There is no use denying that as a Mariner fan I took great delight in the happenings surrounding Carlos Silva this spring. There are few players that I have rooted harder against than he, and to see his self-appraisal turn out to be delusional gave me joy at a time when Spring Training was wearing thin. With the season beginning, I was prepared to toss Silva out of mind and get on with following the many interesting stories cropping up from those that play Major League baseball.

That is, until this morning when I was greeted with the following two notices in rapid succession.

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In the midst of reformatting and updating my retrosheet database, I got re-interested in the game duration field that Retrosheet tracks. I started digging into comparisons, plotting game duration on one axis and various other variables on the other in order to see if anything struck my fancy. Such posts will come at a later date, but while doing that, another thought struck me: How long of a game does the average person find ideal?

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The momentum working through the media is that the Mariners are handing the fifth starter job to prospect Michael Pineda unless he bombs over the remainder of Spring Training. The reasons for doing revolve around Pineda being the team’s best option for that spot, the team not wanting to hurt their relationship with Pineda down the line, and the team not wanting blowback from the union or other players.

A year of Major League service time takes 172 days on the roster to achieve and no player can earn more than one full service year per season. That means if a player such as Michael Pineda spends 171 days on the Major League roster in any season from 2011 through 2016 and 172 or more in the other five seasons, he will end the 2016 season with 5 years and 171 days of service time, making him not a free agent until after the following year.

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It was a disappointing 2010 season for Anaheim. They finished in third place in the AL West and with a below .500 record for the first time since 2003. With lots of money to spend and a natural motive to improve, most people figured the Angels would be big players in all the major free agents this winter. Instead, they struck out on nearly every target. Rightly or wrongly, a hard line stance on contract offers to the likes of Carl Crawford and Adrian Beltre resulted in those players signing elsewhere and leaving the Angels with no big move to hang their hat on. Perhaps out of desperation came the trade for Vernon Wells and the assumption of his entire contract. How does that impact the starting lineup?

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Oakland may have surprised a few people last season by being more competitive than was expected, but they should not sneak up on anyone this year. Is the young pitching shaping up into a potential competitive window again? That’s where most of the focus is drawn to, but the rest of Oakland’s roster could wear teams down in unexpected ways. The lineup has pop, the gloves can catch and the bullpen has been bolstered. In short, Oakland lost little talent this winter and padded their depth in needed areas. Will it be enough?

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The discussion a month ago about Matt Cain and his –and teammates’—home run suppression had me thinking about park factors and the nature of comparing unadjusted stats like RA to ones like xFIP. It feels at times that people will point to the gap between a pitcher’s ERA and his FIP or xFIP as proof that said pitcher is a statistically significant outlier at having control over one of the results of pitching that the DIPS theory rejects. Where I think a disconnect forms is that those assertions ignore that controlling for “luck” factors like BABIP and HR/FB is not the only thing that metrics like FIP do. They also attempt to control out the pitcher’s home park and the defensive skill behind him.

If we want to examine the question of whether a metric like xFIP underrates Matt Cain (or anyone) because it ignores some aspect of Cain’s skill at controlling his batted balls then we need to first isolate that part of the spread between his ERA and his xFIP. That means making corrections for park and defensive skill.

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The annals of baseball history are littered with interesting stories and stat lines. Being the young sap that I am, much of that history is unknown to me which is why I dig around in our databases from time to time so that I can come across stories like this one.

Herb Washington was a world-class sprinter. Literally, he held world records in both the 50 and 60-yard sprints. He also played baseball in high school but stopped after his Junior year. About six years later, Charlie Finley signed him to the Oakland Athletics for the 1974 season to be used as a pinch runner.

That was not an unprecedented move for Finley, but what ended up being special about Washington is that despite appearing in 110 games total across 1974 and 1975, Washington never once came to bat nor spent even an inning in the field. Read the rest of this entry »

Overall, I enjoy Spring Training. Still, there are parts about the whole event that I dislike. Aspects such as heightened speculation over insignificant bench roles, discussions about offseason workouts and people taking small samples too seriously are almost a rite of passage now. Something to be endured before baseball can begin again in earnest. I could do without those parts.

Those are mostly outweighed however, by the good bits. Baseball returning at least in spirit for one and despite the many fluff pieces, there is a growing amount of actual news to digest. Spring Training is also a chance to travel to usually warm destinations, see something resembling baseball for slightly cheaper than normal and have greater access to players and staff than you would have at a regular Major League game.

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Albert Pujols and the Cardinals being unable to come to an agreement on a contract extension has been the big news of the week and provoked a lot of commentary speculating on the motives of all those involved and what the implications might fall out from this.

I am uninterested in predictions about what will happen since even the best are no better than mildly informed guesses, but I am interested in how people view Pujols as a possible asset outside the abstract. That is, suppose nine months from now you are the General Manager for your favorite team and Pujols’ agent calls you up and tells you that if you offer the most money, Albert will sign there. How much do you offer? What’s your breaking point?

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About three weeks after the exchange of arbitration figures where Josh Hamilton requested $12 million and the Rangers countered with $8.7 million, the two sides have reached a contract agreement that will cover this and next season. It is being reported as a two-year, $24 million deal. In essence, this deal can be summarized as Hamilton “wins” his 2011 arbitration case and cedes any possible raise for 2012.

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