Lincoln Mitchell

Blog

This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

Posted in: Baseball

Remembering the Unappreciated Reggie Jackson

When looking back on Jackson’s career many words come to mind, but underrated is not one of them. However, at least with regards to awards voting, Jackson, through a combination of being unappreciated and unlucky, may not have received his due. Jackson finished in the top ten in MVP voting six times, while only winning the award once in 1973. In 1973, when he won the MVP, Jackson played in 151 games hitting .293/.383/.531 for a league leading OPS+ of 162, stealing 22 bases while only being caught eight times for a team that easily won its division. He also played a decent right field and led his leagues in homeruns (32) and RBIs (117). It was a great year for a great player which was properly recognized by the BBWAA. It was not, however, his best year.

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The Ongoing Trials of Barry Bonds

No matter how badly this trial goes for Bonds, how many former baseball players testify that Bonds was involved in steroid use or how much more damage this does to Bonds’ already extremely tarnished image, it will do nothing to address the largely irrevocable damage steroids have done to baseball Nor will it approach bringing any meaningful closure to this sad period in baseball history. The Bonds trial is a legal issue, but it is also another opportunity for baseball’s leadership, and even some fans and journalists to wrongly suggest that by punishing Bonds, baseball can move beyond the steroids scandal. Blaming Bonds is easy because of his personality, but also because of how dominant the steroid using Bonds was, but blaming Bonds is ultimately just another attempt by baseball to look away from steroid abuse, just as it did in 1998.

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The Risk and Rewards of Overworking Pitchers

While all pitching prospects, presumably, would like to develop into big league pitchers who can have long and productive careers, this is not the goal of the teams who control their future. Bringing pitchers along slowly and carefully is probably the best thing for pitchers, but it may not be the best way to win championships. Baseball history is full of pitchers who burned out early or injured their arm due to overuse at a young age, but for fans and management this is not a tragedy but simply part of the game. Teams should not be oblivious to the risks of overworking a young pitcher. These risks are quite real, but teams should also recognize that sometimes they need to take that risk.

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Clemens, Johnson, Maddux and Martinez in Historical Perspective

When Philadelphia Phillies manager Charlie Manuel sent Chad Durbin to the mound to start the bottom of the fifth inning of game six of the 2009 World Series, replacing future Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez, it was the end of a baseball era. Martinez’s last game in the big leagues had not gone well as the New York Yankees, led by Hideki Matsui, rocked him for four runs in four innings. Martinez was the last of a quartet of pitching superstars also including Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens and Greg Maddux, who, at a time when offensive production was higher than ever, dominated the game as no other group of pitching peers ever have.

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Hank, Frank, Roberto and Al

The tail end of the period when Mays, Mantle and Snider dominated baseball and center field, saw the rise of another four players who would all play the same position for over a decade and all rank among the greatest ever at that position. Between 1956 and 1970, Henry Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Al Kaline and Frank Robinson all starred in right field and were among the best players in the game. Aaraon and Robinson are among the five greatest right fielders ever, while Clemente and Kaline are probably still among the top ten.

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Steroids Aren't The Only Reason Gary Sheffield Faces Tough Hall of Fame Odds

Gary Sheffield’s retirement immediately ignited some discussion about his Hall of Fame qualifications. Sheffield’s candidacy is interesting because it raises a number of questions about the Hall of Fame and upon what criteria members should be selected. Sheffield’s numbers were very strong, but his links to steroid use, the era in which he played, the number of teams for which he played and various controversies which followed him for most of his career make him less of an automatic selection.

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Jorge Posada-Designated Hitter Emeritus

Jorge Posada is coming to the end of a great career. He is a viable Hall of Fame candidate who will probably just miss getting elected, but he has been an integral part of four World Championship teams, and is perhaps the third greatest catcher in Yankee history. He is also still a potentially valuable player. If Posada caught 30-40 games a year, even with is diminished defensive skills, played first base for 20 games, and was the DH for 80 games or so, he would still be very useful, but as a full time DH he is reducing the roster’s flexibility rather than increasing it without contributing enough with the bat. It looks like the Yankees are going to start the season with essentially a DH emeritus and a shortstop emeritus. That is at least one and probably two emeriti too many.

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Why Henry Aaron is Still Overlooked

Henry Aaron turned 77 on Saturday. Somehow it seemed appropriate that Aaron’s birthday, as might be expected, was overshadowed by the centennial of Ronald Reagan’s birth. Aaron’s birthday receiving almost no attention demonstrates how the he remains bewilderingly underrated in his retirement, just as he was during his career. Aaron retired as the all time leader in home runs and RBIs and among the top three in hits. His career numbers of .305/.374/.555 were good for a career OPS+ of 155 which, while not in the same ballpark as Babe Ruth or Ted Williams, are still very good. These numbers are even more impressive because Aaron accumulated them over 23 seasons and 13,940 plate appearances. This latter number is the third most ever, but was good enough for first at the time Aaron retired. However, Aaron, who was overshadowed by Willie Mays for most of his career, is still oddly underrated by most casual students of baseball’s past.

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Maybe We Should Think About Benches as well as Bullpens

Constructing a good bench is in some respects more challenging than constructing a bullpen because teams need a broad collection of skills, but only have between three and six bench positions. An AL team with a full time DH and a 13 man pitching staff will only have three players on the bench, while an NL team with an 11 man pitching staff will have six players on the bench. Most teams will be somewhere in between. A good bench needs to have players who between them can play every position at about an average level, one pinch runner, one player who can get on base reasonably well, a player with power from the left side of the plate, and one with power from the right side. The challenge of gathering these players is made more difficult because the best players are usually starters so most bench players will have some of these skills, but also have significant weaknesses that prevent them from having starting roles.

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Escaping from Our Escapism-Why We Care So Much About Baseball Prospects

There is a small minority of fans who seem to fetishize prospects, and would like their teams to essentially never play for the present, but to accumulate as many prospects or draft picks as possible. These fans are the baseball equivalent ofShel Silverstein’s Lester who used all his wished for more wishes and ended up dead surrounded by his wishes. Fans that always want to trade away players for prospects because the prospect or the draft pick might hold something better are like the guy at the party who is constantly looking over the shoulder of whoever he is talking to looking for somebody more attractive. The team that is run that way will never win anything, just as the guy at the party will always go home alone.

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A New Voting System for the Hall of Fame

Every few years the Hall of Fame seeks to address some of these issues, usually by adjusting the process for electing people outside of the annual ballot through changes to the veteran’s committee and the like. However, the method for voting on the players in the annual ballot has remained largely unchanged since the early days of the Hall of Fame. The requirement that a player must get 75% of the votes cast to win induction is something of an unusual voting system which differs from the BBWAA voting system for baseball awards, which is done through rank order voting and the fan’s vote for the All Star Game which is based on a simple plurality.

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Passing the Steroid Buck-Major League Baseball and Hall of Fame Voting

The recent Hall of Fame balloting yielded some interesting results. First, for the first time in several years there were no false positives. The two players elected, Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar, were well deserving of the honor and in no way bring down the overall quality of players in the Hall of Fame. This is different than each of the last two years when the election of borderline candidates like Jim Rice and Andre Dawson troubled many because many clearly superior players, for example Tim Raines, did not get elected while other superior players, like Will Clark, who were contemporaries of these two received little or no support when they were on the ballot.

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Joba to the Rotation-Yankees Have Nothing to Lose

If Chamberlain remains in the bullpen, the best case scenario for him will be that he emerges as the setup man pitching, at best between 70-100 innings, mostly during the seventh or eighth inning. He could also, however, be the fourth righty, and fifth pitcher overall, out of the Yankee bullpen, meaning he would pitch something like 50 innings, primarily in low leverage situations. He will most likely end up somewhere in between these two poles.

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Five Questions for 2011

There were several reasons why 2010 was a memorable baseball season. Fans of the San Francisco Giants saw their team win the World Series for the first time ever in San Francisco, while Texas Ranger fans saw their team play in the World Series for the first time ever. There were two perfect games and one almost perfect game thrown. Pitching dominated the game to an extent not seen for years. New stars such as Joey Votto emerged while proven stars like Roy Halladay switched leagues but otherwise maintained their dominant level of play. The trends and events raise some interesting questions to look at as the 2011 season approaches with bearing both on and off the field.

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Maybe the Phillies Won't Win the Pennant

The Phillies will probably still be a very good team in 2011 with a four man pitching rotation that could carry them very far into the post-season. However, there are still scenarios where things could go wrong for them. Key hitters could continue their declines; Werth could prove difficult to replace; or their pitchers might not all have great years like they did in 2010. More interestingly, the Phillies have become a team big market team with all the advantages, such as the ability to sign Cliff Lee, and disadvantages like being old and committed to big contracts that are almost impossible to move, like Ryan Howard’s. Big market teams sign the best players, but they also set very high expectations, favor veterans, and often overpay for talent. This will also be the Phillies’ story in 2011.

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Have the Yankees Gone Soft

If the Yankees are transitioning into a new era-nobody ever says rebuilding in Yankeeland-the Jeter and Rivera signings make little sense, but that seems to be what the Yankees are doing as they look for young players to handle much of the pitching rotation and perhaps some of the catching. In this context, the simplest explanation for resigning Rivera and Jeter, particularly Jeter, for the numbers the Yankees agreed upon is that the Yankees have let sentiment and their own spin override baseball decisions and that they have gone soft.

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The 2011 Hall of Fame Ballot-The New Candidates

There are nineteen new players on this year’s Hall of Fame ballot: Carlos Baerga, Jeff Bagwell, Brett Boone, Kevin Brown, John Franco, Juan Gonzalez, Marquis Grissom, Lenny Harris, Bobby Higginson, Charles Johnson, Al Leiter, Tino Martinez, Raul Mondesi, John Olerud, Rafael Palmeiro, Kirk Reuter, Benito Santiago, B.J. Surhoff and Larry Walker. There are no new candidates this year that can be expected to easily get elected. The closest to this is Jeff Bagwell, who is deserving of the Hall of Fame, but is not viewed as a sure thing. There are, however, several players on the ballot who, while being good players, in some cases for many years, are clearly not Hall of Famers. This group includes Baerga, Boone, Grissom, Harris, Higginson, Johnson, Leiter, Martinez, Mondesi, Reuter, Santiago and Surhoff. That leaves a diverse group of seven players including Bagwell, Brown, Franco, Gonzalez, Olerud, Palmeiro and Walker whose candidacies should at least be seriously considered.

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The 2011 Hall of Fame Ballot-Returning Candidates

There are 14 players on the 2011 Hall of Fame ballot who are return candidates from 2010: Roberto Alomar, Harold Baines, Bert Blyleven, Barry Larkin, Edgar Martinez, Don Mattingly, Fred McGriff, Mark McGwire, Jack Morris, Dale Murphy, Dave Parker, Tim Raines, Lee Smith and Alan Trammell. This exceptionally strong group of returning players, particularly given the relatively weak pool of first time players on the ballot, suggests that at least some of them will be elected in 2011.

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Derek Jeter, the New York Yankees and the Absence of Alternatives

The economic logic of Jeter coming back to the Yankees remains quite strong especially because neither Jeter nor the Yankees have any other real options. The messages coming from both sides seem more about trying to influence the final offer by a few million dollars one way or the other than really exploring alternatives. Nonetheless, these public spats can get nasty quickly. If the fight gets so bad that negotiations collapse, the real loser will be Jeter who will have to sign somewhere else for a lot less money. The Yankees will also be worse off in the short run, because they will be weaker at shortstop. Perhaps that would lead them to taking a year or two and rebuilding rather than overpaying for other free agents after losing Jeter, but that is not the Yankee way either.

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The Momentum Myth

The concept of momentum is bandied about during the post-season as a way for the media to explain and analyze the post-season developments and individual post-season series. Momentum is used as a default explanation for why any given team is winning any given series. When announcers cannot explain outcomes any other way, or want to infuse drama into an otherwise one-sided series, they can talk about momentum, shifting momentum, deflating momentum and other clichés.

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