Kuzul

This is not a piece advocating Stephen Strasburg’s inclusion on the National League All-Star team.

It’s going to sound like it, but it’s not. This is a piece de-bunking all the pointless, misguided, misinformed arguments people are using to keep him off the All-Star team. There are lots of arguments out there. Some are good. Some are stupid. This post addresses the latter. If you’re going to convince me he’s not deserving of a spot, don’t bring these arguments to the table.

Argument No. 1: “He’s had four starts! He hasn’t proven himself!”

At this point, Stephen Strasburg’s career is 25.1 innings old. A staggeringly impressive 25.1 innings, but 25.1 nonetheless. Not a whole lot to it, I’ll admit. And I’ve always been a believer in the dangers of small sample sizes. And yet…

Anyone know when the All-Star voting opened this season?

April 20th.

Don’t believe me? Here you go:

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100420&content_id=9438224&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

So, if we’re playing the “sample size” game, which seems to be the biggest argument to keep Strasburg out, why were people allowed to vote three weeks into the season? What, playing 1/8 of a season is enough for a hitter to garner votes, but that same amount isn’t enough for a pitcher? Nice double-standard.

Yes, there have been guys who have “been doing it all season.” But here’s the thing: We were voting for those guys long before we entered the “All-Season” mode. How many votes did Mark Teixeira get because people assumed his slow start was just his standard April? Well, now we know he’s pretty much been a disaster all season.

And while we’re here, remember that we elect closers based on limited innings. Are Mariano Rivera’s 24.1 innings pitched more valuable simply because they were spread out over 26 games?

Argument No. 1A: Starters and closers are different, and therefore held to different standards.

Not in an All-Star game they’re not. Once you get past the guy who’s actually starting the game, everyone’s essentially a reliever. Everyone’s throwing an inning, maybe two, so ostensibly, they’re all being asked to do the same thing.

Argument No. 2 : His inclusion will take away from a more worthy candidate

Ok, this is probably true, although the way he’s pitching, I think this becomes less and less likely every start.

Here’s the problem with that argument:

This already happens. All the time. Every year in fact. Pick your culprit: Allowing fans to vote 25 times online, differences in attendance at ballparks, managers picking their own guys, East Coast Bias, the necessary inclusion of one player from every team, Yankees fans. 

But whatever the reason, don’t embarrass yourself by complaining that Strasburg’s inclusion is so unfair and somehow an embarrassment to the process. The process is going to embarrass itself with or without Stephen Strasburg. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Look, I’m not asking him to replace Ubaldo or Doc here. But when the pitchers are finalized, take a look at the list. Find the worst guy and ask yourself the following question: “Is Stephen Strasburg better than this guy?” I’m 99 percent sure you’ll find one.

Argument No. 3: The All-Star game isn’t a popularity contest.

Of course it is! It shouldn’t be and you may not want it to be, but it is. Just because Bud Selig has for some idiotic reason decided to use it to determine home-field in the World Series doesn’t make it less so. And it’s not just the fans.

My favorite rumor in this vein is that in 2008, Jason Varitek was selected as the backup catcher despite a line of .218/.299/.354 7 HR, 28 RBI because everyone hated A.J. Pierzynski (.286/.325/.428 7 HR, 35 RBI). I can’t speak to the truth of it, except, well, it’s no secret a lot of people don’t like Pierzynski.

If the All-Star voting was meant to be fair, the last people on the planet who would be responsible for it would be the fans. Sure, some of them are unbiased. I’m sure there are people in Boston who are voting for Robinson Cano, just as I’m sure people in New York are voting for, well, anyone other than Mark Teixeira.

But there are hundreds of thousands of votes being cast for players simply because they play on the voter’s favorite team. Can you honestly tell me you never voted for a guy on your own team with sub-par stats? I did. Every year, without fail, I voted for Don Mattingly. (Unfortunately, but the time I started going to games regularly, he stopped being worthy of going)

Now, if you want to argue that since the Nationals will only get one player, it should be Ryan Zimmerman or Adam Dunn, then you’d have my ear. I can get behind an argument like that. But the other three? Forget it.

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Baseball purists cost Armando Galarraga a perfect game.

It’s as plain and simple as that.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. Jim Joyce blew the call outright on Jason Donald’s ground ball to first base with two outs in the ninth inning Wednesday night. He’s not without blame.

But it’s the baseball purists, who wax nostalgic about World Series games in the afternoon, four-man rotations, and pitchers hitting who are culpable here.

Baseball purists talk about “embracing the human element” of the game. Mistakes happen, they say, and baseball has lived with those mistakes for over a century. Why change it now? Umpires are part of the game. Always have been. Why should it be different now?

This is why.

This is what embracing the human element has wrought. History is ruined. Unless MLB commissioner Bud Selig steps in and does something—and yes, I think he should, because if anything defines “extenuating circumstances,” this does—Galarraga has been cheated.

This wasn’t an ordinary blown call, where people argue back and forth about what would have happened in the future had it been right, and ultimately we move on.

This wasn’t an umpire showing up a pitcher for the camera. Maybe you think it is, but that’s not what’s important here.

This was a perfect game that suddenly wasn’t. This was a chance for something magical that turned into just another one-hitter.

(On a totally unrelated note, I wish the official scorer had given him an error on the play by saying something like “he bobbled it.” I mean, as long as we’re seeing things that didn’t really exist, why not cut the kid some slack?)

This was bound to happen. And it will happen again.

You know the old saying about a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters for a thousand years putting out the works of Shakespeare? Same concept. Give a thousand umpires 100 years, and they’ll screw up a perfect game.

And we owe it to the players and the fans to stop it.

Joyce made the wrong call. There will never be any doubt of that. But the impact and the result of that blown call lies squarely in the hands of the people who desperately cling to baseball’s past in the face of logic and reason. The people who could have rendered Joyce’s call essentially meaningless.

Congratulations baseball purists. You should be proud of yourselves!

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I’m going to start this piece by stating the following: Yes, I’m aware it’s only May 12, and therefore, “on pace” articles are always rebutted with “It’s only been ___ number of games!”

Regardless, part of the fun in sports in projecting things. So that’s what I’m here to do.

Brett Gardner of the New York Yankees stole his 15th base in the first game of a double-header against the Detroit Tigers. Gardner’s only been caught once, and his current projection is for 80 steals in 85 attempts.

The raw steal numbers are impressive enough. The last player to steal at least 80 in a season? Rickey Henderson in 1988. You may have heard of him.

Vince Coleman stole 80 that year as well. Stolen bases are just not as prevalent now compared to in Henderson’s time, so stealing 80 bases is nothing to sneeze at.

But more impressive is the success rate. Gardner’s 93.7% success rate is astounding. According to baseball-reference.com, the highest SB rate for players with at least 80 steals was Vince Coleman’s 88.4% in 1986. (I’m assuming players like Ty Cobb were thrown out stealing in the 1910’s and the data just wasn’t kept/isn’t available).

The fewest caught stealings by a player with 80 steals? Henderson, who stole 80 bases and was caught just 10 times in 1985.

In the year Henderson stole 130 bases, he was caught 42 times, for a success rate of 75.5%. Likewise, Lou Brock was only successful on 78.1% of his attempts when he stole 118 bases in 1974.

There’s a metric devised that looks at the value of steals vs. caught stealings, so if you want to debate whether going 80-for-85 is more or less valuable than going 130-for-172, feel free.

As for Gardner, it’s unlikely he’ll keep his current pace up. He’s not going to finish the season with a .416 on-base percentage, and it goes without saying that the fewer times he’s on base, the fewer bases he’ll steal.

But for now, Gardner’s on a run unlike anything we’ve seen in recent years. Even current speedsters Jose Reyes, Jacoby Ellsbury and Carl Crawford don’t keep that pace.

Reyes was successful on only 78% of his attempts in his best year, (78-for-99 in 2007), Crawford on 85.6% (58-for-67) and Ellsbury 85.3% (70-for-82)

But if Gardner can keep up this pace, he’ll find himself in pretty elite company.

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Despite a sparkling record good for second place in the tough AL East, a number of Yankee hitters are off to poor starts.

Mark Teixeria, Curtis Granderson, Nick Johnson and Alex Rodriguez are all struggling mightily.

So which of the four are likely to turn it around? Advanced statistics can help us with that one. All of this data is available at fangraphs.com or baseball-reference.com

Alex Rodriguez

The line: .250/.337/.440 2 HR’s.

Prognosis : Good, but remember, he’s getting up there in years.

Yes, the power drop is disconcerting, but according to fangraphs, there’s nothing to worry about. Right now, just 6.7 percent of the fly balls Rodriguez has hit have gone for home runs. That’s absurdly low. For his career, that number is 23.4 percent, and it has never gone below 19.3 percent

According to Fangraphs, A-Rod’s hit 30 fly balls this season, so you would expect him to have seven home runs or so by now. Additionally, Rodriguez is making contact on 86 percent his swings, but his Batting Average on Balls In Play is .268, which is 53 points below his career average. This should also go closer to normal levels soon.

While it’s possible his home run numbers will start to drop—he is older, after all—there’s no reason to believe they’ll stay this low. And some of those other balls are likely to fall in as well. But any time a guy starts getting older, you see a drop in production, so it’s something to monitor.

Nick Johnson

The line: .138/.383/.224.

Prognosis : Good, if he wants it to be

I’ll be honest: Guys like Johnson drive me nuts. It’s not that I don’t know the value of a walk, it’s just that sometimes I get the sense that all they’re going up there to do is try to draw a walk, and they forget about attempting to swing the bat.

And right now, that’s Johnson’s biggest problem: He just doesn’t want to swing the bat. He’s only swung at 28.6 percent of the pitches he sees, down from 36.8 percent for his career. Additionally, he’s only swung at 42.6 percent of pitches in the strike zone, down from nearly 60 percent.

The maddening thing is, when he bothers to swing, he’s making contact. Johnson’s contact rate of 89 percent is good, and he’s only got a swinging strike rate of 3.3 percent. The problem is, the balls he hits aren’t finding the ground.

A .194 BAPIP is stunningly low, but, as it’s 115 points below his career average, it’s going to go up, especially considering his line drive percentage of 24.3 is right in line with his career numbers. Line drives are a type of hit very likely to result in a base hit — Johnson, for example, has a .777 career average on line drives.

For Nick, it’s a simple as taking the bat off his shoulder.

Mark Teixeria

The line: .136/.300/.259, 2 HR

Prognosis : Good, at least for the average

Much like Johnson, Teixeria’s been a victim of bad luck. His BABIP of .148 is half of his career average, and it simply cannot stay that low. He’s only hitting .500 on his line drives, 250 points below his career average. And, he’s only 30, so unlike A-Rod, he’s not at a dangerous age for dropping off.

While he is hitting more balls on the ground (unlikely to result in a hit for a player like him), it’s the fly balls that are also hurting him, as only 8 percent of the fly balls he hits turn into home runs, about half of his average.

That’s problematic, because even four home runs is low for a guy like Teixeria. So while the power numbers may be able to improve only so much, don’t expect the average to stay below the Mendoza line

Curtis Granderson

The line: .221/.310/.377

Prognosis: Not good

Here’s the problem with Granderson: While his BAPIP is low for him—.259 as opposed to .319 for his career—he’s also hitting a much higher percentage of line drives, which, if anything, should make that average go up. And while his average on line drives is low for him (.500 in 2010 as opposed to .743 for his career), it’s also likely he’ll hit fewer of them.

The ground presents a similar problem: Granderson’s speed makes him a threat to get on base with ground balls—his career average on ground balls is .275—but his ground ball percentage this season is virtually identical to his career numbers, and his average on them is .318, which means it’s also likely to drop.

The problem is, the increase in line drives has come at the expense of fly balls, which, unless they go out of the park, don’t often result in hits. So if Granderson reverts to the norm and some of his line drives turn into fly balls, well, you can see where it’s going. For his career, Granderson hits .139 on fly balls that aren’t home runs, so it ain’t pretty.

While Granderson’s only seeing 8.7 percent of his fly balls turn into home runs, it’s not that much lower than his 12.1 percent career number.

Regardless of the reason, these four Yankees need to start hitting, because other players are unlikely to see their hot starts stay so hot.

Robinson Cano is not going to have 28.6 percent of his fly balls turn into home runs all season, nor will Jorge Posada see 29.4 percent of his fly balls leave the park — for comparison’s sake, Albert Pujols’ career rate for that is just over 20 percent.

And Derek Jeter’s not going to hit .335 if he hits 71.3 percent of balls on the ground with only 12.6 percent on a line—and Jeter, like A-Rod is getting up there in years.

And call me crazy, but I just don’t see Brett Gardner, who was a .289 hitter in the minors, maintaining his .323 average all season.

Hopefully, Teixeria, A-Rod and Johnson can turn it around before the Gardners, Canos and Jeters come back down to earth.

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