Out With The Old And In With The New

As you've probably heard, Cal Eldred has retired. It's a bit hard to wax poetic about a middle reliever who was only with the club for a few years, although his return following a serious heart problem obviously was a great story. Looking back at the 2005 season, the 9th inning GIDP he induced against the Dodgers was one of the highlights of the season, as the Cardinals battled back to win in extras. I guess I got used to having Old Man Eldred around, which is something of a surprise considering his first impression was looking completely overwhelmed in the 2003 opener against the Brewers.

While I'm thinking about it, I wanted to mention the other recent retiree Larry Walker. If my corporate masters suggested my job performance might improve if they stuck a needle in my neck once a month, then I'd tell them to go fly a kite. Walker didn't have to do what he did, and I, for one, appreciate it. I suppose the question of whether Walker should've been benched in the playoffs had to be asked, but as ungrateful as it sounded, I wish it hadn't been.

* * * * *

With Eldred, Walker and others departing, the Cardinals naturally have some big holes to fill. Since the Cardinals won't win a lot of bidding wars for the premium free agents, and since they're in win-now mode and they don't have any redundancies at the major league level, they need prospects either to keep or to trade. Nothing new there. Part of the problem with being in win-now mode though is that the Cardinals have had lower draft picks and another part of the problem is they can lose draft picks when they sign free agents. For example, the Cardinals lost their first and second round picks in 2002 -- guys who would be arriving just about now -- when they signed Izzy and Tino (the signing that keeps on giving). So how does a mid-market contender build a good farm system?

The Post-Dispatch has a special series covering one solution. Jeff Luhnow's closed his spreadsheets so he can go build a Latin American program for the Cardinals. This could be a huge deal, and it's great to see the Post-Dispatch going into this kind of depth. Read it all and save it to your hard drive.

One related matter I'll point out is Nate Silver's article back in July at Baseball Prospectus, which in turn pointed out this article on population growth. The Dominican is poor, but its economy is considered "developing" and the result has been a population boom. As Silver put it:

The exponential growth we’ve seen in Latin American ballplayers since 1985 is a mirror of the exponential growth in populations of those countries during that period. At the risk of sounding a bit crude, more Latin American babies means more Latin American shortstops... But birth rates in places like Mexico and the Dominican Republic are more than 50 percent higher than in the United States... And so, it’s almost certain that the number of Latin American born players in the Major Leagues is going to continue to increase over the next 15-25 years.

Busch Auction

Ladies and gentlemen, I present a $400 trash can:

No word on whether the trash bag is included.

Lelands auctioned off a bunch of stuff from old Busch Stadium, and apparently the economy's in better shape than anyone realized. The visitor's hot tub does look like a bargain to me. I wonder how Skip Schumacher's jersey fetched the same price as Jeff Suppan's, as the former has had a cup of coffee and the latter beat Roger Clemens in Game 7 of the 2004 NLCS.

Slightly more disturbing, the Blue Jays reportedly have signed BJ Ryan to a 5-year, $47 million deal. Somewhere Mark Davis is sighing, "And they said I was overpaid."

Giving Thanks

On Thanksgiving 2005, Cardinal followers have much to give thanks for.

I’m not going to go into the big stuff, such as having one’s health, for those of you who do, or having a wonderful family, for those of you who do, or having a knockout wife, like mine.

Just keeping it between the lines, as Redbird fans, we’re in a period of heretofore unknown bounty.

In the last ten years, the Cardinals have gone to the postseason six times, something they’ve never before done, and, more recently, they’ve been there in four of the past five seasons. In today’s four-team-per-league postseason format this isn’t quite as high an achievement as making the postseason five times in nine years from 1926-34, or four times in five years from 1942-46, back when just one NL team made the “playoffs." But still, only the Braves and Yankees have been there as much as the Birds over the past decade. Even though the World Series win has eluded the Cardinals, playoff baseball---something each year 22 teams and their fans don’t get to experience---is exciting, and for the Birds’ recent run we should be thankful.

The Cardinals have the best young hitter in baseball, Albert Pujols. In 2005, in his fifth season, Pujols had his third-best batting average, fourth-best slugging percentage, and fewest doubles and runs batted in his career… and he won the NL Most Valuable Player Award at age 25. No other team in baseball but the Cardinals has Albert Pujols. For that we should be thankful.

The Cardinals are in a period in which they routinely have, or have recently had, the league’s best player at three or four different positions. Whether it’s Pujols, or Edgar Renteria in 2003, or Scott Rolen in 2003-04, or Jim Edmonds in this millennium, or even Chris Carpenter in 2005, when the Cardinals play, you get to see some of the absolute best players in the game. They don’t have that in Kansas City or Tampa Bay. For these players, we should be thankful.

The Cardinals have a management team in place that has made a commitment to winning. Even though they play in a “small market,” the team had a 2005 payroll of $92.1 million---third-highest in the NL behind the Mets and Phillies, and sixth-highest in all of baseball. Drawing 3.5 million fans has something to do with that, obviously, but the Cardinals have rewarded a loyal, knowledgeable fan base by delivering a product worth coming out and rooting for. And that’s not just a function of payroll—it’s also the product of smart decision-making by the front office. Rarely have the Cardinals been saddled with an albatross of a contract---just the Tino Martinez deal---and with shrewd and timely acquisitions, Jocketty & Co. have consistently replenished talent to go forward. They haven’t had that in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. For the Cardinals’ ownership and front office, we should be thankful.

And while I have mixed feelings about the new stadium----okay, I hate to see Edward Durell Stone’s magnificent concrete structure coming under the wrecking ball---the fact that the Cardinals will now have a state-of-the-art facility (even if it is in the absurd form of a building designed 80 or 90 years ago) as a new playground for them and their fans can’t be a bad thing. Imagine going to home games in Tropicana Field or the BaggieDome. For Busch Stadium III, we should be thankful.

And there’s this crazy internet, and cable and satellite TV---where, as fans, would we be without them? I live in Boston, yet I can follow the team to a degree unimagineable as a kid growing up in St. Louis in the 1970s. I can instantly commune with like-minded individuals (and some not so like minded) throughout the country, the world! We are drowning in a sea of information, and I for one, wouldn’t want it any other way. For modern technology, we should be thankful.

And for each of us, there are hundreds of little things about the game and the team and our experiences with them---maybe a memorable Mike Shannon home-run call, or a captured foul ball, or a beer in the bleachers with a best friend---that are the fibers of the fabric of our love for baseball and the Cardinals. And for all of these, we should be thankful.

SABR Rattlings

Pip at Fungoes has a nifty chart up that compresses a whole lot of baseball into a 3x5 note card. How did the Cardinals win 100 games? They had no glaring weaknesses -- they and Atlanta were the only NL teams without D's, and the Braves had a C- grade -- and they only had two minor weak spots, at catcher and with their #2 starter. Pip used Win Shares, which I suspect undervalues Yadier's defense, although the Cardinals obviously had some problems with their backups. Win Shares says Jason Marquis was the #2 starter, which probably results in a lot of "Huh?!? Oh, yeah" exclamations.

This method for evaluating pitchers has some awkward consequences, as Chris Carpenter only gets a "B", while Matt Morris somehow gets an "A". In hindsight, you'd like see of those #5 pitcher Win Shares shifted to 3B or the outfield for post-season purposes, but back in December there was no way to know the Cardinals' front five would be good for 160 starts. Actually the ideal destination for added quality would've been the #2 starter's spot. Too bad the distribution of good luck wasn't more skewed. Jocketty correctly identified the Cardinals' post-season need, just Mulder didn't get the job done in 2005.

My other piece of news comes from the SABR Bulletin. Have you seen those Google ads about becoming a baseball scout? If you're a baseball fan, there's an obvious appeal. In fact the ads remind me a little of those MMF schemes, as if they're too good to be true. Longtime scout Bill Clark confirms my suspicion:

What advice would you give to someone who wants to be a scout?

Don’t. And I’ve told several people that. Until you have your future in your own hands, don’t. Don’t be caught up miasma of glory that goes with being a big-league scout. It’s nice to sit in a ball park and say, "I’m a major league scout." But then you come home to find out that you don’t have a job and your family now is in jeopardy.

I guess I'll stick to my TAS reports for another few years then.

Radio Ga Ga

Everybody knows somebody like this, and all of us have probably been this person at one time or another. The person wants to be part of a group, really wants it, and once they become part of it, they display lots of effort trying to show they belong. That's what I always thought when I listened to Wayne Hagin broadcast Cardinals games. I'm not saying he did a poor job. It just sounded to me like the man was trying too hard.

Following a legend like Jack Buck couldn't have been easy. Reports/rumors of friction with broadcast partner Mike Shannon certainly didn't help him. The Todd Helton thing was a mis-step, to put it charitably. And it takes a long time for someone who's not from St. Louis to be accepted as a St. Louisan (unless you move to town in late July / early August and hit 24 home runs the rest of the season, but that's a different story).

The story reads much like this: "Wayne was a nice guy. Wayne was a professional. Wayne did everything with class. But we had a chance to replace him with somebody even better, and we're gonna do it."

I suspect that Wayne rubbed the folks at KTRS the way he rubbed me -- he called an OK game, but it just didn't sound quite right. Too many words at times where a few would do, not enough at times when more were needed.

Speaking of KTRS, I'm anxiously awaiting news of whether my local station will remain a Cardinals network station this year. WDWS in Champaign, IL is the flagship University of Illinois Fighting Illini station, and is balking at the new network requirement of carrying all of the spring training games. U of I baseball has always taken precedence in the spring -- it's part of the "price" WDWS pays for being the hub of U of I football and basketball games. If not, I'm hoping that WSOY out of Decatur or WJBC out of Bloomington remain on the network, but even then, those are a little far for me to pull in regularly. I'll miss the mighty MOX as my fall-back signal.

TSF

It's his year

Alex says Pujols has won his first MVP.

Can't verify that anywhere else since it's going to be announced this afternoon, but it feels legit (I will never be a journalist).

Update: It's official.

51

On a mission to get Willies Number Retired. Proceed immedietly to this thread and extoll on the mans virtues.

As a footnote both Alex and Dan [of GUB fame] note that Ray Lankford was a better player than McGee. It's sad that Lankford never got his due, or the love you'd think he'd have coming. But he didn't and at this point it's probably not going to happen.

What Will Giles Cost?

The good folks over at Baseball Analysts have a free agency preview up, complete with projected salaries. My stream of conscious went something like this: Clemens? Geezer. Konerko? Mr. 85 OPS+. Millwood? He was traded for Johnny Estrada.

Brian Giles.

Then I made Tim Allen noises (whatever happened to him?). Smith and Lederer think Giles will get 3 years, $30 million, which sounds about what the Cardinals would pay for him, if given the opportunity. That's a reasonable contract for a very good 35-year old. The problem is that inevitably there's some moron owner or general manager who isn't particularly reasonable. I'm not referring to Bernie Miklasz's latest -- although I like the attitude -- so much as the gentlemen responsible for the Darren Dreifort contract or the Alex Rodriguez contract.

I once had a boss who liked to say our industry is driven by its dumbest competitor, and naturally the same is true of same baseball. We cannot rely on reason alone. So armed with Cot's Baseball Contracts and some numbers from the late Doug Pappas, Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference, I decided to do some background work on player salaries. I'm particularly interested in good position players in their mid-30s, what kind of money they got and what kind of years. I need some definition of "good", so I'll use BPro's WARP1's, although Win Shares would work as well. Just for reference's sake, Brian Giles checks in with 8.0, 6.1 and 8.4 over the last three seasons.

2004-05 Offseason
Carlos Delgado (7.5, 8.1, 6.2 WARPs) was only 33 this season, so he's on the young side. He got a heavily backloaded 4-year, $52 million deal. One benefit of backloaded deals is that the player can then be traded with someone else picking up the tab, which apparently the Marlins are considering this offseason. Delgado isn't too happy about that.

Jason Varitek (3.5, 6.0, 6.8 WARPs) also was only 33 this season, but he's a catcher. He signed for 4 years and $40 million. Of course he signed with the Red Sox, who have more money than they know what to do with.

Moises Alou (3.6, 4.2, 6.4) is on the old side this time around, at age 38, so he only managed what amounts to a 2-year, $13 million deal. Prior to that, he signed a three-year, $27 million deal with the Cubs coming off WARP1s of 0.0, 5.4 and 6.0. Alou missed the entire 1999 (and 1991) season with an injury, making the Cubs contract a big gamble. Wow, I didn't know Alou came up with the Pirates and was once a PTBNL.

Magglio Ordonez (7.3, 8.1, 1.6) is definitely too young, but he had a weird injury problem in 2004, so he's worth adding to my survey. He got a whopping 5-year, $75 million deal.

Jeff Kent (9.9, 5.4, 7.6) got $17 million for his age-37 and age-38 seasons. I'll jump the gun and note that he got a 2-year $18 million deal for his 35 and 36 seasons (11.3, 9.9, 9.9 WARPs prior to that contract). Kent's a decent comp as he's not quite a Hall of Famer, although he's had a higher peak than Giles. There may or may not have been some hometown discounts with the Astros in 2003.

2003-04 Offseason
Ivan Rodriguez (6.9, 7.5, 6.7) was only 32, but not only is he a catcher, he started catching major league games when he was 19. He got a 4-year, $40 million deal. The Marlins didn't offer him arbitration, which is worth something, and of course he had been Mr. Veteran Presence for the Marlins' 2003 World Series winner.

Gary Sheffield (8.3, 7.1, 10.4), like Brian Giles, was coming into his age-35 season when he got a 3-year, $39 million contract. That was with the super-rich Yankees and furthermore Sheffield negotiated directly with Steinbrenner. Sheffield also was coming off a monster season. On the other hand, Sheffield can be a world-class pain in the neck and he's a lousy defensive outfielder. Since I think BPro overstates Sheffield's defensive value, this is the closest comp I can find.

Javier Lopez (3.7, 3.3, 9.3) turned his own monster season into a 3-year contract worth $22.5M. He's another 33-year old catcher. Not much else around, so I'll note that Reggie Sanders' contract looks pretty good about now and Kenny Lofton keeps popping up.

2002-03 Offseason
Jim Thome (6.6, 7.1, 9.4) isn't a perfect comp, since he was 32 in his first year with the Phils. However he signed a 6-year contract worth $85 million that obviously runs through his age-37 season. Thome's only five months older than his former Indian teammate Giles, although I suppose all of Thome's strikeouts scream old player skills.

Frank Thomas (8.5, 0.2, 3.9) was also going into his age-35 season when he re-signed with the White Sox. But the "diminished skills" clause and all the options are more than I can digest right now. There are also significant health differences.

I can't find anybody else except the aforementioned Kent and Rodriguez, and in the 2002-2003 offseason Rodriguez only got a one-year deal. Ray Durham (6.6, 6.7, 5.9) might be the most useful case and he was only 31, albeit a 2B. Durham got 3 years, $20 million. Fred McGriff evidently was well past his prime by then, his age-39 season. Steve Finley signed a two-year deal worth $11 million, but at the age of 38 and coming off WARPs of 5.3, 3.5 and 5.7, he'd clearly be a notch below the current Giles.

That's it under the current Collective Bargaining Agreement. The further back we go, the further away we get from the current economic landscape. As it is, there isn't much comparable in the 2001-2002 offseason; the Tino debacle, the aforementioned Alou acquisition and Bret Boone 3-year, $25 million deal are the closest comps. The 3-year, $30 million projection is defensible, but the bigger point here is probably how hard it is to gauge the value -- both market value and "real" value -- of a baseball player like Brian Giles. There just aren't that many mid-30s players available worth the big bucks.

* * *

Going off in a different direction, I noticed that Baseball Reference's expanded leaderboards (NL and AL) have the top ten salaries for each season for each league. Look at those lists for 2005:

Rodriguez-NYY   Bonds-SFG
Ramirez-BOS     Bagwell-HOU
Jeter-NYY       Clemens-HOU
Mussina-NYY     Piazza-NYM
Sosa-BAL        Jones-ATL
Johnson-NYY     Hampton-ATL
Brown-NYY       Dreifort-LAD
Park-TEX        Thome-PHI
Schilling-BOS   Abreu-PHI
Giambi-NYY      Jones-ATL

Egad, what an awful bunch of contracts, especially on the AL (Yankees) side. Sosa, Brown, Park, Schilling, Bonds, Bagwell, Hampton, Thome and Dreifort had disastrous seasons. Giambi looked like a disaster before a magic recovery, so that's half of the two lists right there. Rodriguez, Ramirez, Jeter and Piazza clearly aren't worth the money they receive. Johnson and Mussina probably aren't and it doesn't look promising for 2006. The only good contracts on that list are Larry Wayne, Andruw, Abreu and Clemens. Clemens has an oddball situation and the other three were veterans signed to extensions by their only major league employer, rather than free agents.

Much as I'd like to see Giles hitting in front of Pujols, Edmonds and Rolen, I can't hold it against the Cardinals if they don't bother.

* * *

Speaking of Kevin Brown, he didn't make the Baseball Analysts' Top Thirty. With good reason, as Brown had a 6.50 ERA in 2005 and his back problems may have ended his career. Such a signing could be more Roger Cedeño than Roger Clemens. He's had a great career though, his peripherals were still sound and he played in front of a lousy Yankee defense in 2005. If you're looking for some high-risk, high-reward guys with a thought to the post-season, then this is a good place to start.

Cy Young!

Chris Carpenter won the Cy Young. He joins Bob Gibson as the only Cardinals to win the award.

VEB has some discussion and links that say everything I might need to, so go there and check it out.

Who Knew? Everybody

If you haven't read any of the "ESPN The Magazine Special Report: Who Knew?" yet, go check it out. I'm not quite done with it myself, but there's some really interesting stuff in there. One part in particular reminded me of this post, in the comments of which I used Dave Pinto's Day By Day Database to show the transformation of Bonds' stats starting in the year 2000. It made me think... what about Big Mac? I looked him up and calculated his AB/HR by year (thank you baseball-reference), and sure enough, there is a sort of turning point around '93/94 when he apparently went through some injuries. From '86 to '92 (age 22 to 28), Big Mac hit a homer every 14.2 AB's. From '95 to '01 (age 31 to 37), that figure was down to 8.4.

Defense

NL Gold Gloves were announced Wednesday afternoon and congratulations are in order for Jim Edmonds for his 8th GG. It's one small step closer to Cooperstown. Probably the bigger news is who didn't win it. Yadier Molina's omission isn't a surprise as we know all about Mike Matheny. Molina also had the lack of rep and time on the DL working against him. I'm disappointed for Mark Grudzielanek, who had a marvelous season in the field. I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise, as a lot of us had questions about Grudz's defense coming into the season and even Tony LaRussa was talking about sticking him in the OF in favor of the washed-up Robbie Alomar. The Gold Gloves seem to function like college football polls, as pre-season favorites must lose for others to move up.

I now segue to the Jayson Stark portion of this post.

Some bright people are working diligently to correct the deficiency in what we know about defense. It's still a work in progress though and unfortunately their findings often don't filter up to the MSM and sometimes the work is available for only certain seasons. Anyway, a recent post at VEB got me to thinking about how the traditional defensive stats can be used. If we're stuck with that stuff, let's see what we can do with it.

For example, did you know that Albert Pujols led the majors in putouts in 2005? In fact, he had about 15% more putouts than anyone else did (defensive stats really are the poor step-sister to hitting and pitching, as MLB has Pujols with 1,597 putouts and BR has him at 1,598). This probably doesn't say much about Pujols beyond his durability, but it is an indicator of just how extreme the groundball staff was. Actually Pujols had more putouts than anyone's had since Chris Chambliss in 1980. Pujols had the 34th-highest single-season putout total in history and the 5th-highest since 1930. That's a groundball staff at work. Just for good measure, I'll add that Jiggs Donahue has the all-time record with 1,846 putouts in 1907 and Jim Bottomley set the Cardinals record with 1,656 in 1927.

Further down this path, VEB pointed out this table, and I can make some attempt to go further back in time. The Lahman database does break down player putouts and assists by position, so I can guess how many groundouts each team converted based on stats for infielders. My first pass was to look at total infielder (including pitchers and catchers) putouts as a percentage of non-K outs. On the theory that outfielders aren't throwing the ball to other outfielders too often, I'll remove outfield assists from the numerator and of course I'll need to deduct strikeouts from (usually catcher) putouts. Here are the top teams from 1920 to the present:

    Year Team INF_PO OTF_A SUM_PO TEAM_K   PCT 
1.  1937 NYG   3251    37   4083    653   74.7%
2.  1920 PHA   3244    60   4124    423   74.6%
3.  1926 BOS   3157    38   4069    336   74.6%
4.  1963 PIT   3490    27   4344    900   74.4%
5.  1934 NYG   3208    27   4107    499   74.3%

73. 2005 STL   3429    28   4337    974   72.2%

The 2005 Cardinals were well above-average, but not exactly historic by this measure. There are some problems here, as popouts and lineouts will be treated as "groundouts" above. The Cardinals didn't have a 72/28 = 2.6 GB/FB ratio, so I'm over-counting "groundouts". I'll look at infield assists as a percentage of total non-K outs:

    Year Team INF_A  SUM_PO TEAM_K   PCT 
1.  1977 CHN   2075   4404    942   59.9%
2.  1986 ATL   2003   4274    932   59.9%
3.  2003 LAN   1785   4373   1289   57.8%
4.  1920 PHA   2113   4124    423   57.1%
5.  2005 STL   1919   4337    974   57.1%

That's a bit different. The problem here is that I'm not counting unassisted putouts (e.g., 3U or the first out in a 6-3 GIDP). I'm also counting the assists in lineouts double plays. C'est la vie. There's something screwy with the 2003 Dodgers, who have 1,785 infield assists, but only 1,738 groundouts according to MLB. Whatever's going on there, I've got a pretty good argument that the Cardinals had an historic effort from their infield, or maybe I should say on the infield, even with their best defensive player on the shelf most of the year.

Hmm, Tom Hanrahan did some work on the platoon differentials for groundball/flyball hitters versus groundball/flyball pitchers. That could be Theory #1,598 on the Cardinals' post-season problems.

Building Chemistry

It's OK, they gave each other rings. Nothing builds chemistry more than winning a World Championship. Just look how close the White Sox have become over the course of the playoffs. So what do the Cardinals need to do to build up this chemistry through wins in 2006? Rumor has it, we're pushing hard for Brian Giles. That makes me want to start handing out breath mints.

So what do you think of the following lineup next year?

Eckstein, SS
Edmonds, CF
Pujols, 1B
Rolen, 3B
Giles, RF
Grudz, 2B
SoRod, LF
Yadi, C
Marquis, P

That looks really good to me.