It wasn’t long ago that Jorge Posada was one of baseball’s best backstops. From 2000, the first season he stepped out of Joe Girardi’s shadow, through 2007, his last fully healthy season, he ranked first among MLB catchers in WAR. He was also the decade-long leader, filling the gap between the Ivan Rodriguez and Mike Piazza dominance of the late 90s and the more recent dominance of Joe Mauer and Brian McCann. Even in 2009 and 2010 he produced well enough, 2.9 and 2.0 WAR despite spending time on the DL in each season.

This year, the final season in his contract, the Yankees informed him that he’d be moving out from behind the plate and into the full-time DH role. The transition didn’t start well, and while he showed signs of recovery in June his production has again declined recently. Yesterday the Yankees announced that he was no longer even a part-time member of their starting lineup. Instead they will go with a platoon of Eric Chavez and Andruw Jones, with top prospect Jesus Montero waiting by the phone in Scranton. It’s certainly an odd situation for such an important player in the Yankees franchise.

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The Yankees currently have six starting pitchers. Two are highly paid, two are hardened veterans, and two are on the young side, at least by comparison to their rotation mates. As a unit, they have compiled the sixth-best WAR among starters, but despite that, where each member fits in the rotation behind CC Sabathia is up for debate. Which one of the five should move to the bullpen or be demoted? Or, should the Yankees run out six starters? With the Yankees currently riding a seven-game winning streak as they march into the Fens this weekend, it’s a question that Joe Girardi will likely backburner for a few more days. While he’s procrastinating, it gives us time to debate the merits of each option. Let’s go through each, starting with the longest odds. Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe there’s is a better way to predict how well a hitter is doing? Rather than glancing at his OBP and SLG and OPS or his wOBA and wRC+ and then mentally calibrating that number according to an inflated or deflated BABIP, maybe we can find a simple means of combining the key elements into a single formula.

Well, I believe I have stumbled onto just such a formula.

Th’other day, when I was trying to solve the mystery of the Tampa Bay Rays and their utterly broken run expectancy chart, I began ruminating about the relationship between walks, strikeouts, and an ability to create runs. You see, the Rays tend towards true outcomes: lotsa walks, lotsa strikeouts. So, for some strange reason — be it bad luck or bad hitter-type chemistry — the Rays seem to have an inability of reaching a standard run expectancy with the bases loaded.

Anyway, I began to investigate this trifle and produced an interesting comparison:

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In a post earlier this week, I mentioned a Bill James quote: “If you could split [Henderson] in two, you’d have two Hall of Famers.” James was totally serious. Since James wrote those words, Wins Above Replacement (WAR) has become the Nerdosphere’s favorite total value stat. Does it support James’ contention? Let’s “split Rickey in two” and found out.

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Over the last week, Ubaldo Jimenez has become a popular conversation piece, as he has been linked to the Yankees and Reds (among other teams) as a potential acquisition before the trade deadline. While Jimenez is generally seen as one of the game’s better young starting pitchers, he’s also developed a bit of a reputation for being inconsistent.

As Buster Olney noted on Twitter yesterday, some people in the game see him as similar to A.J. Burnett, and Olney used the phrase “enigmatic inconsistency” to explain why the Rockies might be willing to move him. After I noted on Twitter that Jimenez’s xFIPs have been insanely consistent over the last three years, Buster and I got into a short discussion about the topic. Obviously, the point he’s making about Jimenez’s consistency from start to start isn’t going to be measured using yearly xFIP, though, so today, I thought I’d try to look at the question differently.

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For a pitcher who has thrown 21.1 innings of mediocre baseball this season, Phil Hughes‘ return to the majors has garnered quite a bit of media coverage. It’s not entirely undeserved either. Hughes hasn’t pitched well this season, but his performance going forward may impact the Yankees more than any other player on their roster. If Hughes can pitch effectively after missing nearly three months with a mystery injury, the Yankees will have strengthened their biggest weakness without having to surrender future prospects. While Hughes’ two starts since returning from the disabled list have been far from dominating, there are some signs that indicate Hughes could be the answer to the Yankees’ prayers.
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“He may not look like a classic corner outfielder, but Cabrera can play, and I think Braves fans will be pleasantly surprised with what he offers.”

— Dave Cameron on Melky Cabrera, February 15, 2010

Well, Dave was probably right that Braves fans were “surprised” with Melky Cabrera’s 2010 performance, but I’m not sure the surprise was all that pleasant. Having seemingly gained forty pounds between the Yankees 2009 World Series victory and Atlanta’s 2010 Opening Day, Cabrera followed his reasonable 1.7 WAR 2009 with a combination of a .294 wOBA and awful defense all over the outfield to end up one full win below replacement level for the 2010 season. Dave wasn’t the only one: check out this fool who thought Melky Cabrera was a three-win player who would have made signing, say, Johnny Damon pointless for the Braves.

So when Melky signed with the Kansas City Royals this past off-season, there was very little excitement, to say the least. With a few exceptions, the signing was panned. Given that it came in close proximity to the fulfillment of The Jeff Francoeur Prophecy and that it was for only $1.25 million, it didn’t get all that much attention. However, while the pitching has been awful, the Royals’ offense has been right in the middle of the pack so far, and Melky’s career-high .349 wOBA and 3.0 WAR have been a big part of that. What does this mean for his near future?

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Whence we last examined yonder batting orders, we came away with several expected observations (Jose Bautista plays baseball like a video game, the Oakland Athletics do not care much for scoring runs, Rick Ankiel and Ian Desmond are not feared hitters, and so forth) as well as a number of curious findings (the Cubs lead-off combo was tops in the majors, the 7th hitters on AL teams were worse than the 9th hitters, NL managers effectively managed the bottoms of their lineups, and such).

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It’s not an easy time to be a legend.

I feel redundant saying this, since it’s become a common refrain among sportswriters when discussing star players, but we live in skeptical times. It’s too easy to blame it on the steroids scandal from the late 1990s and early 2000s.  The problem is more deeply rooted than that. Simply put, we live in an age of technology and information – and in such an age, it becomes more difficult to believe in something as abstract as a hero.

We live in the age of the 24-hour news cycle, where small stories become huge scandals. It’s an age where computers and social networks have come to dominate our lives. An age where stats determine whether we keep our jobs, and where a  computer algorithm promises us we can find true love. We have free and easy access to more news than our great-grandparents could have dreamed about, yet we can’t help but crave more information. We’ve truly reached the Information Age.

Yet in this age of instant information, can legends survive? It used to be that legends would grow from hearsay, from people passing around stories by word of mouth. Still, no story can survive for long in these days without being dissected, torn to shreds and stitched back together. If Babe Ruth’s Called Shot happened today, would baseball fans 80 years from now still remember it? Almost certainly not – there would be hundreds of reporters covering the story, searching for quotes and digging up new information and angles. The very mythology of the story would be sucked dry. Heroes and legends often don’t stand up to close scrutiny – they thrive best on uncertainty and myth and the power of a child’s imagination.

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Today with a single and a home run Derek Jeter got his 2999th and 3000th hits, joining a group of just 27 other players to do so. Jeter is the fourth youngest player to reach the mark, having turned 37 on June 26th. Ty Cobb did it as a 34-year old while Hank Aaron and Robin Yount as 36-year olds. Pete Rose got his 3000th hit at age 37 and 21 days, a few days older than Jeter. Inspired by Steve’s HR-pace graph — and this great New York Times career-HR pace graph — I wanted to see how Jeter’s hit pace compares to the other members of the 3000-hit club.

Below is a graph showing hits accumulated by seasonal age. The graph is interactive, so that you can hover over and click on the names at the left to compare the pace of different players. It is a canvas element so it only works in modern browsers (i.e., no IE8 or older). Here is a sample image if it doesn’t work on your browser.

The age is seasonal age not actual age. So in the graph Tris Speaker and Stan Musial get to 3000 hits faster because they did it sooner in their age-37 season even though they were older when it happened. The data come from Retrosheet. Where available it is daily, but for pre-1918 seasons it is just yearly (see Ty Cobb for an example of yearly versus daily data).

Looking at Jeter you can see he got a relatively late start, but then he accumulated hits at a very good clip. By 30 he had more hits than most of the 3000-hit club members did at that age. Since then he hasn’t slowed down as much as most, and he is way ahead of the pack for his age. Given his legend-like status and contract through the 2014 season (with the player option) — even with his talents diminished — he should get a good number more plate appearances before he retires. He should almost surely move into the top ten (by passing Eddie Collins at 3315 hits) and maybe the top five (by passing Tris Speaker at 3514 hits). Until then congratulations to a guy who has already had a great career.