The Number 14

What does the number 14 mean to you? I suppose that it all depends on which sport you follow. I read one rather amazing comment on the number 14 that triggered me to go in search of number “14’s” for this piece, but before I get to the “big” one, here are a few other “14’s.”

* The uniform number of the Hit King, Pete Rose.

* The number of victories for Carl Pavano in 2009.

* The number of victories that Andy Pettitte has in three of his past four seasons.

* The point-per-game scoring pace of Tayshaun Prince last season (well it was 14.2, but if you round off that puppy you got your fourteen).

* The number of points that Rene Bourque has in 10 games with the Calgary Flames this year.

All of those are rather random “14’s” that can be found with a random sampling of sports, and none of the aforementioned “14’s” are what sent me on this kick. What is the “14” that did the trick?

From 1991-2005 the Braves won a division title, you guessed it, 14-consecutive seasons.

If you’re counting and you realize there are 15 years involved you are right. Don’t forget that major league baseball had a strike in 1994 when no divisional champions were officially crowned (the Braves were 68-46 but six games behind the Expos when the season was canceled).

In this day and age of money grubbing athletes, ah who am I kidding I’m just jealous, there is simply no way I can possibly conceive of any team in pro sports ever matching that run with guys always looking to “get mine” making it nearly impossible to set up a dynasty (also the advent of salary caps doesn’t help). Sure the Braves won only one championship in 1995, and they reached the World Series only five times, but honestly, 14-consecutive division titles? I have trouble waking up to my alarm clock 14-straight times. Here are some highlights from the run.

* The NL ERA was 4.21 in this stretch. The Braves’ ERA was 3.53.
* The NL WHIP was 1.38. The Braves’ WHIP was 1.28.
* Obviously the NL winning percentage was .500. The Braves mark was .606.

As you might recall, the Braves had a pretty strong threesome leading the charge to all those pennants.

John Smoltz: 149-99 (.601 Win%), 3.17 ERA, 1.15 WHIP, 8.13 K/9, 3.19 K/BB. Was hugely clutch in playoffs, and there may have never been a more devastating slider from a right-handed starter.

Tom Glavine (1991-2002; he joined the Mets thereafter): 209-102 (.672 Win%), 3.15 ERA, 1.27 WHIP, 5.77 K/9, 3.09 K/BB. The classiest lefty of the past 25 years. He wasn’t ever as exciting as the other two, but the man could certainly pitch with the best of them.

Greg Maddux (1993-2003): 194-88 (.688 Win%), 2.63 ERA, 1.05 WHIP, 6.51 K/9, 4.77 K/BB. Probably the best pitcher of his generation with his only competition being Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson and Roger Clemens. No one was better at the art of pitching.

Combined, the trio also brought home some hardware.

Glavine: 1991 Cy Young Award
Maddux: 1992-95 Cy Young Awards
Smoltz: 1996 Cy Young Award

So as you can see, the Big-3 was certainly at the heart of pretty much all of the success that the Braves had. Oh, that and the man who has helmed the ship in manager Bobby Cox. Mr. Cox is fourth all-time with 2,413 victories, and though he likely won’t catch Tony LaRussa (2,552) for third overall, you can’t do anything but throw mad props at Cox who has been the Manager of the Year four times (1985, 1991, 2004-05) as the guy who captained the organization to every one of those 14 division championships.

One other “14” by the way… my brother Jeff used to wear the number while slugging homers on the diamond before be turned to soccer where he had a fair amount of success going on to become All-State in Junior College at the keeper position.

By Ray Flowers

What is His Legacy?

I was recently asked by a friend what I thought of Pedro Martinez. Why did his career end so abruptly? Did I think he had a chance to be an effective pitcher this season if he signed with someone? And finally, what is his place amongst the greats of the game? Here are my thoughts on each matter.

(1) Why has his career basically ended so abruptly?
I actually don’t think it ended abruptly at all. Basically what has happened is that guys like Randy Johnson and John Smoltz have spoiled us into thinking that every top-flight pitcher can pitch effectively into their 40′s. The truth is, they cannot. Pedro might have “lost it” compared to the two guys we just mentioned, but he won 15 games with a 2.82 ERA as a 33 year old, and that certainly isn’t a bad effort at all. Pedro then started to suffer from shoulder issues, hardly a surprise for a guy who stands 5’11″ and weighs about 175 lbs and threw a 95 mph fastball for years. The fact of the matter is that his body just wore out, a rather normal occurrence for a man who has tossed nearly 2,800-innings in his big league career.

(2) Can he be effective this season?
I don’t see why he couldn’t be a better hurler than a ton of arms currently employed by major league clubs, even at age 37, as long as he is healthy. Certainly he won’t be able to recapture his past glory, but I don’t see why he couldn’t be an effective reliever, that is if his body could stand the transformation from throwing every five days as a starter. Pedro was always a “pitcher” who threw hard and not a hard thrower who tried to pitch. He might not be able to hit even 90 on the gun anymore, but I bet he could still pitch his way to some outs.

(3) What is his legacy?
This was the portion of the question that had me most intrigued. Let’s take a look at Pedro in a handful of categories and see how he stacks up against the all-time greats.

Wins and Loses
Pedro has 214 victories, tied for 86th all-time. Given that he has lost only 99 games, that leaves him with a superlative .684 winning percentage which just so happens to be the seventh best mark in baseball history. If remove pre-1900 hurlers he moves up to fourth on the all-time list. He may not have the volume of wins that others have, but it’s obvious that he was nearly as effective as any man who ever climbed the hill.

ERA
Pedro’s overall ERA of 2.91 is the 61st best mark in the history of baseball for a man who has tossed at least 2,000-innings. While that is impressive, it certainly doesn’t speak to just how dominating that Pedro was in his career. I touched on an idea called “normalization” in an earlier piece entitled Some People Never Learn. You can read more about the idea there, but the basic idea is this – raw numbers mean nothing until they are placed in context. When Pedro pitched there was a ton more offense in the game then when Cy Young was on the hill, so comparing their raw ERA’s to one another wouldn’t really tell you much of anything. The only way to know how effective a player is would be to compare him to his contemporaries who played the game under the same conditions that he did. To that end – Pedro has posted a 2.91 ERA in his career. When we adjust for his competition by comparing his ERA to the league average during his career (4.45), and adjust for the parks he pitched in, we come up with an ERA+ of 154. What this means is that Pedro was 54% better than a league average pitcher during his career which just so happens to be the best mark in baseball history amongst starting pitchers. Cy Young who had a raw ERA of 2.63 in his career comes in with an ERA+ mark of 138, good enough for 18th all-time.

WHIP
Since he began his career in 1992 Pedro is the only pitcher in baseball who has thrown at least 1,500-innings who allowed less than 10 base runners per nine innings at 9.90 (Greg Maddux is second at 10.08). Moreover, Pedro’s raw WHIP of 1.05 is the third best mark of any hurler, post-1900, who has thrown at least 1,250-innings in the history of the game.

Strikeouts
Pedro is tied with Bob Gibson for 13th all-time in strikeouts with 3,117 in his career (Smoltz is 101 behind). If we move to the ratio category of K/9, Pedro’s career mark of 10.08 is the second best in baseball history for hurlers who have tossed 1,500-innings trailing only the 10.62 mark of the Big Unit, Randy Johnson.

I don’t know if Pedro will come back this season, but I can tell you this without reservation – you may not know it, heck you may not want to admit it, but I think a plausible argument can be made that Pedro Martinez was one of the 10 greatest starting pitchers who ever lived, period. Care to disagree?

By Ray Flowers

Thursday's AL Beat

Normally I just ramble on about whatever baseball topics catch my fancy. I’m not really changing that up today, I’m merely going to throw one topic out there that I’ll have to follow to somewhat focus my ramblings – I’m only going to discuss happenings in the American League.

The Blue Jays used eight pitchers in a nine inning game for the first time in team history on Thursday as they emerged victorious 8-7 over the Phillies. If you quickly glance at the scorecard you’ll see that recent called up Jeremy Accardo picked up the save. Huh? With Scott Downs on the DL with a sprained big toe the thought was that the team would turn to Jason Frasor to shut the door in the ninth, so why did Accardo pick up the save? Frasor did enter the game late, but it was in the bottom of the eighth inning. Frasor then proceeded to blow the save though he allowed only one hit while recording an out. The club then turned to B.J. Ryan to start the ninth inning, and he picked up a walk and a strikeout before he too was removed for Accardo who recorded two outs to pick up his first save of the season in his first big league appearance of the year. Despite all this craziness if I had to grab Blue Jays’ reliever at this point I would line them up as Frasor, Ryan and Accardo as I think today was the exception and not the rule. Oh yeah, I also should mention that despite the blown save, Frasor picked up his fifth victory of the year once again proving just how ineffective it is to judge a pitcher by his record (he is now 5-0). Frasor now has more victories than Javier Vazquez who has only four victories despite posting a 3.41 ERA, 1.01 WHIP and 112 Ks in 92.1 innings this season for the Braves.

Gavin Floyd was screwed on Thursday as the White Sox’ bullpen betrayed him. Floyd left the game with a 5-1 lead after seven innings before a collection of arms conspired to help the cross town Cubs to emerge with a 6-5 victory. In the outing Floyd only struck out two batters but he allowed just seven base runners in his seven innings to lower his ERA to 4.65 and his WHIP to 1.36. Those numbers still don’t match his totals from last season (3.84 and 1.26), but given his poor start to the year they are rather remarkable. Floyd has now hurled 6-straight “quality starts” for the Sox even though he has only two victories to show for it despite a 1.62 ERA in that time. I don’t think he will be able to get his numbers down to the point that they will rival what he did last season, but as of now he is pitching better than the likes of Zack Greinke and Johan Santana, and that is certainly saying something.

Magglio Ordonez has been benched by Jim Leyland in Detroit for his continued struggles at the dish. Mags is hitting .273 with only two home runs and 22 RBI putting him on pace to roughly hit six bombs with 60 RBI this season. For a guy who has averaged 24 home runs and 115 RBI the past three seasons, that is a shocking fall. His BB/K rate is still strong at 0.76, the same as his career numbers, and his BABIP mark is also right on his career mark of .320 at .315. So why the struggles? (1) He isn’t hitting the ball hard with a 15.2 LD-rate, and that is a precipitous fall from his career 20 percent mark. (2) His swing has been bereft of power as his current Isolated Power mark of .069 is roughly one third his career .202 mark. For those of you who read Isolated Power and think it’s a foreign language, the measure basically outlines a player’ ability to produce extra base hits. If you want to read more about it, click on the following link to Isolated Power, A Review. The bottom line is that it appears, even when he makes contact, that he is hitting with a wiffle ball bat.

John Smoltz got the thumbs up after his strong minor league start on Wednesday night in which he permitted a single run in four innings of work at Triple-A Pawtucket (without a doubt one of the best names in minor league baseball). As a result of his diligent work coming back from his shoulder surgery, Smoltz will finally be seen on a major league diamond for the first time this season on June 25th against the Nationals. For now the team plans to go with a 6-man rotation, but we’ll see how long that lasts. For more on Smoltz, give One Up, One Down a read.

By Ray Flowers

One Up, One Down

The fortunes of two of the better pitchers in baseball the past decade are going in two totally different directions. One, a former ace reliever, appears to be at the end of his career, while another “ace” appears on the cusp of returning from injury with plans for pitching on into the future.

Jason Isringhausen has a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching elbow and as a result he will require Tommy John surgery if he intends to keep on pitching. Given that he is already 36 years old and coming off an injury filled couple of seasons, this might be the end of the road for the man affectionately called “Izzy.” If it is, he will retire with 293 saves in his career leaving him just seven saves short of becoming the 22nd reliever in big league history to record 300-career saves. During his heyday of 2002-07, Jason averaged 34 saves a season and his total of 205 in that time was fourth in baseball only behind Mariano Rivera (228), Billy Wagner (212) and Trevor Hoffman (210). I know he doesn’t seem like an all-time great, but really, it’s pretty easy to make an argument that Isringhausen was one of the 20 best closers of all-time, though that certainly will not be enough for him to have his name enshrined in Cooperstown one day.

John Smoltz, on the other hand, figures to have his plaque on the wall of the Hall of Fame once he decides to hang up the spikes. However, that time may not be as close as some people have guessed as Smoltz came out and said that he doesn’t want to just pitch in 2009, he wants to continue his career in 2010 as well. “The reason I had surgery was not to just come back for one year,” Smoltz said. “I figured if I was going to have surgery and I can pitch one year, what prevents me from pitching two years.” Makes perfect sense to me. Smoltz will obviously still have to prove that he has “it” on the field, but after having shoulder surgery the Bo Sox were really patient with his recovery and it appears that their patience is about ready to be rewarded. Just how good has Smoltz been? The data is pretty overwhelming.

(1) Smoltz has won 210 games in his career. That’s one more than Don Drysdale.

(2) Smoltz saved 154 games in his career. When combined with his win total, he is the only man in baseball history with 200-wins and 150-saves in his career.

(3) Smoltz has 3,011 strikeouts in his career. That’s the 16th best mark in baseball history and 208 more than Cy Young himself.

(4) Smoltz has allowed 7.90 hits per nine inning pitched in his career. Amongst men with at least 3,000 IP, Smoltz has 3,395, that number is 12th all time and better than the 7.94 mark of Christy Mathewson.

(5) Smoltz has allowed 10.67 base runners per nine inning in his career. Amongst men with at least 3,000 IP Smoltz is 18th all-time, just ahead of Jim Palmer.

(6) Smoltz has produced an ERA of less than 3.50 in every season since 1995, a run of 13 consecutive seasons. During that time his ERA has been 3.04.

(7) Smoltz has produced a WHIP of less than 1.25 in every season since 1995, a run of 13 consecutive seasons. During that time his WHIP has been 1.12.

Do you know how many seasons in his career that Brandon Webb has produced an ERA below 3.04 with a WHIP below 1.12? Try zero.

How about Roy Halladay? Two.
Johan Santana? Three.
CC Sabathia? One.
Jake Peavy? Two
Dan Haren? Zero.

Think about that for a moment. Smoltz averaged those numbers over the past 13 seasons, and those six stud hurlers have combined for a total of eight such seasons. Pretty amazing eh?

Oh, and don’t forget that Smoltz is one of the best “big game” pitchers in history, just look at his post-season career numbers: 15-4, 2.65 ERA, 1.14 WHIP with 194 Ks over 207 innings covering 40 appearances. The term “money” was invented to describe this guy.

By Ray Flowers

Injuries Are Part of the Game

Another day, another top fantasy option has come down with an injury. In fact, you were almost as likely to take a player who has spent time on the DL or on the bench this year with your first round pick as you were likely to draft a healthy player. Just look at how many of the top-15 options heading into the year have dealt with injury.

Miguel Cabrera tweaked a hamstring on Thursday and will be held out of the lineup on Friday though word is that he might be able to pinch-hit if needed. No Cabrera owner can be too upset since their man has hit .354 with 10 home runs, 38 RBI and 34 runs scored so far this season – provided this doesn’t become a DL-type thing.

Hanley Ramirez: He has battled through a variety of injuries all year, and though he is hitting a robust .342, he has only eight home runs and eight steals on the year.

Jose Reyes: The latest news says that his injured calf is now an injured right hamstring tendon. Whether or not that is the same injury and the Mets have kept it under wraps is unknown, but the bottom line is that he is on the DL and the New York Post is reporting that he could miss up to six weeks with the injury. He was hitting only .279 with 11 steals in just 36 games, woeful production for a top-5 pick.

Ryan Braun: Like Hanley, Braun continues to play through a variety of bumps and bruises. Still, he has produced hitting .316 with 10 home runs and 34 RBI, though that pace leaves him barely on pace to produce his third straight 30-100 season. He has only gone deep twice in 19 games which leads me to think he physically ain’t right.

Grady Sizemore: Dude has been lost all year, and now we know why – his elbow is jacked up. Grady hasn’t had surgery on his elbow yet, but it looks like it might be required despite the fact that an MRI didn’t show any structural damage. Sizemore has gone 20/20 in 4-straight year and he could still reach that level since he has nine home runs and seven steals so far provided he doesn’t go under the knife, but his .223 average and .726 OPS show just how awful he has been.

Alex Rodriguez: Had hip surgery and as a result didn’t take the field until May 8th. He is only hitting .250 and doesn’t have a single steal, but he has gone deep seven times with 22 RBI in 26 games.

Josh Hamilton: Like Sizemore, Hamilton may need surgery to fix what ails him. Hamilton is currently on the DL with a strained abdominal muscle. He could be back in two weeks, or he could miss up to two months if he needs surgery. He was hitting only .240 with a .746 OPS though he had drive in 24 runs in 35 games.

Here are some further notes of interest on Friday…

David Ortiz is having his eyes checked since he reported having dry eyes of late. You would think that someone would have checked out his vision a long while ago given his putrid work at the dish this year which includes a .187 average and one home run through 187 ABs. Perhaps some new spectacles will help?

J.J. Putz will be on the shelf for an estimated two months, possibly more, as he will have his elbow operated on to clean some things up. If he comes back as expected, and the team is able to get Billy Wagner back as well, no one will want to face the Mets in September if they can go Putz-Wagner-Francisco Rodriguez in the 7-8-9 innings. I know I wouldn’t.

Brad Penny apparently is on the Braves radar as they look to add some pitching depth. First off, the Red Sox would likely entertain the idea of moving Penny since John Smoltz appears on the cusp or a return to the rotation. The Sox also have Justin Masterson who can start if needed, and don’t forget about Clay Buchholz who continues to toil away in Triple-A simply dominating hitters with his filthy stuff to the tune of a 4-0 record with a 1.74 ERA, 0.76 WHIP and a 4.75 K/BB mark. If you ask me, Penny is the worst option out of those four, so why not move him? If the Braves wanted to add a veteran arm, why didn’t they just hold on to Tom Glavine? For his part, Penny is a very deceiving 5-1 this season thanks to a ton of run support as he has posted a 5.63 ERA, 1.60 WHIP, 5.63 K/9 and a 2.00 K/BB. My disdain for Penny is well chronicled going back a couple of seasons, and nothing I have seen from him this season has changed my mind one bit.

Oh, and one last note. Kyle Elfrink, my co-host on the Fantasy Buffet, our Monday through Friday podcast at Fanball.com, recently did a 1-on-1 interview with the Jets’ running back Leon Washington. Listen for that interview on Monday during the 11AM-12PM time slot that we do the show. You can access the interview at the link posted above on Monday.

By Ray Flowers