Lincoln Mitchell

Blog

This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

Posted in: Baseball

West Coast Pitching Dominance

While the origins of this difference between the West Coast and the Northeast may be partially economic, partially random and partially due to ballpark effects, the result is that a distinct West Coast style of baseball has evolved. The home run heavy, weak starting pitching and strong veteran bullpen approach best represented by the New York Yankees is not tried by any West Coast team; and the Red Sox are the only East Coast team with any young starting pitches, Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester, who are good enough and young enough to stand out in the west. Given the recent success of the Giants, who one quarter of the way into this season, are still playing very well, this model, which seems to be applicable in Florida as well, may catch on among mid-sized market teams outside of the West Coast, thus becoming yet another trend that originates in California and makes its way east.

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Jorge Posada and Baseball's Social Contract

The social contract in baseball is that while players are extremely well paid, they also must play well to hold onto their jobs. Although the numbers may have changed over the years, this has remained a constant. Posada is undoubtedly frustrated with this at the moment, but he will not be able to change the reality of this social contract. If Posada and the Yankees are wise they will agree to put this incident behind them and fete Posada, who has been a great player for the Yankees for a long time, for a month or two during which he either starts hitting or retires. As the Yankees probably already figured out, they need to handle this situation right without dragging it out too long, because a similar fate awaits Derek Jeter in the next year or two.

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The Yankees and the Jeter Paradox

The decline of Derek Jeter may be the most over-reported story of 2011, especially because the decline began in 2010. Therefore it may come as a surprise that as of Monday morning, following Jeter’s home run outburst in Texas, only seven shortstops had played 150 or more games during 2010 and 2011 while maintaining an OPS+ better than Jeter’s 90. An eighth shortstop, Marco Scutaro, had an identical OPS+ of 90 during this period.

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For Some Teams and Players the Season is Getting Late Early Already

After about twenty games or so, however, something interesting happens. The numbers begin to take on more meaning as trends become discernible making it easier to determine which players may have lost a step or have become legitimately better and what off-season roster moves will work out. Obviously, it is a long season in which games and championships are usually decided in the margins, but these general trends become visible at around this point. The line between the sample size being too small and real trends becoming apparent is not altogether obvious. As Yogi Berra might say, the season gets late early sometimes.

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Expanding the Playoffs Solves the Wrong Problem

The efforts to expand the current baseball playoffs so that a total of ten, rather than eight teams, earn a post-season berth is a good effort to solve a relatively minor problem, that will do nothing to address the more serious issue facing competitiveness in baseball. The alleged problem is that too many teams are never in the running for a playoff spot thus causing fans to lose interest early in the season, while the same small handful of teams dominate the playoffs.

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Are Long Term Contracts a Luxury Tax?

Long term contracts are unavoidable for big market teams, because in baseball teams still pay for past performance leading players and their agents to still be able to demand long term contracts. In practice this amounts to something of a luxury tax all but guaranteeing that big market teams will overpay for players during the last years of their big contracts. Adding big contracts every year is the cost of trying to compete every season. This tax pushes money to the players and not to the lower payroll teams, but it can be punitive nonetheless. For example, while most small market teams probably wish they could have afforded Rodriguez during his first years with the Yankees, very few will want him during the years 2013-2017 when the Yankees will be paying him more than $110 million while he is in his late thirties and early forties.

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Manny Ramirez, Derek Jeter and the Inevitability of Aging

Ramirez and Jeter were rivals, but also had very different public personas. Jeter sought to avoid controversy, was rarely an interesting interview, was deeply competitive, tried to conduct himself with dignity and seemed to personify what Yankee fans think of as Yankee dignity. Ramirez was something of a goofball often good for a funny line, made more mental mistakes in a typical month than Jeter would make in a decade, and was outgoing and gregarious in a way that Jeter never was. Ramirez was also controversial and often became something of a burden to his teams. Much of this was dismissed as “Manny being Manny,” whatever that meant.

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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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