Here’s what I did: According to Baseball Reference, there have been 1,084 seasons among hitters of 6.0 Wins Above Replacement or better (since 1901). These are most of baseball’s best years for hitters, and they range from Babe Ruth’s absurd 1923 season (.393/.545/.764, 41 homers, 131 RBIs, 151 runs, 170 walks) to Adrian Gonzalez’s 2010 season (.298/.393/.511 with 31 homers, 101 RBIs, 87 runs, playing in that hitter’s graveyard in San Diego).
These are not ALL the fabulous seasons in baseball history by any means … but they are most of them. It doesn’t really matter for this particular post if you like WAR or hate it — all that matters here is that a 6.0 WAR season usually makes the player an MVP candidate. Last year’s hitting candidates in the American League were Jacoby Ellsbury (7.5), Jose Bautista (8.5), Curtis Granderson (5.2) and Miggy Cabrera (7.1). In the National League, they were Ryan Braun (7.7), Matt Kemp (10.0), Prince Fielder (5.2), Justin Upton (4.1) and Albert Pujols (5.4).
So, 6.0 seemed like a pretty good cutoff point.
Then I looked to see at WHAT AGE those players had their good seasons. That’s what gives us the chart above. I was not nimble enough to make the chart as readable as I would like, but I think you get the picture. As you can see, there are only a few players who had such a great season at age 20 or 21. And there were very few players who had such a great season at age 39 or 40. The bulk of them were in their mid-to-late 20s.
I’ll go through the ages year-by-year, because I think it’s kind of interesting … though I admit that probably says more about me than it does about the information.
“There’s no such thing as good money or bad money. There’s just money”
“Look at what we’ve done and not what we say. Since we have been here — we are now beginning our 11th year — our payroll has consistently been at the top end of Major League Baseball,” said Lucchino. “It has not been No. 1. That position has been reserved, probably permanently, for the New York Yankees, but it has been second most every year, and we have invested lots of money in amateur draft picks. We sign our draft picks at a much higher percentage than used to be the case. We’ve invested in international signings — you can look at some of our Cuban players and some of our Japanese players — and so we have invested dollars into this franchise because we recognize that the fundamental question about a franchise and about its ownership is, is there a commitment to winning. I think that our track record demonstrates that there is that commitment.
“Now, this year, if you want to talk specifically about 2012, we will have the highest payroll in the history of the Boston Red Sox in 2012,” Lucchino continued. “Will we eclipse the luxury tax threshold? To be sure, we will — once again. So I think the talk of us not spending needs to be viewed in the context of real facts and in comparisons to real dollars.”
...Asked for how he feels when his team is characterized as being “cheap,” Lucchino suggested amusement.
“It makes me laugh. It just proves the old adage that you can’t please all of the people all of the time. You certainly can’t please all of the sportswriters much of the time. But that’s OK,” said Lucchino. “What’s important to us is that our fans realize that we are in this to win it, and we operate accordingly.
Verlander, Wakefield, Anthony Vasquez and Corey Patterson in the same list? Cowabunga.
Basically, I was sitting around Thursday afternoon, and I got to wondering what the fastest pitch was that got hit for a homer last season. Then I started wondering about other extremes. Slowest? Highest? Lowest? Most grooved? And so on.
I knew where to check, so I set off to research. Maybe it’s a bit too late to be reflecting on the 2011 season, but I haven’t seen any more recent baseball. Have you seen any more recent baseball? The way I figure, we can watch 2011 clips until we have clips from 2012, and we don’t have clips from 2012.
I probably don’t need to write any more introduction. You get the point. Let’s get to the fun stuff. The answer-y stuff.
In a candid conversation on ESPN’s Dan Lebatard is Highly Questionable, Schilling detailed his interactions with former Red Sox slugger Manny Ramirez and one time in particular, he blamed Ramirez for giving up on making a play during a game.
“I’d never had anybody quit on the field on me before,” Schilling tells host Dan LeBatard. “It was a very eye-opening situation.”
Schilling explains he was so angry after Manny gave up on a fly ball that he wanted to confront Ramirez in the dugout. However, Schilling says he wasn’t allowed to do so by other Red Sox players.
“A couple of my teammates stopped me from [confronting Ramirez,]” he explains. “And the commentary was around the fact that ‘Manny needs to get ready to hit.’”
Former Major Leaguer Rex Hudler and veteran play-by-play announcer Steve Physioc will join Ryan Lefebvre, Jeff Montgomery, Joel Goldberg and Nate Bukaty to form FOX Sports Kansas City’s Royals television team in 2012, FOX Sports Kansas City announced today.
Lefebvre returns for his fifth season of play-by-play on FOX Sports Kansas City. He is slated to call 90 regular season games on television. Physioc, a Kansas State University alum, will be the play-by-play announcer for 50 telecasts. Both Lefebvre and Physioc will also call games on radio.
They’ll be joined in the booth by Hudler, who will call 120 games. Royals Hall-of-Famer Montgomery will serve as analyst for the remaining 20 telecasts.
For just over a year now, the evidence facing Fred Wilpon, Saul Katz and the other Sterling Equities partners who own the New York Mets has been debated in court filings from Wilpon’s attorneys, as well as the filings of the trustee for the Bernie Madoff victims, Irving Picard.
And with the $386 million lawsuit brought by Picard against Wilpon and his partners—who are already under great financial strain and struggling to hold on to the Mets—speeding toward a March 19 trial, the latest court filings include testimony from a woman whose contention about what the partners knew and when they knew it could decide the whole ballgame.
The woman is Noreen Harrington, an accomplished financial executive who was last in the news for blowing the whistle on an unrelated scam, leading to the exposure of the mutual fund scandal of 2003.
A recent break-in at Diamond Baseball Stadium has the Lake Elsinore Storm in need of someone with a good nose for sniffing out clues.
Thieves broke into a storage locker on Tuesday and made off with a quad-runner, used by the team’s mascot, Thunder.
“We’ve never really had a problem with this before so it is an isolated incident for the most part. I don’t know if they knew what was back there or not, but they found the quad,” said the stadium’s director of ticketing, J.T. Onyett.
Team officials believe the thieves cut the lock to the shed, hotwired the bright green quad and drove off, leaving behind a few foot prints and not much else, much to Thunder’s devastation.
Bah! For years I thought Mickey Lolich was on Five-0…cause I remember my druncle yelling “Whoa, fat!” when I showed him a Lolich card.
It’s only right that Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Shane Victorino appear in an episode of “Hawaii Five-0.” Victorino is from the 50th State, of course, and he possesses enough charisma to at least get a callback. So, go and set your DVRs for Feb. 20 on CBS. Here’s a part of the episode’s synopsis, provided by The Five-0s website:
Five-0 investigates the murder of a man dressed as a Hawaiian NaKoa warrior found in the jungle near the site of a historical war re-enactment. Philadelphia Phillies outfielder and Hawaii native Shane “The Flyin’ Hawaiian” Victorino guest stars as a business executive on a company retreat.
“The Flyin’ Hawaiian”? More like “The Actin’ Hawaiian.”
Victorino’s character even gets a name: “Shaun.” Much like “Shane” — and the old “Five-0” series from the ‘60s and ‘70s, when Kam Fong played Chin Ho, or perhaps it was the other way around.
Guess who’s not on this list? Who else - Octavio Dotel.
• Bobby Abreu
An executive of one NL team predicted recently: “There’s no team in baseball more likely to make a deal this spring than the Angels.”
It’s not all Albert Pujols’ fault, but Pujols’ arrival did set off a ripple effect that leaves this team with too many first-base/outfield/DH guys to fit on one roster, let alone one baseball field. So somebody has to go, and Abreu sure seems like the most logical player to move—if the Los Angeles Angels can find a team to take him.
That’s especially the case if Kendrys Morales is healthy enough to DH, because that would wipe out Abreu’s only real hope for playing time. The Angels don’t have any need or any reason to play him in the outfield.
Ideally, they would love to trade him for more bullpen inventory. But an official of one club that spoke with them reports “they’d do it for a middling prospect, just to move the money”—which happens to be $9 million, if you’re ringing your personal cash register at home.
Abreu, who turns 38 next month, can still draw a walk, steal a base (going 21-for-26 last year) and slap a ball up the gap. But he slugged a career-low .364 last season. And one scout who has seen a lot of him said this week: “He doesn’t drive the ball much anymore. He’s not very good in the outfield. And he makes a ton of money. So I really don’t think he’ll have much of a market.”
Suppan, who helped the St. Louis Cardinals win a World Series in 2006, and was a prized free-agent earning $42 million over four years with the Milwaukee Brewers, badly wanted one last chance. A veteran of 16 major-league seasons, he had had been feverishly working out in hopes someone will at least extend a spring-training invitation to their big-league camp.
He was throwing bullpen sessions several mornings each week with a musician friend.
He was working at his restaurant - Soup’s Sports Grill in Woodland Hills, Calif. - during the afternoon and evening.
And he was spending the rest of his winter anxiously awaiting his phone to ring.
But this winter has brought a different harsh reality: The Pirates have tried to spend money above their still-too-low projected payroll of $48 million — actual big-splash money — only to see free agents turn up their noses.
...In the past week, it emerged that Huntington offered pitcher Edwin Jackson three years and $30 million. Not a misprint. Not an alternate reality. It really happened, and I can confirm that every penny was guaranteed, not couched in options or incentives. It would have been the team’s biggest deal ever by a factor of three Barmeses.
Jackson rejected it in favor of one year at $11 million from another losing team, the Washington Nationals.
...The Pirates aren’t lying. And it isn’t that they aren’t trying, as some suggest. It’s that top-tier talents still aren’t buying what they’re selling.
That has to change someday, obviously. But how?
“Honestly, we just need to keep playing better ball,” Huntington told me by phone Wednesday after another late night at PNC Park. “When we win, we’re going to see those results change, along with a lot of other things. We have a great pitcher-friendly ballpark. We have a lot of pieces in place. But the winning has to happen first. And it will. We still feel very good about the team we’ll have in 2012.”
This is supposed to be hush-hush and on the deep down-low, but you know us. It’s time to pop the bubbly because Kevin Youkilis [stats] and Tom Brady [stats]’s sis, Julie, are engaged!
The happy couple, who spent Super Bowl week together with the Brady clan in Indy, got engaged “recently” after dating for at least a year, we’re told from a few F.O.Ys.
From Deadspin and a Tabloid… grain of zaltz.
Also: Who really cares?
The truth, though no one dares say it around the Mariners, is that hitting behind Ichiro isn’t easy. Ichiro’s goal is not to get on base, but to get on base with a hit, collect 200 hits a season. He is unpredictable, playing at his own rhythm. And when he starts an inning with a quick at-bat — Ichiro ranked near the bottom in pitches per plate appearance among leadoff men last season — the No. 2 hitter is in a difficult spot.
At that point, a rival hitting coach explained, the No. 2 hitter is almost forced to be patient, or the pitcher will stand a good chance of breezing through the inning. Someone has to work counts, especially in the first inning when pitchers often are at their most vulnerable. And that task shouldn’t fall to the No. 3 hitter.
...The numbers indicate Figgins has lost his way. He is chasing more pitches out of the strike zone than he did with the Angels, and his walk rate declined markedly in each of his first two seasons with the Mariners. Yet, Figgins maintains he still isn’t aggressive enough.
“Being in that spot and understanding that Ichiro is an aggressive player — that’s what makes him great — I need to understand that when he is aggressive, I need to be aggressive, too,” Figgins said. “A lot of times I get behind in the count too much.”
But isn’t patience his game?
“That’s the adjustment I have to understand and make,” Figgins said. “There were spots in 2010 and last year where I got better at it, got back on track because I was being more aggressive. I’m still having my patient tendencies. But at certain times, I have to be more aggressive. Early in the game, I have to be more aggressive.”
Guess Bob Lorenz must have celebrated early with a special head-whirlpooling Hpnotiq logo.
Next month, the YES Network, now sporting a special logo to commemorate the occasion, will celebrate its 10th anniversary with an array of appropriately-themed programming and content.
The regional sports network home to Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees and the National Basketball Association New Jersey Nets, which launched on March 19, 2002, will integrate the logo into a variety of anniversary-themed content across multiple platforms. The logo will appear on-air within YES 10th-anniversary programming, including the network’s two-hour anniversary special that will premiering next month, as well as a series of vignettes.
The 10th-anniversary logo will also prominently hail a special section on YESNetwork.com, comprising Web-exclusive video clips of YES talent reminiscing about highlights from the RSN’s first 10 years, other video highlights, company milestones and facts and figures. Designed for simplicity for seamless integrations into the aforementioned platforms, the logo was created by YES’s Emmy Award-winning in-house graphics department.
Gawd. I just shoved a spitting rinkhals down my pants.
AZSP: Do you think there is such a thing as a “closer’s mentality,” that makes a pitcher particularly appropriate for use in the ninth inning?
KT: No. To close is difficult. It’s very hard to get those last three outs. J.J. had had a lot of success in Seattle - though he hadn’t done it for a couple of years, he had been highly successful at one time or another. David Hernandez, he reminded me of a young Heath Bell, they had similar routes to the big leagues, came up as starters, ended up back in the ‘pen. Big, strong lower half, overpowering fastball and someone we thought had the right head on his shoulders, could handle the last frames of the game, which he did a great job of, during J.J.‘s absence when he was on the DL.
AZSP: You mentioned good clubhouse guys. When you’re adding players like Putz or Blanco, how do you assess their impact within the clubhouse?
KT: A few of those guys, I’d had in San Diego, so I knew what they were all about, what they brought to the table. With Willie Bloomquist, even though I’d never had him, I saw him a lot when he was in Seattle. We talk to players, talk to coaches: I think we did our due diligence in checking on these guys’ character as well, the type of people we brought in. J.J. was another guy I saw a lot in Seattle when he was over there, and heard a lot of good things about him. To me, the character evaluation is as important, almost more important, than skill evaluations. I think we’ve got some really good people here, that came in and really help changed that culture.
“Tub” Spencer, for a time a backstop with the Phillies after Dooin was injured last year…is now under bail for $1,000 to appear in court.
The charge against Spencer is that he tried to break into a restaurant at Eighth and Dauphin sts.
Spencer, when given his hearing, did not argue that it was unsatisfied hunger that drove him to dive through the window into the cafe. The rotund catcher, who weighs 200 pounds frankly admitted…even a plate glass barrier didn’t deter his efforts to get into the food shop.
SEOUL, Feb. 9 (Yonhap)—The South Korean governing body of baseball has banned scouts from the Baltimore Orioles in Major League Baseball (MLB) from attending local games, after the Orioles signed a teenage pitcher in a controversial move.
The Korea Baseball Association (KBA) announced Thursday it has informed the MLB commissioner’s office and the Orioles of its decision, saying scouts from all major league teams in the future signing Korean student athletes not in the final years of their schools will be banned from KBA-sanctioned games. That will include all national high school and university tournaments, often frequented by major league scouts.
The Orioles in January acquired pitcher Kim Seong-min, a 17-year-old left-hander about to enter his final year in high school and reportedly signed him for US$550,000.
The Orioles’ signing also stirred a controversy about major league clubs’ poaching of young South Korean players. While major league clubs are free to sign any Korean player they wish within the rules, including undrafted high school students or graduates, baseball officials here have long complained MLB clubs’ signing of players can make it difficult for South Korea to develop youth baseball programs.
...doctoring pitches helped extend the careers of countless fading arms throughout baseball history. More than a simple performance enhancer, it was damn fun. Anytime a suspected scuffer or greaser came to town, local media fired off breathless “Does He or Doesn’t He?,” “Will He or Won’t He?” columns. Students of the game watched the pitcher’s every move, looking for a fishy hand movement or sleeve swipe. A batter’s dirty look as he walked back to the dugout was itself worth the price of admission. The mere threat of a spitball drove hitters batty, to the point where they’d get pissed if it wasn’t thrown, given all the waiting and anguish they went through over the course of a game.
There, at the very very bottom of the standings, are the Houston Astros. Okay, that’s not a big surprise. The Astros were baseball’s worst team in 2011. They didn’t then undergo a complete roster makeover. But their projected record - which is the average of several projected records - is 60-102. That’s 60 wins, and 102 losses.
The thing about projected standings is that they tend to miss the extremes. Standings are projected by running a hundred or a thousand individual projections and then averaging them out. By doing this, the records are kind of regressed to the mean. So when you see an extreme record, that’s pretty telling. And I think it’s fair to say that 60-102 is an extremely bad record…..
Out of all the projected records above, the worst is 60-102, belonging to the 2012 Houston Astros (CAIRO) and the 2009 Pittsburgh Pirates (ZiPS). And between those two teams, the 2009 Pittsburgh Pirates were projected to have the better Pythagorean record, based on runs scored and runs allowed.
These 2012 Houston Astros might be historically significant, in whatever way that projected baseball standings might be significant. And while it’s very possible, if not probable, that the Astros aren’t actually the worst team ever projected, that doesn’t change the fact that CAIRO just thinks they’re really gross. And CAIRO’s fair. CAIRO doesn’t hold grudges.
If you glance at the Astros’ depth chart, that they’re projected to be terrible makes a whole lot of sense. Squint and you can like a chunk of the rotation. The pitching staff as a unit isn’t a complete disaster. But I’d really prefer to just not talk about the position players. I like Jed Lowrie, but when you can make an argument that Jed Lowrie is the best position player on a team, you should be worried about that team.
The backlash from the Orioles’ signing of a 17-year-old South Korean pitching prospect continues.
The Korean Baseball Association, the governing body of South Korean baseball, has banned Orioles scouts from all KBA-sanctioned events, according to a report by Yonhap News Agency. This includes national high school and college tournaments that are often frequented by major league scouts.
The ban will extend to major league teams that sign Korean players before their final year of school in the future, Yonhap reported.
This all started last month, when the Orioles signed Kim Seong-min, regarded as the top left-handed pitching prospect in Korea, to a contract reportedly worth $550,000.
The move raised the ire of the Korean Baseball Association (KBO), which filed a formal complaint to the MLB commissioner’s office that the Orioles violated protocol in signing Kim. The KBO contends that the Orioles should have first inquired with the KBO about Kim’s availability before attempting to sign him.
North Korean media has spun this story into saying that the fiendish imperialist-dog south now forbids young people from being watched by birds, in fear that they may fall under righteous praise of Kim Jong Un that they sing with their every song.
“Let us start with the proposition that Dwight Evans is one of the most underrated players in baseball history. There are certain things that make players underrated. The most important of these is that a player who does several things well will always be underrated compared to a specialist, just because of the way the human mind works. We absorb simple concepts more readily than complex ones. If a player hits .325, if he hits 40 homers, if he steals 70 bases, we get that immediately. If a player does many things well but no one thing spectacularly well, he may have equal value but it takes longer for the public to catch on.”
Pat Lackey thinks about a new way to share the Yankees’ revenue.
So would it be a good trade for the Pirates? It’s hard to say from here without knowing what the details would look like. The Pirates would be insane to pay Burnett more than $8-10 million per year for the next two years. They’d be insane to give up more in value for him than they gave up for, say, Yamaico Navarro or Derrek Lee…
A brief visit through the end of the 19th century when men were men and baseball was serious business.
April 29, 1892:
“Cleveland Spiders SS Ed McKean accidentally shoots himself through the ‘fleshy portion’ of his finger with a revolver. He will recover within a week and go on to drive in 93 runs, albeit with the lowest batting average and HR total of his career to date.”
#2 Bryce Harper: Harper’s calling card remains his 80 power to go with an 80 arm from right field, but he’s a better overall athlete than he’s given credit for. ... His light-tower power produces incredible BP sessions and mammoth in-game shots; he has as much leverage from his lower half as a human can achieve without dislocating his spine midswing.
#3 Matt Moore: If I had a crystal ball that could promise me Moore would stay healthy for the next decade, he’d be even higher on this list. Instead, he’ll have to settle for third place and predictions of Cy Young contention by his third or fourth year in the majors.
#7 Jurickson Profar: Profar is a plus-makeup, plus-feel, plus-instincts guy who breaks the mold of that type of player by also having tremendous tools.
#9 Jesus Montero: As a catcher, Montero is not a catcher. He’s slow behind the dish, poor at receiving and throwing—despite some arm strength, he takes a year and a half to get rid of the ball, so the arm doesn’t play. The bat is too special to put at risk of injury at the catcher’s spot or to omit from the lineup 25 times a year because of routine rest days. Let Jesus hit.
According to MLB Network and NESN analyst Peter Gammons (via twitter), right-hander Rich Harden underwent season-ending surgery to repair his right shoulder. Gammons tweeted: After 5 years of ‘always being hurt’ with a torn capsule, Rich Harden last week had surgery, aiming to come back in 2013–healthy. Finally.
The development offered a reminder of the trade to which the Red Sox and Athletics agreed on July 30 (one day before last year’s trade deadline) only to have the Sox call off the deal upon reviewing Harden’s medical records. The deal would have sent Harden to the Sox for first baseman Lars Anderson and a player to be named (both Raul Alcantara and Brandon Workman were on a list of players from which the A’s could select a player).
Harden, who turned 30 following the season, was 2-1 with a 4.30 ERA, 30 strikeouts and 10 walks in 29 1/3 innings at the time of the almost-trade. Though the Sox thought that he was unlikely to make more than a handful of starts down the stretch, Harden remained healthy enough to make 10 starts over the final two months of the season, albeit with mixed results. He struck out an impressive 61 batters (and walked 21) in 53 1/3 innings, but went just 2-3 with a 5.57 ERA while averaging 5 1/3 innings per start.
Passed out? How could they possibly tell the difference?
YES Network television host Bob Lorenz has been charged with drunken driving in Connecticut where police say he was found passed out in his car in his hometown of Westport.
The 48-year-old Lorenz was arrested early Wednesday morning. Police say they found him slumped over the wheel of his car and when they woke him up he drove away slowly and nearly hit a utility pole. Officers say his speech was slurred and he smelled of alcohol.
Lorenz hosts pregame and postgame shows for the New York Yankees and New Jersey Nets. He was arraigned Wednesday at Norwalk Superior Court and his case was continued to Feb. 29.
From Rikers Island, Louise Meanwell claimed Wednesday that Cashman told her he misled federal investigators over what the Bombers’ brass knew of steroid use by players.
Meanwell, who claims she had an affair with Cashman, told the Daily News that Cashman confided to her that he was grilled in June or July by “the feds.”
She said Cashman told her he made it seem like the Yankees had no knowledge of players’ steroid use when, in fact, they did.
Cashman’s spokesman Chris Giglio vehemently denied the accusations.
“These claims are complete and utter fiction, the latest installment of a carefully concocted campaign of harassment now spewing from a jail cell by a person who is being held on serious criminal felony charges of harassment and extortion,” Giglio said.
It was a First Baptist Church…but Pettitte has admitted to a Second.
The Waco-born Berkman, now age 36, will report in the coming days to training camp with the St. Louis Cardinals, a team that he signed with as a free agent following the 2010 season. Berkman played the last two months of that season with the New York Yankees following a trade that took him away from the only professional organization he had ever known.
“The hardest time in my professional life was when I was traded to New York. I had been in Houston a long time. I was very comfortable, played at Rice, a native Texan, so it was like a dream come true,” Berkman said. “For the first two weeks (following the trade) I literally wanted to cry. I felt so bad. I was having a bad season, and was in a completely new and alien environment. I just felt overwhelmed. Fortunately, I did have one friend in New York, and that was the main reason I waived my no-trade clause and went up there because Andy (Pettitte) was there.”
Berkman was joined on the stage Tuesday with the former Yankee and Astro pitcher Pettitte, as well as former Astros shortstop Craig Reynolds and Yankees shortstop Bobby Meacham. Reynolds is currently a pastor with Second Baptist and Meacham is the first-base coach for Houston.
