At 3:12 PM local time on May 09, 2010, Dallas Braden of the Oakland Athletics retired Gabe Kapler to finish off only the 19th perfect game in major league history, defeating the Tampa Bay Rays. Braden struck out six batters in the process and only required 109 pitches to record the 27 consecutive outs.

As for the other 21 outs, seven of them came on ground balls, ten on fly balls, and four on line drives. The A’s outfield defense was certainly kept busy, as left fielder Eric Patterson made four plays, center fielder Rajai Davis made four, and right fielder Ryan Sweeney made one more. The infield of C Landon Powell, 1B Daric Barton, 2B Adam Rosales, SS Cliff Pennington, and 3B Kevin Kouzmanoff combined, between ground outs and five air outs, to record the other 12 outs. Braden did a great job of keeping the ball in the ballpark, and his fielders were there to make the plays when needed.

How unlikely was this performance? Dallas Braden, over the course of his career, had allowed 6.9 hits per 27 batters, 2.0 walks per 27 batters, and 0.2 reached on errors per 27 batters. Overall, that’s 9.1 runners allowed per 27 batters – his numbers for this season alone are similar. According to a basic binomial distribution, the odds of Braden allowing no runners in 27 batters, as he did on Sunday, are .00001517, or 0.001517%. Braden’s perfect game wasn’t quite one-in-a-million. It was more like 15.2 in a million.

Perhaps this means that Braden has taken a step forward. That would be great news for the Athletics, as the former 24th-round pick has a career 4.62 ERA and a 4.10 career FIP – a useful pitcher, certainly, but not a centerpiece of a rotation. If Braden can continually step up in big ways behind Brett Anderson and Ben Sheets, the Athletics will have the best rotation in a tight AL West, with Sheets, Anderson, Braden, Trevor Cahill, Gio Gonzalez, and Justin Duchscherer when healthy.

Finally, myself and the entire FanGraphs team (except for maybe R.J. Anderson) offer a hearty congratulations to Dallas Braden. His accomplishment today will go down in baseball history.

Dave Cameron’s post from yesterday about the Rays’ clutch hitting reminded me of the Little Things. In short, what the “Little Things” stat does is subtract decontextualized offensive linear weights (called wRAA here at FanGraphs) from game-state linear weights (WPA/LI) to give an idea of how well a team or player has done at playing to the game situation, over and above the average linear weight of the event. For, in the contemporary run environment, a walk averages an increase in run expectancy of about 0.3 runs above average, and a home run about 1.4, which is what wRAA/linear weights records, no matter when in the game they occur. However, in a tie game in the bottom of the ninth inning with the bases loaded, a walk and a home run give exactly the same change win expectancy for the home team, which is what WPA/LI records (while factoring out the “leverage” element in order to make each plate appearance of equal relative value). So to get the “Little Things,” the “situational” performance (not to say awareness, not yet, since analysts differ on how much this is a repeatable skill that players possess), we subtract wRAA converted to wins (I simply divide by 10) from WPA/LI: the Little Things. Which three offenses are doing the best and worst so far this season?

The Three Best

3. Mets, -16 wRAA, -0.59 WPA/LI, 1.01 Little Things. Well, David Wright is slightly negative in Little Things, so I guess the fans are right to boo him. It’s not been an impressive offense performance for the team, but they’ve made more out of their production than what their wOBA suggests, as the Mets are a surprising (to me, anyway) 15-13 so far.

2. Reds, -13 wRAA, -0.2 WPA/LI, 1.1 Little Things. Another team that is negative in both categories, but is getting some good situational offense. Scott Rolen’s veteran-ness might be the big difference here (ahem). But seriously, he’s done well, “Little Things-wise” so far.

1. Braves, -16 wRAA, 0.55 WPA/LI, 2.15 Little Things. Yes, Jason Heyward does the Little Things (so far), too.

The Three Worst

3. Angels, -11 wRAA, -3.28 WPA/LI, -2.18 Little Things. A few months ago, I noted that despite their reputation for doing the Little Things, the Angels have a spotty record, at least regarding this issue. Off to an ugly start in 2010, they are still waiting for Mike Scioscia’s magic touch to kick in.

2. Tigers, +23 wRAA, 0.11 WPA/LI, -2.19 Little Things. The Tigers offense is one of the main reasons they are the only team seemingly within striking distance of the Twins so far, but their hitters certainly haven’t maximized their chances so far, being more than two wins below what their context-neutral linear weights would suggest. Given the talent gap between the Tigers and Twins, they’re going to need all the situational skill/luck they can get if they want a shot at the AL Central this season.

1. Red Sox, +28 wRAA, -0.18 WPA/LI, -2.98 Little Things. Has anything gone right for the Red Sox so far this season? Kevin Youkilis is about half-a-win below average, and David Ortiz has (somehow) been worse the more crucial the situation has been. It’s gotta be tough for all those 2 year olds who haven’t seen a Red Sox championship in their lifetimes.

The Orioles have plenty of problems, but right now missing Brian Roberts isn’t one of them. While his absence has created a void atop the order, his offensive production has been replaced, and then some. Ty Wigginton has done nothing but hit since taking over as the full-time second baseman. His defense doesn’t stack up to Roberts’, but his offense has more than bridged the gap. His .445 wOBA currently ranks sixth in the AL.

As Matt noted almost two weeks ago, Wigginton’s power surge is largely based on a high HR/FB ratio. When he wrote the post, on April 26, Wigginton’s rate was 35.3 percent. That hasn’t changed much in the ensuing 10 games, and it currently sits at 34.5 percent. That rate simply is not sustainable for a full season. Wigginton’s career HR/FB ratio is 13.3 percent, though he did reach 18.5 percent in 2008 with the Astros. At that rate, he’d currently have five home runs.

While the HR/FB ratio certainly stands out, two of Wigginton’s stats seem downright absurd when juxtaposed. I’m not quite sure how this happens, but:

GB%: 50%
ISO: .391

Grounders cannot leave the park, and so can only go for doubles and triples. Wigginton, unsurprisingly, has no triples this season. He has hit one double on a grounder, for an ISO of .027. On his eight line drives he has an ISO of just .125. When he hits the ball well into the air, then, he absolutely crushes it. His 10 homers and two doubles on fly balls adds up to a 1.143 ISO. That comes mostly when he pulls the ball. His HR/FB ratio on balls hit to left: 90.9 percent.

This isn’t the first time that Wigginton has gone on a tear for about 100 PA. In August 2008 he produced similar numbers. From the 2nd through the 31st he hit .390/.406/.830 in 106 PA, which is actually a bit better than his 102 PA sample from this season. For the rest of the season, in 323 PA, he hit .248/.333/.399. We very well could see Wigginton drop back to that level soon. That line, after all, isn’t too far off his career line of .271/.330/.459.

That, however, is not to downplay his torrid start to the 2010 season. If not for his production, where would the Orioles be? They’re 7-18 since Roberts’s last game. The difference between Wigginton and Roberts’s other most likely replacement, Julio Lugo, is more than 1 WAR right now. One win might not seem like a huge swing, but at this point the Orioles need everything they can get.

I’ve been an MLB.tv user since it launched. I was around back in the days when the mid-inning entertainment involved a creepy reflection of a guy shaving, visible through a pencil sharpener. Seriously. Every year, I’ve doled out around $100 for the right to watch baseball games on my computer, and put up with the oddities that came along with it. When they decided to stream the exact same commercial between every half inning, I persevered (barely). When the service inevitably wouldn’t work on opening day because they had switched technologies for no reason, I hung in there. When they looped the same 60 seconds of a Tom Petty song between each break, apparently in an attempt to drive us all insane, I stuck around. I’ve even come to terms with the ridiculous blackout policy, and just dealt with not being able to watch games that involve the Orioles, Nationals, Braves, or Reds, because I live a few states away from each of those cities.

Through it all, I’ve been a barely satisfied customer. The service provided has been good enough to justify all the crap that MLBAM put their customers through, and it gave me a way to watch baseball. It was baseball on a 15 inch screen, but it was still baseball. And it was good enough.

Last week, though, I discovered MLB.tv in a way that is no longer just good enough. It is amazingly awesome, and it’s MLB.tv through a PlayStation3. I am not at all into video games, but had been looking into building a computer that I could hook up to my TV in order to stream MLB.tv and Hulu to the television. Despite my best efforts, I quickly realized that piecing together all the components would run me at least a few hundred dollars, and it still wouldn’t replace my horrible cheap DVD player, and so a friend suggested I look into the $300 PlayStation3. It was essentially everything I needed in a pre-packaged box, plus it had the added benefit of being a Blu-Ray player, which I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. So, I figured I’d give it a shot.

I’m blown away. I’m used to struggling with MLB.tv to make it work. On my laptop, I was constantly installing plugins, fighting the wireless connection to try to keep up with the video feed, and dealing with the inevitable lag that followed whenever I’d try to do anything else at the same time. On the PS3, I turned it on, downloaded the software, and it ran. In high definition. With zero problems.

The user interface is fantastic. Pick whether you want to join a game live in progress or start at the beginning of the broadcast, and it loads up seamlessly. Want to jump to a specific inning? That’s two clicks. Pausing? One click. Jumping between games? Easy. It couldn’t be any easier to use, which is the opposite of what I’ve come to expect from MLB.tv over the years.

The picture quality is ridiculous. In a good way. I got an HDMI cord from monoprice for about $3, and I’m not going to pretend to know the visual difference between 720P or 1080P, but I can tell you that it looks about 40 bazillion times better than it ever has on my computer. The difference is staggering, and since I was able to just connect the machine directly to the modem, I’ve eliminated all the issues with the wireless connection. It runs as smooth as a normal television broadcast, only it gives me the benefit of a DVR.

I can’t believe this is the same product I’ve been using forever. I’ve begrudgingly handed MLB $100 a year for a product that was just good enough, but by making one simple investment, I’ve increased the quality of that product a hundred fold. I almost can’t bear the thought of pulling up a game on my laptop again. Thanks to the MLB.tv plugin for the PlayStation3, I get baseball on my TV again. I may never play a video game on the thing, but it’s already been worth $300 to me.

Seriously, if you’re watching MLB.tv on your laptop, consider a PlayStation 3. It will change your life, even if, like me, you will only be using it as a media streamer and DVD player. I couldn’t recommend the experience any more. It’s a home run.

After being swept by the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Cubs have informed top prospect Starlin Castro that he has been promoted to the Major League’s, according to ESPN’s Enrique Rojas. Castro will join the team for this weekend’s tilt in Cincinnati, and presumably, will become the starting shortstop, with Ryan Theriot moving across the bag to second base. Castro turned 20 on March 24, and has a cumulative 243 plate appearances above A-ball.

During those 57 games in Double-A, spread out over the last two seasons, Castro hit .332/.384/.482. In 26 games this year, Castro had failed to get a hit just four times, and recorded multi-hit games 16 times. The Cubs are calling him up following a four-game stretch where Castro went 9-for-17 with two walks and two extra-base hits. This winter, I profiled Castro in a two–part series, and found noticeable statistical, physical and positional similarities between Castro and Garry Templeton. The former Cardinal was also called up from Double-A at the age of 20, although he didn’t make his debut until August 9, 1976.

Before the season, I suggested the Atlanta Braves should not open the season with Jason Heyward on the 25-man roster, because it would cost the team a year of service time that could be added by just waiting three weeks. This is essentially the approach the Cubs have taken with Castro, signalling the team probably wanted to break north with him after a fantastic Spring Training, but given the service time, Castro’s age and the possibility of a Mike Fontenot and Jeff Baker platoon working at second base, wisely decided against it. While this is surely a rash move that will draw ire from Cubs fans ready to compare Castro to Corey Patterson, and the Cubs will likely have Castro become a Super Two arbitration-eligible player, they have likely retained his rights for the 2016 season.

I can find 27 examples of a middle infielder debuting in the Major Leagues at 20, but just 7 examples in the last 30 years: Wally Backman, Roberto Alomar, Wil Cordero, Luis Castillo, Jose Reyes, Jose Lopez and Elvis Andrus. Of that group, only Andrus and Castillo made the jump, and Castillo would be returned to Triple-A for parts of the next two seasons. The Cubs are in rare, but not uncharted, territory with this aggressive promotion of an elite talent. On Monday, I plan to further investigate whether this is any effect of a prospect being “rushed” by jumping Triple-A.

There will be varied opinions on how this move will effect Castro’s development, there is also the factor of whether or not Castro will make the Cubs better. Castro is essentially replacing the duo of Fontenot and Baker, a second base team that has put up a cumulative .262/.310/.346 batting line this year. ZiPS had Fontenot projected at .266/.331/.406 the rest of the season, and Baker at a similar .258/.319/.429. This .330 wOBA is Castro’s benchmark, a level he must hit at for Jim Hendry’s drastic move to hold any kind of water. There are also the defensive ramifications, as Baker and Fontenot both had 1.5 UZR through the last fielding update.

In Ryan Theriot’s career, he has 536 innings at second base, and nearly 3,700 at shortstop. He’s been +16.5 UZR/150 in his limited time at second, and has established himself as +4.5 UZR/150 at shortstop. The reports on Castro’s defense have varied, but at worst, the agreements seem to praise his plus arm and caution his average range. Castro must be +5 UZR/150 at shortstop this year, and Theriot will have to continue to be an excellent up the middle defender.

However this is portrayed by people, the Cubs did not call up Castro on a whim. Whether the thinking behind the move is misguided will be a consistent point of discussion during Castro’s tenure on the north side, and it will begin with the wins and losses this team sees as a result of their middle infield play this season. If Castro doesn’t have a .330 wOBA and +5 UZR/150 defense, then I really can’t justify what Jim Hendry is trying to do here. As I said, the benchmark has been set.

Yesterday David introduced a couple of new stats, Shutdowns and Meltdowns, to the site.  It’s fashioned after saves/blown saves but is vastly superior, because it’s a metric that uses WPA as a substitute of the brainless, archaic save stat and the rules that guide it.

A team essentially has something like a 98% likelihood of winning the game with a three-run lead with no outs, yet a manager will trot out his ace reliever in that situation about 98% of the time for the sake of save. But when the game is on the line and it’s non-save situation, we often see managers make some of the most bizarre choices in their bullpen usage.

Take for instance Tuesday night’s Phillies–Cardinals game that ended in the 10th on a walk-off homer by Carlos Ruiz. While there’s no real “ace” in the Cardinal bullpen, the inexperienced Blake Hawksworth isn’t the guy you normally would want on the mound against the Phillies in such a high leverage situation, but it appears Tony La Russa held back his closer because it wasn’t a save situation.

Anyway, with any luck this catches on. Just to recap:

A Shutdown is when a reliever accumulates greater than or equal to 0.06 WPA in any individual game.

A Meltdown is when a reliever’s WPA is less than or equal to -0.06 in any individual game.

What I thought would be interesting is to look at the “Meltdowniest” pitchers of the past three seasons, as well as the ones who we could say have ice water in their veins. The pitchers with the most meltdowns are usually the ones fans want to ride out of town on a rail, along with their manager, while the pitchers with the smallest meltdown rate we tend to feel pretty comfortable with, even in the highest leverage situations.

These are the pitchers with the highest percentage of relief appearances that resulted in a Meltdown:

Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know what it is about envelopes, but ever since my earliest days, I’ve been pushing the hell out of them.

That trend continues today, as this electronic space serves to preview not just one game, but an entire flipping series.

Is it crazy? Yes. Is it possible? Just wait and see.

St. Louis at Pittsburgh | Friday, May 07 | 7:05 pm ET
St. Louis at Pittsburgh | Saturday, May 08 | 7:05 pm ET
St. Louis at Pittsburgh | Sunday, May 09 | 1:35 pm ET

Starting Pitchers
The careful reader will note that the following pitchers are all Cardinals. This has everything to do with the fact that the Pirate pitching staff is largely underwhelming, and — with regard to the present series, at least — of little concern to the baseballing enthusiast.

The careful reader will also note that the following pitchers are all really flipping good.

Friday: Chris Carpenter
38.0 IP, 9.24 K/9, 3.08 BB/9, .244 BABIP, 49.5% GB, 16.1% HR/FB, 3.32 xFIP
Projected FIP: 3.23 (FAN) 3.18 (CHONE) 3.53 (ZiPS)

Saturday: Jaime Garcia
32.0 IP, 6.47 K/9, 3.66 BB/9, .220 BABIP, 65.1% GB, 0.0% HR/FB, 3.72 xFIP
Projected FIP: N/A (FAN) 4.69 (CHONE) 4.59 (ZiPS)

Sunday: Adam Wainwright
46.0 IP, 7.04 K/9, 1.96 BB/9, .236 BABIP, 50.0% GB, 2.6% HR/FB, 3.51 xFIP
Projected FIP: 3.31 (FAN) 3.40 (CHONE) 3.16 (ZiPS)

On The Pirates Offense
Wednesday night, at an unspecified Portland-area watering hole, I found myself watching the Chicago/Pittsburgh contest at PNC Park. As I tuned in, the game was just entering the bottom of third, and, almost without pause, I was treated to these four at-bats in succession (play-by-play courtesy of FanGraphs play log):

Andy LaRoche doubled to left (Grounder).
Andrew McCutchen doubled to left (Fliner (Liner)). Andy LaRoche scored.
Garrett Jones doubled to right (Fliner (Liner)). Andrew McCutchen scored.
Ryan Doumit lined out to third (Liner).

LaRoche’s hit was — technically, I guess — a grounder, but it was well struck and right down the third base line: a no-doubt double, in other words. McCutchen’s double was to left-center, almost netted him a triple, and looked exactly like this. Jones’s double was even more forcefully struck, this time down the right field line (as you can see right here). Finally, though it didn’t get him aboard, Ryan Doumit’s liner to Aramis Ramirez was hit a ton, too.

It was a striking sequence, this. All four Pirates absolutely sqaured up balls against a pitcher who, despite some minor struggles in his return from injury, is generally recognized as one of the National League’s more capable specimens.

Thus it was, under the influence of this hitting display, that I noted the score of last night’s game between Chicago and Pittsburgh: 11-1 in favor of the home team. Randy Wells entered Thursday night’s game ranked eighth out of 115 qualified Major League pitchers with an xFIP of 3.19. After the first inning, he sported a decidedly higher mark.

If you tuned in late, here’s what you missed in the bottom of said inning (most of which you can watch here):

Akinori Iwamura walked.
Andy LaRoche walked. Akinori Iwamura advanced to 2B.
Andrew McCutchen singled to left (Grounder). Akinori Iwamura scored. Andy LaRoche advanced to 2B.
Garrett Jones singled to left (Fliner (Liner)). Andy LaRoche scored. Andrew McCutchen advanced to 2B.
Ryan Doumit doubled to right (Fliner (Liner)). Andrew McCutchen scored. Garrett Jones advanced to 3B.
Ryan Church struck out swinging.
Lastings Milledge doubled to left (Fliner (Liner)). Garrett Jones scored. Ryan Doumit scored.
Ronny Cedeno flied out to left (Fly).
Brian Burres grounded out to second (Grounder).

Pittsburgh’s win expectancy at beginning of the inning was 54.8%. By the end of it, that number had climbed to 89.7%. Nor did it drop below 89.0% at any point afterwards, as you can see by this invincible graph:

That’s a pretty good way to win a baseball game.

Very clearly, the Pirates aren’t the top of the offensive heap. In fact, they’re 25th in park-adjusted runs scored compared to average, with a mark of -15.8. But there are some signs of life here that oughtn’t be ignored. Second baseman Aki Iwamura has posted a slash line of only .202/.303/.298 — but with a BABIP (.233) over a hundred points below his career mark. Normalize his batted-ball figure, and he’s wOBA-ing around .365 or so. Garret Jones has also been a victim of batted-ball luck (.250 BABIP), but has managed to post a 119 wRC+, anyway. Andy LaRoche appears to be delivering on his early promise, showing the same plate discipline as always, but with an elevated line-drive rate that could be the product of physical maturity. Ryan Doumit is on pace for another above-average offensive season from the catcher spot. And Andrew McCutchen — well Andrew McCutchen is actually just good.

Even Jeff Clement, Lastings Milledge, Steve Pearce: none of them are world-beaters, but each affordable and all with the pedigree to suggest something like upside.

If I Had My Druthers
• Andy LaRoche would finally climb out of the shadow of his older brother, Arizona first baseman Adam.
• Bobby Crosby would finally climb out of the shadow of his older brother, American comedian Bill.

Grant Balfour might be the only baseball player around who participates in triathlons competition during the off-season. He’s not, however, the only baseball player to have an issue with walking batters while featuring a fastball so hot it produces solar flares. Something peculiar has happened so far this season, though. Balfour’s strikeout-to-walk ratio is sitting over six, a drastic improvement compared to a previous career rate a little over 2.2. Meanwhile Balfour’s fastball velocity has dipped about a mile per hour.

Announcers often talk about improving control by decreasing velocity. Whether this is a conscious change in Balfour’s game or not is anyone’s guess. The results are pretty glaring though. The top 16% of Balfour’s fastballs are averaging about 94 miles per hour (as opposed to 95 and 96 MPH in 2009 and 2008) while the bottom 16% are also about a mile per hour lower than in the past. The full table of these figures is posted below, and suggests that Balfour’s velocity has dropped by an equal rate at each level for two years running. Of course there’s a chance this is simply a pitchfx mistake.

Year	N	T16%	M68%	B16%
2010	180	93.9	92.2	90.5
2009	990	95.4	93.3	91.1
2008	920	96.4	94.8	92.9

Undeterred by that possibility, here are the overall results breakdowns for Balfour’s fastballs:

 
Year	N	Cld Sw Str	Foul	Ball
2010	180	0.21	0.08	0.23	0.3
2009	990	0.17	0.09	0.24	0.35
2008	920	0.18	0.12	0.24	0.36

Note the figures in the last column. Balfour has made drastic improvements in reducing the amount of pitches he’s thrown that were called balls. Move your eyes towards the left and you’ll see that these additional strikes are not the result of more whiffs or more fouls, but rather an uptick in called strikes.

There’s a degree of luck that goes into called strikes, no doubt – sometimes the hitter is fooled, sometimes the hitter is taking 100%, other times the umpire messes up – and called strikes do not correlate as well to strikeouts as their swinging variety brethren, but right now, the drop in strikeouts is worth the drop in walks. Balfour’s xFIP is a full run lower (3.21) than it was in 2009, his FIP is more than a run lower, and his tERA is even lower than his 2008 mark, which happens to be the year he did his best Mariano Rivera impression. It’s also worth noting that Balfour is throwing a first pitch strike roughly 69% of the time as opposed to a career rate around 54%.

Balfour will be eligible for free agency at season’s end and as such his agent couldn’t plot a better start to his season.

This week there’s been a lot of discussion on The Book Blog about creating a save style metric based on WPA. The end result of the discussion was to create two stats: Shutdowns and Meltdowns.

A Shutdown is when a reliever accumulates greater than or equal to 0.06 WPA in any individual game.

A Meltdown is when a reliever’s WPA is less than or equal to -0.06 in any individual game.

The entire discussion of Shutdowns and Meltdowns was started off by Jeff Zimmerman’s “saves rant” over at Beyond the Box Score and then the creation of the new metric was hashed out on The Book Blog here and here.

The number of Shutdowns are scaled to Saves + Holds, which is where the .06 thresholds originated.

Both these metrics: Shutdowns (SD) and Meltdowns (MD) are available in the Win Probability leaderboards and teams sections and will eventually make it into the player pages. Remember you will either need to click on “All Players” or “Relievers” since starting pitchers are not eligible for Shutdowns or Meltdowns.

Every time Alex Rodriguez does anything — poses in Details Magazine, slaps a ball out of a glove, shouts to distract a fielder from a pop-up, admits to taking banned drugs, runs across the pitcher’s mound — it gets analyzed to death. In this case, though, it’s Rodriguez’s latest detractor, A’s pitcher Dallas Braden (who called Alex out for running across the pitcher’s mound on his way back to the dugout), who won’t let it drop. In an interview yesterday with Comcast’s Mychael Urban, Braden said that he hoped that Rodriguez had “garnered a new respect for the unwritten rules, and people who hold them close to their game.” He also said that he didn’t like Rodriguez before it happened, either: “I’m not a fan of his antics… [this] wasn’t the first display of his lack of respect for the game or those playing it.”

But are those unwritten rules really all that meaningful? Braden isn’t the only player to assert that rule’s existence, as Bert Blyleven and Goose Gossage both agreed with Braden’s action in an ESPN interview. However, Joe Posnanski argues that Alex Rodriguez is so universally despised that he tends to get dinged for actions for which other players would get a free pass: “If that was Albert Pujols running across the mound, and that was a pitcher who has accomplished as much as Dallas Braden griping about it — say Anibal Sanchez or someone — it seems to me there would be a whole lot of ‘Shut your fat face, kid,’ talk going on across the country.”

Braden was incensed because Rodriguez had violated the rules of baseball’s unwritten code, a collection of ethical bylaws as deeply ingrained, and often as unchallenged, as the “book” that mandates exactly when you should bunt. Thanks to Tom Tango, Andy Dolphin, and Mitchel Lichtman, we’ve revisited the first Book quite a bit over here. The Code, however, is even more sacrosanct, because it’s less to do with wins and more to do with respect, even to the point of easing off the throttle when you’re way ahead, not stealing bases or working the count with a huge lead, or swinging at the first pitch after back-to-back home runs.

Jason Turbow and Michael Duca’s new book, The Baseball Codes, details all the things that, by tradition, players aren’t supposed to do, and they recently published an excerpt on Yahoo. And it’s good to have them on paper, because some of them are a lot less defensible than others. Some of the rules are both widely known and sensible, like the stricture against standing at home plate to admire a home run: it’s disrespectful to the pitcher, and it’s also really embarrassing if you’re wrong about the distance, as Alfonso Soriano ought to know by now. But other rules seem a little bit more dubious. What’s so bad about trying to increase a lead, whether you’re stealing bases or working a count? The deadball era is long gone; leads are never truly safe. Why would you voluntarily forgo offensive weapons in your arsenal? And, for that matter, should we really care about who steps on a pitcher’s mound?

Eno Sarris noted that Braden’s “moxie” has shown up not just in his willingness to confront Rodriguez, but in his willingness to throw his good changeup more often. He’s having a decent year so far, but he’s a lefty with a high-80s fastball who basically gets by on control and handedness. He doesn’t make too many headlines with his results on the field, which was Alex Rodriguez and Joe Posnanski’s point: it’s a silly rule, and anyway Braden doesn’t have the stature to enforce it. The latter is a bit ad hominem, but the former seems reasonable. It probably is a silly rule.

Then again, it’s a silly league, in which grown men put on matching shirts, pants and shoes and get paid millions of dollars to play a children’s game. So, to some extent, all the rules are arbitrary. I’m all in favor of scrapping the mercy rules which legislate against running up the score: if you can push runs across, I think you owe it to your fans to do so. Moreover, the rules about respect and retaliation have been drastically changed in the last few years, as retaliatory plunking has effectively been regulated out of the game through multigame suspensions. (That notwithstanding, Zach Duke recently had to apologize for not hitting any Dodgers after two of his own teammates were beaned.) Baseball’s ethics are mutable, after all, and changes in player’s rules and incentives tend to influence behavior far more effectively than any unwritten code ever could.

But should moundrunning become standard practice? I don’t think so. Certainly, I hope, this whole episode will help remove the “unwritten” status of much of baseball’s Byzantine ethics code. Baseball’s basic unit of respect — the fundamental importance of not “showing up” your teammates or opponents — remains, and ought to remain. Rodriguez may have finally acclimated himself to the role of a heel, so he may find that moundrunning suits him. The rest of the league should probably take heed.