PRFM: (sigh) Just. Check. The. Stats!

Last week's Power Rankings For Morons (it's now been patented, hence the italics) was an entirely inoffensive affair.  I can even say it was a nice little read.  

Two in a row?  Nah.

You might remember last year that Phil's PRFM occasionally did a funny thing.  He would pick one strange stat and use it as an indicator and justification for ranking a team in a certain slot.  

My favorite (and there were many) was probably a catcher's caught stealing percentage.

Today is "double-digit runs."  

Let's get started.

3. Blue Jays (3): Cito Gaston has done a good job getting results from a bullpen that no longer knows if it will be able to count on B.J. Ryan, whose velocity was way down before he went on the disabled list. The lineup hasn't gone more than seven games in a row without a double-digit day.

See.  I ain't no liar.  The Blue Jays have plated more than nine runs in a game four times.

For context, last year, the Rangers scored 10 runs or more 24 times, an average of one game a week and lining up with Phil's benchmark of "hasn't gone more than seven games in a row...."

Texas was not a good baseball club last year.

Yes.  The Blue Jays are scoring runs, mainly because Aaron Hill, Adam Lind and Travis Snider offer Jays' fans hope for the future instead of being relegated to rooting for a softball team.

But it's the completely revamped rotation that has been the surprise.  Starters two-through-five behind Halladay had a combined 23 major league starts coming into the '09 season.  They have a combined 3.55 ERA this year.  Take Purcey out of the equation and it's a 2.60 ERA.

As Texas repeatedly shows every year, you have to prevent runs along with scoring runs and the Blue Jays are currently doing that. 

But 10-run games are pretty.  

7. Mariners (8): A lot of executives must be kicking themselves for not listening harder when Seattle GM Jack Zduriencik called offering Jarrod Washburn. It's only three starts, but a 17-4 strikeout-walk ratio suggests he's poised for a good season.

Yes.  Jarrod Washburn is now a good pitcher because of three starts against a below average Minnesota team, a struggling Rays team and a horrid Angels team.  Two of three at home.

And yes, a 34 year-old pitcher who in 534 innings over the last three years has a 4.55 ERA and a 1.39 WHIP and a combined 23-43 record is now poised to be a good pitcher.

Wait!!  He's left-handed!!  The Cubs should get him.  They value left-handed guys above...well...every bit of evidence staring right in their face.

9. Complete games (NR): April isn't the month for them but there have been 10 already, including two apiece from Tim Wakefield and Zack Greinke. Wakefield, who got the benefit of a seven-inning complete game on Monday, became the oldest pitcher (42) to throw consecutive complete games since Charlie Hough did it for the White Sox in 1992.

If you didn't look it up, you'd think this was impressive/worrisome, right?

You'd think managers outside of the Dusty Baker wouldn't try to tax their arms so early in the season, right?

No.

Complete games thrown in April by year:

2008:  20

2007:  13

2006:  10

2005:  28

2004:  15

2003:  20

2002:  32

2001:  27

2000:  27

That took me about six minutes.  Just look it up.

Just looking at 2008, there is no correlation between how early it is in the season and the amount of complete games thrown.  

April:  20

May:  27

June:  16

July:  26

August:  25

September:  23

Factoring in that teams play on average three less games in April compared to the other months and there is absolutely, bar none, without a question, inarguably no correlation.   

14. White Sox (10): Jose Contreras and Bartolo Colon are 1-4 with a 7.12 ERA between them. Jeff Marquez, the top option in the minors, is 0-3 with a 13.06 ERA in Triple-A. Where have you gone, Javy Vazquez?

Javy Vazquez will be this year's Jon Garland in Phil's world.  Expect repeated potshots at Kenny for trading Vazquez anytime Contreras or Colon puke all over the mound.

15. Twins (15): Joe Mauer is close to returning in early May, if not sooner.

Dear diary, why won't Dreamy Joe love me?  

18. Tigers (17): Hit for double-digit run totals in back-to-back starts by Justin Verlander and Edwin Jackson. Allowed opponents to hit double digits in four of the first 15 games, an alarming trend.

More "double-digit runs" gallimaufry.  And isn't this exactly what the Tigers have done over the last two years?  "Alarming trend?"  

More like "dominant personality trait" to me.

24. Giants (30): Pablo Escobar is showing signs of getting turned around. But not first baseman Travis Ishikawa.

It's Pablo Sandoval, Phil.  Not Pablo Escobar. 

Unless the corpse of Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar is now playing third base and occasionally catching for the Giants.

But Sandoval was sure hitting like a corpse to start the season.  Ba-Zing!!!

(Book Corner:  Read Killing Pablo by Mark Bowden.  Good book.) 

28. Athletics (23): Scoring runs is a bigger issue than the performance of a young pitching staff, which hasn't allowed an opponent to score in double digits.

Hey, Phil made a funny.

Phil Watch: I Was Going To Leave It Alone

And then I took about 3 1/2 seconds and thought about it.

First, some context for early season Phil.

What do we know about Phil this baseball year?

We know he's chosen his two players to follow this season to fall back on when column ideas dry up during the course of the year in Chris Carpenter and Joe Mauer.

Again, you almost have to admire the process.  It's so college student writing papers for 100-level courses.  Get a bunch of filler for a couple of subjects that you know about and spread it thin.  Pump in 20% new research and presto!  Paper done in record time.

Last year was Frank Thomas and Kyle Lohse.  See.  He fulfilled the "local angle" requirement with Thomas being an ex-White Sox player and Lohse playing in the Cubs' division.  This year, Phil's found a way to tell us 8,000 times that Carpenter's performance has "playoff implications" and he's typed "sacroiliac joint" 8,002 times in columns relating to the dreamy Mr. Mauer.

So, we here at Phil Watch have skipped such dippy repetitiveness.  Plus, we haven't even done a Power Rankings For Morons this year.  We promise to get to that Monday.  On that note, for a truly funny MLB Power Ranking, check out Larry Dobrow over at CBS Sportsline.  That's good stuff.  

But this Sunday, Phil tells us that hitting for the cycle is a "growing trend" and gives the grand revelation that it probably has something to do with the new, quirky ballparks.  Eureka!    

Further down comes this nugget, though:

Tough to dig out: This may really turn out to be a crazy season. Research by writer Gerry Fraley shows that slow starts carry a bigger impact than you might think in baseball's wild-card era.

Since 1995, when the wild card was added, 161 teams have had losing records through 10 games. Only 21 of those teams recovered to reach the playoffs. That's a 13 percent chance.

Boston, Tampa Bay, Minnesota, Cleveland, Arizona and Milwaukee were among the teams starting this season 4-6 or worse. Imagine the angst this factoid could cause in Red Sox Nation.

Holy Smokes!  Phil does attribution!  It's a new dawn in America!

He's most certainly covering his ass here, though.  You know, just in case the research proves to be unbelievably wrong.

But let's take it at face value.  Sounds impressive/daunting/neat-o, right?

Well, no.  

In those 14 seasons, we've had some perennially bad teams by and large, teams that have patently refused to field competitive teams based largely on their own incompetence, bad drafting, stupid contracts and just general weirdness.  

The Pirates, Royals, Devil Rays, Orioles, Rangers, Brewers, Tigers and Nationals/Expos come to mind and all those teams finished under .500 the vast majority of the time since 1995.

The research to precisely figure out the numbers would take too long for me (I got crap to do before going to work) but it would be safe to say that just keeping it at those eight teams and fiddling around with the MLB.com standings on about April 11 each year, you can see it to be largely true.

Now, let's say those eight teams were below .500 through April 11 about 10 of those 14 seasons.  

And now revise Phil's number (through Fraley) of "161 teams" and reduce that to 80 teams (161 - (8 teams x 10 seasons)).  That cuts the 161 teams to 80 and doubles the percentage to 26%.  

And that's just taking the consistently bad, not even the teams that are usually around .500 or teams that are recently good (the Cubs) or recently bad (the Giants).

But all this is rather frivolous and besides the point because the argument against such cute comparisons is stupid in the first place.

Why?  Because in the sample size, you're putting the 2009 Boston Red Sox into the same pool as the 2003 Detroit Tigers.  It's like putting a marathon runner into an Iron Man competition with Aretha Franklin and seriously discussing odds on who will win.  It's a colossal waste of time.  

So, since Francona chose to go with Javier Lopez in game eight of the season against the A's instead of sticking with Papelbon for a second inning, causing the team to drop to 2-6 instead of a possible 3-5.  They won the next two games, putting their 10-game record at 4-6 instead of 5-5 and placing them into Phil's (through Fraley's) "under .500" pool.  

Pack it up, Boston fans.  13% chance.  You lost game eight of the season.  Your year is done.

See.  It's just stupid. 

For further illustration on the inherent dopiness of it all, I would like to give attribution to Jesse Spencer of the New York Daily News: 

Since Major League Baseball went to a six-division alignment and expanded the playoffs to four teams per league, 27 of the 104 teams to make the postseason have done so after sporting a losing record in June or later. This includes half of the playoff teams from the last two years - last season's Cubs, Phillies, Rockies and Yankees, as well as the 2006 A's, Dodgers, Padres and Twins all were under .500 at some point after two months of the season had elapsed.

Which do you see as a better indicator of success after being under .500 at some point of the season?  June and later or after 10 games?

Let's mash them together.  Since 1995, if a team is under .500 after 10 games, they have a 13% chance to make the playoffs.  But of the teams that made the playoffs since 1995, 26% of the teams had a losing record in June or later.

If you can present an argument with even a scintilla of credibility w/r/t the 10 game model, you win my undying affection.

 

Phil Watch: What Ifs

Flagship Phil this Sunday chronicles the death of Nick Adenhart.  

Basically, it's a recycling of the 12,868 articles written late last week by others about the odd amount of tragedies that have happened to the Angels over the years.  Shocker!

As least Phil didn't write nonsense on par with Randy Youngman of the OC Register.  Mr. Youngman thinks that the Angels can be inspired by tragedy the same way Loyola Marymount was 'inspired' by the death of Hank Gathers.  Criminy.

Just a few nuggets this week from Phil, all taken from Phil's Whispers.  He keeps his ear to the ground...

The Cubs were very surprised that Rule 5 pick Donald Veal pitched well enough in spring training to stick with the Pirates. He pitched in and out of a big mess in his big-league debut.  If Veal gets it together, the Cubs will regret losing this wild lefty with stuff. 

Do you really give points to a guy that get out of jams entirely of his own making?

He gave up...oh, heck.  Just see Veal's inning for yourself.

It was 8-1 when he came in.  He promptly gave up a dinger to Molina and walked three.  It's like giving credit to a guy who pees all over the kitchen floor but had the common courtesy to mop it up.  He's still a kitchen floor urinator after all is said and done.

Oh yeah, in Spring Training, Veal pitched 14.1 innings, walking 15!  And gave up 8 earned runs.

So please tell me who from the Cubs' 40-man roster should have been left unprotected for the Rule 5 draft instead of Donald Veal.  28 year-old slappy-hitter Sam Fuld?  Crap.  I forgot.  Sam Fuld is still a viable prospect in Phil's world.

Veal, in the last two years in Double-A, started 57 games.  He had a 4.77 ERA with  a 1.56 WHIP, averaging five walks per 9 innings.  He's just a guy who happens to be a lefty and hasn't shown an ability in four years in the minors to hit the strike zone.  That does not spell 'regret' in any book even if he does happen to become productive.  

And he made the Pirates roster.  That's just one step up from receiving a 'participant' ribbon.

The Dodgers' Albuquerque rotation — Eric Milton, Shawn Estes, Jeff Weaver, Miguel Pinango and Eric Stults, before Stults was called up Friday — has more big-league experience than their big-league club.  That wouldn't be a bad place for the Angels to seek short-term help. 

Eric Milton, Shawn Estes, Jeff Weaver and Eric Stults.  Those four guys have never been used in the same sentence as "quality short-term help."

Wait.  I just used them in a sentence that way.  And that's the only way they ever will be from this point until the end of time.  Yes, give up a mid-level prospect for one month of that badness.  

The Yankees and Mets will wish they had signed Derek Lowe instead of A.J. Burnett and Oliver Perez, respectively.  The Dodgers will miss Lowe more than they seem to think.  He was just as good as CC Sabathia down the stretch last season.

Umm...the Mets signed Perez (a terrible signing by any measure) after Lowe picked Atlanta.  It wasn't an either/or.  And there was no sign from Lowe that he wanted to pitch in the American League again at his age.  None.  

He's 35 and got a four year deal at $15 per.  The Dodgers currently have these commitments through 2013.  McCourt has been screaming "poor man" from the highest mountaintops for the last few years and has a gazillion guys hitting prime arb years soon (not to mention the oodles of bad contracts to deal with.  See:  Schmidt and Pierre, not to mention the $17.8 million left on the Andruw Jones contract).  Please tell me how the Dodgers could have committed that money to Lowe and still remained solvent ("in this economy...")?      

On the Mets' option.  Jerry Manuel's weird.  He's just an odd bird.  And when Lowe was making a decision, gauging the Mets' commitment to Manuel probably played into that.  Also, nobody knows how Citi Field is going to play.  The dimensions are the same as Shea but the foul territory has been dramatically reduced.  That could spell trouble for pitchers, especially ones like Lowe who essentially pitch to contact.

First Edition of Power Rankings For Morons this week!  Just posted. 

Phil Watch: I Throw Up My Arms

If a sportswriter plans to write an evaluation of a shift in a team's roster towards pitching and defense, you'd think that the end product would be filled with correct facts and stuff of that nature, right?

Well...you know.  This is the Chicago Tribune.  Only yesterday, Vaughn McClure wrote an article asking, "Is coming of Jay Cutler to Chicago Bears heaven-sent?"  And Rick Morrissey (BRETOA3 participant) called the Jay Cutler signing a bad move.  So...

But it's refreshing to know that Phil still possesses the ability to write something even more stupid than those.  At least those guys were simply making judgments.  Wrong judgments but merely judgments all the same.

Phil, in evaluating the Tigers roster moves, makes wrong judgments AND gets basic facts wrong.

Let's get started.

This time last spring, when the buzz around baseball was the muscle in the Detroit Tigers' lineup, some of us rejected the hype.

Courtesy of South Side Sox

Phil rejected the hype with extreme prejudice!  Oh...wait.

You don't overcome a flawed, fragile pitching staff and second-division fielding with a collection of hitters. Teams almost never slug their way to titles. The Tigers have realized that, and that's why Gary Sheffield isn't with them anymore.

Thank you, Captain Obvious.  

And read that again.  Using that logic, teams should dump all of their aging sluggers.  Just write that Leyland and Sheffield didn't like each other, Sheffield wouldn't have shut up about playing the field so they dumped his mouthy, bad fielding ass.

The Tigers aren't competing for anything this year.  They're going young, trying different things, will be extraordinarily active at the deadline and that's why they dumped him.  Write that.

General manager Dave Dombrowski has given manager Jim Leyland a team that will do a much better job catching the ball...

Dombrowski started retooling the Tigers' defense with the signing of fielding-first shortstop Adam Everett and the trade for catcher Gerald Laird. Those moves set Brandon Inge at third base, where he played when Detroit went to the 2006 World Series, and moved the error-prone Carlos Guillen to left field.

Adam Everett?  Great fielder.  And one of the worst offensive players in baseball.  I mean, he's absolutely terrible. 

Laird?  He's the definition of average behind the plate while forcing two guys into the lineup when you include Inge on a regular basis who are well below-average hitters.

And Guillen in left?  Phil predicts that to go well? 

By writing off Sheffield as $38 million poorly spent, the Tigers create a revolving door at DH. Guillen may get most of the time there, but Magglio Ordonez also will fill that hole sometimes, with the consistently underrated Marcus Thames getting the outfield starts.

BAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!  Marcus Thames throws crap leather at a wildly prodigious rate.  Really.  How does a major league baseball player have a -29.3 UZR150?

If he qualifed, Thames would have been the second-worst fielder in all of baseball last year, behind only Brad Hawpe's superlatively crappy -47.9.  That's all fielders, folks.  Not just outfielders.  

Guillen and Thames at the corner outfield spots is Phil's answer to a better Tiger defense.

Jeff Larish, a left-handed hitter who has hit 67 homers in his three full minor-league seasons, takes Sheffield's spot on the roster. The corner infielder can start at first to give Cabrera a chance to get off his feet as the DH.

And struck out 318 times while hitting .255 in 'three full minor-league seasons.'

...Newcomers Edwin Jackson, who was Tampa Bay's No. 5 starter last season, and Rick Porcello, a 20-year-old who hasn't pitched above Class A, join new closer Brandon Lyon as the key guys.

My.  God.  Fernando Rodney was named the Opening Day closer five days ago.  Five!  Read the wire reports, Phil.  

Porcello might be the best pitching prospect to enter the majors since Mark Prior. He has a great collection of pitches, including a 12-to-6 curveball and a hard sinker, and he commands the strike zone.

Is that a joke?  I don't have the time to do all the lists but Porcello was the 7th-best pitching prospect in Baseball America's top 100 list THIS year.  7th-best.  And that leaves out every other year since 2002.  

Tone down the hyperbole.  He had a really good first year in the minors last year, had an admirable GO/FO rate but sure didn't miss a lot of bats.  

"I think he's ready," Dombrowski told the Detroit Free Press. "I think he'll do well. If he has some tough times — every pitcher does — I think he's mature enough to handle it. … He has a pitch that can help get him out of jams — a very, very nasty sinker."

What do you think he's going to say?  Dombrowski has no other options.

Porcello won't be alone in learning the ropes. He's joined by power reliever Ryan Perry, who was pitching for the University of Arizona at this time last season. Dombrowski cites "an electric arm" and mental toughness as reasons for throwing him into the fire alongside Porcello.

See above.  Perry has pitched 13.2 innings of professional baseball.

"Are we right?" Leyland asked. "The easiest thing is to say they're not ready. The way I look at it, they deserve to be on [the team]."

Unlike the addition of Sheffield after the World Series season, these are changes with shelf life.

See.  Not one mention of the tough road ahead this year.  It's a patchwork team getting oodles younger.  Also, not one mention of the Josh Anderson acquisition, a guy who plays great defense, has stolen 40 or more bases in each of the last five seasons and the reason they released Sheffield.

Let's end on the traditional note.

National.  Baseball.  Writer.