Is Perception Reality?

Anecdotal evidence is unreliable when trying to paint a picture of something as the human mind tends to overemphasize what it has just witnessed paying little attention to things like context and history. Nowhere is this more apparent then when it comes to players being derided for playoff failures even though we are often talking about something like 5-10 games. With that …

Here is my daily Alex Rodriguez check up. After hitting .455 with two homers and six RBI in the ALDS, he has gone on to hit .375 with three homers and five RBI in the ALCS. He has been so hot that Angels’ manager Mike Scioscia even paid him the ultimate sign of respect by walking him intentionally with the bases empty. I’ve said it before too many times to count, but remember context and sample size people. Remember back three weeks ago when A-Rod was the biggest playoff choker ever? Now he has been hot for two weeks and all of a sudden everyone thinks he is the greatest thing since the invention of porn. Look at things this way. In his regular season career A-Rod has produced a .305/.390/.576 line, and with his recent hot streak his playoff numbers are nearly identical at .299/.388/.563. It all evens out folks, though sometimes the road is a bit bumpy.

Want to talk about a playoff choker? Well then, how about we look at Mark Teixeira who is 2-for-21 of late in the playoffs. I’m just kidding. Remember the value of sample size (give me 21 at-bats and I can make Babe Ruth look pitiful and Omar Vizquel look like a legend). However, the case of Chone Figgins is worth examining. Figgins has hit .291 during his regular season career of more than 3,500 at-bats, but come playoff time he has barely hit his weight at .174, though again we are talking about just 115 at-bats. Still, he has looked atrocious this post-season going just 2-for-34, good for a .059 average. We are talking about a handful of at-bats of course, but in his last seven playoffs series Figgins has hit under .150 five times. That’s ugly.

One of the major reasons that Scott Kazmir was brought to the Angels was because of his career-long success against he Bronx Bombers which can be seen in his 2.67 ERA, 1.27 WHIP and 8.83 K/9 mark over 87.2 innings covering 15 appearances. So much for history as he went out and laid an egg against the Yankees allowing six hits, four walks and four runs in just four innings of work in the ALCS. As a result, his two post-season outings this season have resulted in an 8.10 ERA and a 1.80 WHIP. I don’t think that is what the Angels had in mind when they traded for him. It’s just two starts – sample size people – but the two pathetic outings certainly leave a bad taste in Kazmir’s mouth after he had so much success down the stretch when he posted a 1.73 ERA and a 1.05 WHIP in six starts with the team from Southern California.

One of the worst calls in playoff baseball history occurred yesterday. It hardly mattered as the Yankees crushed the Angels, but it was still galling in it’s ineptitude. You can watch the terrible call by clicking on the link where a full description of what went wrong is explained. Dreadful.

INJURY NEWS

Albert Pujols’ elbow surgery went well as a few bone chips (apparently five) were removed from his right wing, and Pujols’ should be fully prepared to play once spring training roles around. Still, the continued issues with Pujols’ right elbow are really starting to concern me. Nothing destroys a fantasy teams chance of winning a title like having your first round draft pick crap out (ask Jose Reyes owners), and with each “minor” procedure on Pujols’ elbow I grow more concerned. We all know he will eventually need Tommy John surgery given the partially torn elbow ligament he is dealing with, and just because he has been able to play through it without further exacerbating the problem the past few years is no guarantee that he will be able to do so in 2010. Honestly I’d have to do some serious number crunching before I could suggest passing on Pujols if you had the #1 spot in your draft, but a guy like Hanley Ramirez is starting to look awfully appealing despite the reduction in steals he posted in 2009 (just 27 after being over 35 each of the previous three years, though who really cares when you hit .342, score 101 runs, knock in 106 and play shortstop?).

By Ray Flowers

How Good is Albert Pujols?

Earlier this week I made the case for Albert Pujols as the lead dog in The NL MVP Race. Honestly, he isn’t the lead dog, he is the only dog worth even mentioning.

Some of you may understand just how historic Pujols has been in his career, other’s may not, so I thought I would spend a few minutes detailing to you just how amazing Pujols has been through his first nine seasons.

(1) If not for some moronic voting in 2002, Albert Pujols would have been selected to the All-Star team in every season of his career (he ended the year hitting .314 with 34 homers, 127 RBI and 118 runs scored and was hitting “only .294-21-66-66 in 84 games in the first half).

(2) Pujols may have won two MVP awards so far, his third one will be added to the mix shortly, but despite playing only nine seasons he is already 11th all-time in MVP Shares. He could easily move up to about sixth on the list after this year’s vote is announced.

(3) Pujols owns a .334 career batting average, the 24th best mark in baseball history for players with at least 3,000 plate appearances. He has never finished below seventh in NL batting race in his nine seasons.

(4) Pujols owns a .427 career OBP, the 13th best mark in baseball history. Six times he has finished in the top-3.

(5) Pujols owns a .628 career SLG, the fourth best mark ever. In each of his nine seasons he has finished in the top-9.

(6) Pujols owns a 1.055 career OPS, the fourth best mark in baseball history. In all of his nine seasons he has finished in the top-10, and over the past five years he has finished first in the NL four times.

(7) Pujols has had only one “down” season in his career. In 2007 he hit .327 with 32 homers, 103 RBI and 99 runs scored. That ’07 season is the only one in his career in which he has failed to knocked in at least 116 runs or score at least 100 times.

(8) Here is how Pujols ranks, amongst all major leaguers, during his career (minimum 3,000 plate appearances).

AVG: .334, 1st overall
HR: 366, 2nd overall (A-Rod has 394)
RBI: 1,112, 1st overall
Runs: 1,071, 1st overall
OBP: .427, 3rd overall
SLG: .629, 2nd overall (Barry Bonds posted a .731 mark)
OPS: 1.055, 2nd overall (Barry Bonds posted a 1.262 mark)

(9) And finally. In each of his nine seasons, Pujols has hit at least .314 with 32 homers, 103 RBI and 99 runs scored. That run of nine consecutive seasons is the longest such stretch in the history of the game (Babe Ruth is second with seven). What about Alex Rodriguez or Manny Ramirez, the two other right-handed hitters often spoken of as potential all-time greats from the right side of the plate? A-Rod’s longest stretch is two years (2000-01) while Manny has never done it in back-to-back seasons.

Those are just some of the numbers that speak to the greatness that is Albert Pujols. So next time you are sitting around the fire blazin’ up some smores and the conversation floats to baseball, you know which man you should lead with when someone asks you ‘who is the greatest right-handed hitter you have ever seen play?’ If you are under 40 and you don’t say Mr. Pujols you need to lay off the ripple. If you were to come back and ask this question in another 10 years I think it’s at least a 50-50 bet that no matter how old you are that the answer would be Albert Pujols. Mr. Pujols isn’t just great, he is historically magnificent. You can tell him I said so.

By Ray Flowers

The Case for Jim Thome

Late last week I touched on how I thought it was time that we gave Ken Griffey Jr. more respect than we have of late given the latest performance enhancing drug scandal surrounding Sammy Sosa (you can read all of my thoughts in Death of the Hero?). In that piece I also mentioned, briefly, the name of today’s discussion and that is Jim Thome, who, remarkably unnoticed, has gone about producing one of the most impressive power hitting careers in the history of baseball.

That last statement isn’t hyperbolic in nature by the way. Consider the following data points with Thome.

(1) In his last 12 seasons of at least 400 at-bats, he had only 193 in an injury plagued 2005 campaign, Thome has hit at least 30 home runs.

(2) In those 12 seasons, Thome has knocked in at least 85 runs, and 11 times he has posted at least 90 RBI.

Let’s put those numbers in context.

Thome has 12 seasons of 30 home runs and 85 RBI. That just so happens to be the third most such seasons in baseball history behind only Hank Aaron (14), Mike Schmidt (13) and Babe Ruth (13). Moreover, his total of twelve 30-HR seasons is tied for the fourth most in history (Aaron leads the way here as well with 15).

(3) Thome has averaged, per 162 games in his career, a .278-40-112-107 line. Think about it this way – do you know how many seasons matching all four of those numbers that Albert Pujols has produced in his astounding career? Four. And remember, that is Thome’s average over his career per 162 games.

(4) Thome has always been a remarkable on base machine with a .406 career OBP. Amongst hitters who have accrued at least 3,000 plate appearances in their career that number places Thome in 46th place all-time. By the by, his OBP has been at least .385 in 12 of the past 14 seasons. Ryan Howard has only two seasons above .360 in his career.

(5) Thome is the proud owner of a .559 SLG in his career. Amongst hitters who have accrued at least 3,000 plate appearances in their career that number places Thome in 19th place all-time. Justin Morneau has only one season that high, and it was exactly .559 in 2006.

(6) Thome’s career OPS is a superlative .965, the 18th best mark in league annals for a batter with at least 3,000 plate appearances. Fellow teammate and slugger Jermaine Dye has only one full season where his mark has bettered that when it was 1.006 in 2006.

So when we add that all up, here is what we come up with.

Thome is eighth on my all-time “clean” home run list (you can find the list at the link at the start of the piece), 46th in OBP, 19th in SLG and 18th in OPS. Toss in his 1,459 runs scored that are 73rd all-time and his 1,527 RBI that are 46th all-time, and this is what we have.

Thome is one of just 11 players in baseball history to hit 400 home runs, knock in 1,500 runs, score 1,400 times and post an OPS of at least .950.

Given all that, does Thome deserve to make the Hall of Fame? Being that his power seems nothing more than corn-fed from growing up in the heartland of American (he was born in Illinois), you seriously have to consider the man for enshrinement in the Hall. The biggest negative is the fact that he has functioned as a DH late in his career though in 2,216 career games he has appeared at first base 1,101 times and third base 492 times, so it’s not like he has been a DH only weapon for the majority of his career (to compare Reggie Jackson, who cannot match Thome’s lifetime numbers, is in the Hall despite 630 games at DH versus Thome’s total of 633). If the voters can look past his merely average batting average of .278, and consider that his name has never been linked to performance enhancing drugs, then I think this lefty swinging slugger has a great shot at having a plaque one day in Cooperstown.

By Ray Flowers

The Chosen One?

Like Roy Hobbs straight out of a scene from The Natural, 16 year old Bryce Harper has burst onto the scene. Certainly those scouts that have followed this kids’ development over the past few years are hardly shocked at the rate at which he continues to dazzle everyone who sees him grace the diamonds in his home state of Nevada, but for those of you unaware of the burgeoning legend, he was recent a cover boy on Sports Illustrated, here are some of the highlights.

1- The kid throws a fastball that has been clocked as high as 96 mph. That’s faster than most of the fastballs from Tim Lincecum (his average fastball is 92.4 mph this season.). Don’t worry though, he doesn’t pitch most of the time, he plays catcher.

2- He once reportedly hit a home run 571 feet. Yes, 571 feet. The longest major league home runs that has officially been verified to my knowledge was a 565 foot bomb hit by Mickey Mantle. Oh yeah, Bryce was 15 years old when he that bomb. Fifteen. He also has the longest home run in Tropicana Field history, you know the park where the Rays play their home games. His blast there was a mere 502 feet, though that was only 502 feet because it smacked into the back wall of the stadium. During the home run derby in which he slugged that Ruthian blast he hit six consecutive home runs that traveled an average distance of 469 feet. Must have been the aluminum bat huh?

3- At 16, he already stands 6’3″ and weighs 205 pounds. And don’t even think of steroids, the kid has never touched the stuff and has no need for it.

4- He played for USA Baseball’s under 16 team at the Pan Am Championships in Mexico facing the best players in the world that are his age. All he did in that tournament was hit .571 with four home runs and six stolen bases in eight games to earn tournament MVP honors.

5- Bryce Harper has decided to skip his junior and senior years of high school and take the GED which he will likely pass with flying colors given his 3.5 GPA. Why? So that he can enter junior college in August of this year, and then become eligible for the major league draft in 2010 in which, conceivably, he could become the number one overall pick in the country.

Is he ready for all of this? We can sit here and debate all day whether or not he can handle the pressure, after all he isn’t even old enough to watch an R-rate movie, to vote, or for that matter he is just barely able to drive a motor vehicle. But in this day and age of 15 year old tennis stars, 14 year old Olympians, and tennie boppers in the entertainment world who aren’t even old enough to watch a PG-13 flick, it’s really a bit of a surprise that it has taken this long for someone to be so good in baseball as to push us all to consider just how young is too young (teams routinely sign foreign players at 16 years of age anyway). As for his skill and the change of him a top-5 pick in the 2010 draft, here is one what National League scouting director had to say about Harper.

“I scouted A-Rod, Chipper Jones, Manny [Ramirez], all those guys in high school. God was very, very good to this kid. He’s stronger than they all were in high school. Never mind next year. If he’d been in the draft this year, he would have gone very, very high.”

Oh, and it appears that Harper will be represented by Scott Boras who almost certainly will look to make the argument that Harper is the greatest athlete since modern man crawled out of the Fertile Crescent in Africa some 100,000 years ago.

It will likely end up being a wild ride for this kid. I can only wish him the best and hope that he turns out to be more Ken Griffey Jr. than Todd Van Poppel.

By Ray Flowers

Some People Never Learn

I thought we were past this. I thought after all the analysis we’ve been spewing over the past five years that the mainstream media has finally gotten “it.” I guess we’re not done yet.

I recently was flipping through the pages of my Sporting News Magazine when I came across an article in which they asked a bunch of baseball people to rate who the best players in the game are (Albert Pujols came out on top). While I might disagree with some of the order of their choices, that isn’t germane to my concern here. My concern is that people in the mainstream media, and remember these are the people that vote for the Hall of Fame folks, just don’t understand how the game, and the measurement used to speak to the game, work.

What do I mean. Simply put nothing means anything without context. Think I’m crazy? Here is a series of numbers. Can you tell me what they mean with no supporting context?

13, 60, 73, 511 and 911

My shoe size.
The single season home run record set by Babe Ruth in 1927.
The new single season home run record set by Barry Bonds in 2001.
The career victory total of Cy Young.
The famous model number for Porsche’s.

The point is without some sort of context, the numbers mean nothing at all.

So when I read the Sporting News breakdowns I wasn’t shocked, though I was dismayed, to realize that people that are supposed to be “in the know” still, well, don’t know.

Here is an example. The article talks about how Josh Hamilton hit 32 home runs and had 130 RBI in his first full season in Texas while Juan Gonzalez had only 27 HR and 102 RBI. That would lead you to think that Hamilton is a much better player wouldn’t it?. However, let’s use some context. Hamilton was 27 years old last season while Gonzo was just 21 in his first full season. Oh, and in case you were wondering, by the time Gonzalez was 27 he had four seasons of 40 home runs and 100-RBI.

Another example? There is a note that Victor Martinez has more RBI at the age of 30 than fellow catcher Carlton Fisk. The context that is left out here is that Fisk had 468 RBI through his 30 year old season, but that he then went on to record 866 RBI over the remainder of his career that lasted until he was 45 years of age. Do you honestly think that V-Mart has another 1,700+ games in him as did Fisk? Martinez better keep whacking that ball around the yard at a prodigious pace if wants to surpass the 1,300+ RBI that Fisk had in his career, and let me tell you something – it ain’t gonna happen (Martinez would have to average 85 RBI for the next 10 years to catch him).

And here might be the topper. The article actually says, and I quote, that Carlos Zambrano’s winning percentage of .615 “…is the same as Sandy Koufax when he was 28.” Seriously? Besides the fact that wins and loses are a putrid way to measure the success or failure of a hurler, there is also the context that by every conceivable measure known to mankind shows that Koufax was a vastly superior pitcher to Zambrano making any comparison between the two fallacious. Here are some examples.

In his 29 and 30 year old season’s Koufax went 53-17, to push his winning percentage up to .655 in his career. In addition, he also posted a 1.88 ERA, 0.92 WHIP, 9.55 K/9 and a 4.72 K/BB ratio in those two seasons, numbers Zambrano has never even sniffed in his career. Oh yeah, Koufax also tossed 659 innings in those two seasons, or more than the 619 that Zambrano has tossed in his last three seasons!

But even this isn’t fair because it isn’t putting Koufax’s performance in the context of the era in which he pitched. I mean really, how do you compare a guy who tossed 330-innings in a season to a guy who throws 200? How do you compare a guy who posted an ERA of 2.76 in his career, to a guy who owns a 3.50 mark like Zambrano? Context my friends. By comparing each pitcher to their contemporaries we find that Koufax produced an ERA that was 31% better than the league average when he pitched, whereas Zambrano, pitching in a more “offensive era” has been 27% better than the league average. What this shows is that their performance, when compared to era in which they pitched, were actually similar despite the fact that Zambrano’s raw ERA is three-quarters of a run higher. The answer to all of this comparison business is context.

So next time you read one of these historical articles comparing players, make sure you do something that most of the writers never do – put whatever you are studying under the microscope, sprinkle in some context, and come up with an “answer” that is likely more accurate than that of the man or woman who is being paid to write the piece.

By Ray Flowers