MLB: May 2011

The Game Room
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Tough stretch of games ahead for the Phillies. Playing a lot of good teams, and it seems like every other game someone gets hurt. But, hopefully, they can hold their own through it all and when they come home at the end of the month get Utley back in good shape. I’m hoping his first game back is on 24th against the Reds. I have tickets to that game, and it would be exciting to be there for his home coming.

Cliff Lee is a bad pitcher. He hasn’t won a game for a month. Guess it was a waste of money? What good is 16 strike outs if you can’t hit home runs?

With this stupid PSN outage, I have been unable to watch as many games as usual. man. I can’t wait til it comes back!

Did we talk about the McDowell madness here? I think the MLB handled it pretty well. I just hope he improved his apology. The one I read by him made it sound like the hecklers brought it on.

Crazy fun how good the Indians have been. Nice to start the year with a surprise like that.

On the flip side. What is up with Minnesota? I know Mauer is hurt, and that is a huge loss. But, who would have thought they would be this bad? Worst team in baseball? Wow.

Tampa Bay has turned things around really well.

They’re making a big deal about the Cubs GM hugging Pujols the other day, and saying it might mean the Cubs sign him. Big deal over nothing. But, what I don’t understand is how that guy has a job. I don’t follow the cubs really well. But, I don’t see a lot of good roster decisions done over the past 3 or 4 years. And, not even rumors about firing him. Whats up with that?

This Dodgers mess cannot end soon enough. I don’t mind the Dodgers losing. But, I can’t stand them losing because the ownership is so greedy, incompetent and just plain bad.
The Mets stuff isn’t as bad yet. But, it doesn’t look good, either.

Lance Berkman? What the hell?

I don’t get the Brewers. They looked so good against the Phillies. But, I guess maybe it was just that the Phillies were so bad that series.

Must be weird for Pirates fans!

Ah. That’s enough. Fun season so far.

I haven’t been paying close enough attention. Who are the ROY front runners?

62

The Indians have been facing some mind-blowing pitching lately and baseball is making me exhausted.

It is very hard to be in first place because you’re always watching your back. And then you have all these damn streaks that you don’t want to break (most consecutive wins at home! pitcher has pitched 6 innings in every start he’s ever made! etc) And teams play really hard against you.

The Indians are still in first place. By 3.5 games. Freaky! Although, I don’t know why it’s surprising me. I’ve known this team was special since before last season.

I’m still blogging about the Tribe every day, recapping each game with a purely positive spin. That is actually exhausting in itself. Not the being positive stuff, but listening intently to every game then writing a summary and making it long enough. Plus I am putting in quotes from the radio broadcast, so I have to hear most or all of the radio broadcast. Sometimes I have to listen to it later in the day or the next day, on the MLB.com archives.

But, I wouldn’t have it any other way :slight_smile: Paying attention in this much detail is WAY fun!

63

The Giants take first place with a 6-0 homestand in which:

  1. They only scored 3 runs per game on average
  2. They never scored more than 4 in a game (an MLB first)
  3. 5 of 6 were 1-run games
  4. 3 of 6 were walkoffs

They are now 12-3 in 1-run games, and are on track to finish 52-13 in 1-run games. No luck involved here.

64

This is only a very small part of why they are losing. It’s part of it, don’t get me wrong, but a small part. The larger part is the GM choosing to spend money on middle relievers in the off season rather than hitters, and the few hitters he did spend money on are all HR potential hitters rather than anyone who can get on base with any regularity. I like Juan Uribe if he is one guy with huge HR potential and low OBP, but when you put him with Rod Barajas, Marcus Thames, and Jay Gibbons who are also guys with nothing but huge HR potential but are most likely a guaranteed out at the plate, you are in trouble. This is not ownership, this is the GM making poor choices in who to bring in with the off season money that he had to work with .

Looking at the rest of the lineup Casey Blake is solidly average but old and often hurt, Jamey Carroll is also solidly average but also old and can’t play every day, and Rafael Furcal is genuinely great but ALWAYS hurt. Tony Gwynn Jr. is a fantastic outfielder but a below average hitter and usually an out, and Aaron Miles shouldn’t even be in the major leagues.

So that leaves Jerry Sands, a AAA call up who is still figuring things out (and figuring them out quickly but still) James Loney who is currently on pace to have the worst career OBP of any Dodger since the 1960s and Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp, one genuinely productive hitter and one monster baseball player.

No matter how you shuffle the lineup you are almost guaranteed to get 2 outs within three batters, and that is not a recipe for success. McCourt being an asshole has nothing (well, very little) to do with that.

65

Huh? Cliff Lee’s an amazing pitcher. He just happens to be on an offensively struggling team.

Really? I hadn’t heard that mlb.tv service went down with it. I know I can access Netflix on my PS3, don’t know why you couldn’t get mlb.tv.

In the AL it’s Britton and Pineda. In the NL…maybe Beachy?

66

Munch, you think Eric Hosmer has a shot at inserting himself into the ROY race? I’m not trying to read it only out of his first week’s performance, but the fact that he has everyone talking him up…I’ve been hearing the Yankee broadcasts of the Yanks-Royals series this week, and they seem higher on the Hos than the Royals are, if that’s possible.

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Absolutely. Pineda and Britton have had a really good head start - but it doesn’t take many games for a pitcher’s numbers to go south. Plus, there always seems to be a bias towards hitters for ROY.

68

This is why I think if Hosmer lives up to even half of what is expected of him he is a lock for AL ROY. No matter how good Pineda is, he isn’t a hitter. It’s hard for pitchers to get that title.

69

Has anyone else noticed that offense is WAY down?

The American League’s batting average - this is for the whole leager - is .251. That’s a full nine points below last year, which was already quite low, and if it keeps up it will be (easily) the lowest AL batting average since the introduction of the DH. I note that the league average the last year without the DH was .239, which frankly makes me awfully sympathetic to the people who came up with the idea.

The NL’s batting average is just .250; that would also be the lowest average since 1972.

Other numbers are similarly shrinking.

I wonder why this is? It’d be easy to say roids, and I suppose that’s part of it, but batting average, specifically, is at a remarkable nadir. It’s lower than it was in the mid-to-late 70s or 1980s, when steroids weren’t a problem; indeed, in the 70s it was unusual for ballplayer to do weight training.

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Nah, haven’t noticed - the Cards are hitting .290 :slight_smile:

But seriously, I think it’s a combination of steroids being completely gone and likely a change in the ball, coupled with really really bad weather for most of the season. If it’s still like this in July then I’ll start highly suspecting a change in the ball.

71

It’s not the roids, it’s the amphetamine ban. Roids never helped anyone hit the ball more, it helped them hit it farther and let them be active for more games.

72

Logically, roids should still raise batting average. A fly ball out become a home run; a line drive that would have been caught by the shortstop becomes a single. If you hit the ball harder you get more hits.

Banning greenies seems like a small matter to me; I doubt many players were doing then all that much anymore and, anyway, there’s always coffee.

More numbers to chew on; strikeouts are at 6.73 per team per game. In 2000 it was 6.18. I’m not sure what that means.

Comparing numbers from 2000 (an offensive year nonpareil) to 2011 is striking. In 2000 the worst-hitting team in the AL was Tampa Bay, who scored 4.55 runs per game and had splits of .257/.329/.399; they hit 162 homers. The same numbers in 2011 would rank them above average.

73

There are probably more players using amphetamines right now under a medical exemption than there were using steroids at its peak.

74

Yeah, that part certainly doesn’t seem to point to a PED causation.

I’m tempted to just write it off as sample size until a bit more data comes in, but I’d really like some enterprising journalist to get their hands on the current baseball and do some journalisting.

Although, I guess I can see how a reduction in power (due to PEDs, new ball, weather) would drive up the strikeout rate by proxy. Basically if you’re no longer afraid to groove one you can make “better” pitches. I’d be interested to see if the swing-and-miss rate is up as well - anybody have access to that data?

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Munch:

Heh, I guess my sarcasm wasn’t very good. The only thing more amazing than Cliff Lee’s pitching performances has been his bad luck. At least he isn’t losing a ton of games with the gaudy stats, the Phillies are just choosing to score their runs after he is out of the game, so he can be happy with a no decision. Anyway, I think this will turn around eventually, and he will start picking up wins to go along with all his other fantastic stats.

Yeah, the PS3 mlb.tv app insists that you be logged in to PSN before it will run. According to the MLB.tv support boards this is something Sony insists upon. And, you are lucky that Netflix is still working. Netflix was working for me (after the trick of cancelling out after the failed PSN login.) fine up until around 2 days ago when it just stopped working.

Ah yeah. I have been reading a lot about Hosmer and his amazing start. I mean, there are already articles about how they should lock him up on a long term contract! Boras seems willing to wait. Forgot about him.

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That sucks. But Netflix was asking for a PSN login, but after about 2-3 tries, it would just load up. I’m guessing you’ve tried that with mlb.tv, but thought I’d mention it.

In the longrun, it’s good advice from Boras - it’s money he’s not going to see until 2017, and things are really going to change with salary structures in the next few years. However, on an individual basis, there’s tons of risk for Hosmer to not sign now. I think I’d wait until at least the off-season. Push for ROY, get the fanbase to totally fall in love, and start talking about that 2013 World Series ring - then sign.

77

Both steroids and amph fail the basic why now question. Why would usage be any less now than last year or the year before. Two far more logical explanations are a shift to better defensive/worse offensive players and even more simply really good young starting pitching. The amount of pitchers throwing 95 is up significantly from 5 year ago. These things have always been cyclic and don’t really need any explanation than that.

78

Are we just producing better pitching now? These kids are like well-crafted machines, where previously your Bob Fellers and Nolan Ryans were just born that way. Is there better scouting now? (Tom Hamilton always says "Don’t worry about what school you go to. If you’re good, they’ll find you). Better pitching coaches? (more wisdom to pass down) Sabermetrics. Better medicine. Smarter trainers. Are teams putting all their money into pitching like football teams put all their money into quarterbacks?

Maybe it’s just because we just came off a stint against all the best pitchers in the AL, but it sure seems tough out there. Every night it’s like we’re facing the best.

ETA: Simulpost with Hawkeyeop.

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I think that’s entirely possible.

I’ve expressed great pleasure at the crop of young starters the Blue Jays have, but then in almost every series everyone else seems to have good young starters too.

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Freakonomics: Who Stole All The Runs In MLB?