Snubs

You got a second? Open up another tab or window, pull up your favorite search engine, and type baseball all-star snubs 2015. You'll get a lot of hits! Just from perusing the search results, here are some of the players whose absence from the All-Star Game (at this point--there's still the Final Vote and the inevitable late injury substitutions):

• Clayton Kershaw, Dodgers pitcher
• Alex Rodriguez, Yankees DH
• Justin Turner, Dodgers third baseman
• Clay Buchholz, Red Sox pitcher
• Brian Dozier, Twins second baseman
• Brad Miller, Mariners shortstop
• Kolten Wong, Cardinals second baseman
• Brian McCann, Yankees catcher
• Xander Bogaerts, Red Sox shortstop

This isn't an exhaustive list. All I did was scroll through the first four pages of search results and pull names from the headlines. I didn't go into the many articles with lists of snubs. So there are undoubtedly more.

Now, Kershaw and Bogaerts could still make their respective teams via the Final Vote. But the other guys--yeah, the only way they're watching to All-Star Game is to score a ticket or tune into Fox next Tuesday.

My question is: How much of a snub is this, really?

I mean, there are guys who have money riding on this. Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer, who's going to the game, gets $50,000 for appearing. So I could see him being disappointed--feeling snubbed seems a bit strong--if he hadn't been chosen. His teammate, second baseman Omar Infante, who isn't going, would've gotten a $250,000 bonus in each of 2016 and 2017. That's a big chunk of cash (his base salary is $7.75 million in 2016 and $8 million in 2017), but it's hard to call a guy who's got a .246 on base percentage (lowest in the majors among 164 batting title qualifiers) and .309 slugging percentage (fourth lowest) snubbed. So yeah, if I'm Dozier or Wong, and my contract pays me extra for going to the All-Star game, I'd probably be annoyed.

But most players? I wonder whether the fans and media mythologize the All-Star Game a bit. I would imagine a player's first All-Star Game is a thrill. You bring your parents, maybe your siblings, your wife or girlfriend, probably your kids. You rub shoulders with all the big names. You get this cool All-Star uniform that you throw into your duffel bag right after the game, not knowing that MLB would have washed and sent it to you anyway. You probably lift the All-Star insignia notepads and pens from the conference room. All that sort of thing.

Once you've done one, though...Take Andrew McCutchen. This'll be his fifth straight All-Star Game. Yes, it's nice to get the recognition and all, but from his point of view, twenty of his teammates get the full All-Star break, four days off next week to relax, hang out with their families, ice down sore muscles, catch the matinee of Terminator: Genisys, and go out for dinner at a reasonable hour, while he spends Monday and Tuesday on the field and with the press. For the fifth straight year Cutch's break will be abbreviated. 

Baseball players have a tough job. Yes, they're playing a game for a living, but they play it 6-7 days per week for six months. That's seven and half including spring training, eight and a half including the postseason. They put in long hours at the office, with most games not ending until after 10 PM, and if they get a day off, it's always a Monday or Thursday and never a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Plus they're living out of a suitcase, on the road, half the time. I know that some of you are going to say, "Big deal, they're paid tons of money to do that," to which I'd reply, "I know, but that's not the point." I'm betting most of you would accept $10 million to step into the ring with Floyd Mayweather, but that doesn't mean his punches wouldn't hurt. Playing baseball pretty much every day for half the year, even if you love the game, is grueling. Think about the last time you had a big project at work that had you coming in over the weekend, then think how much you were dragging by the end of the next week. Then imagine that for 26 weeks. The four days of downtime that Pirates Neil Walker, Francisco Liriano, Tony Watson, Pedro Alvarez and sixteen other teammates will get has got to seem great to them. So yes, you could make a case for Pirates catcher Francisco Cervelli making his first All-Star team this year. Among NL catchers with 250 or more plate appearances, he's second in batting average, first in on base percentage, and third in slugging percentage. He also ranks second in Baseball Prospectus's measure for pitch framing, i.e. the ability to get umpires to call pitches on the outer edges of the strike zone strikes instead of balls. So going the All-Star Game would be pretty sweet. But given that we're in early July and he's already 30 games away from setting a career high in games played, at the toughest position on the diamond, I've got to think four days off will be pretty sweet too.

Reality Check: Defensive Shifts

Tom Verducci writes about baseball for Sports Illustrated and talks about on the MLB Network. He's a smart guy and a great writer. He's passionate about the game as well, writing on occasion about ways it could be better. He did so last week, proposing that baseball do something to limit defensive shifts: moving fielders to one side or the other of second base in order to take advantage of hitters' tendencies to hit the ball there. You know, like this:

Verducci cites the situation pictured above in particular, when the player at the plate is lefthanded, he tends to hit balls to the right side of the infield, and, in addition, he's slow. (I can't speak to the speed of the guy at the plate in this picture; I can't make him out.) He cites slow left-handed batters who pull having down years: Chris Davis, Ryan Howard, Jay Bruce, Adam Dunn, Brian McCann, Shin-Soo Choo, David Ortiz, and Adrian Gonzalez, among others. He has a pretty convincing table: batting average on balls in play (i.e., excluding at bats that result in strikeouts or home runs) for left-handed hitters when they hit the ball to the right side of the infield:
   2005   .379
   2006   .386
   2007   .353
   2008   .358
   2009   .350
   2010   .351
   2011   .332
   2012   .313
   2013   .323
   2014   .301

Verducci:

In 2010, Howard, McCann, Ortiz, Bruce, Dunn, Choo, Curtis Granderson and Adam LaRoche all were among the best lefthanded hitters in the game. None of them were All-Stars this year. Fewer hits to the pull field – into the shift – is one reason. Throw in former All-Stars Mark Teixeira and Carlos Beltran, two more slow-footed sluggers (and using only their numbers batting lefthanded), and you can see how the shift is harming lefthanders...

Ignore that some of those guys haven't been good for years. His point, that the shift's affected lefties since the Tampa Bay Rays started becoming shift-happy in 2008, seems to be borne out by the numbers above. His solution: That baseball should look into establishing an "illegal defense rule" that'd limit the number of infielders on either side of second base to two. 

Verducci's proposal met with a fair amount of criticism on the Internet, partly because he's proposing a pretty significant change to the rules of the game. I don't really buy that. The rules of baseball aren't inviolable; we added replay and removed home plate collisions this year. If there's a problem in the game, let's address it.

The problem I have is that I'm not sure the response Verducci's proposing--limiting defensive shifts--will address the problem of a decline in offense, simply because there's not a lot of evidence I can see that shifts are the culprit. I'm going to show you a somewhat busy table, so let me explain the columns. The first one, Year, is self-explanatory. BABIP is the batting average on balls in play--that is, the batting average when the batter puts the ball in play (doesn't strike out, walk, get hit by the pitch, etc.) and doesn't hit a home run. Ground is the batting average on ground balls. L vs. L is the batting average for left-handed hitters--the focus of Verducci's research--against left-handed pitchers. L vs. R is the batting average for left-handed hitters against right-handed pitchers. If defensive shifts are hurting offenses, particularly with lefties at the plate, we should see all of these batting averages decline with time, as shifted fielders turn what used to be hits into outs. Here's the table:
   Year    BABIP  Ground  L vs. L  L vs. R
   2005    .295    .233    .295     .299
   2006    .301    .236    .294     .302
   2007    .303    .239    .301     .312
   2008    .300    .237    .298     .302
   2009    .299    .232    .286     .299
   2010    .297    .234    .299     .298
   2011    .295    .231    .291     .301
   2012    .297    .234    .287     .299
   2013    .297    .232    .293     .300
   2014    .299    .237    .297     .307

Do you see any evidence from those number that defensive shifts--which have grown in popularity especially in the last couple years--have hampered offense? I can't. As of today, the batting average on balls in play at its highest level since 2009. The batting average on grounders is the highest it's been since 2008. Left-handed hitters are hitting better against lefties than any year since 2010 and against righties since 2007. Offense is surely down, but it's not because defensive shifts are resulting in plummeting batting averages. So I don't see a need to legislate against shifts.

As to why offense if down: batters are striking out in 20.3% of plate appearances, the most in history--the rate's risen for nine straight years--the walk rate's declined for five straight years and is now at its lowest level since 1968, batters are hitting balls on the ground,  which produce a lower OPS than balls hit in the air, at the highest rate since stats became available in 2002, and the percentage of fly balls leaving the park has declined for two years, to the lowest level since 2011. That's why. Sounds like a problem of good pitching rather than innovative defense.

Sweet Play of the Day: July 22

Rangers outfielder Leonys Martin and Yankees catcher Brian McCann haven't lived up to expectations. Martin, in his second year as Texas's center fielder, hasn't improved at the plate (.698 OPS last year, .696 this year), striking out more frequently and hitting fewer extra base hits. McCann, in the first season of a five-year, $85 million free agent contract signed before the season, has a .294 on base percentage and .373 slugging percentage, both career lows. They both remain in the lineup, though, in part because of their strong defense. Those paths crossed last night, as Martin turned what would have been McCann's eleventh home run of the year into an out.

2014 Predictions: NL East

As Yogi Berra is alleged to have said, it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future. These predictions for upcoming season are going to be pretty quick and dirty. You don't want to spend a lot of time reading them anyway, do you? Unlike other prognosticators, though, I'll revisit these to see how badly I did.

Since baseball games are the product of runs scored and runs allowed, I'm going to focus on those two metrics in developing my 2014 predictions. Here are predictions for the NL West and NL Central and the American League West, Central, and East.

Atlanta Braves - 96-66 in 2013, 4.2 runs scored per game (13th in MLB), 3.4 runs allowed per game (1st in MLB): Color me skeptical. The Braves got a lot of credit for locking down their young stars over the offseason, but what's that got to do with 2014? Here are two pairs of numbers that worry me about Atlanta: .266/.357/.512 vs. .236/.284/.473, and 22.2 vs. 11.6. The former pair is departed catcher Brian McCann's slash line against righties vs. that of his replacement this year, Evan Gattis. That may not be entirely fair, given that McCann bats left and Gattis right, but hey, 72.5% of plate appearances in the NL last year were with righties on the mound. The second pair is an estimate of the number of runs McCann saves per 7000 pitches (roughly a season) by pitch framing--catching a pitch on the fringe of the strike zone in such a way that the umpire calls it a strike instead of a ball--compared to Gattis. That may sound esoteric, but framing is something that can be measured, given that there are cameras in every ballpark the measure where a pitch crosses the plate and how it's called by the umpire. McCann's consistently been one of the very best. I think McCann's departure hurts the Braves' ability to both score and prevent runs. And that's before we consider the injuries to the team's starting pitchers this spring. (Pitch framing stats from Baseball Prospectus.) Prediction: Fewer runs scored, more allowed, 89-73.

Washington Nationals - 86-76, 4.0 runs scored per game (16th in MLB), 3.9 runs allowed per game (7th in MLB): The Nats still have questions at second base, where their .670 OPS was fourth-worst in the league, and they're hoping center fielder Denard Span plays more like he did after the All-Star Break (.302/.337/.413) than before (.263/.320/.358). But they added Doug Fister, a quality starter, for spare parts, bolstering an already-strong rotation. Prediction: A few more runs scored, a few fewer allowed, 90-72, and I'm going to regret that if Fister's elbow inflammation reported this month turns out to be serious.

New York Mets - 74-88, 3.8 runs scored per game (24th in MLB), 4.2 runs allowed per game (17th in MLB): The Mets added three 30+ free agents (SP Bartolo Colon, 41 in May; LF Curtis Granderson, 33; RF Chris Young, 30) to some promising youngsters (CF Juan Lagares, whose bat not keep his outstanding glove in the lineup; SP Zack Wheeler; SP Noah Syndergaard, who will probably start the year in the minors). But oh, for those Matt Harvey days... Prediction: More runs scored, more allowed, 74-88.

Philadelphia Phillies - 73-89, 3.8 runs scored per game (25th in MLB), 4.6 runs allowed per game (25th in MLB): The Phillies are making noises about embracing modern fielding analysis, which should help their newly-acquired groundball pitchers A.J. Burnett and Roberto Hernandez. But other than those moves, they're still a really old team (key offseason acquisitions: Marlon Byrd, 36; Burnett, 37; Hernandez, 33) that can't score runs even in a hitter-friendly ballpark. Prediction: Fewer runs scored, fewer allowed, 70-92.

Miami Marlins - 62-100, 3.2 runs scored per game (30th in MLB), 4.0 runs allowed per game (11th in MLB): The Marlins play in a pitchers' park, but their offense was really was bad as it looked: They scored easily the fewest runs in baseball at home and on the road. Among the new starters this year are 2B Rafael Furcal, who is 36, missed last year with Tommy John surgery, and will start at second base for the first time since 2002; and 3B Casey McGehee, who last year batted .292 with 28 homers and 93 RBI--in Japan. At least they'll have a full season of Jose Fernandez, knock on wood. Prediction: More runs scored, same number allowed, 65-97.

A-Rod Loses, Yankees Win

The biggest beneficiary of Alex Rodriguez's 162-team suspension? His employer.

It's partly because the Yankees won't be on the hook for Rodriguez's $25 million 2014 salary. But more importantly, the team has a shot at significantly reducing the "luxury tax" it pays. Because the Yankees' $234 million payroll exceeded the $178 million luxury tax threshold in place in 2013, they had to pay the league a $28 million luxury tax. The amount of the luxury tax is based on the amount by which the payroll exceeds the threshold times the luxury tax rate, which is set at 17.5% the first time a team exceeds the threshold and rises thereafter to a maximum rate of 50%. The Yankees are at the maximum, so paid 50% on the $234 million - $178 million = $56 million by which they exceeded the limit.

There are two keys to the calculation: The limit, which rises from $178 million to $189 million this year, and the number of consecutive years the team surpasses the limit, because that sets the tax rate. If a team gets below the limit, even for just one year, the luxury tax resets to the lowest rate.

The Yankees have stated a goal of getting below the limit, because then they won't have to pay a luxury tax in 2014 and their luxury tax resets the next time they exceed the limit. Let's say, for example, the Yankees' 2014 payroll is $189 million--right at the limit--and returns to $234 million in 2015. Then their tax rate would be 17.5% in 2015, 30% in 2016, 40% in 2017, and 50% in 2018. The total tax paid those four years would be $61.2 million.

On the other hand, if the Yankees' payroll is just $1 million higher, $190 million, it will exceed the limit another year, keeping the tax rate at 50%. So making the same assumption that the Yankees payroll returns to $234 million in 2015, the luxury tax paid 2015-2018 would be $90 million. Even for the Yankees, the difference of $28.8 million is a lot of money. (Look at it this way: It'll pay almost half of the $61 million the team still owes Rodriguez in 2015-2017!)

So why does the A-Rod suspension help them? Because suspended players don't count toward the luxury tax limit. After signing free agents Brian McCann, Jacoby Elsbury, and Carlos Beltran, getting the payroll down to $189 million was going to be a challenge. Removing $27.5 million (the average value of the nine-year contract Rodriguez signed before the 2008 season) helps a lot.

Granted, the Yankees now have a big hole at third. The Fangraphs depth chart lists Brendan Ryan, Kelly Johnson, and Eduardo Nunez as likely starters. Still, that hole will likely prove to be smaller than the hole in the team's wallet if they can't get below the luxury tax threshold.

Robinson Cano and the Yankees

I hit up the Mariners' $240 million, 10-year free agent contract with Robinson Cano earlier. There are two implications of this deal for the Yankees, as I see it.

• The Bombers have a somewhat unfair reputation for "buying pennants." There was a time when they signed high-priced star free agents by the armload. But there really hasn't been that much of that recently; the last two splurges were CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira, and that was five years ago. (Yes, I know, Brian McCann and Jacoby Ellsbury signed big contracts, but they are not stars like CC and Tex were.) What the Yankees have done, though, is retain their key players, most famously Jeter, Rivera, Pettite, and Posada. Can you remember the Yankees losing their best hitter, in his prime, to free agency? I can't.
• The Yankees' window for buying pennants has probably closed, anyway. As Joe Sheehan pointed out in a brilliant piece in his newsletter Thursday (subscription required, and it's worth it), top young stars hardly ever hit free agency in their prime anymore; their teams have them locked up. Think of Evan Longoria, Andrew McCutchen, Troy Tulowitzki--all have long-term contracts with their teams. So even if they wanted to, the Yankees can't buy a pennant anymore by waiting for young stars to hit free agency after six years. So they need to keep core players like the one who just got away.