2. What is Alex Rodriguez these days? He’s hitting .270/.368/.399 with just nine extra base-hits (four doubles, five home runs). The good news is he has missed just one game, but there are times when A-Rod looks slow and old. Look, he can still get on base and pop the long ball every now and then, but like Teixeira, it’s clear he’s not the player he once was. His OPS figures since 2007: 1.067, .965, .933, .847, .823, .767. Is really anything more right now than a $28 million Chase Headley?
...Kuroda, meanwhile, went from pitcher-friendly Dodger Stadium to Yankee Stadium and the American League. And Hughes just isn’t that good; he has made 79 career starts and his ERA as a starter is 4.93. So while CC Sabathia remains as sturdy and steady as ever and Andy Pettitte looked good over the weekend in his second start, this is also a rotation with question marks.
We’re only 25 percent through the season, so neither of these teams are out of it, of course. And they’re certainly in better shape than 1984—that was the year the Tigers started 35-5, so the Yankees and Red Sox were already 16.5 games out of first place on May 20. The Yankees ended up that year at 87-75 and the Red Sox 86-76.
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1. Steve Balboni's Personal Trainer Posted: May 21, 2012 at 06:37 AM (#4136646)TOR 24-17 - Good young starting pitching, old bullpen, but it's been good; Bautista is hitting .204, Lind .158, nobody is hitting very well.
BAL 23-18 - Offense has guys who are punching above their weight; starting pitching has not been very good; bullpen has been unbelievable.
TB 22-19 - All over the place; best player is out; pitching hasn't been as good as advertised, offense has been a little better.
NYY 21-19 - ARod? Jeter is hitting .355? Chavez? Ibanez? Teixeira? Kuroda? Rivera's out. The bullpen's good, but this team is so old.
BOS 21-19 - The offense is holding on while Ellsbury and Crawford get healthy; You tell me if Beckett, Lester, and Buchholz's recent improvements are real, and I'll tell you if this team is winning the division.
Based on how they've all played, this is about right. Last place and first place are 2.5 apart. Add to this the new second wild card, and clearly nobody in this division has played itself into or out of the playoffs. Color me skeptical that Baltimore can keep this up. Color me increasingly bullish on Toronto's chances of winning this division - their pitching looks good, and they're winning games while Bautista and Lind struggle.
Toronto
I'm not sure if I can share in the optimism though. The pitching has been excellent so far, but Drabek is still walking too many guys and Alvarez has a 2.5 K/9. Hutchison I think is a bit better than his ERA shows, but probably isn't quite ready yet.
On offence, Lind's been bad...but there's the very real possibility that he just is bad, and for the rest of the year it's just a question of whether he'll be bad in Las Vegas or in Toronto. Bautista is starting to heat up (not to mention Arencibia), but guys like Rasmus, Thames (to a lesser extent Escobar and Lawrie) this could easily be as good as you get for 2011.
I started out the season thinking the Jays had a 3% chance at the 2nd wild card. Things have gone about as well as one could expect, I'd put them at, say, 7% now.
TBR .569
Tor .558
Bal .541
Bos .541
NYY .530
Toronto 94 wins
Baltimore 92 wins
Tampa Bay 90 wins
Boston 85 wins
New York 84 wins
Everyone's close enough that I think my pre-season guess remains roughly the same. The only addition is that by virtue of sticking in the hunt this long Baltimore and Toronto move from "almost impossible" to "very unlikely" playoff teams.
I hear you on this - every year, somebody (Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Kansas City, etc.) gets pretty hot for 40 or 50 games, but by the end of the season, like a leaf slowly falling, with a swaying motion, to the ground, things settle into where they should.
But.
This year is a little different. How?
1) The bar for being a playoff contender is lower in 2012, because of the 2nd wild card. Whereas a team in the AL over the last 10 years, because of the Red Sox/Yankees thing, has typically had to shoot for at least 93 wins to feel good about winning a wildcard, you can win 88 games and, at a minimum, be in the hunt with two weeks to go. The last time the "2nd wild card" would've need 90 wins to claim the final playoff spot was 2002. 89 wins probably gets you the 2nd WC, maybe as few as 87.
2) The Yankees and Red Sox simply aren't as good in 2012 as they typically have been in the 2002-2011 period. The Yankees are really old. Posada is retired. Rivera is out for the year. ARod looks really old. Jeter is playing well, but he's 38 years old. Ibanez has played well, but he's 40. Teixeira is 32, but his bat appears to be 36. The young guys who were supposed to take over behind CC - Hughes, Joba, and Nova - are either out or are struggling. This is not a 95-win team.
The Red Sox are palgued by lots of money locked into assets that have value far below their salaries. Crawford and Lackey have a combined $36 million salary this year (and 2013, and 2014), and they, more than anything else, have forced the Red Sox to solve problems on the cheap. Nobody would lump Gonzalez in with those two guys, but his salary at a position that is relatively cheap to find decent talent, effectively locks in decisions for years to come. The Red Sox have to go cheap in RF, C, SS, and the back of the rotation because all of their money is spent. $77 million of their payroll is on the DL right now. And the worst part is that several of their best players aren't even making crazy money relative to their talent - Ellsbury, Pedroia, Lester, Buchholz, Bard, Doubront, the entire bullpen, Salty. Ross and Sweeney have played well, and cost nothing...and the Red Sox are still screwed in their payroll! This is not a 95-win team, either.
I'm not saying the Orioles or Blue Jays are going to win 95 games. The Orioles will end up with 75 wins...but I do think the Blue Jays are going to win 89 games, and that'll get them at least the second WC, if not a division title.
I'd be stunned if 89 wins is a division title. I'd be shocked if someone didn't get hot enough to get to 95 wins. Toronto could even be that team (though I'd put them 4th in the likelihood of that) but I think 93 is probably a bare minimum to win the AL East.
The Wild Card is a big mess though. Teams like whoever is going to be second in the Central plus Toronto and Baltimore (though I don't believe in the O's) have to be licking their chops. Not only do Boston and New York look vulnerable but so do the Angels. Even if you trust those teams to come around the losses they've all piled up count. 87 is looking like it might be a reasonable 2nd WC number and that's attainable for virtually every team in baseball with the right breaks.
Already one quarter? Yowza.
The AL East is the toughest division in baseball still, and we've gotten used to this division producing a division winner and WC each with 95+ wins. But that situation was built upon having a dreadful Orioles team for everyone to beat up on. If the O's have turned into contenders, then you've got 5 excellent teams playing each other for 1/2 the schedule. No matter how good they are, the sum of the interdivisional games will always be .500.
If the teams split their interdivisional games then they'd have to play almost .600 ball against everyone else to win 89. Now even if all 5 teams were of equal strength, it's not likely they'd all split, somebody would get lucky and win more than their share of interdivisional games. So while 89 wins for a division winner is unlikely, the division winner will probably have a lower win total than we're used to.
Sure, but almost every year some team that everyone thought would stink has a big turn around and ends up contending. The DBacks did it last year. Baseball is hard to predict.
I don't think the orioles are "real" in the sense that they'll win 95+ games, but I think they're a better team than most thought and could easily win 85-88 games and make life difficult for the other teams in the division. I think the Rays are the class of the division and will end up in first with 92-95 wins. I could see the other teams tightly bunched in the 85-90 win range.
Also, I don't think pythag is particularly meaningful this early in the season.
True, but 95 would in fact be a low total. In the Wild Card era the AL East has been won with 95 or fewer wins just 4 times;
2005 - 95
2001 - 95
2000 - 87
1996 - 92
(the 1995 Red Sox had a .597 winning percentage, that's a 97-65 pace).
It's possible to be less but I think in the end some team will rise up. I'll agree that the total is more likely to be 93-95 than it is 98-100 though.
Here's the whole AL using linear weights runs scored and allowed.
team_w-l
TEX_29.3-12.7
TBR_23.0-19.0
CHW_22.6-19.4
BOS_21.9-19.1
CLE_21.8-19.2
BAL_22.4-19.6
TOR_21.7-20.3
NYY_20.6-20.4
LAA_20.3-21.7
DET_19.7-21.3
SEA_19.0-24.0
KCR_17.6-22.4
OAK_18.2-23.8
MIN_15.2-25.8
Games over .500 in non-division games.
Baltimore, +6
Tampa, +6
Toronto, +8
NYY, +1
BOS, +3
They are 24 games over .500 out of the division. On pace for about 95 games over .500.
The one adventage they had over everybody else was the bullpen, which has lost its best two relievers.
And A-Rod's power is gone. Ideally, you'd move him up to No. 2, because he still gets on base, and have Granderson and Cano as the 3 and 4.
Phillies
Yankees
Red Sox
Angels
And the odds that any one of those four makes the playoffs at all?
I'd be tempted to say the Sox because they can't possibly keep giving up five runs a game, can they?
If ISU is playing MSU in the Big 12/SEC game, then you've got the Big 12 vs. the SEC in the national championship. Though I've long been for a 4 or 8 team college football playoff. I want to see more Boise State over Oklahoma games!
And yes, I have a thing for underdogs. It doesn't help in the short term for the owners of MLB rights, but it does help the sport overall in the long run.
My opinion is that the Angels are the best of those four teams so even though they have the most ground to make up I'll say they are most likely. After that I'd say Yankees-Red Sox-gap-Phillies. I think the Phillies have real concerns though the pitching could be enough to bail them out. I also have more confidence that the NL teams that weren't contenders last year (e.g. Washington, Miami, Cincinatti) are legitimately capable of putting up a ~90 win season than I do in Baltimore, Cleveland and Toronto (though the Jays wouldn't shock me).
I know it sounds like a broken record, but starting pitching is the foundation of nearly every good team, and so far here's where the Yanks' rotation is at:
Sabathia 112
Kuroda 94
Hughes 81
Nova 75
Pettitte is at 172, but let's give that more than two games to sort itself out
The bullpen's as terrific as ever, but with three key members on the DL and two of them out for the entire year, the hapless performances by the starters puts way too much burden on the likes of Soriano, Logan and Phelps.
It's not impossible that Kuroda, Hughes and Nova will start pitching up to their capabilities, but unless that happens pretty damn soon, you're looking at an 80-85 win team. You can blame some of this on injuries, but that doesn't address the problem.
From 2006 - 2011, PECOTA projected the Orioles to win 451 games (75 on average). They won 406 games (68 on average)
From 2006 - 2011, PECOTA projected the Jays to win 453 games (76 on average). They won 497 games (83 on average)
I have no idea if this is bad luck, or something missed by the model, or the fact that the Orioles fall out of the race earlier, so they accelerate their decline by trading away talent and leaning on rushed prospects. Or all of those, or something else entirely. But it is interesting.
Once again, this year, PECOTA projected both teams to win ~75-77 games.
I'm not ready to give up on Kuroda yet, but I think it's time to face facts that Hughes' capabilities are just not that high. And Nova is, at best, a No. 4 starter.
Did this effect exist for other systems? PECOTA was the system that projected Matt Wieters to be Johnny Bench in his rookie year so it is possible that they are doing something wrong with MLEs for the Oriole system (though if I recall that was a league wide issue they had with whichever minor league Wieters played in). If the issue exists across systems I think it gets a bit more meaningful.
Contributing (OPS+ or ERA+ at or above average) homegrown regulars who came up after 2007 and who are still with the team:
Red Sox
--------
Clay Buchholz (who threw that no-no during the '07 title run, but I'll count him anyway)
Daniel Bard, honorable mention (not sure I would count "setup man" as a "regular" position)
Yankees
--------
Ivan Nova (he of the 5.69 ERA)
Phil Hughes, honorable mention, ERA+ of 98, injured half the time
Given the resources that these two organizations have had at their disposal, this is nothing short of underwhelming, to say the least. And there are several players from both systems who are contributing for other teams (Lowrie, Reddick, Montero, Kennedy). The youngest position players on both clubs remain their two All-Star second sackers (well, Ryan Sweeney is 1 1/2 years younger than Pedroia-if he remains a regular once Crawford and Kalish are healthy).
Hmm, I've always felt the O's were absolutely crushed by having non-major-leaguers taking up roster space and at-bats. Seems every year the club had a Jay Gibbons, Cesar Izturis, Felix Pie who qualified as "worst regular player" by WAR.
But, then again, Baltimore hasn't had a pitcher on the same level as Doc or Ricky Romero since Mussina left. This year's rotation is interesting, but Hammel is hurt, Chen is new, and Arrieta/Hunter/Matusz are still works in progress.
Historically, yes. SG’s Diamond Mind projection blowout (which uses a bunch of different projection systems, including PECOTA) shows pretty much the same thing, although it likes the Jays much better this year (81 to 70)
Baltimore Projected wins
2005 82
2006 74
2007 75
2008 67
2009 75
2010 75
2011 79
Average 75
Toronto Projected wins
2005 78
2006 83
2007 84
2008 85
2009 76
2010 65
2011 74
Average 78
On the pitching side I think the Sox are pretty pleased with Felix Doubront (ERA+ 102) so far. Will Middlebrooks (133 OPS+) probably belongs on a list though he is pretty likely to go back to Pawtucket when Youk returns and is looking like a guy who needs a bit more time down there.
(edited for clarity)
I think you would expect fewer of the regulars to be homegrown for teams with lots of resources, and not the opposite.
I'm not ready to give up on Kuroda yet, but I think it's time to face facts that Hughes' capabilities are just not that high. And Nova is, at best, a No. 4 starter.
The only reason I retain any faith at all in those two is because Nova is averaging well over a strikeout an inning (9.6 K/9 after only 5.3 last year), and at 8.5 K/9 Hughes is at his best rate since he was a full time setup man in 2009. Their problems have stemmed almost exclusively from control, and specifically from bad pitch location within the strike zone. That's not easily curable, but it's less ominous than a precipitous drop in velocity and K-rate.
They should trade him for the Diamondbacks. He'd be 32-3 with a 1.98 out there this year.
All of them?
I just wanted to point out that Montero is at a 104 OPS+ at the moment. I know you were filling out the list, but Raul Ibanez has been much better than him this year.
1. ARod (his power has seriously slipped)
2. Teixeira (his batting average has nosedived)
3. Hughes (home run rate has spiked)
Martin isn't a question mark; he just sucks. Would have been better to roll the dice with Montero.
Yankees
--------
Ivan Nova (he of the 5.69 ERA)
Phil Hughes, honorable mention, ERA+ of 98, injured half the time
I'm not sure what regular means, but Brett Gardner came up in 08 and has been pretty valuable the last two years. David Robertson has been on the best relievers in baseball and he came up in 2008.
That's 5 years of relative barrenness-and I figured appropriate given that any pre-2008 players would now be in their prime years.
The point is that even a team with a ton of resources needs fresh infusions of young talent to remain viable long-term (within reason); not only will snarfing up free-agents for every single open position mean you are overspending, but you are buying into a market which is certain to decline. Good young players are cheap, can sometimes develop into superstars, and keep your financial options open for when that truly deserving FA becomes available. I knew this day would probably have to come-as a Sox fan I was hoping that it would drag down the Yankees first (tho misery loves company).
I think that kind of happened with Lester, Pedroia, & Ellsbury; it worked riiiiiight until Lackey and Crawford were chosen as the truly (un)deserving FA's...
I agree that Ian Kennedy was at one time deservedly behind both Chamberlain and Hughes on the prospects lists (it's funny how things work out sometimes), but people seemed to undervalue him even so, probably because he got hammered in his second go-round with the big club.
True, but Ibanez will be out of the league in two years, while Montero has an upside.
Russell Martin: 29 years old, .168 batting average - and he's basically a .240 hitter at this point.
Oh he does not. Even at the moment he's .2 WAR -- yep the BA is 168 but the OBP is 317 which ain't bad these days and good enough for a positive oWAR for a C (which is kinda depressing but there you go). Over the previous three seasons (1450 PA) he's 2.3 wins above average. His current BABIP is 181 which is 40-50 points below the BABIP for pitchers so that's going to rebound and he's likely to start putting up average starting C offense again.
I see the Ms are starting to give Montero more time at C with 11 starts in the last 18.
The relievers have high K rates but have not been bitten by the HR bug.
The Red Sox are now 21-21, 5.5 games out of first place, tied with Yankees, and the Orioles are the first place team, playing unsustainably well.
A lot better than I thought they'd be right now...
As my Yankees-loving friend puts it, "The Yankees are older than fxxxing dinosaur bones."
Not dinosaurs. Dinosaur bones.
What's the difference between these old Yankees and the old Yankees that were competitive from 2004-2010? Every year people projected their demise, and every year it was fine. Is it just that the "old" guys are now A-Rod / Rivera / Jeter / Posada (so old as to be retired, in some cases), as opposed to the FA signings around them?
Part of it is that a few of today's old guys are the same old guys who were expected to decline somewhat during 2004-2010.
There are two differences;
1. The pitching looks a bit more unsteady than it did in the past.
2. The competition is more widespread. Maybe my memory of past years is colored by results but it feels like there are more legitimate playoff contenders in the AL than in years past. The East alone has four teams that could conceivably win 90 games (some need more breaks than others) and Cleveland is playing well. Add in the expected contenders of Detroit, Texas and LA and I think you have 8 teams for 5 spots potentially (sorry Baltimore).
I think the biggest issue is the Yankees aren't playing well at the moment. I fully expect them to be one of the playoff teams when all is said and done but I think there is less wiggle room in the AL than there has been in the past.
I suspect there aren't more than two or three straight-up swaps to move Soriano I wouldn't do, and that's one of them.
Howzabout Ryan Howard?
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