A Look Back

I watched the scroll at the bottom of my television screen the other day and it informed me that Max Scherzer was optioned to Triple-A Toledo. So, in addition to the excitement that the Mud Hens (I think that's what they're called) are getting a great new top-of-the-rotation starter, the fantasy baseball ramifications also leapt to the front of my mind. Now, I knew that in my Baseball Stars fantasy league (named after the customizably awesome NES game) Scherzer was taken by worthy foe Islamabad Beard. This tickled me, because the Beard's owner has fleeced me on several occasions in trades. All of this got me thinking about how the other first-rounders have looked so far this year.

The Baseball Stars league has ten keepers, so our draft began in the eleventh round and went a little something like this:

1st - Javier Vazquez (Chin Music; Dan A.)

2nd - Jose Valverde (Kenny Powers All-Stars; Michael Y.)

3rd - Rich Harden (Momaw Navaughn; JMR)

4th - Jered Weaver (the eightpounders; Emily W.)

5th - Scott Sizemore (Hulk Hogan's Heroes; Andy M.)

6th - Juan Pierre (the Trumpet of Conscience; Luke K.)

7th - J.J. Hardy (Momaw Navaughn; JMR)

8th - J.D. Drew (Momaw Navuaghn; JMR)

9th - Max Scherzer (Islamabad Beard; Nick S.)

10th - Carlos Santana (O'Boizez with Two Z's; Joe R.)

11th - Rafael Soriano (Shut Up And Love It; Mike G.)

12th - Brian Fuentes (Balti's Boomsticks; Jon B.)

So, let's start from the top here. Javier Vazquez goes number one overall to Chin Music. It was hard to argue with this choice on draft day, although I wouldn't have made it. Did it work out? Well, Javier Vazquez has a WHIP of 1.78, a 2-4 record (and one of those wins was a relief appearance where he retired one batter) and an ERA north of eight! So, Chin Music struck out with this selection for certain. Perhaps Vazquez will right the ship, but I doubt it at this point. The guy has to be thinking that he'll never be able to pitch in the AL East.

Next taken was Valverde, who has ten saves, a 0.51 ERA and a 0.79 WHIP. So, this ends up being a great pick. I would have made Jose the newest closer for Momaw Navaughn if he had slipped a spot, but he didn't and, clearly, he shouldn't have. I'm going to lump into this paragraph the other two closers who were taken in the first round: Soriano and Fuentes. Soriano has been very solid with ten saves of his own and a 1.59 ERA and 0.94 WHIP. Fuentes is a bit iffier of a selection. His ERA is terrible, but he has notched 5 saves despite a stay on the DL. Not what you want out of your first selection, but it could be worse and Fuentes should end up with decent numbers.

Rich Harden. Sigh. I literally could NOT prevent myself from taking Harden in this slot. Was it the best move? Well, I knew that I had two other selections in the first round, so I felt that I had a bit of wiggle room. And so far Harden has posted a 2-1 record with a 4.74 ERA, making it through the sixth inning in only three of his nine starts. The way my team is designed, though, the ERA and WHIP categories are punted about every week anyway. So, since Harden continues to make bats miss at a good clip he is helping my team a lot more than he's helping the Rangers. Still, maybe not the best value I could have gotten here.

For some reason, Jered Weaver never seems to be a valued commodity. He wasn't kept and thus entered the draft pool along with the newcomers to the AL. Probably, the only reason Jered was drafted here as it is was because the eightpounders were on auto-pick. Weaver's line is pretty spiffy so far this year (despite a disastrous most recent outing). His ERA sits at 3.40, his WHIP is 1.19 and he's on pace for 231 strikeouts (his 60 currently leads the league). Jered may be the pick of the litter.

Scott Sizemore was hitting .206 with a single homer when he was sent back down to play for the Mud Hens (they must be killing those other AAA teams) on Saturday after going 0 for his last 14. As far as first round selections go, Sizemore may go down as the biggest clunker of them all.

The Trumpet of Conscience chose Juan Pierre and added him to a lineup that already featured Ichiro, Elvis Andrus, Julio Borbon and Chone Figgins. Pierre has done exactly what you'd expect him to do. He's swiped eighteen bases and little else. If a different team, one who had needed speed, had taken Pierre here then I would've said "great pick". Instead, I'm just going to shrug and marvel at the fact that Luke owns four of the top ten base-stealers in the AL.

The next two picks represented a change in my drafting philosophy over previous seasons. Typically, I'd spend an early pick to take a Desmond Jennings-esque prospect here. Instead, after an excruciating season of failed expectations last year, I focused on winning this season. I took J.J. Hardy and J.D. Drew to fill positional needs. Hardy's been hurt for the last two weeks and was pretty unremarkable before that, but he might chip in with fifteen home runs if he heals up. He'd already hit three before hitting the DL. J.D. looked like a terrible first round pick through the first month of the season. His batting average in April was .197. Since the calendar page turned to May, though, J.D. has hit .375 with an OPS of 1.016! That's more than worthy of an exclamation point.

Max Scherzer, of course, is the Mud Hens' latest addition. Why is that? It could be his 7.29 ERA and 1.29 WHIP that got him sent down. It could also be that his K/9 was down from last year's 9.19 to 5.57. Or maybe it's that opponents have a .951 OPS against him. These are seriously troubling numbers for the Beard.

Finally, Carlos Santana. It's too early to tell, obviously, whether or not this is a solid pick. Santana does have 37 RBIs in 39 games in AAA this season. His OPS down at Columbus is a smashing 1.050. Next year at this time we may be declaring this the best pick of the draft.

I'll wrap things up by crosschecking my assessments using ESPN Player Rater data:

1 - Vazquez (345th best in AL)

2 - Valverde (60th best in AL)

3 - Harden (196th best in AL)

4 - Weaver (45th best in AL)

5 - Sizemore (350th best in AL)

6 - Pierre (80th best in AL)

7 - Hardy (205th best in AL)

8 - Drew (30th best in AL)

9 - Scherzer (387th best in AL)

10 - Santana (n/a)

11 - Soriano (65th best in AL)

12 - Fuentes (190th best in AL)

So, what should the first round have looked like in the Baseball Stars league?

1 - Ty Wigginton (11th best in AL) should have been Chin Music's first pick. He would have filled the 1B slot currently occupied by Casey Kotchman. Ty went in round 20 to the Trumpet of Conscience.

2 - Jose Bautista (13th best in AL) should have gone second. Instead, Momaw Navaughn snagged him in round 21.

3 - Alex Gonzalez (19th best in AL) should have been taken here by Momaw Navaughn. His output has been excellent and he would have filled the SS position JMR needed to fill. Alex went in the 22nd round to Islamabad Beard.

4 - Andruw Jones (25th best in AL) should have gone here, although, as mentioned above, hard to argue with the Jered Weaver selection. Andruw went in round 17 to Islamabad Beard.

5 - Austin Jackson (27th best in AL) would have been the perfect selection for Hulk Hogan's Heroes who clearly wanted to go young, but clearly would benefit more from a young player who isn't currently on the Mud Hens. Jackson went in the next round anyway, to Kenny Powers All-Stars.

6 - Scott Podsednik (29th best in AL) would have given the Trumpet of Conscience the speed he so desperately craves as well as some other solid numbers (including a .301 average to Pierre's .253). Kenny Powers All-Stars snagged this character in the 19th round.

7 - J.D. Drew (30th best in AL) should have gone to Momaw Navaughn in this spot. Instead, Momaw Navaughn took him in the next spot.

8 - Alberto Callaspo (31st best in AL) should have been Momaw Navaughn's third first-round selection. It wouldn't have filled much of a need, but depth is nice too. Alberto ended up falling to Chin Music in the 15th round.

9 - Ricky Romero (37th best in AL) probably would have been a better pick for Islamabad Beard than Scherzer. Compton FistFullOfBees ended up taking Ricky in the 21st round.

10 - Shaun Marcum (38th best in AL), for some reason the Jays pitchers are high on the ol' Player Rater. If O'Boizez with Two Z's had taken Marcum here like he apparently should have, then the O'Boizez pitching staff would probably be the tops in the league. Compton FistFullOfBees took Marcum in round 16.

11 - John Buck (41st best in AL)? Really? Yep. Blue Jays battery members only for picks 9 through 11. Still, Shut Up And Love It's Soriano selection probably made more sense, since Joe Mauer would have been tough for Buck to unseat. Still, O'Boizez with Two Z's ended up getting John in the 19th. Good value.

12 - Doug Fister (44th best in AL) would have been the perfect player for Balti's Boomsticks to take here. Instead, Doug went undrafted and Hulk Hogan's Heroes was prescient enough to scoop him off the waiver wire five days after the draft.

Can you believe it that twelve of the Player Rater's top 44 players were available on draft day? Anybody who gets discouraged or takes over a crummy team should take note of this. A great draft can remedy even the lousiest of inherited rosters.

Tasers, Stats and Love For You-Know-Who

Career Opportunites is playing on my iPhone here at work. It's a pretty awesome song by The Clash, and it always makes me think of the blown chances I've had to do something with my life. You know, like getting a job that's important enough that I don't have time to write baseball blogs on the clock. So, the theme of this blog will be that I try to tie together the baseball topic I want to write about with the song playing on my iPhone.

Fire On High (School Kids) - This ELO masterpiece, and theme song of Funtown's Astrosphere, sets up one of baseball's most recent stories perfectly. The 17-year-old who got tazed. (After having very little success researching the proper verb to use, I decided to simply go with the one that I think looks coolest, the one with the "z". Meanwhile, did you know that TASER is an acronym for Thomas A. Swift's Electric Rifle?) So, some doof jumps onto the field and runs around waving his t-shirt like a doofus. Some tubby cop shoots the kid in the back with a stun gun, ending the ruckus he was causing in a heartbeat (a possibly irregular one, now). My opinion: Come on, dude. Did they really have to taze the teenager in the back? Were they afraid he was going to Rat-Tail Ryan Howard with his shirt? (Looking up Rat-Tail to make sure it was a wikipedia-approved term for towel-snapping led me to finding the picture below.)
Jumping onto a baseball field and running around is and has been a part of the game for decades. But the punishment here did not fit the crime. If your friend got pulled over for speeding, and was levied with a $250 fine, then the next day you got pulled over for speeding and they sentenced you to four years in prison, you'd be pretty shocked. Not as shocked as Steve Consalvi was on Monday, but shocked nevertheless. The point is, no fan to my knowledge had ever been tazed for running around on the field before. Unless you're informing people ahead of time that the penalty for entering the field of play is 50,000 volts, it's kind of a douche move. But I get it. It's obnoxious, people shouldn't do what that kid did. Yet, packing a ballpark full of drunk fans is like begging for tomfoolery. Stadiums aren't going to stop selling beer, though, are they? I think not. I recognize that I am in the minority on this topic. Something like 73% of respondents to an MSNBC poll voted that a Taser is an acceptable tool to use in the situation. I respectfully disagree with those people.

The Day And The Time (For Sox Bats To Get Going) - So, it was a Shakira song that popped up just as I finished writing on the last subject. Embarrassing. Anyway, the Red Sox wasted an entire series' worth of offense on last night's game. I predict they'll be supporting Jon Lester with an output of two runs tonight. (Of course, that's all they gave him during his last start and he won anyway.) The offense last night was really nice to see, though. I'm pumped that J.D. is heating up. He's 9-for-17 over the last four games with 7 RBIs. He's still striking out way too much, but hopefully he'll see his batting average continue to climb, if only to get the haters off his back. Oh, and the "D" still stands for Durability. 25 of 26 games for Durability Jonathan Drew.

I Can't Stand Losing (To) You - Getting swept by the Baltimore Orioles was a travesty. I mean, seriously, have you seen the Orioles? What a joke. It's not like the Orioles were starting a hot streak either, because they went right back to losing Monday at Yankee Stadium.

Promises - I couldn't really think of a way to tie this into a baseball topic. Stupid Eric Clapton. So, instead I'm going to talk about random stats for a while. I like the Defense-Independent Pitching Stat, so let's look at the top ten AL pitchers in that category:

1. Francisco Liriano 2.38
2. Brett Anderson 2.54
3. Doug Fister 2.85
4. Brett Cecil 2.95
5. Carl Pavano 2.97
6. Colby Lewis 3.06
7. John Danks 3.22
8. David Price 3.22
9. Brian Matusz 3.26
10. Jered Weaver 3.27

Now, essentially, this stat takes into account only strikeouts, walks and home runs, then calculates what their ERA would look like assuming that everyone had the same defense behind them. It's kind of silly, but I like what it can tell us. Things like Liriano's and Fister's seasons so far might not be flukes and that they are actually pitching great. But beware of Mitch Talbot (6.01), Brian Bannister (5.31) and Jeff Niemann (4.81), fantasy owners. Their spiffy ERAs are mirages, I promise you. Hey, look, I tied it together after all.

My Back Pages - Rich Harden (5.61) is on that list of mirages, too, unfortunately. Fortunately for Rich, he's one of my favorite players and I will immediately jump to his defense here. The league-leading 23 walks Harden has given up so far are undoubtedly the reason his DIPS is more than two full runs higher than his actual ERA. And that walk total is out-of-control ridiculous for only the month of April. But April is gone and so are Harden's problems with the base on balls. I sat in front of my computer watching ESPN's Gamecast of last night's Rangers-Athletics game. It featured two of my fantasy pitchers going head-to-head, Harden and Dallas Braden. And Harden was simply brilliant during his first start of May. He went seven innings, walked nobody, struck out nine and only gave up two hits (the first, a double to Momaw Navaughn teammate Rajai Davis). Harden's performance ranked as the sixth-best start of the season for an American League pitcher (his game score was 82). I'm telling you, Rich Harden is about to get hot, and you don't need to check the back page of the sports section to figure that one out.

Just What I Needed - A good song to end on. I doubt I'll write an article with this theme again, since, aside from Fire On High (School Kids) my topic headings really blew. But I hit the highlights of what I wanted to write about in this article: D.J. Jazzy Drew, Richy Rich Harden and that silly tazing incident. Most importantly, I wasted about two hours of work writing this. And that's just what I needed.

Listening To Shakira, Avoiding Doing Work

Sitting here at work, desiring to do anything but work-related activities, I've looked over a lot of baseball and Sox stats/articles. I heard grumblings that the Red Sox have signed a 23-year-old Cuban catcher. Unfortunately, the article is available only to ESPN Insiders. Insiders, in this case, is code for "doofs who actually pay money to ESPN to gain access to an extra fifteen articles a month that don't say much of anything." Either way, I wish I could read this particular Insider article. Instead, I read some blogs on ESPNBoston. There is a cool diary entry written by Daniel Bard on there. I'm not sure how much outside editing goes into these entries of his but, technically speaking, his writing ability overshadows every hack writer that pukes up a sports story for MSNBC. Anyway, here we go:

Josh Wreck-It: That's a terrible topic heading (but better than my second-best option of Buttercup Squash Beckett, which I'd have had a real hard time explaining), but Josh is wrecking his ERA at an alarming rate right now. In fact, if the Sox ace were to throw back-to-back-to-back-to-back complete game shutouts it would only lower his ERA to 3.20. But there's nothing to worry about because after five starts last season his ERA was exactly the same as it is right now (7.22, gross). So, a fantastic rebound is imminent.

Josh Check-It: But there is something to worry about. My continued non-work-related-web-surfing led me to an interesting graph illustrating what one of Beckett's problems might be:

(credit to ESPNBoston or whomever for this image)

Not only is Josh leaving his changeup up in the zone, as you can see from my stolen/plagiarized chart, but he's also throwing this crummy changeup 14 percent of the time (only 8.6% last season). So, maybe if Josh stops throwing the change his numbers will improve? I hope so, but there's another troubling piece of information that I found as well. Beckett's career average for swinging strikes coming into this season was 9.9%. So, essentially, opposing hitters swing and miss at one out of every ten pitches that he throws. And what about this year, so far? Well, now only 7.4% of Josh's offerings are swung on and missed. That is bad news. I mentioned the striking similarities between this season's and last season's awful beginnings: 28 2/3 innings, 23 earned runs, similar hit totals (36 and 37). The 2009 strikeout total, though, was still an impressive 31. Right now Beckett has K'd only twenty batters. Gulp.

Even Scarier: Adrian Beltre leads the team with his .309 batting average?!

The "D" Is For Durability: Don't look now, but J.D. Drew has played in 19 of the Sox' twenty games this season. Okay, some of you out there are thinking, "But I hate that effing loser; he's hitting .182!" I'll counter by saying that his .308/.353/.846 line with runners in scoring position gives him the second-highest OPS on the team in those clutch situations. I'd also like to point out that his 10 runs batted in are third on the team overall.

Roll of the Dice-K: As an owner (once a proud owner) of Daisuke Matsuzaka in two separate fantasy leagues, I'm excited for the return of the nibbling starter. Imagine if he comes back and looks good! How awesome would it be for the Sox (not to mention Momaw Navaughn) if Dice-K looked like WBC Dice-K or even 2008 Dice-K? The answer is very awesome.

Best Team Ever: In the spirit of doling out some V-tek love, I'm going to spit out a fun stat for you all. A team of nine Jason Variteks would score 12.26 runs per game. That's right.

Premature Statistical Analysis

I've combed over some stats this afternoon and found a few that I thought were interesting:

The Brewers Got Zauned - Gregg Zaun has grounded into a double-play, on-average, once every nine pitches this season.

Keep The Meter Running, I Won't Be Here Long - Orlando Cabrera is seeing 1.77 pitches per at-bat, which falls in line with the 1.86 seasons he spends with each ball club over his career.

I'll Take The One That Comes With The Pinstriped Pillbox Hat - Assume that both Vernon Wells and Garrett Jones stay on their pace to hit 162 home runs this season. The Blue Jays would be paying $77,160.49 for each dinger while the Pirates buy theirs for the bargain basement price of $2,623.46.

Workin' Harden? - Rich Harden's K/9 is 19.64. The next closest starting pitcher? Ian Kennedy, more than five full strikeouts behind Rich.

Or Hardenly Workin'? - Rich Harden's BB/9 is 12.27.

And Your Punishment? $68,000,000.00 - Josh Beckett's WHIP of 2.36 is the worst (tied) of any starter whose team plays in one of the United States. Players that pitch in the District of Columbia are a different story.

On The Schnide - Nick Johnson has an OBP of .400 and a batting average of .000 after 15 plate appearances. Josh Hamilton has struck out in six of his eight plate appearances so far, notching a grand total of zero base hits. Hamilton's average draft position in ESPN Fantasy Leagues is 79.1 versus 233.8 for Johnson. I'm not sure what I'm trying to prove with this info, just found it curious.

Bold Prediction - Adrian Gonzalez of the offensively-explosive Padres, will finish the season with 42 home runs and 42 runs batted in.