A) I DON'T KNOW HOW THEY DO IT

I think the most frustrating thing about this season is the sharp contrast with the Yankees. Both teams [the Yankees and Red Sox] have had numerous problems, more than they could have pessimistically expected before the season. Yet the Yankees have ignored their problems and are running away with the best record in the AL while the Red Sox are simply praying for a spot in the playoffs.

- Ben Jacobs

If we knew at the start of the season that the Yankees would suffer the following:

1) Kevin Brown would be out for two months, with Mike Mussina being out for almost as long and ineffective when he did pitch;

2) Jason Giambi, wracked by parasites and tumors, would give the team very little for virtually the whole season;

3) The performances of new acquisitions Javier Vazquez and Alex Rodriguez would be slightly below expectations (it's true);

4) Jose Contreras would implode faster than ... a rickety raft sailing from Cuba to Florida;

5) Being forced to give 11 starts to the group of Donovan Osbourne, Alex Graman, Brad Halsey and Tanyon Sturtze;

6) A surprising offensive decline from Derek Jeter, along with Bernie Williams failing to wholly reverse his slide;

7) Second base being manned by Miguel Cairo for virtually the entire season; and

8) Not adding any star players via an in-season trade, despite rampant speculation;

then most baseball fans would have predicted that the Red Sox would at least be even with the Yankees, if not far ahead. Yet the reverse is true. How?

1) The offense, of course, is the biggest factor. Check out the AL leaderboard of Win Shares ; showing Sheffield and Matsui tied for the lead in the AL as of August 12. Even with A-Rod's slightly diminished production, having 3 of the top 6 players in the league is a pretty good foundation. Matsui has essentially replaced Giambi's production; he's finally fulfilling the hype that accompanied his 2003 debut and is a reasonable contender for the MVP award (which would do wonders for the US-Japan relationship). Imagine what'd be if Giambi had contributed this year!

Almost as important to the Yankees' offense is the lack of a truly weak link in their usual lineup. For example, the Red Sox offense has two hitters almost as valuable as the Yankees' trio in Manny and David Ortiz, but Pokey Reese does his best to counteract their contributions, and his negative impact is accentuated by the fact that (at least before the Nomah trade) he played most of the time he was healthy. Enrique Wilson and John Flaherty would be up to the task, but they don't play enough to really hurt the team. Even the Yankees' lesser players - Clark, Cairo, Sierra, et al - have done enough positive things to avoid dragging the offense down. Combine that with the contributions of the big three, and you have a pretty good offense.

2) The bullpen - specifically, the "Quan-Gor-Mo" combination - has received plenty of credit, and deserves it. As of August 5, the Yankees' bullpen was ranked eighth in baseball by Baseball Prospectus' "Adjusted Runs Prevented" (BP hasn't updated since then), a big improvement over last year. (As is often the case, the trio of Quantrill, Gordon and Rivera total is higher than the team total - the other dwarves in the bullpen drag down the total. This is a good omen for the postseason, as those dwarves won't be seen within 60'6" of the mound in a playoff game the Yankees have any chance to win.)

3) The Yanks' defense is much improved over last year; they are in the middle of the AL in Defensive Efficiency (I believe they were second-to-last last year). Lofton, despite not being at his best, has been an improvement over Bernie in CF. The most notable change has been in the infield, which will be discussed below.

4) Luck - as noted last week, the Yankees are overachieving compared to their expected record (as has been customary throughout the Torre era), while the Red Sox are catastrophically underachieving compared to their expected record for the second time in three years.

B) OH CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN

Switching 19th century writers, this has been a tale of two seasons for Derek Jeter. And I'm not talking about before versus after his catastrophic early-season slump - I'm talking about his offense versus his defense.

After his horrific early-season slump, Jeter's superficial offensive numbers don't look out of place with the rest of his career, except for his batting average being slightly below normal. But look closer, and his production is still way off his career norms for one very specific reason: he's stopped walking. From 1997-2002, Jeter walked between 57-91 times each year (and was at that pace in his injury-shortened 2003 as well), resulting in an OBP that never dropped below .370. This year, he's on pace to walk fewer than 40 times and his OBP is .332. Whether it's residual bad habits picked up during his slump, nostalgia for the departed Alfonso Soriano or something else, it amounts to a substantial decrease in his offensive production.

But that may be balanced out by perhaps the most shocking development of the 2004 baseball season: Jeter's improved defense. Prior to the season, the debate over the quality of Jeter's defense ranged from whether he was the worst in the league to whether he was below average, but not the worst in the league. That's not a debate Jeter supporters would like to get into. The consensus of informed opinion (and not-so-informed opinion) was that the Yankees would be losing out on the full benefits of the A-Rod acquisition by moving him to 3B and leaving Jeter at shortstop.

While it's impossible to prove a negative, it's difficult to imagine how that solution would have worked better than the much-maligned shift of A-Rod to 3B. A-Rod has been outstanding at his new position. And Jeter is actually second in the AL in fielding Win Shares among shortstops, and has accumulated more than four times the amount he amassed last year (in comparable playing time due to his injury). By this metric, Jeter has gone from one of the worst fielding shortstops in baseball to one of the best. That calls up memories of Vizzini's lisp: "Inconceivable!" I can't find any in-season calculations of the other advanced defensive metrics (such as UZR or Baseball Prospectus' Fielding Runs), but I assume that an improvement in Win Shares of this magnitude would show up in the other metrics as well, even if not to the same extent.

How did it happen? Perhaps A-Rod's shortstop-like range has enabled Jeter to cheat to his left, but this effect didn't show up when Jeter played with Brosius, a superior defender.

Maybe sabermetrics has had an impact after all. In an e-mail to me on the subject, David Pinto wrote:

In the 1990's, I wrote a piece in one of the STATS Baseball Scoreboards
about Griffey's defense in center. He always ranked low in our zone
ratings. So I did a really detailed study of Griffey's zone ratings, and
the main thing I learned from it was that (this from memory, I should really
dig out the article) was that Griffey was basically letting his left and
right fielders make a lot of plays that other centerfielders normally make.
Griffey was being lazy, and not calling for every ball he could get (which
is a CF's job, after all). Griffey's zone ratings started going up after
that.

I like to speculate that we in the sabermetric community have an effect on
the game. It takes a long time, but every once in a while I see something
that says to me, "they're listening to us." I wonder if someone talked to
Griffey and told him to start going after more balls? And certainly Cashman
is smart enough to know that Jeter was a bad shortstop. Did he or Torre
find a way to confront Jeter with the numbers? Did all the talk of A-Rod
being a better shortstop get to him? I don't know, but between you and me,
I like to think these numbers had an effect.

I hope so. One thing is for sure: I haven't been this wrong about anything since I spent two days telling my brother that Scott Brosius had no chance whatsoever to get a hit off Byun-Hyun Kim in the 2001 World Series..or when I drank the sabermetric Kool-Aid and thought the Yankees should have traded Soriano instead of Jiminez in 2001 (true story: I got into this with Joe Sheehan at a BP Pizza Feed a couple of years ago)...or when I was convinced that Drew Henson would become a star...or when I thought that Ed Yarnall would be as good as Andy Pettite...

C - FINISH (OFF) WHAT YOU START

Much ink has been spilled / pixels have been displayed bemoaning the sub-par performance of the Yankee starters. Let me suggest a very simple explanation, and it doesn't have anything to do with the heart, fortitude, big-game ability, etc. of the departed starters from last year (whom we all love...sometimes, in Wells' case):

Last year, these were the strikeout ratios of the Yankee top four starters:

Name 2003 K/9
Clemens 9.0
Pettite 8.6
Mussina 9.1
Wells 4.7

Wells' was shockingly low, but the other 3 were very high and enabled the team to avoid its then-shaky defense.

Here are the 2003 ratios for the top four starters in today's Yankee rotation (not counting El Duque):

Name 2003 K/9
Mussina 9.1
Brown 8.8
Vazquez 10.4
Lieber 6.2 (from 2002)

Finally, here's how the current Yankee foursome has done this year:

Name 2004 K/9
Mussina 6.3
Brown 5.6
Vazquez 6.7
Lieber 4.6

Guys, take your pick: approach the performance of your 2003 predecessors, or what you did yourselves last year. Either one will do. Notwithstanding the team's improved defense, it seems to me that the #1 culprit in the starters' problems has been too few strikeouts. A far more strikeout-oriented staff was annihilated by Anaheim in the 2002 playoffs; with the Angels again among the league leaders in fewest batting strikeouts, I shudder to think of the butchery that might result if those two met again. (We'll get a preview in their series next week.)

D) THE GHOST OF MARIANO DUNCAN

A key part of the Yankees' 1996 championship season was the freakish performance of one Mariano Duncan, who seized the 2B job, hit .340 and slugged .500, and was annointed the "team leader" by the media because he bought some T-shirts with an inane slogan. When his "leadership" failed him the next season, along with his bat and glove, the Yankees turned to the lovable Luis Sojo, who - for the one time in his U.S. playing life other than the 2000 World Series - hit enough to actually be useful (.307 batting average, .355 OBP). When his season was ended in August by an errant fastball to the wrist, the Yankees traded for the slick-fielding Rey Sanchez, who completed the unholy trinity of flukish performances by hitting .312 with a .758 OPS. That off-season, the Yankees decided not to tempt fate a fourth time and traded for a then-legitimate star in Chuck Knoblauch. And all was well, until the first time he tried throwing to first base...

Apparently, the Yankees' deal with Mephistopheles contained an option clause.

While Enrique Wilson, unable to face Pedro Martinez every time out, has done his best to drag the Yankees' offense down, Miguel Cairo has drawn deserved plaudits for his performance. Even with a recent slump, Cairo's OPS is .756 - not great, but by comparison, Jeter's is .770 (see above re: his decrease in walks) and the departed Soriano's is .812 after a recent hot streak; he was almost even with Cairo for much of the season. And the Cairo-Wilson combination has been more than adequate defensively (better than Soriano). While I expect the Yankees to acquire a better 2B in the offseason, Cairo has enabled the team to focus on other areas for now. (Not necessarily improve those other areas - thank you, Arizona and the Yankees drafting personnel - but focus on them nonetheless.)

E) "MOST PUTRIFIED CORE"

Near the end of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, Hector brings onstage a soldier he has newly killed and remarks:

Most putrified core so fair without,
Thy goodly armour thus hath cost thy life.

As Professor Edward Tayler notes, one of the themes accentuated by the scene is the unnaturally rapid decay of the body in question.

Yankee fans could be forgiven for feeling Shakespearean over the performance of Bernie Williams this year, and not in an eloquent way. Like the rapidly decaying soldier slain by Hector, the descent of Williams from consistent All-Star has been shockingly sudden. It appears that he will not reach the level of 1996-2002 again. He can still help the team in a complementary role, which will probably be his station next year (if he's not traded). But the star player the Yankees had for almost a decade is probably gone, and that is sad. I'd still vote for him for the Hall of Fame, but I don't expect people who actually have the power to will do the same.

AL EAST

Yankees

To be discussed in a separate post, as befitting their oh-so-regal status.

Red Sox

“How the East Was Lost” – the Sox have lost the division to the Yankees at three points:

1) When they, as Baseball Prospectus pointed out, treaded water after their April sweep in Yankee Stadium and allowed the Yankees to wipe out the accumulated deficit against the toughest part of their schedule. Once the Yankees went into June with a lead, it was that much tougher for the Sox to catch up.

2) After the sweep which culminated in the classic 13-inning game on July 1, the Yankees were wiped out. Promptly swept by the Mets (an event that, in almost any other year, would have caused apocalyptic overreactions from the Boss, and I don’t mean Bruce), the team treaded water for much of July, going 10-8. A Red Sox hot streak, long expected by most fans, would have made the race interesting again. Instead, the Sox also went 10-8 and thus frittered away another month.

3) Donating the shortstop formerly known as No-mah to the Cubs for 40 cents on the dollar, if that much. This trade has been picked over in cyberspace, and there’s no need to rehash it here. While I understand the necessity to get him out of town for non-performance reasons, the fact remains as stated by Jedi Master Beane in Moneyball: “The day you say you have to do something, you're screwed. Because you are going to make a bad deal.” (Quote may be somewhat inexact, as I don’t have the book with me.) I’m sure the Sox management knew this, but did the deal anyway. Theo Epstein may need more training before he can become a Sith Lord and challenge the Yankees (to invert Larry Lucchino’s infamous quote).

One other thing: Many people have noted that the Sox’s “Pythagorean” record (i.e., the record that they would expect to have based on their totals of runs scored and runs allowed) is just about identical to the Yankees, and drawn the conclusions that: (a) there is little if any difference between the quality of those teams, and (b) the Yankees’ superior record is mostly attributable to luck (though research has indicated that a superior bullpen such as “Quan-Gor-Mo” gives teams a small structural advantage on Pythagoras).
I buy both points, to a degree. But history is an interesting thing. Let’s look at the following comparisons:

Year Yankees’ “Pythagorean” Record Red Sox’s “Pythagorean” Record
2004
(through August 5) 59-48 61-45
2003 96-66 94-68
2002 99-62 100-62

(Note: 2002 and 2003 figures are from Baseball-reference com; 2004 figures are from Rob Neyer’s ESPN.com page. There is a minor difference in how they calculate the expected records: Baseball-reference uses the somewhat more accurate exponent of 1.83, while Rob’s page uses the traditional 2, for those who care.)

Pretty close, with the Red Sox having a small advantage in 2002 and 2004 (so far). Now let’s look at the real-world records:

Year Yankees’ Record Red Sox’s Record
2004
(through August 5) 68-39 59-48
2003 101-61 95-67
2002 103-58 93-69

The difference between the two teams may have largely been luck, but that luck seems to have been around for a while.

And no sooner do I write this than I see the following on Rob Neyer’s ESPN chat:

Tom (Upstate NY): The Yanks are leading the league because they're vastly outperforming their Pythagorean projection, but they've done this consistently since 1996. Eight of nine years they've beat Pythagorus since the dawn of the Torre-Rivera era, by a total of 37 wins. What's the cause of this amazing feat?: Torre's managerial skills?, Rivera and the rest of the bullpen?, or just plain luck? My money's on Rivera, et al, but what's you're call?

Rob Neyer: (11:57 AM ET ) Good question, Tom. The Twins have been doing the same thing, though not for as many years. The standard answer is that it's mostly luck, that the bullpen effect has been studied and found wanting. But I'd love to see a new study of the subject, because the Yankees do make you wonder.

Tampa Bay Devil Rays

How cool is it to not have the AL East teams in the same exact order for the seventh year in a row? Finally, Tampa Bay shows signs of joining the big leagues. Not only are they flirting with .500 and amassing a core of exciting, high-ceiling young talent (it’d be nice if, thanks to being rushed to the big leagues, Crawford and Baldelli wouldn’t be eligible for free agency just as they’re hitting their primes – but hey, you can’t expect the organization to be perfect after seven years of nothing but mistakes), but last week, they even made a good trade. After only seven years of trying! (I don’t have to tell Met fans which trade I’m referring to…)

Baltimore Orioles

Some short takes:

Miguel Tejada and Javy Lopez: Justifying their contracts, for now.

Palmeiro: Start the Cooperstown clock soon – it’s almost time. Could last a little longer if his at-bats are restricted to RHPs.

Melvin Mora: If not for Barry Bonds (and some injuries), the most incomprehensible player in all of baseball. Seriously - from an extra guy, at best a super-utility guy, to a 1.000 OPS over two seasons? And you can’t even criticize the Mets for trading him in 2000 – not even the Orioles thought he’d be anywhere close to this good.

Sidney Ponson: Fat. Bad. Lesson not to (with one exception, now pitching for the Giants) give a big-money contract to a pitcher based on potential when he hasn’t translated that into performance at any sustained point over the first six years of his career: priceless. (See, e.g.: Dreifort, Darren; Escobar, Kelvim (though he’s actually doing OK this year).)

Pitching in general (to opposing hitters): Yum.

Toronto Blue Jays

This is ground zero in the Moneyball wars, and it should be. Great things were expected out of the Blue Jays this season, as J.P. Ricciardi has had over two years to raze the team to its foundations and rebuild as he (sabermetrically) saw fit. Coming into the season, it looked like he’d done so: he made several well-regarded moves to strengthen the pitching staff of a team that had won 86 games in 2003, and had a farm system supposedly turning out star prospects by the dozen. It hasn’t worked out that way, in every respect.

The Ricciardi regime has already taken abuse on a number of counts from the media allies of the scouts he’s fired. If the Blue Jays do not rebound quickly next year, Ricciardi could be in trouble and the anti-analytic media suspects will be quick to draw broad conclusions.

AL CENTRAL

Minnesota Twins

Thanks to their multi-year hex over the White Sox (as well as the injuries to Frank Thomas and Magglio Ordonez), they’ll be going to the playoffs again. And while they finally cleared space for Justin Morneau (thanks to the Red Sox-Nomar divorce), they (wisely) passed on Benson. Accordingly, they’re poised to be a speed bump for the Yankees in the playoffs, again. (All caveats about small sample sizes, “$%%^$& not working in the playoffs,” etc. apply.)
The thing to watch over the next couple of years is whether they are able to continue focusing and stay ahead of the hard-charging Indians, or whether a combination of bad contracts (Hunter, Radke, Stewart, etc.) and indecisiveness regarding talent allocation (Morneau, the two-year delay in getting Santana into the rotation, etc.) closes their window of opportunity.

Chicago White Sox

As a Yankee fan…THANK YOU, KENNY WILLIAMS!

Seriously, things don’t look good: Williams culminated a multi-year trend of dissipating prospects by overpaying for Freddy Garcia, and exchanged a somewhat reliable Loaiza for … well, “reliable” is not the first adjective that comes to mind in describing a pitcher who needs a battalion of psychologists every time he falls behind 2-0 on a batter or sees a Red Sox uniform. And he took on a lot of money in the process. And the farm system is depleted. And Thomas and Ordonez are each hurt and probably soon to be gone. And the stadium is still the worst of the new generation of parks. And Chicago fans still barely notice…

Cleveland Indians

They’re following the sabermetrically-approved path of bashing other teams’ brains in first and figuring out the other side of the ball later: (See: 1999-2000 Athletics, 2003 Red Sox and Blue Jays). Because they’re in Cleveland and their GM is neither a former employee of Billy Beane nor a current employer of Bill James, the organization hasn’t attracted the attention it deserves as an analytically-run place. But it’s possible that no organization, except possibly the A’s, has integrated research and analysis as thoroughly as the Indians have. Check out this great Cleveland Plain-Dealer series from last year for a description.

Now, let’s hope they get the rest of their pitching staff together before C.C. Sabathia blows his arm out.

Detroit Tigers

“The Detroit Tigers are not part of major league baseball until further notice.” – Mike Francesa, on the radio in the spring of 2003.

Notice has been given, as the Tigers have already surpassed their 2003 win total. They’ve done it mostly thanks to the bats of Carlos Guillen and Pudge Rodriguez, the latter further expanding his list of accomplishments for the Cooperstown plaque. As of last Sunday, the Tigers actually led the AL in Lee Sinins’ “Runs Created Above Average.”

One of the most fascinating articles yet published by the Baseball Prospectus was their preview of the Tigers before the 2003 season, in which they discussed the perverse PR problems faced by teams with good offense (especially power) but mediocre pitching. Good organizations know how to spout cliches about how “pitching and defense is the key” to everything, and then go back to the office and put things into proper perspective. Bad organizations actually believe it. The Tigers’ belief in such cliches led them to build “Comerica National Park” - an extreme pitchers’ park designed to strangle the very kind of player that had been most successful for the Tigers for the previous century – and build the wrong kind of team for the park. Thanks to Pudge and Guillen, the Tigers have returned to their roots to an extent. Has the Detroit media picked up on the reasons for the Tigers’ success, or have they been fooled by the park effects and attributed the Tigers’ resurgence to “pitching and defense?” Any Tigers fans out there who can comment?

Kansas City Royals

Team motto for 2004 comes from God’s punishment of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:19: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” I’ve lost track of the number of pitchers who’ve broken down, and Brian Anderson has been worse than that. But at least Allard Baird is getting better at the “trading-the-star” thing – he brought back some viable talent this time.

AL WEST

Oakland Athletics

Notwithstanding their recent series loss to the Yankees, the team has commenced its annual second-half run. This is getting ridiculous already; while “$#$%^ing A” deals for players such as Jermaine Dye might have been big contributors in years past, I don’t think last year’s acquisition of Jose Guillen and this June’s acquisition of Octavio Dotel (with a 5.32 ERA for the A’s as of Friday) are the primary causes of the A’s annual second-half sprint. More research is needed.

Aside from the struggles of Barry Zito (Joe Sheehan’s prediction looks very good now, even if Ted Lilly hasn’t set the world on fire either), the biggest story for the A’s in the national media will be: how will they self-destruct in the playoffs this time? Presumably, they’ll win a series eventually if they keep getting in. But many commenters have noted how much extra pressure the Yankees face in October, knowing that anything short of a World Series championship will be deemed a miserable failure. The A’s will be facing similar pressure from the media this year; if they win a series, will the media transform them into clutch heroes? I doubt it.

Texas Rangers

There is no team I am rooting against more this year (except for the Red Sox, of course). I should be grateful for their generous donation of A-Rod to the Yankees along with $67 million or so. And all Yankee fans will always root for Buck Showalter, and I hope Soriano does well. But the Rangers’ success this year (which even they clearly didn’t anticipate) feeds the common confusion of correlation and causation – i.e., their success will be attributed to the A-Rod trade, facts be damned (Soriano’s production is down from the last two years, despite moving to a better hitters’ ballpark, and how has the A-Rod trade contributed to the shocking and sudden competence of the pitching staff?). That must be stopped, for the good of all that’s logical.

Anaheim Angels

I still have trouble looking at this team rationally (the traumas of the 2002 ALDS run deep), and would have even more trouble if they had acquired Randy Johnson. With their (albeit injury-plagued) bullpen and Vlad the Unstoppable, they would be great trouble if they ever got to the playoffs. And that’s really all I have to say about them.

Seattle Mariners

As the great U.S.S. Mariner blog has described in hating detail, the Mariners’ front office has been a conscientious objector in the great “Moneyball” war between sabermetricians and traditionalists. But they did take Kenny Williams to the cleaners for Freddy Garcia, so there’s still hope.