Last year, Josh Beckett posted a 5.78 ERA in 21 starts, and his struggles were one of the main reasons the Red Sox missed the playoffs. This year, Josh Beckett has a 1.86 ERA in 14 starts, and his dominance is one of the reasons that the Red Sox have the best record in the American League. A look beyond ERA, however, shows that Beckett is the poster boy for why metrics like xFIP were created in the first place.

Last year, Beckett had an xFIP of 3.86, 8% below league average. This year, Beckett is posting a 3.69 xFIP, 8% below the league average. In fact, his K/BB ratio is almost exactly identical (2.58 last year, 2.63 this year) to what it was a year ago. His ERA has been slashed by over four runs thanks to huge reductions in two factors that are counted in xFIP – BABIP and HR/FB.

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Dave Cameron noted an excellent reason for favoring the elimination of divisions and unbalanced schedules, and the revamping of Major League Baseball’s playoff schedule: fairness. Eliminating a set-up that has six teams vying for the NL Central crown, and just four teams battling in the AL West, would be a welcome change.

Putting the Pirates and A’s in the same boat isn’t the only fairness improvement baseball could see with realignment. A number of writers (myself included) have noted the overwhelming challenge of having to climb over the Yankees and Red Sox every year to get to the postseason. From a purely competitive standpoint, blowing up the divisions and going to a balanced schedule would seem a major win for the Rays, Jays and Orioles.

That view ignores one key counterpoint: The three non-superpowers in the AL East see a jump in attendance and overall revenue gains from those six extra games per season against both the Yankees and Red Sox. So here’s the question: All things considered, would the Rays, Jays and O’s be better or worse off if MLB blew up the AL East and shelved unbalanced schedules?

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Paul Konerko is sitting at 381 home runs. The 35-year-old has averaged 32 homers per season in his last six, and he looks to be on pace for 30 to 35 more this year. Erring on the conservative side, let’s say he finishes with 30 dingers — 14 more than his current total. He would finish the 2011 season with 395 career home runs. He has two years remaining on his contract, and as long as he continues to hit like this, he should have no problem DH’ing for another few seasons after that.

Is it far-fetched to think that Konerko couldn’t average at least 21 homers from 2012 to 2016? Because with that average, he’d reach the 500-home-run milestone.

Along with achieving 3,000 hits, or winning 300 games as a pitcher, getting to 500 home runs — insert generic PED disclaimer here — tends to trigger automatic election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. But as Chris Cwik covered earlier this week, Konerko is obviously not a Hall-of-Fame player. Even if he joins the 500-home-run club, he’s unlikely to garner much HoF support, which is interesting because it would mean the milestone isn’t what it used to be.

With that idea, let’s discuss other players who might buck the milestone trend. These players would have achieved grand milestones almost under the radar, and would be considered longshots for the hall of fame despite their accomplishments.

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“I wanna make a deal with you girl
and get it signed by the heads of state.
I wanna make a deal with you girl.
Be recognized round the world.
Well, it’s my nonalignment pact.”
— Pere Ubu, “Non-Alignment Pact”

By now, we’ve all had nearly a week to digest Buster Olney’s weekend revelations about baseball’s possible realignment plans: baseball is very likely to move a team from the National League to the American League so that each division will have an equal number of teams, and it’s also considering doing away with divisions altogether. Dave Allen believes the plan could actually lead to more competitive races, not fewer, even though the six division pennant races would be replaced by two leaguewide pennant races with four effective “wild cards.”

Dave Cameron wrote that eliminating divisions is fundamentally an act of fairness, and he endorses it for that reason. This morning, I spoke to Yahoo! sports columnist Jeff Passan, who wrote a column a year ago proposing “unalignment” for baseball, the first comprehensive treatment of the notion of getting rid of baseball’s divisions. He claims no credit for Major League Baseball considering a similar plan, but he still fiercely defends the proposal.
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Last night, Yorvit Torrealba accused Andruw Jones of stealing signs from second base as the Yankees lit up Derek Holland. Holland’s final line (5 IP, 7 H, 6 R, 5 BB, 0 K, 2 HR) would support the idea that the Yankees knew what was coming before he threw it, but it would also support the idea that Holland just pitched really badly. So, to test the theory of whether the Yankees have seen a boost in offensive performance when they had a runner on second base (who could steal signs), I decided to look at the data.

Yankees, 2011:

Bases Empty: .256/.349/.436
Runner on First: .268/.320/.530
Runner on Second: .209/.355/.328
Runner on Third: .368/.403/.561
First and Second: .207/.261/.378
First and Third: .390/.415/.805
Second and Third: .171/.397/.371

With one runner on base, the Yankees have performed the worst if that runner is on second base. With two men on base, the Yankees have performed worst in the two situations where a runner is on second base. Their two best performances, by far, have come when they do not have a runner on second base.

This isn’t a definitive study, of course, but if the Yankees were stealing signs and that actually helped them hit, you’d expect to find some evidence of improved performance in that situation. That we find exactly the opposite, even in a small sample of data, suggests to me that Torrealba is either reacting to nothing or that sign stealing is a really terrible idea.

With the second go-round of interleague play looming and roughly 40% of the season done, now seems like a good time to check in on how well pitchers are hitting. Although it’s usually not given too much thought, having a group of starting pitchers who are capable of putting bat to baseball outside of just laying down the sacrifice bunt can make a big difference. Let’s take a look at which National League teams’s hitters are better at being really bad hitters through yesterday’s games:

TM. PA. AVG.. OBP.. SLG.. wOBA wRC+ RAAP
ARI 160 0.162 0.208 0.243 0.206 +21 +6.8
LAN 155 0.162 0.232 0.208 0.206 +24 +6.6
HOU 139 0.176 0.210 0.227 0.199 +16 +5.1
FLA 155 0.165 0.221 0.181 0.190 .+9 +4.4
MIL 160 0.157 0.186 0.229 0.187 .+9 +4.2
CIN 156 0.161 0.173 0.219 0.174 .-2 +2.3
SFN 162 0.138 0.179 0.196 0.172 .-2 +2.1
PHI 169 0.158 0.185 0.178 0.165 -10 +1.2
CHN 140 0.144 0.164 0.192 0.161 -13 +0.5
WAS 155 0.126 0.165 0.134 0.142 -20 -2.0
COL 162 0.131 0.137 0.168 0.135 -30 -3.1
STL 164 0.113 0.143 0.141 0.132 -26 -3.6
ATL 150 0.096 0.137 0.120 0.123 -33 -4.4
SDN 138 0.105 0.118 0.137 0.115 -31 -5.0
NYN 153 0.087 0.120 0.126 0.114 -38 -5.7
PIT 154 0.083 0.109 0.098 0.097 -53 -8.0
AVG 155 0.135 0.168 0.175 0.157 -11 +0.0


The Dodgers have been powered so far by Chad Billingsley’s fantastic 8/26 line, including three doubles, a homer, and three walks. Barry Enright and Zach Duke, although they only have 21 combined PAs, have slugged three homers for Arizona. Zack Greinke has a homer for Milwaukee; Yovani Gallardo and Randy Wolf also have on-base percentages above .250. Houston has been powered by J.A. Happ’s .304/.360/.487 line, his .370 wOBA second only to Billingsley’s .401. Other notables include the ever-present Carlos Zambrano (.363 wOBA), Clayton Kershaw (.313 OBP), and Jason Hammel (.200 wOBA, but a homer against Greinke).

The bottom of the leaderboard presents some pretty hilarious lines, chief among them that of baseball’s best pitcher to date: Roy Halladay. Halladay has only two hits and a walk to go with 19 strikeouts in 44 plate appearances, good for a .069 wOBA. Remarkably enough, though, he has scored two runs already this year. Other oh-fer kings include Jhoulys Chacin (.093 wOBA), Kevin Correia (.066 wOBA), Charlie Morton (.047 wOBA), and Kyle Lohse (.084 wOBA). Most of these guys have pitched well this season, but it really should be noted that their poor performance at the plate does hurt the team a bit. Halladay, for example, will likely be a full win below the major league average by the time the season is over. Not that I wouldn’t take him, but that does sharply reduce his value to a National League club.

After yesterday’s seven-run, four-inning fiasco against the Reds, Chad Billingsley is sporting some ugly numbers. His current 4.65 ERA is the worst that number has been at this point in the season. Last year’s 4.34 ERA on June 15th was his second-worst, though, and something has been amiss in his repertoire since as early as 2009. As the doubles kept falling in on Wednesday, the twitter questions began pouring in: “What’s wrong with Chad Billingsley?”

The easy answer is nothing. His 8.09 K/9 is basically the same as his career number (8.18). So is his 3.84 BB/9 (3.86 career). His fastball velocity is still right around 91-92, and he’s still using the same pitching mix as ever. This could just be his ongoing below-average control working hand-in-hand with his career-worst BABIP (.336). It could.

Watching yesterday’s game, you can get that BABIP feeling. In the second inning, Brandon Phillips hit a dink that was a hair away from an out. Fred Lewis‘ double later that same inning was a hair fair. In the third inning, Edgar Renteria slapped a single into right field that wasn’t lined with authority. Jonny Gomes broke his bat on a flare single that prompted Vin Scully to exclaim that he’d “be happy with that.”

Then again, there were some moments that were all poor performance. The Scott Rolen double that plated the first run of the day was down-the-middle belt-high. A couple ball fours were way out of the strike zone. He walked in a run. He hit 94 on the gun a few times… on balls. It wasn’t a good performance waylaid by the bouncing ball. It was a mediocre performance that was augmented by some poor luck.

Scanning his pitching mix, it seems that Bills is using his cutter and curveball less and using his changeup more, and that doesn’t seem optimal. By pitch-type linear weights, his cutter and curveball are by far his best pitches. And yet his curveball usage is at his second-lowest level, and the pitch itself is at its slowest. Perhaps there’s something to this. Per Dave Allen, he only used the pitch eight times last night, in 88 pitches, which is far below his 18.4% career usage. Ryan Hanigan’s two-run single was on a curveball. The pitch broke well enough, but Hanigan seemed ready for it. There might be something off with his off-speed pitches: Billingsley only managed six swinging strikes on Wednesday, and all of them were on fastballs. Perhaps a Pitch F/x centered approach could find something wrong with his curve, even if the pitch is still a positive by linear weights. It doesn’t seem quite right.

Since 2009, Billingsley has the fifth-worst ERA-FIP difference among qualified starters. Ricky Nolasco and Jason Hammel sit one-two in that category. Somehow, this is a fitting group for Billingsley to be in. In recent years, the overall results have not matched up with the outcomes of his individual at-bats. As long as his curveball is okay, though, Billingsley should right ship again. Then again, with Clayton Kershaw in town, he’ll never reach top billing again in Los Angeles.

Whaddo I look like, a frigging psychologist over here?

This edition of One Night Only contains:

1. Previews of varying sizes for four games: Texas at New York (AL), Baltimore at Toronto, Milwaukee at Chicago (NL), and New York (NL) at Atlanta.

2. Pitcher and Team NERD scores for every one of tonight’s games.

3. One man’s trash.

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When Scott Kazmir said that the Tampa Bay Rays had a realistic shot at the playoffs in 2008, the media still found it hard not to laugh. Even so, Kazmir seemed among the best players to deliver the message that things were changing in Tampa. Outside of Carl Crawford, no player personified the Rays’ future more than Kazmir. Since joining the Devil Rays in 2004, Kazmir compiled 13.5 WAR on his way to becoming the Rays ace. Kazmir was coming off his best season as a pro — and he was still only 24 years old — so there was a legitimate thought that he was still improving. Three and a half seasons later, Kazmir is currently looking for a job.
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