Baseball 45 Years Ago

Motivated by a remark in the Joe Sheehan Newsletter, I wrote a retrospective on the 1971 season for Baseball Prospectus, focused on the differences between baseball then and now. Featuring Gomer Hodge.

On April Worries

The season hasn't started well for the Pirates. They're 3-6, ahead of only Milwaukee in the National League Central, 2.5 games behind the Cardinals and Cubs and 2 games behind the Reds. Among the problems:

• They're last in the league in batting average (.207) and on base percentage (.255) and third-to-last in slugging percentage (.338). Pedro Alvarez is the only regular with a batting average above .235.
• They've struck out in over 25% of their plate appearances, the most in the league, while walking in just over 4%, the second-fewest.
• The starting pitchers have been pretty good--3.38 ERA, sixth in the league--but the relievers' ERA of 3.04 is the fifth highest. 
• They were shut out Tuesday and Wednesday by the Tigers. That's only the 14th time they've been shut out back-to-back in this century, and the first since 2013.
• As I pointed out Tuesday, Starling Marte and Gregory Polanco are 1-2 in the National League in strikeouts per plate appearance (42% and 39%, respectively). 
• As Travis Sawchik of the Pittsburgh Tribune pointed out Wednesday, closer Mark Melancon has had a worrisome drop in pitch velocity along with a 6.75 ERA.

Still, it isn't time to panic, at least not yet. It's true that the Pirates have suffered two shutouts in a row, which didn't happen at all last year, but it happened twice in 2013, when they won 94 games, the team's most since 1992. As for the won-lost record, last year's club, which made the postseason, was in fourth place in the division as late as July 18. The first nine days do not a season make. 

One of the links on the Reading tab is to Joe Sheehan's newsletter. He sends it out via email, and I always look forward to receiving it. The little asterisk next to his name means that you have to pay for it. It's well worth the $29.95 annual fee, because of gems like this, from Tuesday:

So, madding crowds be damned, I'll be the guy who points out that the stats generated in one week of baseball are just as meaningless in April as they are in June as they are in August. Attempts to glean meaning from the performances of individuals or teams over six or seven or eight games are wasteful exercises in clickbait and confirmation bias. This is the worst part of baseball fandom in the modern age, the footballification of analysis, the insistence on stamping feet and insisting that, yes, this time is different.  

Joe's point--and he's one of the best analysts out there--is that a short streak doesn't mean anything. Andrew McCutchen is hitting .207 after eight games. That stinks! But he batted .206 over a ten-game streak in 2014. That streak--from May 22 to May 31--didn't occur at the start of the season so it didn't cause the hand-wringing this year's start has. McCutchen will do better. So will the Bucs.

I'm not saying everything's great. It isn't. But it's way, way early to get worried.

(Except Melancon's pitch velocity. I'm really concerned about that.)

Next Up: Milwaukee Brewers

The Pirates host the Brew Crew for three games over the weekend. Last weekend, the Bucs took two of three in Milwaukee. The Brewers haven't been has bad as the Pirates at the plate; Milwaukee's hitters were 24% below league average entering play today, while the Pirates were 33% worse. But Pittsburgh's put together a 3.26 team ERA, sixth in the league, while the Brewers' team ERA of 4.38 is second-worst in the majors. So Pittsburgh's disappointing hitters meet Milwaukee's disappointing pitchers: Somebody should get better, right?

The Brewers' best hitter has been first baseman Adam Lind, who has a .345/.441/.586 slash line. Shortstop Jean Segura, who had a terrible 2014, has also started well, .333/.379/.519. Right fielder/booing target Ryan Braun's hit an anemic .261/.292/.261. His next extra-base hit will be his first.

The Risk of Giancarlo Stanton

The Miami Marlins have signed their star right fielder, Giancarlo Stanton, to the longest and richest contract in baseball history: 13 years, $325 million. The 25-year-old Stanton can opt out of the deal after the 2020 season. We don't know the details of the contract, i.e. how the dollars are spread around over the years, but I'll go out on a limb and say that at an average value of $25 million per year, he's going to be paid a lot of money every season. Stanton, who turned 25 earlier this month, was an All-Star and finished second in MVP balloting in 2014, leading the National League in home runs (37), total bases (299), slugging percentage (.555), and, in a statement both of his talent and that of the Marlins lineup surrounding him, intentional walks (24). He's tied for tenth all time in home runs through age 24:

Rk	Player	HR	From	To	G	PA	AB	R	H	2B	3B	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
1	Eddie Mathews	190	1952	1956	732	3141	2634	497	735	119	24	492	471	443	.279	.388	.559	.947
2	Alex Rodriguez	189	1994	2000	790	3515	3126	627	966	194	13	595	310	616	.309	.374	.561	.934
3	Mel Ott	176	1926	1933	983	3978	3367	680	1059	195	31	711	537	258	.315	.412	.548	.959
4	Jimmie Foxx	174	1925	1932	810	3270	2750	612	923	159	57	667	460	377	.336	.432	.625	1.056
5	Mickey Mantle	173	1951	1956	808	3491	2944	642	907	136	43	575	524	578	.308	.412	.560	.972
6	Ken Griffey	172	1989	1994	845	3606	3180	518	972	194	19	543	374	477	.306	.379	.541	.920
7	Frank Robinson	165	1956	1960	735	3155	2741	501	818	145	27	449	321	427	.298	.380	.552	.932
8	Albert Pujols	160	2001	2004	629	2728	2363	500	787	189	9	504	304	279	.333	.413	.624	1.037
9	Orlando Cepeda	157	1958	1962	764	3220	2987	471	922	163	16	553	172	463	.309	.350	.532	.881
10	Giancarlo Stanton	154	2010	2014	634	2640	2288	350	619	138	8	399	318	742	.271	.364	.540	.903
11	Johnny Bench	154	1967	1972	782	3229	2887	421	781	142	12	512	288	470	.271	.334	.488	.822

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used

Generated 11/18/2014.

As you can see, he got there in fewer plate appearances than anyone on the list (among players with 100 or more homers through age 24, only Mathews, Pujols, Bob Horner, and Willie Mays went deep more often than Stanton's 5.8% of plate appearances), and he's also struck out more than the others. 

The contract has resulted in predictable reactions.

• It's too much money. Yes, it's the biggest contract in baseball history in total dollars, but not in average annual value. Miguel Cabrera, Clayton Kershaw, Alex Rodriguez, and Justin Verlander are in contracts that pay them more than an average of $25 million per year, and the $25 million average equals the current contracts of Ryan Howard, Josh Hamilton, and Felix Hernandez. There are players whom one might view as more valuable than Stanton (Mike Trout and Andrew McCutchen, to name two), but Stanton's contract isn't out of line with those of the players on the $25 million-plus list.
• No, I mean, it's too much money for a player. Sports Illustrated's Joe Sheehan has pointed out that the share of baseball revenues going to player salaries has steadily declined since the turn of the century. Given that no teams were going bankrupt in 2000, and that fans would probably rather watch Stanton hit than watch his owner, Jeffrey Loria, count money, I can't see a problem with the players getting a bigger slice of the pie.
• No, seriously, we can pay a baseball player that much and we can't pay schoolteachers and firefighters? This argument will make sense when kids walk around wearing their teachers' replica jerseys and firefighters negotiate with regional sports networks to televise their rescues.
• Thirteen years is too long. There's no question that's a risk. But Stanton will be 38 when his contract ends. Cabrera's will pay him at least through age 40, possibly a couple years longer, depending on options that vest based on his MVP vote. Rodriguez is under contract through age 41. Same with Albert Pujols. It's a long contract, but not ridiculously long. 
• He won't age well. Stanton is 6'6", 240. One could easily see him slowing down as he ages, moving from right to left to, eventually, first. He's in the National League, so he can't become a DH. But here's the thing: Historically, players with "old player skills" (home runs, walks, strikeouts) tend to flame out relatively early. Stanton last year was first in the National League in homers, second in walks, and sixth in strikeouts. On the other hand, Stanton is a good athlete. He grades out as an above-average right fielder and was 13-for-14 as a basestealer in 2014. He's not just a slugger.
• His owner's crazy. Well, that's true. He's "the most hated man in Major League Baseball." The Marlins' payroll last year was $42.4 million, last in the majors. The average annual value of Stanton's contract equals nearly 60% of that total. It doesn't make sense to pay that much to one guy while doing everything else on the cheap. Is this indicative of a willingness to spend? If so, the Marlins, who have a lot of promising young players, could contend. But we've been down this road before with Loria, when he added players after the 2011 season only to unload them after a disappointing 2012. But say this for Loria: His sins have consistently been of being penny-pinching, not profligate.

Rather, there are two things that I worry about with Stanton:

• Durability. Stanton's first full year in the majors was 2011. He played 150 games that year. He hasn't matched that total since. In 2012, he missed 39 games due to knee pain that required surgery in July. He also had oblique and shoulder injuries that year. He missed 46 games in 2013 due primarily to a strained hamstring but also with shoulder soreness and an ankle sprain. Last year he was healthy until September 12, when he was hit in the face by a Mike Fiers fastball in one of those can't-watch-it injuries, suffering multiple facial fractures. Hard tissue injuries (bones) tend to fully heal and are as much bad luck as anything. Soft tissue injuries (muscles, ligaments, tendons, cartilage) can be recurring. Toronto shortstop Jose Reyes, for example, has been on the disabled list five times, and day-to-day several other times, with hamstring problems. Stanton's been on the DL only twice in is career (the hit-by-pitch last year was in September, when teams don't bother disabling players), and he had a healthy 2014 until the Brewers' Fiers beaned him, but his record isn't scot-free. (All injury data from Baseball Prospectus.)
• Sustainability of revenues. The reason baseball revenues have grown dramatically in this century is television. With the proliferation of DVRs, consumers can record the programs they like and watch them when they want, fast-fowarding through the commercials. Sports are one of the few events consumers watch live. So they see the ads for beer and trucks and insurance while watching a game that they skip while watching sitcoms. That has made sports programming particularly valuable to advertisers and, therefore, for the networks that carry them. Additionally, TV broadcasting has shifted from national networks to regional sports networks (RSNs), like NESN in New England, YES and SNY in New York, and MASN in Baltimore/Washington. Teams have national contracts with ESPN and FOX, but they also have local contracts with RSNs that can dwarf the national contracts. Cable subscribers pay to have RSNs bundled with other channels. However, there's been a move to "unbundle" cable, letting consumers pick and choose the channels they want rather than the average of 189 that they receive now. Will your great aunt want ESPN, much less the RSNs, if she could pick her channels? And if she doesn't, and many others don't, what will happen to RSN revenues? The prospects for unbundling, as well as the savings it might yield, are unclear. But Stanton's contract assumes a stable economic model in baseball. In my role as a financial analyst, I've often said that Wall Street has a penchant for seeing a point and drawing a line through it. Baseball's doing the same thing with its current revenue mix. What works today may not in 2027, the last year of Stanton's contract.

Overall, I can't get too excited over Stanton's contract. Baseball's rolling in dough; might as well give it to a marquee player. I question what the Marlins have in mind longer term, and I worry about his injury risk, but the focus here's on the field of play anyway.

On The Horror of a Wild Card World Series

Look, I'm not wild about it either. For the second time in baseball history (2002, Angels-Giants), we will have two wild card teams--i.e., teams that couldn't even win their own division--meet in the World Series. That's a far cry from the years though 1968, when a team had to be the best in and eight- or ten-team league in order to make the Fall Classic. Now, you don't have to even win a five-team division.

Except. There is an element of variability in most everything in life, including baseball, that is almost always ignored. Say there's a game, tied 3-3 in the eighth inning. The pitcher throws a ball on the border of the strike zone. The batter doesn't swing. Is it a ball or a strike? 

Well, the average major league hitter had a .251 batting average, .314 on base percentage, and .386 slugging percentage in 2014. After a 1-0 count, that rose to .267/.373/.420. After 0-1, it became .221/.261/.331. 

That difference, in the late innings of a close game, is enough to sway a ballgame. The batter who gets a strike call is far less likely to get on base and score a run than the batter who doesn't. How many times do fluctuations like that occur over the course of a season? Take the Royals. They finished with 89 wins. If you were to replay 2014, over and over again, using the exact same players, same lineups, same injuries--do you think they'd win exactly 89 games every time? I don't. Maybe they'd win 88 or 86 or 92--it all depends on little things like ball/strike calls, a tiny movement in a batter's swing, the precise timing of a fielder's leap. How random are things like that? Maybe, say, 3%? Then over a 162-game season, we'd expect variance of 162 x 3% = 5 games. So the Royals may have won 89 games this year, but it's just as likely that they're an 84-win team that got a little lucky, to the tune of five wins, or a 94-win team that got a little unlucky, to the tune of five losses. Yes, the 89-win Royals knocked off the 98-win Angels and 96-win Orioles, but you can easily build a case that the Royals, if we were to replay the season over and over, might have, in the long run, a better record than the other two. Maybe the Angels and O's are really, in the long run, 93-win teams that got a little lucky this year while the Royals are really, in the long run, a 94-win team that got a little unlucky this year. 

Same in the National League. The Giants won 88 games, and they knocked off the 96-win Nationals and the 90-win Cardinals. But were they an inferior team? Those differences are both within our 3% margin of error. 

I've quoted baseball analyst Joe Sheehan before, but his observation from his newsletter bears repeating: Variance swamps everything. The fact that we're seeing two wild card teams in the Series doesn't mean we're seeing two inferior teams. We're just seeing two teams that didn't compile as good a record over a six-month, 162-game season as the teams they defeated. Maybe they picked the right time to get hot, or maybe they took advantage of their opponents' injuries (the Royals faced an Angels team without its No. 1 starter and an Orioles squad without its starting third baseman, first baseman, or catcher), or maybe some pitchers were more worn down in October than they were in April, or any of many other factors. The point is: If the goal were to insure that the teams with the best record meet in the World Series, then we should return to the pre-1969, pre-divisional play baseball world in which there were two leagues and one champion per league, period. As FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron said in his chat last week, "If you crown your champion with a postseason tournament, you’re asking for randomness."

And that's what you get: Randomness. There are two things I hate hearing, incessantly, during the postseason. One is all the myths I addressed last month: that prior postseason experience is important, that having veteran players provides an edge, that momentum matters, that good pitching stops good hitting, that reliance on home runs is bad, that ace starters confer an advantage. All of those, I explained, are dubious. 

But the other thing that I hear a lot, and which is probably more offensive, is that the postseason is a test of character. It's a short series of baseball games, not a morality play, for crying out loud. The Royals and Giants didn't advance because they're better people than the players on the Angels, Nationals, Orioles, and Cardinals. They didn't win because they were able to "put it together," "draw on their inner strength," "function better as a team," "will themselves to win," execute under pressure," "perform when they had to," and whatever other crap you read and hear, while their vanquished opponents didn't. They're each here because they won eight baseball games, spread over a one-game play-in and two short series. And, to the delight of baseball fans, most of those games were tight and exciting. Isn't that enough?

Sweet Play of the Day - June 10

Joe Sheehan is referring to this as simply "The Throw."

Reality Check: Stretching Them Out

I enjoy The Will Leitch Experience podcast (though I usually skip the episodes involving sports I don't care follow, i.e., pretty much everything other than baseball). Last week he had three consecutive appearances by Joe Sheehan, whose newsletter I strongly recommend. Joe previewed the 2014 season for all 30 teams. When discussing the Cardinals, he and Will talked about plans to move young pitcher Carlos Martinez from the bullpen to the rotation.

Joe mentioned that giving a young pitcher experience in the bullpen to prepare him for a starting role has become rarer in baseball due to the predominance of one-inning specialists. In 1965, the Baltimore Orioles had 19-year-old pitcher Jim Palmer in 27 games: six as a starter and 21 as a reliever. In those relief appearances, he pitched 56 innings, an average of exactly two and two thirds innings per relief appearance. That workload helped prepare Palmer for a Hall of Fame career as a starter.

Since the speaker here was Joe Sheehan, one of the top analysts in the game, the purpose of this Reality Check is not to determine whether Sheehan's assessment is correct. It is. The question is, how right is he?

I looked at five-year periods of baseball beginning in 1965, Palmer's rookie year. I used Baseball Reference's Play Index (invaluable research tool) to count the number of seasons in which a pitcher younger than 25 had at least 15 relief appearances of at least two innings. These appearances, we could reasonable conclude, are better than a shorter stint at preparing a young pitcher's arm for the rigors of starting. Here are the results. In the table, "# Seasons" means the number of seasons within the date range in which a pitcher younger than 25 had at least 15 relief appearances of at least two innings:

   Years   # Seasons   Prominent example
  1965-69     30       Ferguson Jenkins, 25, 1966
  1970-74     59       Bill Lee, 24, 1971
  1975-79     60       Jack Morris, 18, 1978
  1980-84     39       Rick Sutcliffe, 16, 1980
  1985-89     38       Chuck Finley, 16, 1987
  1990-94     15       Pedro Martinez, 31, 1993
  1995-99     15       Chan Ho Park, 15, 1996
  2000-04     13       Johan Santana, 18, 2000
  2005-09      5       Brandon McCarthy, 18, 2000
  2010-14      2       still waiting
Source: Baseball Reference Play Index. 

As you can see, over the past 50 years, there have been several cases of Hall of Fame and All Star-caliber starting pitchers who have begun their career pitching long relief. As the bullpen has evolved into a series of one-inning specialists, Sheehan's right: it's become hard for a relievers to develop the arm strength to move into the starting rotation. We may be looking a future with fewer stars starting out in relief like Ferguson Jenkins and Pedro Martinez and more promising youngsters who break when they try to move out of a short-outing relief role like Joba Chamberlain and Neftali Feliz.

Derek Jeter and Workplace Etiquette

The encomiums will be endless, and this isn't one of them. Rather, it's a cool story that Joe Sheehan threw out as an aside in his newsletter (which is fabulous and a subscription I recommend highly - you can get it here).

In 1994, the Yankees had the best record in the AL when the strike ended the season. In 1995, they were second to Boston but were the wild card team, losing to the Mariners. So hopes were high heading into 1996. But their switch-hitting shortstop, Tony Fernandez, broke his elbow in spring training. Management wanted 22-year-old rookie Derek Jeter, who had hit .306 with a .383 on base percentage in four minor league seasons, to play short. Principal owner George Steinbrenner, though, was unimpressed with Jeter during 15 games in New York in 1995, as he hit just .250 with a .294 on base percentage, striking out in over 21% of his plate appearances. Steinbrenner had his eyes on Mariners shortstop Felix Fermin, a slick fielder who had batted .317 in 1994 but had lost his job in 1995 to two future Yankees: Luis Sojo and rookie Alex Rodriguez. To get Fermin, Steinbrenner wanted to trade a 26-year-old Panamanian pitcher who'd struggled to a 5.51 ERA in his rookie season (a lot of rookies in this story), throwing 67 innings split between starting and relieving. The pitcher: Mariano Rivera. 

So to review: Steinbrenner wanted to trade Mariano Rivera for a shortstop coming off a .195 batting average in order to avoid playing Derek Jeter.

The moral of the story, of course, is that sometimes it's OK to talk your boss out of doing something really stupid.

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.