Our Fantasy Baseball League is up. The league ID is 39768 and the password id dananddev. The draft is scheduled for March 21 @9:00.
Scheduled Managers
1.Mitch
2.Daniel
3.Mike
4.Ray
5.Howie
6.Erik
7.Pat
8.Art
9.Skizzo
10.Steve-Rookie
I think we should keep it at 10. Any thoughts
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
Please Help!!!!!!
Starting about March 1st I plan on doing team previews for all 30 teams. I'm reaching out to anyone who reads this and asking you what would you like to see in team previews? There are many magazines on the newsstand. And tons of info online. So if you were to invest 3-5 minutes reading a team preview what form would you like it to take? Stat heavy? Odd facts? Some historical stuff? Let me know!!! PLEASE.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Just In Case You Missed It
The past week has been marked by alot of players avoiding arbitration and resigning with their current teams. The largest contract going to Ryan Howard. The Phils bought out his remaining arbitration years for a cool 54 mil for 3 years. But during the past week three players changed uniforms. While none of these signings set the baseball world a blaze they are all interesting for one reason or another
Ty Wigginton-Orioles Is there one player who always seems to have great games when you are at the park? Anytime Daniel was at the Trop Wigginton always did well. If he stayed in Tampa and gave him season tickets Wigginton would be making 10 mil a year. But anyway Wigginton signing with Baltimore is a bit odd. There really is no regular place for him to play. Defensively he plays about the same positions as Aubrey Huff who was fantastic last year. Ideally you platoon Wigginton at third base but both he and Melvin Mora are righties. Other options are have him getting ABs against lefties and benching Luke Scott in left. Or have him DH. In the end Wigginton probably gets about 400 ABs playing various positions. To me in a perfect world he would be much better suited to be a part time player on a better team.
Tom Gordan-Diamondbacks-Gordan joins Chad Quallis, Jon Rauch and Tony Pena at the back end of the Arizona pen. If Gordan is healthy he adds another arm, if not there is not much lost. The only problem I see is all four of the above pitchers are all right handed. It should be very interesting to see how Bob Melvin manges the end of games. This situation lends itself to playing the hot hand. The NL West should be very close and any little improvements may lead to winning the division. All I know is I'll probably be up way too late watching them listening to my favorite broadcaster Mark Grace.
Andruw Jones-Rangers-This move surprised me. While Jones is costing Texas next to nothing it seemed Texas was looking to have youth in their outfield. Assuming Jones is somewhere between the guy who hit 51HRs and the guy who hit 158 he would be their CF. If thats the case Josh Hamilton then probably gets moved to right. And Nelson Cruz who they seemed to like the RF either goes to left and competes with David Murphy or goes to DH. In addition the Rangers also have Marlon Byrd in the outfield. And the DH position will probably be manned by Hank Blalock and Frank Catalanotto. Anyway you look at it they have no shortage of bats. Jone's main value may come in if he can give them gold glove quality play in center. Thus cutting down the amount of runs a very questionable Texas staff gives up. As an FYI while I can handle most D-Backs questions any Rangers questions I'll defer to Mike who knows alot more about them than I do.
Ty Wigginton-Orioles Is there one player who always seems to have great games when you are at the park? Anytime Daniel was at the Trop Wigginton always did well. If he stayed in Tampa and gave him season tickets Wigginton would be making 10 mil a year. But anyway Wigginton signing with Baltimore is a bit odd. There really is no regular place for him to play. Defensively he plays about the same positions as Aubrey Huff who was fantastic last year. Ideally you platoon Wigginton at third base but both he and Melvin Mora are righties. Other options are have him getting ABs against lefties and benching Luke Scott in left. Or have him DH. In the end Wigginton probably gets about 400 ABs playing various positions. To me in a perfect world he would be much better suited to be a part time player on a better team.
Tom Gordan-Diamondbacks-Gordan joins Chad Quallis, Jon Rauch and Tony Pena at the back end of the Arizona pen. If Gordan is healthy he adds another arm, if not there is not much lost. The only problem I see is all four of the above pitchers are all right handed. It should be very interesting to see how Bob Melvin manges the end of games. This situation lends itself to playing the hot hand. The NL West should be very close and any little improvements may lead to winning the division. All I know is I'll probably be up way too late watching them listening to my favorite broadcaster Mark Grace.
Andruw Jones-Rangers-This move surprised me. While Jones is costing Texas next to nothing it seemed Texas was looking to have youth in their outfield. Assuming Jones is somewhere between the guy who hit 51HRs and the guy who hit 158 he would be their CF. If thats the case Josh Hamilton then probably gets moved to right. And Nelson Cruz who they seemed to like the RF either goes to left and competes with David Murphy or goes to DH. In addition the Rangers also have Marlon Byrd in the outfield. And the DH position will probably be manned by Hank Blalock and Frank Catalanotto. Anyway you look at it they have no shortage of bats. Jone's main value may come in if he can give them gold glove quality play in center. Thus cutting down the amount of runs a very questionable Texas staff gives up. As an FYI while I can handle most D-Backs questions any Rangers questions I'll defer to Mike who knows alot more about them than I do.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Its Greek To Me
Back in the early days of sabermetrics we found out you can very accurately predict a team won-loss record by knowing how many runs a team scores and gives up. This is called the Pythagorean Formula. Over the years this formula has proved to be very accurate. Of the 30 teams last year only 5 teams were more or less than 5 games from their predicted result. It has also been proven that in virtually all cases a team that gets alot more wins than their Pythagoreean formula ultimately regresses. While teams that have less wins end up winning more games the next year. So who are those 5 teams.
Teams that Should Improve
1.Toronto Blue Jays -7
2.Seattle Mariners-6
3,Atlanta Braves -6
Pythagorean does not account for free agent defections and injuries. With that said I don't see Toronto improving. But I see the other two improving by more than six wins each
Teams that Should Take a Step Back
1.Los Angeles Angels+12
2.Houston Astros +9
I think the Angels can drop 10-15 games this season. And I also think the Astros back track.
The reason why I introduced this is I saw a interesting article that used Pythagorean to predict the 2009 season. What they did was estamate playing time for the players that are now on each team and had a computer estamate the amount of runs scored and runs allowed. As the article said signing a Manny, Adam Dunn or Bobby Abreu can significantly alter the results. But here on a chilly Florida night its fun to see what we got.
AL East
1.Tampa Bay Rays 95 67
1.NY Yankees 95 67
3.Boston Red Sox 93 69
4.Toronto Blue Jays 82 80
5.Baltimore Orioles 73 89
AL Central
1.Minnesota Twins 90 72
2.Cleveland Indians 86 76
3.Detroit Tigers 84 78
4.Chicago White Sox 78 84
5.Kansas City Royals 73 89
AL West
1.LA Angels 92 70
2.Oakland As 84 78
3.Texas Rangers 78 84
4.Seattle Mariners 74 88
NL East
1.Philadelphia Phillies 96 66
2.NY Mets 92 70
3.Atlanta Braves 86 76
4.Florida Marlins 83 79
5.Washington Nats 66 96
NL Central
1.Chicago Cubs 95 67
2.Milwaukee Brewers 88 74
3.St. Louis Cards 85 77
4.Houston Astros 83 79
5.Cincinnati Reds 74 88
6.Pittsburg Pirates 70 92
NL West
1.LA Dodgers 88 74
2.Arizona D-Backs 84 78
3.Colorado Rockies 82 80
4.SF Giants 78 84
5.SD Padres 68 94
Just something to think about. As of now its pretty close I think.
Teams that Should Improve
1.Toronto Blue Jays -7
2.Seattle Mariners-6
3,Atlanta Braves -6
Pythagorean does not account for free agent defections and injuries. With that said I don't see Toronto improving. But I see the other two improving by more than six wins each
Teams that Should Take a Step Back
1.Los Angeles Angels+12
2.Houston Astros +9
I think the Angels can drop 10-15 games this season. And I also think the Astros back track.
The reason why I introduced this is I saw a interesting article that used Pythagorean to predict the 2009 season. What they did was estamate playing time for the players that are now on each team and had a computer estamate the amount of runs scored and runs allowed. As the article said signing a Manny, Adam Dunn or Bobby Abreu can significantly alter the results. But here on a chilly Florida night its fun to see what we got.
AL East
1.Tampa Bay Rays 95 67
1.NY Yankees 95 67
3.Boston Red Sox 93 69
4.Toronto Blue Jays 82 80
5.Baltimore Orioles 73 89
AL Central
1.Minnesota Twins 90 72
2.Cleveland Indians 86 76
3.Detroit Tigers 84 78
4.Chicago White Sox 78 84
5.Kansas City Royals 73 89
AL West
1.LA Angels 92 70
2.Oakland As 84 78
3.Texas Rangers 78 84
4.Seattle Mariners 74 88
NL East
1.Philadelphia Phillies 96 66
2.NY Mets 92 70
3.Atlanta Braves 86 76
4.Florida Marlins 83 79
5.Washington Nats 66 96
NL Central
1.Chicago Cubs 95 67
2.Milwaukee Brewers 88 74
3.St. Louis Cards 85 77
4.Houston Astros 83 79
5.Cincinnati Reds 74 88
6.Pittsburg Pirates 70 92
NL West
1.LA Dodgers 88 74
2.Arizona D-Backs 84 78
3.Colorado Rockies 82 80
4.SF Giants 78 84
5.SD Padres 68 94
Just something to think about. As of now its pretty close I think.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
First 3 Rounds
With only about 1 week away from pitchers and catchers the mock draft season is starting to heat up. Yahoo had a mock draft and the following was the top 3 rounds. By the way it was for a 12 team standard 5x5 league
Round 1
1.Hanley Ramirez
2.Alex Rodriguez
3.Albert Pujols
4.Jose Reyes
5.David Wright
6.Ryan Bruan
7.Grady Sizemore
8.Josh Hamilton
9.Miguel Cabrera
10.Ian Kinsler
11.Jimmy Rollins
12.Mark Teixeira
Round 2
13.Tim Lincecum
14.Ryan Howard
15.Chase Utley
16.Evan Longoria
17.BJ Upton
18.Johan Santana
19.Prince Fielder
20.Carlos Beltran
21.Manny Ramirez
22.Lance Berkman
23.Dustin Pedroia
24.Carlos Lee
Round 3
25.Ichiro Suzuki
26.Alfonso Soriano
27.Matt Holliday
28.Justin Mourneau
29.Carlos Quentin
30.Brandon Phillips
31.CC Sabathia
32.Brian Roberts
33.Carl Crawford
34.Jason Bay
35.Aramis Ramirez
36.Nick Markakis
Round 1
1.Hanley Ramirez
2.Alex Rodriguez
3.Albert Pujols
4.Jose Reyes
5.David Wright
6.Ryan Bruan
7.Grady Sizemore
8.Josh Hamilton
9.Miguel Cabrera
10.Ian Kinsler
11.Jimmy Rollins
12.Mark Teixeira
Round 2
13.Tim Lincecum
14.Ryan Howard
15.Chase Utley
16.Evan Longoria
17.BJ Upton
18.Johan Santana
19.Prince Fielder
20.Carlos Beltran
21.Manny Ramirez
22.Lance Berkman
23.Dustin Pedroia
24.Carlos Lee
Round 3
25.Ichiro Suzuki
26.Alfonso Soriano
27.Matt Holliday
28.Justin Mourneau
29.Carlos Quentin
30.Brandon Phillips
31.CC Sabathia
32.Brian Roberts
33.Carl Crawford
34.Jason Bay
35.Aramis Ramirez
36.Nick Markakis
Monday, February 2, 2009
Ollie Stays Put
Oliver Perez resigned with the Mets today for 36 mil over 3 years. The bottom line is the Mets are a better with him than without him. The lenght of the contract and the money is a fair deal for both sides. The Mets rotation is now Johan, Maine, Perez, Pelfrey and either Redding, Garcia or Niese. Overall its not bad. But after Johan their are questions about everyone else. As for Perez he is inconsistent. Saying Perez is inconsistent is like saying Shakespeare can write. Perez has terrific stuff. And any 27 year old lefty who can throw 90 will garner interest. So lets look objectively at Perez. The good is he is capable of throwing unhittable stuff at any time. When he is on few lefties are better. But his main problem is twofold. Last season he averaged close to 5 walks a game. That figure makes it very difficult to be a consistent winner. But even looking past the 5 walks Perez tends to be wild in the strike zone. When he gets behind too often he'll throw a pitch with terrible location which turns into a longball. Which brings us to Perez's second problem. Ollie is a flyball pitcher and when he makes mistakes they tend to cost him runs. Less walks and better control can turn him in a allstar. An interesting thing to look for early in the season will be how will Citi Field play? If its like Shea and is a pitchers park Ollie will be more valuable but if the ball carries it could spell trouble.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
How Do You Spell Releif Part 3
Over the past two blog entries I have talked about relief pitching. The first essay told of my disgust how bullpens are managed today. And in part 2 I went over a quick history of bullpen usage in MLB. This morning in the final part of this series I want to compare usage levels of todays best with yesterdays best and make a final plea to reason.
I have two main gripes with bullpen usage now. The first is how much these guys are used. Simply put closers today are babied. While I'm certain teams will tell you since these guys are now highly paid we need to carefully manage their workload. So my question to those guys is does only having your best relieve pitcher pitch 1 inning 3 to 4 times a week prevent injury? While I'm no doctor I can say with virtual certainty teams are not preventing injury to closers with such limited work loads. Over the past few seasons we've seen injuries to closers with very carefully manged workloads like Billy Wagner, Trevor Hoffman and Brad Lidge. If you go back into history and go to what I call the Golden Age of Relievers those guys pitched much more and most of the successful ones had long careers. The injury rate of relievers in the 70s did not seem to be any worse than today. So if you throw out the injury argument why are those guys only facing 3-4 hitters per game? Yesterday I had some free time and decided to do a little experiment. I choose 5 of the most successful closers of the last 5 years, Mariano Rivera, Francisco Rodriguez, Johnathan Papelbon, Joe Nathan and Jose Valverde. I looked at the average number of batters they faced per appearance. I took numbers for the last 5 years(3 for Papelbon and 4 for Jenks). And then I did the same thing for 5 closers of the golder era. For these guys I picked the 5 year period they were most effective(they had to be 5 consecutive seasons). The 5 guys I selected were Bruce Sutter, Goose Gossage, Dan Quizenberry, Rollie Fingers and Mike Marshall.
Today Average Batters Faced Per Appearance
M. Rivera 4.30
K-Rod 4.46
J. Pabelbon 3.94
J. Nathan 3.92
B. Jenks 4.45
It does not take a genius to figure out that if you are averaging about 4 batters faced per outing you are probably getting 3 outs and allowing 1 baserunner. Which makes sense because these guys WHIPs are around 1
Golden Age
B. Sutter 6.59
G. Goosage 7.02
D. Quizenberry 6.99
R. Fingers 6.65
M. Marshall 7.93
Looking at the above chart shows are very large difference. Also think about the 3 under 7 Sutter, Fingers and especially Quiz were EXTREME groundball pitchers who probably threw alot of double play balls which would suppress the batters faced per appearance a bit. As a group the above averaged facing 7.10 batters per appearance while todays closers faced 4.21. Their average appearance is 41% shorter than the 70s group. The 3 extra batters translates into 1 inning when a team does not have to use a middle of the road reliever. And if a team like the Red Sox have a key part of the game in the 6th or 7th they can bring in J-Pap to preserve the lead or not let the game get away. Let him go 2 or 3 and then they can have Manny Delcarmen finish or Francona can play matchups. If they are up by 2 or 3 runs at that point the chances of surrendering the lead is minute. Make Sense.
The other area that I find illogical is when to use your best bullpen weapon. Only bringing closers in the 9th if your up by 1-3 runs is great if they are on your fantasy team but makes no sense in real life. Like I said earlier the idea should be to win games NOT get your closers saves. Teams can win or lose games during all 9 innings not just the 9th. While planning ahead an inning or two is critical in baseball. Recognizing the key point in a game is also critical. If a manager botches innings 6-8 the closer becomes a non-factor in the 9th. If your closer is really your best reliever shouldn't he be in during the most important parts of the game? Knowing that each game is different. This crap that its important for all members of the bullpen to know exactly what their role is garbage to me. These guys are all highly skilled very competitive people or they wouldn't by Major Leaguers. Their job is simply to get hitters out whether its the 2nd, 5th, 7th or 9th inning. Teams are missing the boat/ Think about this. If you owned a business and had to send one of your salesman out on a critical sales call that can mean big bucks who are you going to send? I would think your best salesperson. Another smaller example is when I write the schedule for the store its no accident my best employees get the most hours while my worst employees get the least amount of hours. Bullpens should be the same way. Out of 30 teams last season only 6 had their save leader throw the most innings. And oddly enough two of those six teams leaders were guys that lost the closers role at some point in the season.
So thats my case. I'm sure its more than most of you have ever thought of managing the bullpen. So can things change? Sure. But we will need one team to rip up the "book" and try something different. You just do things the way they used to be done when it was done correctly. Younger fans who don't know any better and older broadcasters know don't know any better will yell and scream. All it takes is one team. But if there is something we all know about baseball is it does not like change.
This 3 part series was aimed at making everybody think a little. I really hoped you enjoyed it. Comments are very much looked foward to.
I have two main gripes with bullpen usage now. The first is how much these guys are used. Simply put closers today are babied. While I'm certain teams will tell you since these guys are now highly paid we need to carefully manage their workload. So my question to those guys is does only having your best relieve pitcher pitch 1 inning 3 to 4 times a week prevent injury? While I'm no doctor I can say with virtual certainty teams are not preventing injury to closers with such limited work loads. Over the past few seasons we've seen injuries to closers with very carefully manged workloads like Billy Wagner, Trevor Hoffman and Brad Lidge. If you go back into history and go to what I call the Golden Age of Relievers those guys pitched much more and most of the successful ones had long careers. The injury rate of relievers in the 70s did not seem to be any worse than today. So if you throw out the injury argument why are those guys only facing 3-4 hitters per game? Yesterday I had some free time and decided to do a little experiment. I choose 5 of the most successful closers of the last 5 years, Mariano Rivera, Francisco Rodriguez, Johnathan Papelbon, Joe Nathan and Jose Valverde. I looked at the average number of batters they faced per appearance. I took numbers for the last 5 years(3 for Papelbon and 4 for Jenks). And then I did the same thing for 5 closers of the golder era. For these guys I picked the 5 year period they were most effective(they had to be 5 consecutive seasons). The 5 guys I selected were Bruce Sutter, Goose Gossage, Dan Quizenberry, Rollie Fingers and Mike Marshall.
Today Average Batters Faced Per Appearance
M. Rivera 4.30
K-Rod 4.46
J. Pabelbon 3.94
J. Nathan 3.92
B. Jenks 4.45
It does not take a genius to figure out that if you are averaging about 4 batters faced per outing you are probably getting 3 outs and allowing 1 baserunner. Which makes sense because these guys WHIPs are around 1
Golden Age
B. Sutter 6.59
G. Goosage 7.02
D. Quizenberry 6.99
R. Fingers 6.65
M. Marshall 7.93
Looking at the above chart shows are very large difference. Also think about the 3 under 7 Sutter, Fingers and especially Quiz were EXTREME groundball pitchers who probably threw alot of double play balls which would suppress the batters faced per appearance a bit. As a group the above averaged facing 7.10 batters per appearance while todays closers faced 4.21. Their average appearance is 41% shorter than the 70s group. The 3 extra batters translates into 1 inning when a team does not have to use a middle of the road reliever. And if a team like the Red Sox have a key part of the game in the 6th or 7th they can bring in J-Pap to preserve the lead or not let the game get away. Let him go 2 or 3 and then they can have Manny Delcarmen finish or Francona can play matchups. If they are up by 2 or 3 runs at that point the chances of surrendering the lead is minute. Make Sense.
The other area that I find illogical is when to use your best bullpen weapon. Only bringing closers in the 9th if your up by 1-3 runs is great if they are on your fantasy team but makes no sense in real life. Like I said earlier the idea should be to win games NOT get your closers saves. Teams can win or lose games during all 9 innings not just the 9th. While planning ahead an inning or two is critical in baseball. Recognizing the key point in a game is also critical. If a manager botches innings 6-8 the closer becomes a non-factor in the 9th. If your closer is really your best reliever shouldn't he be in during the most important parts of the game? Knowing that each game is different. This crap that its important for all members of the bullpen to know exactly what their role is garbage to me. These guys are all highly skilled very competitive people or they wouldn't by Major Leaguers. Their job is simply to get hitters out whether its the 2nd, 5th, 7th or 9th inning. Teams are missing the boat/ Think about this. If you owned a business and had to send one of your salesman out on a critical sales call that can mean big bucks who are you going to send? I would think your best salesperson. Another smaller example is when I write the schedule for the store its no accident my best employees get the most hours while my worst employees get the least amount of hours. Bullpens should be the same way. Out of 30 teams last season only 6 had their save leader throw the most innings. And oddly enough two of those six teams leaders were guys that lost the closers role at some point in the season.
So thats my case. I'm sure its more than most of you have ever thought of managing the bullpen. So can things change? Sure. But we will need one team to rip up the "book" and try something different. You just do things the way they used to be done when it was done correctly. Younger fans who don't know any better and older broadcasters know don't know any better will yell and scream. All it takes is one team. But if there is something we all know about baseball is it does not like change.
This 3 part series was aimed at making everybody think a little. I really hoped you enjoyed it. Comments are very much looked foward to.
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