Archive for All Star Game

The National League has won more games than the American League this season in interleague play, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at our individual leaderboards. The top seven position players by WAR this season reside in the American League and 10 of the best 11 — as long as Manny Machado remains in the AL — also play in that league. The parity when it come to interleague record is more likely a function of the National League’s relative parity, while the American League is very top and bottom heavy. The best teams in the AL can only do so much, as the bulk of the NL overwhelms the bottom-feeders in the opposite league.

As for the All-Star rosters, they more closely resemble the leaderboards. The graph below shows the WAR totals for every player on the All-Star Game roster, including those on the active roster but excluding those who have been replaced due to injury or a Sunday start.

Last year, both leagues featured a collective WAR similar to the NL’s mark this season, though the AL was missing Mike Trout. This year, Trout is back and acting like himself, while Mookie Betts and Jose Ramirez seem to be acting a lot like Trout, as well. If we removed the top three players from each roster, the collective WAR totals would be pretty close. That said, the All-Star Game would be also be less entertaining.

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Every year, some combination of fans, players, and members of Major League Baseball come together to select All-Star teams to represent the leagues in an exhibition. Every year, that group mostly gets it right. And every year, either players miss the game due to injury or pitchers pull out after having started on Sunday, and we still end up with a game featuring baseball’s very best players.

This season, both sides are missing arguably their best player: Mike Trout is aiming to return from injury as the second half begins, while Clayton Kershaw is resting after having started a couple days ago against Kansas City. With each side suffering a fairly major blow, let’s see which team is the most talented.

One indicator of talent is the actual quality of play on the field in the first half. One way to measure that play is using WAR. The graph below shows all the position players in both leagues by WAR accumulated so far this season.

As you can see, the American League has the edge at the top, even without Mike Trout. Aaron Judge, Jose Altuve, and Mookie Betts lead the way, and the AL has five of the top seven slots, with only Paul Goldschmidt and Justin Turner from the NL in that mix. Neither Goldschmidt nor Turner are in the starting lineup, however. After the top seven, the National League has 13 of the next 17 spots and overall, which is enough to narrowly edge the AL in first-half WAR by a count of 53.6 to 52.8. A healthy Mike Trout would make things even closer to equal, but it’s already basically a wash.

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Despite Major League Baseball’s attempts to add urgency to the All-Star game, there are factors which ensure that winning isn’t the only objective for its participants. It is, after all, an exhibition game. And yes, while most of the league’s best players will be present, deserving players will be absent. Finally, managers will make an effort to use nearly all players on each roster — both for the players’ benefit and the benefit of those fans who voted on the players’ behalves. There are, in other words, expectations placed both on the players and managers which surpass mere winning or losing.

Even if winning were the only objective of either team — and if the players on each roster were deployed optimally — using the results of tonight’s game as a proxy for determining which league is stronger would be foolish, not unlike using World Series results to do the same. Calculating strength of league requires an evaluation of interleague records and some greater evaluation of entire group of players in each league. That would be the most equitable way of doing things.

However, given that the All-Star game is tonight and given that it includes an equal number of players on both teams, we can compare the respective talents of those squads as a small way of comparing the leagues. That’s the goal of this post.

While both teams have had injury replacements over the past week, the National League has been hit considerably harder, losing Clayton Kershaw, Madison Bumgarner, Noah Syndergaard, Matt Carpenter, and Yoenis Cespedes. Those players have combined for 18.1 WAR so far this season and Kershaw leads the NL and is tied at 5.5 with Mike Trout in MLB. Even with those losses, the NL has put together a talented squad.

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If last night’s Home Run Derby was any indication of the interest and excitement that will be on display tonight, there should be a lot of electricity in Cincinnati for the All-Star Game. The disparity of talent between the American League and National League has been an ongoing debate for some tonight, and the result of a single-game exhibition is not going to tell us a lot about the superiority of any league. Looking at the entire talent level of a league is a much better indicator of the league’s as a whole, but tonight we have a snippet of that talent, and for the most part, we have a large portion of the talent at the top.

The All-Star Game never has all of the best players in each league matched up face-to-face. Layers of fan voting, peer selections along with injuries and pitchers starting on Sunday tend to thin the rosters a little. That being said, most of the best players in Major League Baseball are represented on the roster and taking a look at their performance this season, their preseason projections, as well as rest of the season projections can provide a decent indicator of the talent level at the top of the respective leagues.

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Television ratings for the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, like most sporting events and television shows generally, have seen a viewership decline over the last few decades. This decline is not new. After an embarrassing All-Star Game in 2002 that saw Bud Selig call the game a tie, the powers that be wanted to help prevent a further decline in ratings and interest so they came up with a plan to make the game matter. Beginning in 2003, the league that won the All-Star Game would receive home field advantage in the World Series. The move has done little to prevent ratings from a slow decline over the next few years, but over the past five seasons, the ratings have remained steady despite an increasingly fractured television landscape.

Thirty years ago, the All-Star Game was the crown jewel of MLB’s regular season. Only around 50 baseball games were broadcast nationally, ESPN had not begun to broadcast games, and the All-Star Game was a rare opportunity to see the game’s best players. That rarity, combined with limited options for television viewing in general, came through in the ratings. The graph below shows the ratings for the MLB All-Star Game from 1967 through last season.

Source: Baseball Almanac and LA Times

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Let the record show that I am all about Omar Infante starting the All-Star Game. As Grantland’s Bill Barnwell recently stated at the beginning of his fantastic article regarding below-replacement players who’d received MVP votes: “Baseball has a rich historical tapestry of stupidity.” May anarchy reign. Whatever.

Inspired by Barnwell’s spirit of inquiry, I wanted to discover which All-Stars finished their season with negative WAR — a destiny, it should be noted, that neither Steamer nor ZiPS project Infante to fulfill (barely). Read the rest of this entry »

Pretty much everyone loves Joe Posnanski, including me. But while “Poz” has been perhaps the most prominent advocate of objective analysis among “mainstream” sportswriters, few would call him a “radical.” His blog post today, in the aftermath of a series of Tweets and counter-Tweets regarding Matt Thornton’s appearance in last night’s All-Star Game, however, paints a different picture. While he doesn’t explicitly say so, Posnanski implicitly has a pretty radical idea about what sort of pitcher belongs (and does not belong) in the All-Star Game.

While acknowledging that Matt Thornton is a good middle reliever, Posnanski does

not want to see a middle reliever, no matter how good, pitch with the game on the line in the All-Star Game. I just don’t. I’m not necessarily overjoyed by the way managers use their staffs, but I know the realities of the game — managers put their best pitchers in the rotation, and they put their best reliever in the closer role, and they take the best of the rest (or the young pitchers they are trying to break in) and put them in middle relief. Some thrive in that role. And their value tends to be undervalued by everyone … including me.* But that doesn’t make it interesting in any way.

This is set up by this perfectly reasonable point:

Middle relief is a specialty position. It’s extremely important in day-to-day baseball, but, to me at least, the All-Star Game is not day-to-day baseball. It’s a game for the best. And in a league that has Lee, Liriano, Lester, King Felix, Verlander, Price, Greinke, Weaver, Sabathia, Pettitte and many other great, great starting pitchers, I’m sorry, I don’t want Matt Thornton pitching in the most important moment of the game. I don’t buy that having that “experience” of pitching the seventh inning with runners on is of great value, not in this kind of game. Give me the best pitcher.

Poz is right: we want to see the best pitcher out there, and we know that relief pitchers are generally relievers because they aren’t good enough to start. Yes, most fans would rather see Zack Greinke or Jon Lester than Matt Thornton — they are better pitchers than Thornton.

The “experience” point is also excellent, and pushes this idea over into the “radical” category. After all, if the “‘experience’ of pitching the seventh inning with runners on” isn’t important in the All-Star Game, then really, why would “experience of pitching in the ninth” be any different? The “experience” issue is a major part of the basis for modern closer “position,” one of the myths that sabermetric analysis has been debunking for a while. Closers do what they do because, just like every other reliever, most of them couldn’t handle starting for some reason or another. This gets at the heart of Posnanski’s implicit radicality: if we want to see the best pitchers, why should any relief pitchers make the All-Star Game?

If we agree with Posnanski that Matt Thornton isn’t good enough to pitch in the All-Star Game, which relievers are left? Among qualified relievers 2008-present, only two had a better FIP than All-Star Scourge Matt Thornton (2.50): Jonathan Broxton (2.13) and Mariano Rivera (2.36). Has Thornton been lucky on home runs? Here is an exhaustive list of qualified relievers with a better xFIP than Thornton (2.84) 2008-present: Broxton (2.32) and Rivera (2.57).

Of course, Rivera and Broxton are both “proven closers,” but even if you buy that load of “clutch” nonsense (you shouldn’t), as Posnanski pointed out, that kind of “experience” shouldn’t matter in the All-Star Game. In any case, leverage accounts for just how important the situations in which the pitcher has been placed in have been. Wins Above Replacement (WAR) helps us properly value “mere specialists” by incorporating leverage into their valuation as well as how much they’ve pitched. Since 2008, Matt Thornton has accumulated 5.9 WAR. Which relievers are ahead of him? You guessed it: Jonathan Broxton (6.9) and Mariano Rivera (6.4).

Maybe guys like Rivera and Broxton could make an appearance in the All-Star Game, if all the starters were used up or something, but hey, if we don’t want to see Matt Thornton, one of the most valuable relievers (middle or otherwise) in the game over the last few seasons, what’s the point of having relievers on the roster at all? Heck yeah, I’d rather see King Felix pitch than Matt Thornton. I hope Posnanski uses his prominent position to advocate for the position logically implied by his arguments.

However, I suppose in one way Posnanski should probably be happy that Matt Thornton was the reliever inserted into the game. Can you imagine the backlash Posnanski would have endured from Royals fans in his hometown of Kansas City if he’d tweeted about the silliness of Joe Girardi putting in Joakim Soria, someone Thornton has clearly outpitched the last several years?

Actually, we’re not all special: that’s tonight’s important message.

Nationals at Americans | Tuesday, July 13 | 8:05pm ET
Starting Pitchers
Nationals: Ubaldo Jimenez (NERD: 8)
127.0 IP, 8.01 K/9, 3.26 BB/9, .248 BABIP, 51.9% GB, 5.4% HR/FB, 3.71 xFIP

Americans: David Price (NERD: 8)
115.1 IP, 7.80 K/9, 3.36 BB/9, .276 BABIP, 47.2% GB, 7.8% HR/FB, 3.95 xFIP

A Logic Problem
The All-Star Game, as the urban youth of our country would likely say, “is what it is.” “Is what it is,” as the academics in our country would likely say, represents an instance of tautology. Therefore, it can be said that the All-Star Game is itself tautological.

Discuss.

(Seriously. Do it. Now.)

Service, With or Without a Smile
I think I’m stating the obvious when I say that we at FanGraphs view ourselves — more than baseball fans or ruthless capitalists — we view ourselves as public servants. (Indeed, no other reasonable explanation exists for Jack Moore’s decision to tweet factoids about Joe Morgan’s career, with no prompting whatsoever, at approximately 3am local time.)

To further continue this commitment to our readership, I’ve included the complete rosters for each team at the end of this post — all with links to each respective All-Star’s FanGraphs player card.

An Obligatory Comment in re Colby Lewis
Paddy McMahon of Around the Majors and Knuckle Curve Semi-Drop tweeted the following almost-true truth:

PadmanJones colby lewis is tied with the AL’s ASG starter (price) in WAR. lewis is not on the team. @cistulli mad.

I say “almost true” for this reason: I’m not mad. Rather, it’s probably something more like melancholy that I’m feeling. Colby Lewis, as is widely known, has been responsible for a very many, very intense spiritual experiences. Yet, millions will be robbed tonight of Lewis’s extraordinary mound presence and his darting slutter.

“Fie, for shame,” is the only reasonable response to that.

If I Had My Druthers
• In the midst of a high-leverage situation, American League coach Joe Girardi would come to the mound and signal for a right-handed reliever.
• Simultaneously, Colby Lewis would enter Angel Stadium, from the sky, via parachute, and land on the mound part of the field.
• Also, Lewis would breathe fire. (Note: I recognize that fire-breathing isn’t entirely related to the rest of the fantasy, but if I had my druthers, that’s what would happen.)

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Episode Thirty-Nine
In which the panel is all stars all the time.

Headlines
Cliff Hanger: Where Will Lee End Up?
The Futures Game: Is It Past Its Prime?
All-Star Game Coverage: Blah to the Blah to the Blah

Featuring
Dave Cameron, Full-Time Employee
Matt Klaassen, Resident Philosophizer
Bryan Smith, Prospect Maven Deluxe

Finally, you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio on the flip-flop.

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I had something else planned for tonight, but in light of learning about Brad Lidge having to warmup on six different occasions over a two-hour span last night, my anger at this ridiculous game had to be expressed. First, a question: WHY does this game count? Why does this exhibition game, in which the rosters are not always indicative of the best players in each league, in which each team is required one representative meaning that other deserving players are excluded, in which players rarely last more than three or four innings, determine which league gets home field advantage in the World Series? Honestly? Can someone please answer this for me?

“Well, Cubs, you had a tremendous year, winning more than any other team in the whole sport, scoring more runs than everyone else as well, but you won’t have home field advantage in the World Series because your league failed to win the All-Star game.”

Say that a couple of times and let it sink in. I’m very confused why this game was made to be the determining factor of home field advantage in the World Series and doubly so why more stipulations were not made clear with regards to how managers must utilize players or how roster spots should be filled. The first basic point that needs to be fixed if this game is going to remain as “important” is that people who can actually play need to be selected. I don’t care how good Brandon Webb or Scott Kazmir have been this year: if they cannot pitch or just pitched a couple of days prior, they serve no purpose to the team. They are taking up a roster spot, risking injury and should not be participating.

Those actually capable of pitching should be selected, and for the sake of honoring those deserving, regardless of whether or not they can participate, why not just come out with some type of list, citing the best players of the first half, not necessarily intertwined with the game? That way a guy like Kazmir could be recognized for his first-half performance but not be subjected to what happened last night. Imagine if Corey Hart didn’t throw like a nine-year old girl, as Dave Cameron noted, and the game continued. Kazmir was on a strict pitch count and Francona would have no choice but to forfeit the game.

Or if Lidge could only go two innings last night, apparently David Wright was going to be his replacement. That would have been spectacular. The AL could have garnered home field advantage by hitting a home run off of a third baseman. And if Wright gets hurt pitching, I would have to imagine it would be mighty tough to justify his usage on the mound due to the game “counting,” to the thousands of Mets fans excited at the possibility of overtaking the Phillies in the NL East.

Either the game counts and the rosters should be populated by those capable of pitching, regardless of whether or not they are Jeff Suppan, Jamie Moyer, et al, or the game reverts to exhibition/fun nature and after a certain period of time, say 11-13 innings, it is called regardless of score. Pitchers should be required to go for at least one inning, with no platoon or LOOGY moves and, if the game “must be decided” as the commissioner’s office informed Francona, why take so many closers? Honestly, did the AL need anybody other than Mariano Rivera, Jonathan Papelbon, or even Francisco Rodriguez? It could have been Zack Greinke, not Joakim Soria, and then Greinke could have gone a few innings.

It just really irks me that the sport I love could be so stupid and naive with a tradition such as this. If you want to have a competition between the leagues to determine home field advantage in the world series, why not make a balanced interleague schedule and whichever league wins gets the advantage. That way it’s more than just one meaningless game acting as the determining factor.

Overall, IF the game supposedly counts:

a) No more fan voting
b) No more requirements about representatives from each team
c) Pitchers who can actually pitch are selected
d) More starters than closers
e) Pitchers have to go at least one full inning

If it doesn’t count, do whatever you want. It’s a fun game, there should be no real rules other than to have fun. Or, what I would ultimately suggest, is that all of the aforementioned suggestions be disregarded and just let Tim Wakefield make the team every year, with the clause that he can pitch for both teams.