Lineup Games

Viva El Birdo's has some information on starting lineup combinations using Dave Pinto's Linup Analysis Tool. There's some interesting data there, including the fact that the best lineup combination Iboros could come up with was:

pujols, 1b
edmonds, cf
molina, c
rolen, 3b
bigbie, lf
encarnacion, rf
spivey, 2b
pitcher
eckstein, ss

Yeah that's Molina batting third, which solicited This comment:

It is also rather ironic that the 2nd worst hitter is always put in the 3rd spot, when that spot is usually considered to be the place for the best hitter on the team.

This is odd, and counter intuitive but I can explain. A year ago I wrote my own lineup toy that cycled through every possible iteration of lineups to come up with the 'best'. I then destroyed my code in a zip accident (embarrassing, because I'm technically a proffesional software developer. A lesson to those who read this: Automated Version Control Backups only work if you check in the code) so I couldn't recreate the results. But I found the same thing (trust me, really). And the reason is that clustering your good hitters close together means your bad hitters are clustered close together as well, and the benefit of the good hitters being together is outweighed by the drag of having 2-3 (or even 4) automatic outs in a row. It's better to distribute hitter quality a little more evenly (although weighted towards the top of the order), that way if some random good event happens the chances of a second good event happening that inning (and thus increasing the odds of a run scoring) are much better.

Of course all these simulations are just that and don't take into account managerial tactics that would nullify this advantage (IE: Walking Edmonds to get to Molina). It would be very interesting to see a lineup constructed like this against an actual manager. It may be that managerial manuevering would nullify the advantage and even turn it.

And finally clouds on the horizon:

if you remove sanders, walker, and grud'k from the standard 2005 lineup and replace them with encarnacion, bigbie, and spivey, your production per pinto's toy falls from 5.2 runs a game to 4.8. ouch. that's 65 runs over the course of the season, 6 to 7 wins in the standings. . . . . but just remember: it's only a toy. it's only a toy. it's only a toy.

Spring is in the air

Everyday on the way home from work I drive by the Giants spring practice fields. Today I noticed that they are exceptionally trim and green, especially compared to the bone dry surroundings (it hasn't rained here in more than 130 days). I didn't see anybody throwing, or running, or swinging a bat, or even standing on the grass but thats all coming soon. And the sight of that immaculate green field woke me up to the fact that it's time to start really watching baseball again.

So before I go anywhere else with this I was wondering: Does anybody know of any Cardinals related podcasts out there? I'm really interested in some ipod cardinals action, leave a comment if you know of any.

And also: I havn't paid much attention to baseball lately, and when I wander around Cards blogs everybody is deep in their arcane discussions of things that happened in the last 4 months that I'm not aware of. I have the constant feeling of being at a party and walking into a conversation midway through and being totally lost. So if anybody could give me some quick context as I get myself geared up for this year, I'd really appreciate it.

One Shot

On Saturday John Sickels posted his Top Twenty Cardinals Prospects. I guess there's nothing earth-shattering here; I wish Anthony Reyes was a little higher, but of course Sickels historically has been stringent with his A's and A-'s, giving out 25 or so each year. My deep thoughts are that I like the Cody Haerther grade, as I'm holding out hope he can man one of the corner outfield spots in 2007, and I don't like the Tyler Johnson grade, as it fits my suspicion that TJ's step forward in 2005 was similar to Carmen Cali's step forward in 2004. What's really interesting to me is that guys like Chris Duncan, Shaun Boyd, Brendan Ryan, Skip Schumaker and naturally John Gall have been pushed aside in this listing. The new blood is still a couple years away, so these older guys still have opportunities they might not have elsewhere. They better get on their horses though.

Speaking of making the most of their big shot, it doesn't sound so good for Juan Mateo. Also sprach Dave Duncan, courtesy of Matthew Leach:

I can't say this for sure, but it appears to me that the only one who might have come in here without really doing a lot of work before he got down here is Mateo.

This whole Rule 5 thing is weird. Imagine your employer's main competitor calling you up one December morning, announcing that you must work for them now. Then they might decide they're not as enamored with you as they had hoped and they're mulling the option to send you back to your old employer. There must be some conflicting motivations here.

On the other end of the Cardinals roster, Bernie Miklasz lays down the numbers for Jim Edmonds. Edmonds had, by all accounts, an off season in 2005 and yet he was still pretty good. That's the way it works when you're a superstar. As fate would have it, I've been playing around with a Win Shares spreadsheet from Baseball Graphs, trying to get a little better grasp on Edmonds's Hall of Fame chances. I've been going about it a bit differently from normal, as rather than comparing Edmonds to Earl Averill or Duke Snider, I'm trying to establish what non-Hall of Famers stand between Edmonds and Cooperstown. There are a few ways to do this using Win Shares, none of them perfect, even if you assume Win Shares is the end-all and be-all, which it isn't. I'll get my hands a little dirty though.

First, here are Jim Edmonds's season-by-season Win Shares in descending order:

36, 30, 29, 29, 28, 24, 22, 21, 19, 18, 7, 5, 1

Uh-oh, before I get going, I should note that these aren't the Bill James Official Win Shares. I don't know what the differences are, and considering James keeps tinkering with the formulas, I'm not sure anyone else knows all of the differences either. As long as the calculations are relatively consistent for other ballplayers, I think it's safe to pursue this course though. Anyway that's 269 career Win Shares there. Unless he has some post-season heroics, Edmonds probably will need another 20-WS season to make the Hall, which would put him at 9 such seasons. Here's a list of eligible non-HoFers who can claim 9 20-WS seasons (career WS in parentheses), excluding the pre-1920 guys:

Dick Allen (342), Sal Bando (283), Bert Blyleven (339), Bobby Bonds (302), Brett Butler (295), Jack Clark (316), Wilbur Cooper (266), Willie Davis (322), Andre Dawson (340), Darrell Evans (363), Tony Fernandez (280), Mark Grace (294), Bobby Grich (329), Stan Hack (316), Keith Hernandez (311), Gil Hodges (263), Frank Howard (297), Minnie Minoso (283), Al Oliver (305), Vada Pinson (321), Willie Randolph (312), Ted Simmons (315), Reggie Smith (325), Lou Whitaker (351).

If you follow Hall of Fame arguments, there are plenty of familiar names here, with a fair number of fence-sitters and a fair number of Inner Circle Almost Hall of Famers. I made a 5% adjustment for pre-1961 seasons, but this list is dominated by recent ballplayers (don't ask me how Wilbur Cooper sneaked in there), perhaps because the Hall hasn't expanded as rapidly as MLB has expanded.

Some of these aren't my idea of Hall of Famers, and in particular they don't have the big seasons that I think are necessary. Tony Fernandez, for example, topped out at 25 Win Shares. Willie Davis and Al Oliver maxed out at 26. In other words, let's consider peak seasons. Again, I'm drawing a line around Edmonds, so let's look at guys with 2 30-WS seasons and 2 additional 25-WS seasons. Again, I'm going to chop out some old-timers like Sherry Magee and Larry Doyle, who probably belong in the Hall, and Noodles Hahn, who probably doesn't:

Dick Allen (342), Bobby Bonds (302), Cesar Cedeno (296), Jack Clark (316), Will Clark (331), Rocky Colavito (273), Wes Ferrell (233), Bill Freehan (267), Bobby Grich (329), Heinie Groh (272), Stan Hack (316), Frank Howard (297), Don Mattingly (263), Carl Mays (256), Minnie Minoso (283), Bobby Murcer (277), Dale Murphy (294), Tony Oliva (245), Dave Parker (327), Vada Pinson (321), Ron Santo (324), Urban Shocker (225), Ken Singleton (302), Rusty Staub (358), Vern Stephens (265), Bucky Walters (258), Jimmy Wynn (305).

Sooo combine the two and here's the list of guys I've found firmly between Jim Edmonds and Cooperstown as of today:

Dick Allen -- Bill James's favorite jerk.
Bobby Bonds -- Basically done at age 33.
Jack Clark -- If only he had stayed healthy.
Bobby Grich -- The statheads' favorite.
Stan Hack -- Had little power, but good for 300 / 400 / 400 every year.
Frank Howard -- Could he have made it if he'd played a little longer (only 6,488 at-bats)?
Minnie Minoso -- Race and age make this a complicated case.
Vada Pinson -- Great start (he was two years older than B-R says), but last ten years were blah.

That ain't much. Pinson had 9,645 at-bats to accumulate his 321 Win Shares; if Edmonds needs 4,000 more at-bats to get that far, he's not making the Hall of Fame. My recollection was that Bonds was underrated due to all the strikeouts and the lower batting average. Hack was a good player, but he's not a good comp, in spite of what Win Shares says. Dick Allen could almost be put in the Pete Rose-Joe Jackson-Benny Kauff pile. Again, there's not much history between Edmonds and the Hall. Actually Edmonds may face greater challenges distinguishing himself against the more recent players. Here's the list of the not-yet-eligibles who meet both criteria:

Roberto Alomar (376), Jeff Bagwell (388), Craig Biggio (414), Barry Bonds (666 -- no, I'm not that making that up), Junior Griffey (361), Rickey Henderson (535), Chipper Jones (282), Jeff Kent (299), Mark McGwire (343), Rafael Palmeiro (395), Mike Piazza (310), Manny Ramirez (310), Cal Ripken (427), Frank Thomas (362).

That doesn't include The Great Pujols, Vlad (who doesn't have a 30-WS season yet), Andruw Jones (who inexplicably was credited with only 23 WS in 2005) or the small army of recent HoF-caliber pitchers (David Gassko's right about WS underrating great pitchers). What just happened to Will Clark is a discouraging sign for supporters of Edmonds, Larkin and Raines. Some pretty good ballplayers are going to get buried.

Scott Rollin'

I may need to go to confession for that title. We're all watching Rolen, looking for tiny little markers of progress. The more important thing is that the Cardinals seem to be taking a calm, rational approach with Rolen's rehab, although I won't claim to recognize the full inventory of irrational approaches. This looks completely different from what they tried last summer, and as such it's got me excited for 2006. The thing that caught my eye from that link was this though:

"I had been facing live pitching right up until I came here," Eckstein said. "So it wasn't as different for me today as maybe some other guys."

The Cardinals shortstop had been working out in Orlando with other Major Leaguers, including Dan Miceli and Danny Graves, who pitched batting practice to Eckstein.

Great, now Eckstein's going to be swinging for the fences all through spring training. And this also grabbed my attention:

Weather report: Another bluebird day is forecast for the Redbirds workouts as blue skies with few clouds and temperatures climbing to the mid-80s are predicted for the morning workout.

Over the next two months about the closest I'll come to that is listening to ELO's Beatles-esque Mr. Blue Sky. Matthew Leach recently reported that the Cardinals-Yankees exhibition game was sold out a month in advance (think about that for a second), but I guess part of the popularity of spring training is the weather. I hope other folks are enjoying it, because my next big trip is to Detroit.

Prospects

Baseball America has started its top 100 prospect list for 2006. No Cardinals in 51 through 100, and there probably will be only one (Anthony Reyes, duh) in the top 50. Baseball Prospectus has its top 50 out, along with their methodology (no roundtable this year evidently; both articles are free and on my computer at least there are ads for the BA Prospect Handbook). Reyes shows up 25th at BPro, even though he's a flyball pitcher. I don't know who has the best list, and I've reached the age where I don't care. I do tend to pay more attention to BA though, because their "scouty" information is something I can't find at the Baseball Cube.

* * * * *

In spite of the fact that it's the busy part of the year for me, we've been interviewing for summer internships. We have a lot of candidates for these positions, so we tend to weed out folks based on certain facts. If the applicant's GPA is around 2.0, or the applicant has no computer skills beyond Internet Explorer or the resume was written in crayon, then that person probably won't be allowed in the interview room. Once candidates make it past that first cut, we try to flesh out their resumes and find out a little about their makeup. After all, part of the goal is to find candidates for permanent positions and in the long-term, attitude will likely play a significant role in career-building.

We go to a bunch of schools to do this and no one person wants to conduct all those interviews, necessitating a committee approach. One day the committee was discussing one strange candidate, when I found myself thinking "Put a Milo on that one." Unfortunately nobody else on the committee had read Moneyball, so my extraordinary wit was wasted. It did occur to me though that what we're doing is basically the same thing as evaluating baseball prospects. We use facts -- stats really -- to cut down our work and then we try to figure out what's important -- sometimes it's qualitative and sometimes it's quantitative -- from there.

All this may be obvious to you, but I've had minimal interest in the whole employer-employee mating ritual, and so I'm happy for the framework to rely upon. For example, I won't get carried away with our prospects, even the toolsy ones, because odds are they won't be superstars. I won't get carried away with any one aspect of a candidate, as again, odds are they'll need other skills to be successful in our field. Finally, no matter how good our process is, we're going to get some duds and we're going to miss some good ones. We do the best we can, but of course we're not handing out million-dollar bonuses to our picks, so there's not quite the drama of Beane's war-room. It is nice however to find some work-use for all the time I've spent thinking about baseball.

Spring Training Heats Up

We have our first set of real controversies for the 2006 season. These aren't Generation-X angst or recycled controversies either. These are genuine Corinthian leather-class controversies.

I was all ready to call Ricardo Rincon a slacker, based on the first report. But further reports suggest our government is making millionaires jump through hoops for unknown reasons. I do think it's strange that, according to that first link, Duncan hasn't spoken with Rincon since he signed. I would've figured that Duncan has a "welcome to the team" speech down pat, something like the manager's "hardest thing" speech in Bull Durham. I can hear Dan & Al blaming somebody's slow start on this or on participation in the WBC and maybe they'd even be right (it always comes down to cash, but I'd guess the WBC is doomed). It's also a bit strange that Deivi Cruz's phone is disconnected.

The second controversy is buried in another article from Matthew Leach. While discussing the need for a right-handed reliever who can strike batters out and won't wilt against left-handed hitters, Leach had this to say:

Fortunately, the two holes could be filled with one man. While the Cardinals are trying to put together a bullpen, they're also endeavoring to choose a fifth starter. Someone from that derby might well be pushed to the bullpen.

"We've talked about that (strikeouts)," said Duncan. "It would be nice to have somebody like that. And we may have somebody here that fits that role.

"You look at the competition between the three starting guys, and one of them will make it and two will not. So somebody in the bullpen could end up being one of those guys, and that could be a strikeout guy."

Sounds like Anthony Reyes is headed to the bullpen. Actually it sounds like Leach and Duncan had a [nudge-nudge]"speaking hypothetically"[wink-wink] conversation. I understand the need for depth and I understand the injury concerns with Reyes, but it's kinda sickening to see the organization's consensus top prospect, a pitcher with nothing left to prove in the minors, lose a battle to a pitcher coming off seasons with 5.30 and 6.21 ERAs. Oh, and that veteran pitcher punched a judge. Sometimes it seems the Cardinals make personnel decisions more to keep Dave Duncan busy than to win ballgames.

The third emerging issue is who'll be playing in left. Thus spoke LaRussa:

I just think a guy like So is going to play one of the three spots (in most games). Because of this sport, you pick the complete player. John could be hitting .500 and if he doesn't defend and doesn't run the bases, somebody hitting .300 who does both of those things is going to get the playing time.

So Taguchi is described as the incumbent. As for Rodriguez hitting .500 and sitting, I can't help but wonder if Taguchi would be getting be any kind of consideration if he had hit 238 / 330/ 420 last year instead of 288 / 322 / 412. What managers spout to the media in February ranks up there with Paris Hilton's views on energy policy in terms of irrelevance, but LaRussa has a history of rooting for players. I hope this is all just a motivational ploy to push Larry Bigbie.

Of course all this dire news is dwarved by the positive reports on Scott Rolen. Rolen hates all the questions surrounding his health, but there's only one way to shut everyone up.

Boiling Over

I had what was likely my biggest meeting of the year on Thursday, and while it went relatively well, I'm still dealing with the various consequences. That is to say, I've been too busy to focus on the Rockies signing Bo Hart or the latest non-developments during the darkest couple of weeks of the baseball year (it also means I missed Purdue's throttling of Michigan today). So forgive me, I'm a little behind.

Fungoes nails it with his response to Will Leitch's guest column at Baseball Prospectus. The basic premise for BPro's very existence has been that historical results do in fact have predictive value, and by any meaningful measure the current brass has done a fine job over the last ten years. Expanding on two points from Pip:

(1) Busch Stadium was ready to go. I liked the old park, although my last impression of it was "Darn, Casey Stengel was right, it really does hold the heat well." It had history and ironically baseball architecture had evolved to a point that Busch II actually was unique. Like many, I'm not keen on a copycat mallpark or the catering to corporate clients. That said, I've been to 40 or 50 ballparks the last five years, and in terms of "niceness" Busch II was in the bottom half of the list. Is is that unreasonable for a great baseball city like St. Louis to have a park at least comparable in quality to what they have in, say, Pittsburgh or Montgomery? (Yes, Montgomery.)

Certainly there are things to worry about with the new ballpark. But my concerns are the exact opposite of Leitch's: Tickets will be harder to come by, especially in 2006, they'll be more expensive and the crowd will be more interested in the cuisine and less interested in the game. That's not a problem from the Cardinals' standpoint however.

(2) As far as stat-heads are concerned, the offseason hasn't been that bad. See post #67 here, for example. Diamond Mind's projection is the definitive word and it won't be released until March, but there's little reason to expect ugliness. It's weird, compare Leitch's column to Leach's column on Rolen. The BPro writer is engaging in FUD and the writer for the Voice of MLB is quoting VORP and runs created. The times they are a-changing.

I will semi-disagree with one Fungo point. I think St. Louis fans are the way they are in part because Cardinals fans have had it pretty good, starting with the Branch Rickey days in the 1920's. Giving Sam Breadon five years to get the Cardinals' house in order after he bought the franchise, the Cardinals have the second-best winning percentage in baseball since 1924, behind only the Yankees. During the same stretch, they haven't had a 100-loss season, or a 95-loss season for that matter. Outside the 1994-95 strike-infested years, the Cardinals haven't had consecutive losing seasons since 1958-1959. There is some basis to George Will's silliness about Cardinals fans lacking the 'character' of Cubs fans. Of course it's also hard to envision the non-signing of JD Burnett, a mediocre month or two, and a couple of slow concession stand lines rolling back 80 years of good will.

It seems to me the 'winter of discontent' has it backwards, that the problem isn't so much with the 2006 team being that bad (or mediocre) as it is with the 2004 and 2005 teams having been that good. That those two truly great teams blew it in the postseason crapshoot in traditional LaRussa fashion only adds to the frustration. It does seem strange, however, to hold the overall success of the current regime against it.

Beat the Bucks

Joe Strauss tallied the 2005 and 2006 payroll as part of a larger story about the thin skin of Cardinals' ownership. Strauss totals up 2005 payroll to $90 million, which surprised me a little bit as the number usually cited is $94 million. Of course the Cardinals didn't pay all of Larry Walker's salary and they paid very little of Roger Cedeño's salary (good grief, Cedeño made $5 million last year to play like an A-baller), and Strauss reflects that. The problem is if you total Strauss's numbers up, you get $87.4 million instead of $90 million. There was a little more money spent on the John Gall-variety cups of coffee, but that's not covering the difference. I suppose you should throw in the deferred money to Woody Williams and friends.

Or should you? Cashflow accounting generally doesn't work well for large, sophisticated businesses -- consider the upfront cost of building an automobile factory, for example -- and the Cardinals are a large, sophisticated business. So when you try to account the "best" way, you start applying things like the matching principle, which says "Expenses are recognized not when the work is performed, or when a product is produced, but when the work or the product actually makes its contribution to revenue." In one sense it's hard to claim Woody Williams contributed to revenue in 2005, aside from getting bombed by the Cardinals in the NLDS. On the other hand, part of the reason the Cardinals sold so many tickets in 2005 was their success in 2004, and Woody most definitely contributed there. Then again, so did Mike Matheny and Edgar Renteria. Should we count some part of their salaries? Heck, somebody like Ted Sizemore might've contributed in some small way to 2005 ticket sales. Should we count his salary too?

There's an old line about accountants, ask them what 2+2 is and they'll tell you it's whatever you want it to be. The connotations are unfair, but there's some grain of truth here. With the paltry hard data we have at our disposal, it isn't easy to assess the present financial state of the Cardinals and even if we had complete information, it still would be difficult to assess the economics of the various options the Cardinals have (e.g., signing AJ Burnett). In essence, we won't know much beyond what the team wants us to know and dwelling on the matter is doomed to become an exercise in frustration.

Aces

With so little going on in the offseason, I did some catching-up on my reading list this weekend. I finished Mychael Urban's Aces, a book on Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito. It's a good, not great read, for a Cardinals fan with a statistical bent. On the one hand you have the missing three chapters from "Moneyball" and on the other hand you have a little more insight into our man Mulder and his mysterious 2004 breakdown. Structurally it's a running log of the 2004 season, as opposed to "Moneyball" or "Three Nights in August", which more or less are anthologies around a central theme.

While Billy Beane wrote the foreword, he's a minor character in "Aces" otherwise. Well, at least until he traded Hudson and Mulder, he was a minor character. Maybe Urban recognized we don't need any more Beane talk, but it's at odds a bit with Michael Lewis's claim that Beane, unlike Sandy Alderson, ruled the A's clubhouse. If "Aces" is any indication, the reason for the curious omission of the Big Three's stories in "Moneyball" is that they just couldn't be tied to the main plot of Lewis's tome.

As for Mulder, I still don't know what caused his troubles. The apparent foundation for his fall was that everything always has come too easily for Mulder -- Beane called him the golden child -- and that was explored in depth: When he hit a rough spot he simply was not equipped to deal with it and apparently the matter just snowballed. Mulder had the sense to call noted sports psychologist Harvey Dorfman, as Mulder's problem became mental ("thinking too much") even if it didn't start that way. Beyond the breakdown, we learn many unconnected things about Mulder, such as his dislike for watching video of himself and that he didn't care much for Rick Peterson. In fact Mulder said that four days out of five his main goal was messing with Peterson's mind (Mulder used a slightly different word from "messing"; actually the book has enough f-words to make Richard Pryor blush). His whole cool aloof aura carries away from the field, as he has a history of being intentionally boring so the press will leave him alone.

Barry Zito comes off as the good guy of the three. He's a philosopher-surfer dude who doesn't like to be called a flake. When Mulder had his first bouts with self-doubt, Zito's response was "Welcome to my world." Tim Hudson is the warrior. We Cardinals fans also should appreciate Hudson's pre-trades statement that he'd like to play in St. Louis, since it's a franchise devoted to winning. Probably the best line of the book is Hudson's complaint about the flipping Rally Monkey, although I have a soft spot for lines about the Rally Monkey.

* * * * *

Speaking of books, I got an ad from MGL that his book is nearing publication. He promises to donate his share of the proceeds to Retrosheet. Although the email started suspiciously like Nigerian 409 spam, I expect this will be my next baseball book.