Might as well do one more catching up for opening day!
You can find links to projections here and to standings and awards here.
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We're just 9 days away from the first set of pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training.
February 18th:
So to tide us over, here's some links from the last few weeks. The favourite players list will still be coming, but this is an easy compilation of some good reading. Plus roll through the last few entries to look at my 10 favourite team seasons. Yahoo! Sports is doing a Homer History feature, where writers tell stories of particularly memorable home runs.
And finally, an MLB.com promo video to get you pumped up for the new season! On a side note, those who follow the Jays will be happy to know that Josh Donaldson was extended for this year and next year, avoiding an arbitration hearing over his salary. Enjoy, everybody! To the readers, because it's been a while. Thanks to anybody who has kept coming and checking, or re-reading things. It's been a slow winter writing-wise, partly because it's the offseason, and other things have been busy. But there have been things going on. I'd like to react to some of them, and will look a little further at what, in particular, the Blue Jays and Giants have done with their respective teams, but I can at least catch you up on some of the other good writing that has gone on over the last couple of months. I may also discuss the hall of fame voting and candidates soon, although many capable writers have already done so. Without too much further ado, here we go.
From Joe Posnanski (with a lot about the Hall of Fame voting, in particular):
And keep checking back here, I'll get back to posting a bit more often. Spring is coming soon! As you are all now no doubt aware, the Kansas City Royals won the World Series on Sunday, finishing off the New York Mets in 5 games. First, some links to some good stories about it, and then some thoughts.
First, probably the craziest number: From the 7th inning on the the playoffs, the Royals outscored their opponents 51-11. The other 9 playoff teams combined to score 55 runs from the 7th inning on. Or another take on it: the Royals scored 40 runs in the 8th inning or later. No other playoff team scored more than 5. That boggles the mind. Seriously. Using Fangraphs win expectancy, the Royals had 8 different games that at some point they had less than a 35% chance of winning, historically, and won all 8 of them. Drilling down further, in 6 of those games they had less than a 20% chance, and in 4 of them they had less than a 10% chance. That just doesn't happen. Specifically, in the World Series, the Royals won 3 games which they trailed in the 8th inning. Which Jayson Stark says has not happened in the previous 110 World Series. I've read a lot about the Royals lately, and listened to some podcasts discussing them (shout out to Jonah Keri and Mike Schur/Ken Tremendous on a sort of "Grantland goodbye"). There's a lot out there about what to take from the Royals. Professional sports are notorious for copycats. Everybody wants to emulate the kings. Sidebar before going too far into that: Moneyball is now pretty well known to people even who aren't necessarily baseball fans thanks to the Brad Pitt movie. A lot of people over the years have taken the lesson that "Moneyball means walks and OBP" and so a team like the Royals would seem to be anti-Moneyball. That's the wrong lesson. Moneyball was (and is) about taking advantage of market inefficiencies. The Oakland A's of the early 2000's (who baseball writers have noted were blessed with having 3 great young pitchers, which had a lot to do with their success but was sort of passed over in Moneyball) were financially unable to compete with teams like New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, and many others, but still found themselves in or near the playoffs for a good run. The author (Michael Lewis) revealed that they were one of the first teams to really embrace "analytics" and try to find how players could actually contribute to "wins" (basically WAR) and what skills were not valued as highly as they should be. Batting average, RBIs, and home runs were valued. Walks and on base percentage were not as valued at the time, but Oakland realized that they should be, and built a very competent offense on this basis. Walks and on base percentage are very highly valued now. They are no longer an inefficiency. Back to Kansas City. They've done a few things that seemed unorthodox, but maybe now are revealing some truths and some "market inefficiencies" that they had taken advantage of. For one, and you'll find this in many articles, they've really tried to build a culture of good people in the organization and on the team. By all accounts, this is a group of players who like each other, and who love baseball. Alex Anthopoulos of Toronto apparently realized about a year ago that "character" was actually pretty important for the team and the fanbase (and whether that lesson was learned much too late is a discussion for another time. There have been teams in the past that were known for "25 players, 25 cabs", as in, nobody did anything together. If you have enough money to get great players, maybe that works for a bit. But maybe Kansas City's method is a lot more sustainable. The San Francisco Giants are known to be a pretty good clubhouse with a manager that is well loved by the players, and this has been a pretty good decade for them. The 2004 Red Sox famously crowned themselves "the idiots" and seemed to have a lot of fun playing. Fun can't be the only part of playing professional sports, I imagine, but in a long season, it probably helps. And for a team like Kansas City who has now been to the World Series 2 years in a row, that growing success is probably not an accident. To that "culture" as well, take another look at that Eno Sarris piece, or the Joe Posnanski one (or both really). The Royals were mocked over the years for their "5-year plan" which turned into a 6-year, 7-year, 8-year... and eventually, as it turned out, 10-year plan. Dayton Moore, their GM, was mocked many times for his decisions, but as it turns out, his moves over the last 4-5 years have been largely outstanding. And above all, they have been very, very patient. Alex Gordon was a high draft pick who hit poorly and fielded poorly at 3rd base, eventually got sent back down to the minor leagues, learned to play left field, and came back as a strong hitter and a gold glove fielder. Mike Moustakas and Eric Hosmer were supposed to be great in 2012, but both struggled (Moustakas in particular) before seeming to really settle into what they are. Alcides Escobar was one of the worst hitters in the league THIS YEAR, but he plays a very good shortstop, and seemed to really hit well in the playoffs (and that making contact on fastballs thing really made a difference). Lorenzo Cain didn't start playing baseball until late in high school when he was cut from his basketball team. He was a good fielder with some speed who hit for some average last year, then added power and really turned into a star this year. Salvador Perez was signed as a 16 year old and brought up as their starting catcher as a 22-year-old. A lot of bi9 market teams would not have had the patience to let some or all of these players grow and find their level. Maybe this was an advantage of being unnoticed for years. Frankly as a fan, I'd love to see a team build something out of good young players, even if it hurts at first. Houston may be on the fast track to this particular part of the Royals success, and the Giants have been doing it for the last 5 years. Another thing which has been discussed a lot lately is the value of making contact. The Royals lead the league in not striking out. They also didn't walk a lot, leading to kind of an average offense. But it was a very difficult to stop offense. Strikeouts having been going up for years now, and walks are starting to go down. As starting pitchers pitch less and presumably maximize their effectiveness and more and more guys throw hard in the bullpen, the ability to hit the ball and give yourself a chance probably is very valuable now. Home runs and walks are getting harder to come by, so a good single can be a difference maker. They've also built an exceptional defense with some great athletes around the field (at most positions anyway), and take advantage of their large home field by letting some of their pitchers (the starters at least) put the ball in play and trust that their fielders will take care of it. Chris Young is an extreme contact and fly ball pitcher. That would be a terrible strategy in Yankee Stadium or Coors Field, but in Kauffman Stadium, it can really work. And of course, they have that great bullpen. Now, bullpens are traditionally volatile and guys who were great one year can be decidedly average the year after that (or worse). Kansas City experience some regression (and then a season ending injury) from Greg Holland this year, but Wade Davis and Kelvin Herrera were excellent again, and helped shorten every game they were in. Remember, 51-11. It may be instructive (and I think it is), that Wade Davis and Danny Duffy are both former starting pitchers (Danny Duffy may be a starter again) whose stuff played way up in the bullpen. Even the aforementioned Chris Young struck out a lot of guys out of the bullpen for a guy with a high 80's fastball. If you want to make a greater point out of that, probably the best short reliever of all time (Mariano Rivera) came up as a starter before getting converted. This is something for teams to think about rather than maybe overpaying strict relievers. I may have more thoughts on ideal team building in another post at another time. In any case, I liked the Royals and their story last year (though, as a Giants fan, I was more than happy with how it ended - Bumgarner forever), and was impressed with how they built on it this year (almost no "experts" or predictors even had them back in the playoffs this year), though a little less a fan after the Blue Jays series and the way a couple of their players acted (Ventura in particular). But they earned this. And hey, in a league of 30 teams, every team should have a chance at one championship in 30 years. So we'll see the Royals back in 2045. The links might become a slightly less frequent feature during the offseason, which will start at the latest 8 days from now. I'm assuming, because many weeks may not have as many things to link to. Awards season, free agency, that sort of thing. But for now, it's World Series time. Game 1 was a good one. Started off with a strange and exciting play, ended with.... a sacrifice fly. But there you go, there were 14 innings of action altogether. And condolences to Royals starter Edinson Volquez. Some things are bigger than baseball.
To the links!
It's been a couple of days, so I'm going to start with a selection of good links for this week.
Quickly, we might as well acknowledge the fact that the Blue Jays are in trouble. Losing the first 2 games on the road wasn't too big a deal, especially when they won game 3 at home. Losing game 4 by 12 runs in a game where their utility infielder pitched in the 9th inning... that's not a great look. Their hitting has struggled outside of yesterday, including many swings and misses against a pitcher today who doesn't usually get a lot of them. Their bullpen seems to have 2 guys in it who Gibbons trusts, although Hendriks should be back on that list (but not available tomorrow I'm sure). Of course, I don't concede the series just yet. Marco Estrada pitched well enough in game 1 that I trust him to do the same or better tomorrow, and if the Jays can score a little bit, they have a chance. They would then need to win 2 more on the road, but would get a chance to do so with what should be their two best pitchers. And, as somebody pointed out on Twitter, this could just be an elaborate revenge plot for 1985, when the Royals came back from a 3-1 deficit including the final 2 games on the road to beat Toronto in the ALCS. They added to that by coming back from a 3-1 deficit to win the World Series too. It's not over, and momentum is tomorrow's starting pitcher. Don't give up just yet. I spent a chunk of yesterday's post going over game 5 of the Jays-Rangers series, and, in particular, inning 7 of game 5, and, in particular the moment after the count went to 2-2 with 2 outs in the top of the 7th to the 3rd pitch thrown to the 6th batter of the bottom of the 7th inning. The thing is, a lot of other people did too, and there are lots of fun perspectives. So far I've just been doing links once a week, but that game and that inning have enough links already that they're worth sharing if you haven't found them.
Edit - I've been adding new links when I've found them, I'll try to note that.
Enjoy everybody. Round two starts tomorrow. I hope it does go 7. I hope every series does. All the baseball! It's been a good week for baseball. A lot of the articles posted early last week were playoff previews and predictions and things. Because of where we are now already in those series, I won't post much along those lines, but it is fun to share some good writing around the web.
So I'd like to write some more original content over the next few days. I actually used Twitter to send a direct link to the blog, so that's cool. In the meantime, I might add a weekly-ish feature of links to some good writing about baseball. This is a particularly good time to do it because there's a lot of end-of-year wrap-ups, playoff predictions, etc. Also! If you're reading this (or any other post) and enjoying it, have any specific thoughts about it, questions, disagreements, requests, anything, please feel free to leave a comment. I haven't added a "contact" portion to this, although there looks to be a link for that, so for now, feel free to comment away. Just, be cool. For the kids. (not sure there are any kids reading, but just in case). Anyway, to the links!
Edit I forgot one. Or rather, I just read it, but it deserves to be here. It's Joe Posnanski again. It's kind of about sports. But it's mostly about people. Read it though. It might give a good explanation of why I'll read anything Joe writes. Almost especially when it isn't really about sports. |
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Greg JacksonA baseball fan in general. Interested in statistics and analytics. Usually follow the Giants and Blue Jays, fan of all MLB in general. |