keep it simple

haven’t posted in a zillion yrs, my life taken over temporarily by another writing project. but here’s something quick n easy n worth the time: tom meagher at sabernomics has come up w a new projection system which he calls the sabernomics simple projection system, or ssps. (tip o cap to baseball musings.) meagher ran 2005 projections for ev’y major league hitter who got 150 pa in 2004 (ceptin’ larry walker, apparently, since i could not find the old buzzard). the cardinals’ projections herewith: batting avg, oba, slg, ops

reg’lars
eckstn 284 / 333 / 380 / 713
pujols 323 / 405 / 589 / 994
rolen 300 / 384 / 550 / 935
edmnd 288 / 401 / 597 / 998
grud’k 285 / 333 / 428 / 761
sanders 263 / 331 / 487 / 818
molina 291 / 347 / 443 / 790

bench
cedeno 273 / 335 / 423 / 758
hluna 275 / 328 / 436 / 764
mabry 276 / 350 / 498 / 847
tagchi 282 / 332 / 417 / 750

god bless’m if he’s right about molina; a line like that and we’d never notice edgar’s bat missing. but i’m with you — i’ll believe it when i see it. he’s got mabry outslugging and out-oba’ing sanders — platoon? — and projects that little scrapster eckstein to keep scrappin’. and if’n he’s wrong about eckstein . . . . well then maybe he’s right about luna, who’s a better fielder to begin with and, by these lights, a more productive bat. but hold on: ssps predicts signif productivity declines for all three of the bats that matter most, albt jimmy and scotty. and i can’t say i disagree: all three either set or tied career highs for homers in 2004 (more on this soon, i hope), and both rolen and edmonds set new standards in slugging and ops. you betcha they’re going to slide.

in any case, it’s an untested system and not likely to be worth more than any of the other ones out there (ie, not worth a lot). but to the extent it has any value at all, i think it bodes more good than ill. will keep an eye on it.

what mcgwire should have said

in a just world, mark mcgwire would/could have said something like this last thursday:

ok, i did it. but all the rest of you did too.

while i was juicing my body with steroids, you were juicing your profit margins with bogus bandwidth transactions. i used artificial inputs to inflate my home run totals; you used them to inflate your stock returns. i acquired obscenely large forearms; you acquired mcmansions and hummers and 2d homes in colorado. i was addicted to testosterone enanthate and winstrol and equipoise; you were addicted to campaign cash and venture capital and misleading quarterly reports. same stuff, different format. all of us were on the juice back in those days.

we were bulking up and loving every minute of it. nobody cared how you did it — whether you bulked up in the weightroom or with a syringe; whether you built up solid revenues or cooked the books and created paper profits that didn’t really exist. my biceps, your earnings projections — everyone knew they might be fake, but so what? didn’t matter back then. bulk alone mattered. as long as everyone agreed to keep up the pretense that the bulk was real, we all got ahead.

it didn’t seem wrong at the time. we were all profiting hand over fist, so why quibble about whether the bulk was honestly come by? stupid question; kind of thing that’d make people roll their eyes at you. a question like that completely missed the point; the point back then was to keep serving up the bulk, keep hitting the homers, keep driving those double-digit returns on wall street. 70 dingers, 12,000 on the dow — just keep up the pretense. just don’t burst the bubble.

now the bubble is burst. now the pretense is no longer shared. two days ago, bernie ebbers got convicted for securities fraud. and here we are today in front of this committee, and you ladies and gentlemen ask us in all apparent earnestness: is baseball on the level? i roll my eyes at you and say: stupid question. you already know the answer; you see it ev’y time you look in the mirror.

let me say a word to those who believe that i and barry bonds and sammy sosa should give back our mvp awards and our home run titles. i'll give mine back when you give back your stock-option windfalls; when you shed the bulk (the homes, the suvs, the retirement accounts) that you amassed with the help of artificial enhancements; when you disavow your pacs and your 529s and resign the offices purchased thereby. let all that happen, and i'll come clean too. but you better drop your own pretenses first before you come after mine.

cubs v cards: round 3

i’ll weigh in shortly about david pinto’s eye-opening charts revealing the holes in david eckstein’s range. for now, suffice to say that the charts do nothing to assuage my concerns.

meantime, here’s installment 3 of the chi-stl 2004 series review.
part 1 here
part 2 here


SERIES 3: JUNE 7-10, at CHICAGO

CONTEXT: the cardinals mean to make a summer of it; they’re 9-3 since their last meeting with the cubs and have moved into 2d place, a game behind the surprising reds. the cubs’ injuries are catching up to them; they’re 4-9 since the last series and have fallen to within 2 games of .500, three games behind st louis. sosa and wood remain on the shelf, and borowski has joined them there. but prior is back and apparently healed — six shutout innings in his first start — and the season is long; no way the cubs can struggle like this all summer. not once they get healthy.

SERIES SUMMARY: the cards yield 26 runs in four games and get just one game score above 32 from their starters, yet they still manage (what else) a split, with another 1-run win (their 4th of the year vs chicago) and a 12-4 thrashing of mark prior. the cards outhit the cubs in that game for the first time all season. and, despite playing the whole series without albert pujols, they swat at least two dingers in every game and out-hr chicago 9-6 for the series. and the longballs count — hrs knock in all four of stl’s runs in their series-opening 4-3 win, and 8 of their 12 in the game 3 triumph. the cubs win all the macrostatistical battles decisively — runs, rc, ba, ops, der — but continue not to capitalize on those advantages in the standings. and their frustration is starting to show — derek lee reacts to a brushback pitch in game three, and the benches empty. no punches thrown, but in retrospect it looks like a telling moment, a shift in dynamic: the cards acting like alpha dogs, the cubs feeling threatened.

PIVOTAL MOMENT: first game, bottom 5th, cards clinging to 4-3 lead. chris carpenter is fading badly — over the last eight hitters he’s yielded five hits, incl two doubles and a homer (to glendon rusch). with jose macias at 2d and one out, mike barrett laces yet another hit, but macias gets a lousy jump and has to stop at 3d; shoulda scored. but no matter, seemingly: carp’ter promptly falls behind 2-0 to alou and appears to want no part of him; ramirez waits on deck. then alou reaches outside the zone and lifts a fly to center; not deep, but prob’y deep enough for speedy macias. edmonds tho uncorks a perfect throw to the plate and nails the runner on a close play. and that turns out to be the ballgame; no baserunner from either side reaches scoring position for the rest of of the afternoon.

BY THE NUMBERS:
runs: chi 26-22
hits: chi 48-31
hrs: stl 9-6
rc: chi 31.9 - 20.8
ops: chi 931 - 831
der, chi 755 - 645

THE SEASON TO DATE: in their first 11 games vs st louis, the cubs have gotten eight game scores of 60 or above out of their rotation; the cardinals have gotten just one. cubs have now outhit the cards 112-76 — an advantage of three a game — outslugged them by 93 points, out-onbased them by 52. and they have created 20 more runs than st louis, 61-41 --- nearly two a game. they’ve done all this largely without sosa, wood, and prior. that they have squandered games seems to make the cubs more complacent, rather than less; they know they’ll have plenty more chances and that, sooner or later, the luck will even out. the cards meanwhile seem to sense the opposite — they are walking a pretty fine line, stealing wins by the barest of margins. they lead the cubs by three games but play with a healthy dose of insecurity — the knowledge that they cannot afford many mistakes. in the coming weeks they will channel this fear into a teamwide vigilance, a kind of hyperconcentration — the do-no-wrongness that lets you win games despite being outhit and outpitched. some dismiss it as luck, others exalt it as "character" or "professionalism" — but whatever it is, you can’t manufacture it; it evolves. many commentators remarked upon this quality late in the season, after it had reached full flower and the cards had played an entire summer of .750 baseball. but here, in early june, the cards are nothing special. they’re becoming special — and will make even more significant progress toward specialness in their next series vs the cubs.

JUN 7
stl 4 6 1
chi 3 9 1
w: carpenter 7-1
l: rusch 2-1
s: isringhausen 13
hr: rolen 14, sanders 10, patterson 7, rusch 1

JUN 8
stl 3 6 2
chi 7 13 1
w: clement 7-4
l: williams 3-6
hr: rolen 15, 16

JUN 9
stl 12 13 1
chi 4 10 1
w: morris 6-5
l:prior 0-1
hr: renteria 4, edmonds 11+12, patterson 8

JUN 10
stl 3 6 1
chi 12 15 0
w: zambrano 7-2
l: haren 0-1
hr: mabry 1, lankford 5, alou 15, lee 7, t. walker 7

cubs v cards, round 2

the saga began with series 1, april 30-may 3 and continues here:

SERIES 2: MAY 21-23, at CHICAGO

CONTEXT: since splitting series 1 with the cubs, the cardinals have gone 9-6, winning 4 of 5 series — an early hint of the great consistency that will become the hallmark of their season. they remain 2.5 games out of 1st, in 4th place, but there are stirrings. the main thing stirring for the cubs, meanwhile, is the disabled list — sosa and wood have joined prior and grudzielanek there, and kent mercker will soon join them. for all that, they continue to win — 8-7 since the first meeting with st louis and 23-17 overall (a 92-win pace), in 2d place, a game behind the astros. they are still the team to beat; just gotta get healthy.

SERIES SUMMARY: cubs dominate again despite starting aaa callups sergio mitre and glendon rusch in the first two games of the series. mitre gets pounded in the opener, but once he leaves the mound the cubs smother the cardinal bats — stl goes 9 for 73 with 4 runs scored over the series' remaining 22 innings. but they score 7 during mitre’s five-inning stint, which nets them a win — and the cards are lucky to have it. despite holding the advantage in all three pitching pairings and facing an injury-thinned lineup, the cards gets outscored 11-17 --- and 4-14 when mitre's not pitching.

PIVOTAL GAME: the rubber game pits matt clement against matt morris, who at this juncture is still considered the cards’ ace. thru his 1st 9 starts he’s 4-3 with a 3.70 era, and he already has goosed the cubs once this season, throwing 9 shutout innings at them on may 2. but morris has established a troubling pattern of sucking every other start — game scores below 50 in his 1st 3d 5th 7th and 9th appearances, but above 60 in his 2d 4th 6th and 8th starts. this being his 10th start, morris is due to throw well — and he does, holding the cubs scoreless for six innings . . . . the 2d thru the 7th. but there is a 1st inning, and morris hurls it like sergio mitre: 4 runs on 5 hits (incl 2 doubles and a homer). clement, meanwhile, hurls like mark prior, holding the cards to three hits over eight innings. two of the hits are solo hr, which keeps the score close at 4-3 — but in the 9th joe borowski mows down the heart of the order to clinch the series for chicago.

BY THE NUMBERS:
runs: chi, 17-11
hits: chi, 29-19
hrs: chi, 6-4
rc: chi, 18.5 - 8.4
ops: chi, 853 - 600
der, chi 778 - 716


SEASON TO DATE: after seven games, the cubs have made it abundantly clear that they’re the better team. they have outscored the cardinals 31-21, outhit them 64-45, outhomered them 10-7, and out-ops’d them 785-620; they have outhit st louis six times and tied them once. altho they only lead the series 4-3, the margin will surely increase once the cubs get their players healthy and sort out their problems in the bullpen. as the clubs part ways, the cubs lead the cardinals by 2.5 and the astros by a game; they’re tied for 1st with the reds, 7 games over .500 despite their terrible run of injuries. the cardinals, at 23-21, don’t look they’ll achieve liftoff any time soon — not with morris and woody williams (1-5) struggling, and not with pujols edmonds and renteria all batting in the .270 range. a quarter of the way through the year, the team stands 4th in the league in runs scored and 11th in runs allowed (the cubs rank 5th and 1st, respectively). stl fans, if they’re honest, just hope the cards can stay competitive for the wildcard; the team clearly does not have the firepower to keep up with the cubs.


MAY 21
stl 7 10 1
chi 6 11 2
w: carpenter 5-1
l: mitre 2-3
s: isringhausen 8
hr: pujols 11, edmonds 10, barrett 6+7, walker 5, alou 12


MAY 22
stl 1 6 2
chi 7 8 0
w: rusch 2-0
l: williams 1-5
hr: hollandsworth 5


MAY 23
stl 3 3 0
chi 4 10 0
w: clement 6-3
l: morris 4-4
s: borowski 8

cubs v cards, round 1

the cardinals so thoroughly whipped the cubs in the standings last year that it’s easy to overlook how close the teams played each other head to head. altho st. louis took the set 11-8, the cubs outscored the cardinals 94-92 — this despite getting just three starts from prior and wood. stl played some of its tightest (ie, most error-free) baseball vs chicago last year, while the cubs displayed the same train-wreck sloppiness that characterized the rest of their schedule. still, many of the games could have gone either way; had the cubs not f**ked up so reliably in game situations, the summer might have had a much, much different tenor in mid-america. with a card-cub dogfight looming in 05, a close look back at 04 might be instructive — and even if it isn’t, there are worse ways to wait out the exhibition season.

SERIES 1: APRIL 30-MAY 3, at ST LOUIS

CONTEXT: cubs enter the series in 1st place at 13-8 (7-3 over prev 10); this without mark prior, on the shelf since spring training. fifth-place stl is a cipher, its various new parts still trying to mesh — 11-11 overall record (5-5 prev 10) includes 2-5 showing vs lowly milwaukee and an 0-3 sweep at home vs houston, but a gaudy 7-2 mark on the road. cardinals have many questions and few answers — with the biggest question being, can they stay on the field with the cubs?

SERIES SUMMARY: cub pitchers dominate — 4 bb, 33 so in 30 innings pitched — but bullpen gives two games away in cards’ last at-bat. tied 3-3 in bottom 9 of the opener, the relievers issue four walks, the last to mike matheny with the sacks jammed to force in the winning run. tied 0-0 in bottom 10 of game 3, they walk the sacks full again, then finally get a strike over with scott rolen batting; he whacks gwh to warning track. despite outhitting stl in three of the four games (and tying in the fourth) and besting stl in ops by 100 points, the cubs still only manage a split.

PIVOTAL GAME: 1st game foreshadows the two teams’ divergent paths for ‘04. cubs get 8 strong innings from wood, outhit the cards 10-5, but piss the game away with little lapses. in the top of the 4th, with cubs leading 2-0, mike barrett misses a two-run hr by inches (foul ball); tho he doubles a few pitches later, matheney pegs a basestealer in the interim, spoiling the rally. in the bottom of the 6th an errant throw from wood sails down the right field line, putting womack on third base with nobody out (he scores on a sac fly — unearned run). in top 9 with the score tied, cubs get leadoff walk but alex gonzalez bunts into a dp (catcher short first), negating the two singles (barrett and hollandsworth) that immediately follow; todd walker grounds out to 2b to end the threat. bottom half, after leadoff walks to pujols and edmonds, la russa takes bat out of hands of red-hot scott rolen (27 rbi in 22 games) by ordering the bunt; successful execution puts winning run at third but (predictably) costs the cards’ ed renteria’s bat as well, as baker orders him intentionally walked to restore the force play. sanders obligingly pops up for the 2d out, and when latroy hawkins gets ahead of mike matheney 0-2 it appears the cards will blow the opportunity. instead hawkins throws four straight balls and gift-wraps the win for st louis.

so it will go for these two teams all season long — the cards defense taking runners off the basepaths at key junctures, the cubs’ head-case bullpenners generously giving away bases, runs, and victories.

BY THE NUMBERS:
runs: chi, 14-10
hits: chi, 35-26
hrs: chi, 4-3
rc: chi, 17.8 - 12.6
ops: chi, 738 - 634
der, stl 736 - 698
dp, stl 5-3

cub starters: 30 ip, 20 h, 6 er, 4 bb, 33 so
cub bullpen: 6 ip, 6 h, 4 er, 11 bb, 4 so

WHAT IF . . . the cubs had swept the series, as they had ev’y opportunity to do? such would have left the cards in last place, 7 games behind chi in the loss column and lower still in morale. woulda made for a far diff’nt season . . . . instead the teams parted as they convened, chi now tied for 1st w houston at 15-10, stl still 5th, still 2.5 gb, still trying to establish an identity.

how close did stl come to getting swept? compare their numbers for this 4-game set vs what they compiled while getting swept out of the world series:
v chi: 10 r, 126 ab, 26 h, 42 tb, 15 w, 37 k
v bos: 12 r, 126 ab, 24 h, 38 tb, 12 w, 32 k

APRIL 30
chi 3 10 1
stl 4 5 0
w: kline 1-1
l: farnsworth 0-1
hr: sanders 8

MAY 1
chi 4 9 0
stl 2 7 0
w: clement 4-1
l: suppan 2-3
s: borowski 6
hr: ramirez 7

MAY 2
chi 0 5 0
stl 1 5 1
w: isringhausen 2-0
l: farnsworth 0-2

MAY 3
chi 7 11 1
stl 3 8 0
w: maddux 2-2
l: marquis 1-2
hr: pujols 8, edmonds 6, t. walker 3, lee 3, sosa 6