Pete Rose

You may have heard that ESPN published evidence that Pete Rose bet on baseball games while he was a player, in contrast to his insistence to the contrary.

Two things about Pete Rose:

1. I never cared for him all that much as a player. I mean, I fully acknowledge he was one of the best ever. But I always found him to be overly self-promoting and, on his most famous team, the mid-1970s Big Red Machine, only the third-best player on the club (Johnny Bench and Joe Morgan, if you must ask). He was a leadoff hitter with a .375 on base percentage, which is very good but not great. He was a lousy base stealer (57% lifetime success rate), didn't hit home runs (160 lifetime), and, while he played a lot of positions, left field was the only one he played particularly well. But he had amazing longevity, and was very, very good overall for a very, very long time.
2. People get upset that he's lied about his gambling, pretty much every step of the way. Maybe it's a moral failing or something, but I just don't get excited about lying. Pete Rose lied, Alex Rodriguez lied, politicians lie, all true enough, but let's face it, you and I lie a lot, too. When lies get people hurt, yes, that's bad. When people lie to cover their butts, as Rose or Rodriguez did, well, is it really that different from the lies we tell when our boss asks us about the report we forgot to complete, or our spouse asks us whether we remembered to get bread on the way back from work*? I just don't see it.

While I don't get excited about lying, I do get excited over rules. And there's really only one that's relevant here: 

Rule 21 Misconduct, (d) Betting on Ball Games, Any player, umpire, or club, or league official, or employee, who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor has a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible.

He bet on baseball while he was in uniform. Open and shut. There isn't a statute of limitations. He's permanently ineligible, which means he can't go into the Hall of Fame. Period. The newest revelations don't change that at all.

*No, my wife usually doesn't read this. So don't tell her, OK? And for the record, she generally doesn't eat bread.

Reality Check: Ray Fosse

I listened to most of yesterday's Blue Jays-A's game while on a long drive in order to hear the Oakland debut of Jeff Samardzija, acquired in a July 4 trade with the Cubs. (He did pretty well: One run and five baserunners in seven innings.) Going from the Cubs, the worst team in the NL Central, the A's, with the best record in baseball, is a huge upgrade for Samardzija. The color man on the A's broadcast, former major league catcher Ray Fosse, talked about what that's like. 

Fosse is best remembered as the catcher whom Pete Rose flattened while scoring the winning run in the 1970 All-Star Game, one of the most memorable plays in All-Star history. Fosse suffered a separated shoulder and, it was said, was never the same again. That claim may be a little hyperbolic. It's true that Fosse never approached the .312/.366/.527 slash line that he'd compiled at the 1970 All-Star Break, but a lot of players put together a great half-season. And it's not like he became worthless. He was an All-Star the following season and won a Gold Glove. He was a regular only three more seasons, though, and, worn down by a succession of injuries, he retired at age 30.

In March 1973 season, Fosse was traded from the Indians to the A's. Like Samardzija, he went from a poor team (the 1972 Indians were fifth in the six-team AL East) to a good one (the 1972 A's won the World Series). On the broadcast, he talked about how exciting it is for a player to go from an also-ran to a championship-quality team, even though it means you're no longer a big fish in a small pond. Fosse noted (I'm paraphrasing here) that he went from batting fourth to batting eighth. 

Is that true? Did he really go from being a cleanup hitter to a No. 8 hitter? Doesn't that sound overly dramatic?

It turns out Fosse's memory is correct. In 1970, the year of the collision with Rose, he had 498 plate appearances, the majority (59%) batting fourth. That made sense, as led the Indians in batting average and slugging percentage. In 1971, he led the team in batting again but his power slipped, and he was more often the No. 3 hitter (33% of plate appearances) than No. 4 (30%). In 1972, his last year in Cleveland, he batted just .241/.312/.354, but his .666 OPS was about league-average--this was a pitching-dominated year, and the American League adopted the designated hitter the next season in an attempt to revive offenses. Fosse had 508 plate appearances, with a narrow plurality in the No. 4 position (33%) followed by No. 6 (32%). He was a pretty bad cleanup hitter, batting .216 with a .327 slugging percentage, but his recollection is correct: he batted fourth more than in any other lineup position for the 1972 Indians.

For the 1973 A's, he's absolutely correct: 80% of his plate appearances were from the eighth position in the lineup.

Fosse's point wasn't that it was a bummer going from batting fourth to batting eighth; it was that going from Cleveland to Oakland was invigorating because it gave him a chance to play for a winning club. And he did: The A's won the World Series in 1973 and 1974 with Ray Fosse as their catcher.

Adrian Beltre and Immortality

On Tuesday, Rangers third baseman Adrian Beltre went 4-for-4 in an 8-2 loss to the Tigers. The first of those four hits, a single to center in the bottom of the second, was the 2,500th hit of Beltre's career. It made Beltre, who turned 35 on April 7, the 32nd player to collect 2,500 hits by age 35. Of the 32, Beltre is the only one to have played over half his games at third base.

Two questions regarding Beltre's legacy: Is he likely to reach 3,000 career hits, and might he get inducted into the Hall of Fame?

Every year, the Bill James Handbook calculates the percentage chance of players reaching various milestones using the player's accomplishments to date, age, and level of performance. This year's Handbook lists Beltre's chance of reaching 3,000 hits at 81%. If the season were to end today, Beltre would have to become the 89th hitter in history to get 490 hits at age 36 or later in order to reach 3,000. (He has 2,510 through June 28.) If we assume that he can get another 75 hits this year (which seems safe; he has 84 in the Rangers' 80 games thus far), he'll need 415. There have been 111 players, ranging from Bill Buckner (419) to Pete Rose (1,494), to have done that. That total includes 11 third basemen:

Player	H	From	To	Age	G	AB	R	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	Tm
Lave Cross	848	1902	1907	36-41	747	2967	360	143	33	4	402	114	64	.286	.314	.360	.675	PHA-WSH
Wade Boggs	743	1994	1999	36-41	672	2407	363	130	13	31	268	334	226	.309	.389	.412	.802	NYY-TBD
Graig Nettles	637	1981	1988	36-43	933	2675	328	90	9	110	404	351	383	.238	.326	.402	.728	NYY-SDP-ATL-MON
Cal Ripken	635	1997	2001	36-40	620	2334	281	116	1	78	326	169	272	.272	.322	.423	.745	BAL
Chipper Jones	609	2008	2012	36-40	604	2086	323	124	4	82	324	360	328	.292	.393	.473	.867	ATL
Gary Gaetti	582	1995	2000	36-41	672	2262	292	121	7	103	362	182	392	.257	.319	.454	.772	KCR-STL-CHC-BOS
Jimmy Dykes	551	1933	1939	36-42	580	2023	227	88	17	22	307	272	144	.272	.365	.365	.730	CHW
Jimmy Austin	489	1916	1929	36-49	604	2010	265	73	32	3	124	257	193	.243	.333	.316	.649	SLB
Brooks Robinson	450	1973	1977	36-40	547	1849	168	69	5	26	199	167	158	.243	.306	.328	.635	BAL
Mike Schmidt	440	1986	1989	36-39	457	1612	256	85	3	90	322	242	223	.273	.368	.497	.865	PHI
Sparky Adams	429	1931	1934	36-39	406	1581	217	87	8	2	89	121	72	.271	.326	.340	.667	STL-CIN

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 6/29/2014.

The Hall of Fame outlook is even brighter. Despite the stinginess of Hall voters in recent years, 2,500 hits by age 35 has been a near-lock. Of the other 31 players to have reached the milestone, the only ones not in the Hall of Fame are Alex Rodriguez (still active), Pete Rose (banned from baseball), Derek Jeter (still active), and Vada Pinson (flamed out - hit .223/.248/.335 in 103 games at age 36, his last year in the majors). Takeaway: If Beltre can keep playing at a reasonably high level (he's currently better than that, ranking second in the American League with a .333 batting average) and, in the immortal words of Satchel Paige, go very light on the vices, he stands a good chance being inducted into Cooperstown.

Reality Check: Harmon Killebrew

I was watching a Twins broadcast and the announcers were discussing Aaron Hicks's struggles at the plate. Through May 11, Hicks was batting .160 with a .235 slugging percentage. That's pretty bad; among pitchers with at least 15 plate appearances, 13 are batting and slugging higher. (Hicks has heated up since, going 7-for-21, but his batting average is still below .200.) The announcers were reminiscing about Twins great Harmon Killebrew. One of them, I think it was Bert Blyleven, said that when Killebrew would visit the batting cage after he retired, his advice to hitters was, "Keep swinging." The announcers talked about how Killebrew was a free swinger but when he made contact the ball went a long way.

Today, we have the technology to precisely measure that. Tigers rookie Nick Castellanos leads the majors in swinging, having swung at 59.3% of the pitches thrown to him. The Cardinals' Matt Carpenter is the other extreme, swinging 33.6% of the time. So Castallanos keeps swinging, while Carpenter doesn't. But pitch-by-pitch data weren't available in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s when Killebrew played. So we'll have to go by strikeouts and walks.

Obviously, a guy who strikes out a lot is taking a lot of swings. Killebrew struck out 1,699 times in his career, 27th most all time. He led the AL in strikeouts once and was in the top ten seven other times. But does that make him a free swinger?

Not if you look at his bases on balls. Killebrew is 15th all time with 1,559 walks. He led the American League in walks four times, was in the top three eight times, and in the top ten 13 times. In his years as a regular (1959-1972), among players with at least 1000 games played, Killebrew had the 24th lowest ratio of strikeouts to walks in the majors. Compared to his walks, he struck out less frequently (1.01 strikeouts per walk) than Pete Rose (1.03)!

So whoever heard him say, "Swing away," must've missed when he added "at pitches you can hit; otherwise, take your base on balls."