Run Environments and DIPS

In 2007, American League teams allowed, on average, 4.82 runs per game. This year, that number is down to 4.49. The table below sheds some light on what factors have contributed to this discrepancy.

The only two changes that seem particularly significant here are H/9 and HR/9. But the increase in homers doesn't match up with the GB%, which has barely changed. Here are the more detailed batted ball stats, from FanGraphs:

Fewer fly balls overall, and more infield flies, have allowed for a 5.8% decrease in outfield fly balls, a category which I just made up. The increase in line drives is somewhat strange, since the average DER was .692 last year, and is up to .703 in 2008. Incredibly, about 1/3 of that increase can be explained by Tampa. Some of it is a zero-sum game (trading Harris to the Twins for Barlett), but not all of it (Upton to center, Aki to second, calling Longoria up).

Anyway, the point is that these changes, regardless of whether they're temporary or not, have caused issues with some DIPS stats. I'm going to stop isolating the AL now, since I'm not sure that there's any reason to do that other than for illustrative purposes, and turn to the majors as a whole. The numbers below are for guys who have thrown at least 90 innings thus far in 2008.

So if you see that a guy's QERA is a bit higher than his actual ERA, don't think too much of that, since that's true for the whole league. The same is true for FIP, although to a lesser extent.

Finally, I'm not sure that this would have much predictive value, but if you run a regression on the QERA variables (K%, BB%, GB%) using these 114 guys, you get this:

(In both cases, you then have to square the result to get the expect ERA. QERA is also explained/defined here.)

This Week's Links (6/30-7/4)

A day early this week, since I can't imagine this site will be getting a whole lot of traffic tomorrow.

How good are the Angels? Sean Smith knows.

The streak lives! (See here for reference.)

The Schilling/Jack Morris comparisons are awesome.

Buster Olney, reporter? Fine. Buster Olney, analyst? No.

Something about some team that's doing well, or something.

A logo conspiracy? I think so.

A proposal (#17) to add a new wing to the Hall of Fame titled, "What The Hell, They Were Better Than Jim Rice".

This Week's Links (6/2-6/6)

WFNY interviews Terry Pluto. Good stuff.

Law and Goldstein break down the first day of the Draft. The Indians' first round pick is a brilliant kid.

Leitch is leaving Deadspin. Shyster has a good breakdown.

"Furious Ozzie Guillen's Lineup Card Full Of Expletives"

I need to write about the White Sox just so I can use this picture.

THT talks to Pittsburgh GM Neal Huntington.

This week's Blog Show guest: Erin Andrews.

More Brian Bannister.

This Week's Links (5/19-5/23)

Sportsbook's #1 pick odds have changed slightly in response to the Bulls winning the lottery. Previously, Rose was -120 and Beasley was -110; they are now each -115.

Mike Piazza retired.

Should the Rays take Buster Posey first overall?

College football previews: USC, tOSU.

Cris Carter "has a problem" with Will Leitch, for all kinds of logical reasons.

"If Billy Wagner's on your side, you probably want to change sides."

Contract Years

The fact that there is actual evidence that players perform better in contract years has always interested me. It's one of the relatively few old baseball clichés that have been confirmed by actual data. Today- and, probably, a couple more times throughout the course of the season- I thought I'd check in on some of the bigger names that are eligible for free agency this winter.

The following players have been selected completely arbitrarily (from here)- I'll probably look at a different group if I do this again.

Pat Burrell
.320/.445/.670, 9 HRs, 24 BBs, 23 Ks

It's unlikely that Burrell will continue doing his best '00 Bonds impersonation, but notice the BB/K ratio. In his first year in the league, he struck out in 34.1% of his PAs, and walked in 13.4%. He's been steadily improving since:


His other numbers have also steadily increased, if not as consistently. He's 31- the hot start puts him in good position to have a career year, and it's certainly nice timing.

It'll be interesting to see how much he gets in the offseason. In theory, I'd think that the same GMs that appreciate the walks and don't mind all the Ks (read: the smart ones) would be hesitant to invest too heavily in a 31-year old with the dreaded "old player skills". Although maybe he'll end up with a high enough BA and HR total that it won't matter.

Adam Dunn
.209/.371/.374, 4 HRs, 24 BB, 24 K

At least he's still walking.

This seems like unfortunate timing for Dunn, doesn't it? Unless there is a dramatic reversal of fortunes, he will be viewed as a secondary option to Burrell. I won't waste everybody's time pointing out the obvious similarities. Not an ideal situation for Dunn, but it might make him a good deal for whichever team he ends up with. Maybe a certain GM with a team incapable of scoring runs that needs a LF anyway is thinking the same thing.

C.C. Sabathia
1-5, 7.51 ERA, 38.1 IP, 50 H, 6 HR, 18 BB, 37 K

The K/BB still isn't yet at the lofty numbers we've come to expect from Sabathia, but considering it was 14/14 after four starts, he's recovered quite nicely. And if Franklin Gutierrez was capable of catching a fairly routine fly ball, his ERA over his last three starts would likely be under 1. The ERA looks like it'll be fine, if a little inflated because of the early struggles. Whether the Indians will be able to score enough wins to get him a respectable win total is an entirely different story.

It doesn't really matter though. By November, those four April starts will be ancient history- barely more recent than the the '07 Cy Young award. How much will he get? Santana's contract (6/137.5) is probably a good starting point- Johan is better, but he also never got to test the open market. With the way "Generation Trey" is shaping up, I might even (cringe) take the over on that.

Ben Sheets
4-0, 2.29 ERA, 39.1 IP, 3 HR, 11 BB, 33 K*

Well, Gagne isn't helping. Obviously, the big thing with Sheets is health, as he has a 3.77 career ERA but has averaged just 21 starts/year since 2004. I apologize if this was covered in Baseball Between the Numbers- strangely, I don't own it- but I wonder if guys tend to stay on the field longer in contract years. That's not to question Sheets' "toughness" or whatever- I can't blame the guy for having some extra incentive to stay out there and get those IP totals back to his '02-'04 levels.

Because of the injuries, Sheets probably has the most to lose/gain over the next five months. If he wins the Cy Young, how much could he get? 5/90? That may be a little high, but it doesn't seem unreasonable. On the other hand, if he gets hurt in his next start, who's going to give him more than one, maybe two years? Besides him.

Rafael Furcal
.381/.466/.603, 4 HRs, 19 BB, 15 K

Both Furcal's BABiP (.411) and ISO (.222) are way above his career averages. There's no way the BABiP stays that high- he's been between .298 and .350 each year of his career. The ISO is impressive though, and it's not only a product of an increased HR/FB%, since he has 12 doubles and 4 triples. He won't keep this up, but this winter's contract should look similar to the 3/39 the Dodgers gave him after 2005.

*Stats include Sunday's game; everybody else's are through Saturday.

(By the way, Macklin is transferring to Florida.)

Photo: ESPN.

Longoria and Leverage

I've seen the following thought expressed in various articles; the Prospectus Hit List just happens to be the most recent (and thus most readily available). Regarding the Longoria extension:

"If nothing else, the move obliterates any questions regarding the financial motivations behind his late-spring demotion."

As I write this, the fact that the Rays waited a couple weeks to call Longoria up is completely irrelevant. It will have no bearing on any decision either Longoria or the Rays make in the future.

That doesn't mean it didn't have an effect in the negotiations. Having Longoria under control for an extra year gave the Rays that much more leverage. Since that's an extra year of arbitration rather than receiving his true value on the free agent market, it decreased the expected value of Longoria's career earnings at the time. At least in theory, this would cause Longoria to agree to a less favorable contract.

Not breaking camp with Longoria in the big leagues didn't end up having any direct effect, because he signed a contract extension after playing six games with the Rays. But it's likely that it had an indirect effect, and I don't see how the extension proves that keeping him in AAA wasn't a financial decision. If anything, the opposite is true- do you really think Tampa actually thought that a guy they were about to give $17MM didn't deserve to start over Willy Aybar?

This Week's Links (4/14-4/18)

U.S.S. Mariner looks at some small sample size craziness.

Banny log #3.

"The Metro and Magnet Night don't mix like..."

Kenny Mayne has an interesting marketing plan for his new book.

Carib released their college hoops futures odds.

Jay Jaffe thinks PECOTA is overly optimistic about the Rays' defense.

Somebody's Gonna Be Wrong

Comparing preseason predictions from various sources is a lot of fun, and also a pretty good way to get a feel for what's expected from teams from various sections of the media. What I've done here is take predictions from a few different places- 5 ESPN analysts in their season preview, three Yahoo! guys, the SI staff, Joe Sheehan (AL, NL), and PECOTA- and find the biggest discrepancies bewteen win totals for each team. The first largest differences are below, followed by a discussion of why there's such a lack of consensus, and who looks to be correct.

By coincidence, this ended up being all AL teams, which is fine by me.

Seattle Mariners
Average: 86.2
High: Steve Phillips (ESPN), 92
Low: PECOTA, 75

Do you think Phillips can spell "Pythagorean"? I don't.

That being said, 75 is really low. The PECOTA projection does come with something of a disclaimer, since it has Ichiro hitting .303/.346/.384. In 4774 career ABs, Suzuki has hit .333/.379/.437; this is his age 34 season, but thats a huge drop, and Ichiro has outperformed his PECOTA pretty much every year.

Still, even if we bump PECOTA's projection up to 77, that's a 15 win difference. And this is far from an isolated incident. The four ESPN guys (Stark, Kurkjian, Olney, and Phillips) and the three Yahoo! guys (Henson, Brown, and Passan) have the winning an average of 90 games. Sheehan, Law, and various computer projections predict an average of 79 victories.

They won 88 games last year, while being outscored by 19 runs. The high predictions employ the "88 wins + Bedard" logic. The others are starting with a baseline of 79, and giving them a boost for Bedard but factoring in some regression for their aging lineup. I don't think it's particularly hard to figure out who to side with here.

Tampa Bay Rays
Average: 77.3
High: PECOTA, 88
Low: Steve Henson (Yahoo!), 72

The thing you have to love about PECOTA is that it's 100% unbiased. When it runs the numbers and comes up with 88 wins for a team that's never won 70, it doesn't adjust that to something that seems a little more reasonable. This paid off with the White Sox prediction last year; considering its history of success (not limited to that one example, obviously), the extreme predictions for Seattle and Tampa are hard to ignore.

I don't really know who this Steve Henson fellow is, but that's okay- he's got some wacky predictions, which are always appreciated. Here is his analysis on the Rays:

"The Rays are improving but are still middle-school level to the Red Sox graduate students."

This is a little over the top, but I think that's the mainstream consensus. Personally, I have no idea how many games this team is going to win (although I'd certainly take the over on 72). There's no big Pythag gap here- last year their expected record was 67-95, and their actual record was 66-96. Three things are causing the huge expected jump- a vastly improved defense, additions to the bullpen, and the development of young players. They were a horrible fielding team last year, but PECOTA expects them to be a little above average this season. The biggest upgrade is going from Brendan Harris (-19 in Dewan's system) embarrassing himself at short to Jason Barlett's +18 glove. The also have Upton finally spending a full year in center, and the (eventual) addition of Longoria to the lineup will allow Iwamura to slide over to second.

Combine that with the addition of Matt Garza, and the progress of Kazmir, Shields, Sonnanstine and Co., and it's easy to see that their run prevention will be much improved. PECOTA has a team that allowed 944 runs last year decreasing that by a whopping 226 runs. Without looking it up, I'm going to go ahead and assume that that'd be the largest reduction in the history of baseball; that's about three months worth of runs for the Giants' offense.

Henson's prediction of 72 wins for the Rays is insanely low; 88 is high, but not that high. It's hard to both see and quantify these internal improvements- switching up defensive alignments, young players improving, old ones regressing- which is why PECOTA is so far off from the general consensus.

Texas Rangers
Average: 73.0
High: Joe Sheehan (Baseball Prospectus), 80
Low: Steve Phillips, 64

This is not a fair fight.

I watched Phillips' "analysis" of the Rangers on their ESPN season preview page, and I must say, he didn't really enlighten me. He doesn't think Millwood and Padilla are top of the rotation starters, which is reasonable. He goes on to explain that Texas is going to have to outslug their opponents. I don't know how he came to that 64 number (he probably doesn't either), but we should remember that they do get to play almost 60 games against that increasingly horrific division.

Sheehan is bullish on their offense; he has Texas scoring 840 runs, which is 60 higher than PECOTA. He seems to be high on Blalock who absolutely tore it up (.313/.405/.656) after returning after missing three months last year. Because of his disappointing '05 and '06 campaigns, PECOTA is very down on Blalock with a projected .263/.331/.436 line, so that's probably causing a decent amount of a difference. Because of how unique he is, Josh Hamilton is obviously a hard guy to find comparisons for; PECOTA has him going from .292/.368/.554 last season to .283/.349/.481 this year. This makes some sense, since last year was in the easier league and a better hitters park, but it still seems low. In writing this paragraph, I have convinced myself that the Rangers are going to score a whole lot of runs this season, and certainly win a lot more than 64 games.

Baltimore Orioles
Average: 63.6
High: Steve Henson, 70
Low: Buster Olney (ESPN), 56

Olney does love the extreme predictions- 49 wins for the Nationals last year is one I'll never forget. This one is much more sane though. They have a decent outfield, but they forgot about the whole "shortstop" thing, and that is a truly awful rotation in an impossible division. Our new friend Henson thinks they will win just two less games than the Rays; now that is a bet I'd like to make.

Toronto Blue Jays
Average: 86.2
High: Joe Sheehan, 91
Low: PECOTA, 78

This is very interesting- a third huge discrepancy in the East, but this time between two "people" that look at things similarly. These are the only two sets of projections that also offer RS/RA, which is helpful. PECOTA has Toronto at 762/775, while Sheehan predicts 761/676. So it's pretty clear where the disagreement is here.

This may be partially caused by different opinions on their defense- they are good, it's just a question of how good. But I think it's mostly their top 3 starters. Burnett can opt out of his deal at the end of the year (thanks, Keith). PECOTA has him throwing 185 innings with a 3.83 ERA; it's worth noting that in his last contract year he threw 209 innings with a 3.44 ERA in 2005, his last contract year. That's certainly too optimistic of an expectation, but it's been shown that players perform better in contract years, and I don't believe PECOTA takes that into account. So that's something to keep in mind. Staying healthy is the first step, obviously.

PECOTA has Halladay at a 4.06 ERA, which is certainly conservative, as his career ERA is 3.63- I'm assuming that's caused by his relatively weak peripherals.

Finally, PECOTA is very low in McGowan, with a 4.60 ERA. Obviously, it hasn't been reading The Baseball Analysts. Beyond that intriguing article, I've read a few other things on McGowan. I think he's expected to improve on last year's 4.08 ERA, and certainly beat his PECOTA projection. So yeah, it looks like Toronto will have some excellent run prevention this year, as one can reasonably expect their top three starters to be significantly better than what PECOTA suggests.

This Week's Links (3/10-3/14)

Arkansas beat Vanderbilt!? Impossible.

SI's Luke Winn refers to this blog as "esteemed". Questionable, but appreciated.

This is what I was talking about in the live-blog. I can't do better than AA's title- "Digger Phelps Has No Idea What's Going On". That is even an understatement.

Dusty Baker is going to ruin Joey Votto. It's not funny. Okay, maybe a little.

Bob Costas hates bloggers.

BPro Unfiltered headline: "Braves, Angels Have Most Heart". Scientific evidence follows.

Hasheem Thabeet is an excellent Scrabble player.

An interview with Ken Tremendous.

Posnanski's "Stats I Like".

A compilation of forecasted standings. I'm going to do something with all these when the picks for all the ESPN guys are posted.

Early Links

There was a ton of good stuff this week, so I'm going to split it up. There is no way I am going to do anything productive during the Notre Dame-Louisville game anyway.

"Statistical profiling" of true talent levels- including a comparison of the career paths of Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds.

In this corner, Joe Sheehan's "Sign Barry Bonds" column. Opposing it, Ken Rosenthal's "Bonds playing in '08 would be bad for baseball" piece.

NJIT did it. 0-29. Congratulations.

Miggy Cabrera has a very appropriate B-R sponsor.

How did Brandon Phillips hit 30 homers last year? Partially because 14 were "Just Enoughers".

This Week's Links (2/18-2/22)

The St. Louis under won, 39-14 (74%). Arizona is up now; we're going alphabetically the rest of the way.

Baseball Prospectus 2008 comes out on Monday. Probably the best $13.17 you'll spend this year. Unless Xavier (80:1 at BetUS) wins it all.

Very old, but this Russell Westbrook dunk against Cal was absolutely filthy.

Baseball Musings predicts how many R/G each team will score in '08. A commenter alertly notes, "Looks like another long year for Matt Cain."

STF interviews SI's Luke Winn.

Ozzie Guillen, being awesome:

‘’Then if you’re a nice guy, they are going to treat you the same way. [Expletive] it, be an ####### then. I would rather be an ####### winning than be a nice guy [expletive] losing. Give me an ####### who can win, don’t give me a nice guy who can [expletive] lose.’"

ESPN jumped the gun on the UAB-Memphis game. How does that happen? Is it really so difficult to wait two minutes?

Silver adjusts PECOTA for strength of schedule. Seattle's prediction descends even lower. 85 wins. Right.

With Leather was on the foxnews.com front page. Also from WL:

"Seriously, if I said that Raul Ibanez could run down a routine fly ball, I'd punch myself in the face, because I'd be lying."

Derek Jeter: a below average fielder!? Man, what are they smoking down at Penn?

Crazy Computer Hates Mariners

The 2007 Seattle Mariners won 88 games, finishing second in the AL West. In the offseason they added Erik Bedard and Carlos Silva to a rotation that saw Jeff Weaver, Horacio Ramirez, Cha Seung Baek, and Ryan Feierabend combine to make 68 starts last year while compiling a 6.49 ERA.

They did lose a few guys from last year's team, including Jose Guillen (signed with Royals), Ben Broussard (traded to Rangers), Jeff Weaver (unsigned), and George Sherill (Bedard trade). But the additions to the rotation clearlymake up for these losses. In other words, Steve Phillips will likely predict that the Mariners win 90 games.

Baseball Prospectus' projection system, PECOTA, has them winning 73 games.

The issue is not their pitching, which PECOTA has as a little better than league average. The problem is they are projected to score 691 runs, which is the lowest number in the AL.

How does an 88-win team seemingly improve, yet become a 73-win team? A few possibilities:

Pythagorean Record
This is the obvious one. Seattle was outscore by 19 runs last year, and their third-order record was just 78- 84. If you are setting the baseline on the 2008 team at 88, you are wildly overestimating their true talent level.

Ichiro
PECOTA has Ichiro hitting .304/.346/.384, for a VORP of just 14.7. This is a guy with a career line of .333/.379/.437, whose average VORP over the last three years has been 48.1. PECOTA is consistently down on Ichiro (last year it had him at .310/.353/.400; he hit .351/.396/.431), so you have to think they are being unfairly docked a few wins here.

Age
The average age of the 30 MLB teams last year was about 28. Weighted for playing time (from here), the average age of the 2008 Mariners' lineup is 30.3, with Ichiro, Ibanez, Sexson, Vidro Johjima, and Wilkerson all on the wrong side of 30. This is another thing that goes unnoticed by he mainstream media. There is a significant difference between going from 28 to 29, and 30 to 31, and I think that is part of the reason their projection is as low as it is.

Defense
Seattle was 27th in the majors last year with a defensive efficiency of .678. This also goes back to their age- it is likely that they will be just as bad, if not worse, this year, as everybody is a year older, and they traded away a very strong defender in Jones.

73 wins seems a little extreme, but I think a projection of around 76 is entirely reasonable. Either way, articles like this are sure to be written, but we'll have to wait and see if there's a post like this come September.

This Week's Links (2/11-2/15)

Mr. I: "If there was ever a Douchebag Smurf, this is what he would've looked like."

Guesses on the lines for tomorrow's college basketball games.

More projected standings, this time using CHONE. 89 wins for the Rays?

Pomeroy:

Louisville probably won't win the Big East regular season title, but don't let that fool you. They're the best team in the conference.

A very flattering picture of Josh Beckett.

YouTube was forced to delete all the Berman videos. Deadspin wasn't.

NL Spring Training previews from Sheehan: East, Central, West. On the Giants:

Winter grade: F
They took a 71-91 team and replaced its best position player with a guy coming off a career year who’s had two above-average seasons in his life. For $60 million. Good luck with that.
One move to make: Release half the roster. And the general manager.

Indeed.

Wednesday Links?

I don't have time to write much of anything (and there's not much of not to write about anyway, except maybe Purdue), so I figured I'd post some links from the past few days.

Excellent Sheehan chat last Friday. My favorite part (I know, it would be):

erbacaine (Milwaukee): Eric Gagne over/under 35 saves

Joe Sheehan: Under, and I'll take out a loan to make that bet.

erbacaine (Milwaukee): rickie weeks over/under 30 Homeruns

Joe Sheehan: Under, parlayed with Gagne's saves.

If you want to read 4800 words on the 2008 Kansas City Royals' lineup, Posnanski's got you covered.

Early 2008 projected standings. How are the Indians +220 to win the Central at VIP? That is nonsense.

Shyster reviews Leitch's God Save the Fan. Good book, I recommend it.

Will Carroll begins his Team Health Reports with the Indians. I think I would sign up for Carmona only missing a month mid-year right now.

Football Outsiders pegs the Giants' odds at winning the SB when the playoffs began at 143:1.

Vanderbilt beat Kentucky by 41. No, seriously.

I have been meaning to do a NCAAB futures post, but don't 35:1 and 100:1 seem high for Stanford and Purdue, respectively? (Both at Sportsbook.)

Looks like Indiana might be in some trouble.

This Week's Links (2/4-2/8)

Bob Knight stepped down.

The FJM guys reveal their identities; Ken Tremendous is a writer for "The Office".

The Giants are not going to score many runs this year.

The Rays actually sent David Pinto a letter asking him to stop using "Devil", and fining him for doing so.

Sheehan's AL Spring Training previews; East (subscriber-only), Central (free), West (free). He is not optimistic about the Tribe.

Giants fans express their feelings towards Tiki.

Rafael Betancourt really was incredible last year.

2008 MLB Home Run Champ Odds

Sportsbook has posted odds on who will lead the majors in HRs in 2008. This kind of thing is extremely difficult to handicap but, with the help of PECOTA, I thought I'd give it a shot.

Here are a few of the bets I think there's some value in.

Ryan Braun
Odds: 15:1
PECOTA homers: 39, 2nd in MLB

Braun was an absolute beast last year, hitting 34 HRs in only 492 PAs en route to winning the NL RoY (the selection was obviously debatable, but for reasons other than his bat). That's a homer every 14.5 PAs. His odds are the clear outlier among the '08 predicted HR leaders- the best you can do on anyone else in the top four is 5:1.

Rick Ankiel
Odds: 300-1
PECOTA homers: 30, 13th in MLB

Yes, seriously. PECOTA is very bullish on Ankiel- other projections dont' have him nearly as high. Will he lead the majors in HRs? No, probably not. But it's important to remember how good these odds are. Betting $20 would net you $6000. And hey, stranger things have happened.

Carlos Pena
Odds: 50-1
PECOTA homers: 33, 6th in MLB

Carlos Pena hit 46 home runs last year. Vlad Guerrero hit 27- he's never topped 45, and hasn't even reached 40 since 2000 (with a team that no longer exists). Yet they both have the same odds. I could do this comparison with Pena and pretty much anyone else, since his remarkable '07 season really flew under the radar. Sure, it doesn't really match up with his career stats, but it's hard to argue with getting the guy who was 4th in the majors in HR at 50-1.

Alfonso Soriano
Odds: 25-1
PECOTA homers: 35, 5th in MLB

The value here is because Soriano is coming off a "down year", hitting only 33 homers (mostly because he missed 27 games). Still, he hit 46 in '06, while playing half his games at RFK. He should probably be in the range of 10-1, but the line is skewed by last year's low output.

Othere decent bets: David Wright (100:1), Adrian Gonzalez (200:1), Nick Swisher (75:1), Grady Sizemore (300:1). Edit: Dunn (18:1), too. Good point.

I've posted all the odds here; feel free to post your pick(s) in the comments. The full PECOTAs are available here; a BP subscription is required.

Photos: Flickr, SI.

This Week's Links (1/14-1/18)

BBTF hands out some Gold Gloves.

Listen, Buster. Listen. He listened!

The Post not making much sense. Carl echoes the same thoughts, except Carl is joking.

Sheehan's '08 breakout candidates.

Duke or UNC?

Shaughnessy at it again.

Jack Morris for the HoF? In that case, how about Rob Nen?

Grant Wahl doesn't include UNC in his "Magic Eight". His reasoning behind this is questionable (see update).

This Week's Links (1/7-1/11)

Check out the Memphis write-up in Luke Winn's Power Rankings this week. Pretty cool.

" Jacobs Field, the home of the Indians since 1994, will now be called Progressive Field." Well that sucks.

I thought it was interesting that Rice's BA/OBP/SLG are nearly identical to his HoF comps; the difference comes in OPS+, where he's 13 points behind. No wonder the voters are having so much difficulty with him.

More Rice: Sheehan observes that people "feared" Rice because of his '75-'80 performance; he really wasn't that scary at all in the second half of his supposedly dominant stretch.

Last one: Shaughnessy explains to us that Rice was "capable of inducing an intentional walk when the bases are loaded," and a better hitter than Wade Boggs. I mean, I guess I am *capable* of running a marathon, but it's never, you know, *happened*.

Posnanski forces "Brilliant Reader Dan Gould" to eat his hat.

"Mike Downey discussed Goose Gossage's HOF legitimacy by citing his win total."

Keith Law is the Stephen A. Smith of baseball. I wonder how he feels about Cheese Doodles.

Boras, on Ankiel:

"You have a player whose contributions came first as a pitcher, then as a position player. The last player you’re really talking about is Babe Ruth.”

This Week's Links (12/31-1/4)

Hall of Fame edition, because there wasn't a whole lot else going on this week.

Looks like Gossage is in, while Blyleven, Rice, and Dawson all have a shot. Raines does not.

Dave Studeman's imaginary ballot.

OMDQ's imaginary ballot.

Heyman's ballot really was bad.

Jay Jaffe on this year's SP candidates (subscription only).

Posnanski on Morris, and the Pozcars results.

More on the Blyleven-Morris "comparison".

This Week's Links (12/3-12/7)

An interview with Indians' AGM Chris Antonetti.

A website dedicated to Tim Raines' HOF campaign.

FJM tried out the whole user comments thing. This didn't last long.

Sadly, new Pirates' GM Neal Huntington is very smart, and doesn't want to trade Jason Bay to the Indians for Lee and Shoppach. This is unfortunate.

Doug Gottlieb is upset.

"Long Live the Boom King". Indeed.

I thought this Unfiltered post (by Sheehan) was fantastic:

"The notions of “clutch” and “choke” are post-facto labels we use to create narratives, not skills that actually impact the game on the field.

Writers, however…boy, can we choke."