Horn-Tooting and So Forth

The Gowanus Rotisserie Baseball Gazette just turned 1 year old. Much to our surprise, we've somehow accumulated 16,000 hits in that time, so thanks to the people out there who appear to be reading the damn thing, and Deadspin for the links that have driven much of that traffic. With baseball season starting soon, the site is going to turn back into a weird melange of stuff specific to our fantasy league, and more general items. We'll try to keep everybody up to speed regardless. Cheers.

Spring Training Thought for the Day: Eight to Grow On

Spring training has inched along from the utter meaninglessness of ping-pong and Ozzie Guillen to the merely near-total meaninglessness of games pitting big-leaguers against local colleges. These games generally serve as an autograph opportunity for the college kids, and an early tee-time opportunity for the MLB contingent. As a competitive event, they tend to end up looking something like this:

One such matchup took place today, with the defending World Champion Red Sox taking on Boston College, the defending fifth-place team from the ACC Atlantic Division. The resultant beating (22-zip Sox thru five innings) was, well, unsurprising.

However, special mention must be made of BC pitcher Steven Cadoret, who seized his opportunity to compete against the best by putting up the following line:

0.2IP 5H 8R 6ER 5BB 0K 1WP 0HR 81.00ERA

By the looks of it, "Steven Cadoret" is French for "Daniel Cabrera."

Still, though, it's a useful reminder of just how freaking good guys in the majors are. We here at the GRBG expect that Cadoret could strike us both out on no more than 7 combined pitches. Yet the big leaguers are even better than he is, and by an order of magnitude. This is why we mainly stick to the fantasy advice.

Hey, How'd We Do?

So, last year we here at the GRBG took a shot at predicting the finishing order of our fantasy league. We suppose that we're obligated to compare those against the actual order of finish, even though that will probably undermine whatever credibility we have left on the subject. Here's a summary of our predictions versus reality:

Basically, we were within shouting distance for 8 teams, but missed big on 2 teams in each direction. So what happened? Let's see where things went right and wrong for our picks last year.

12. President Skroob (Ang 12/Teddy 12)

We were right about:

The team not being very good, though that was akin to correctly predicting that the Washington Generals would struggle against the Globetrotters last season. Still, we'll take the bullseyes where we can get them.

We were wrong about:

The staff, which I unfortunately described as featuring "the best 1-7 starting pitching in the league." Whoops--the team finished with 7 of a possible 48 points in the starting pitching categories, as injuries to Chris Carpenter's arm and Barry Zito's talent torpedoed the team.

11. Mike/Windy City Windfalls (Ang 6/Teddy 5)

We were right about:

The weakness of the pitching staff--Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens, and Jason Jennings on the same staff? Yikes. We also pegged the risk profile of the team, which Ang described as one "that's going to either run into the top 2 slots, or crater badly and trade off assets for next year." There was an unmistakeable cratering, and even a fun, if ultimately unsuccessful effort to trade off assets.

We were wrong about:

Who the freaking owner would be by the end of the season. Though, to be fair, it would have been hard to see that coming.

10. bondermans grundle (Ang 10/Teddy 11)

We were right about:

The finishing slot; the manifest insanity of drafting Rich Aurillia in anything other than a fantasy back-forking league.

We were wrong about:

The "upside" of a staff featuring future AAA castoffs Ervin Santana and Kei Igawa.

9. The Spam Avengers (Ang 3/Teddy 1)

We were right about:

We correctly predicted that none of the team's players would be eaten by wolves. Other than that, not much other than the riskiness of the starting pitching.

We were wrong about:

Where to begin? My pick of the team to win it all? Ang's choices of Mike Cameron and Morgan Ensberg as potential bounceback guys? Our mutual confidence that the first signs of weakness in the residential mortgage-backed securities market wouldn't cause a broader sell-off in the stock market? Mulligan. Or mulligans, plural, I guess. I don't have a very good explanation for what happened to this team; as late as August I expected them to make a run.

8. Lefty's Revenge (Ang 5/Teddy 7) (Hey, I finally got one closer than Ang!)

We were right about:

The team's roster construction likely forcing it to punt steals (they ultimately finished 11th in that category) and saves (T-10th), thus dooming it to mediocrity.

We were wrong about:

Julio Lugo's production in Boston being "likely to skew more heavily towards R and OBP and less towards SB." Lugo ended the season with 33 steals and an OBP below .300. Laser accurate!

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7. Nigerian Gentlemen (Ang 8/Teddy 8)

We were right about:

The bullpen, which Ang described as featuring "a pair of Shea Stadium washouts and a guy who isn't closing for the Red Sox but would be the opening day starter for the Nationals." The team ultimately finished T-10th in saves.

We were wrong about:

Anibal Sanchez as a breakout candidate, as we failed to appreciate the degree to which Joe Girardi had fed Sanchez's arm into the sausage grinder.

T-4. Ed Rooney's Office (Ang 9/Teddy 9)

We were right about:

The team not having enough offense to compete as drafted; the record-breaking K potential of the starting OF (Adam Dunn, Delmon Young, Juan Pierre); the strength of the starting pitching.

We were wrong about:

The team not being able to violate a bedrock fantasy tenet by finding lots of offense (in the forms of Carlos Pena and Mike Lowell) on the waiver wire. Combined, Pena and Lowell accounted for 31 more HR and 107 more RBI than the players originally drafted to fill their slots. The difference bumped the team up by 9 points and several places in the league.

T-4 Evil Empire (Ang 11/Teddy 10)

We were right about:

The team not having enough pitching to compete as drafted in Aaron Harang, Chris Capuano, Doug Davis, Jon Garland, Josh, Nate Robertson and Kenny Rogers Roasters. Holy Christ--other than Harang, that's a who's-who of who Hindenberg'ed last year.

We were wrong about:

Again, the transactions page. This time, it was pitching pickups Jeff Francis and Tim Wakefield that steadied the ship, giving EE a big bump in W's. Also, while we knew the pen was strong, we didn't think it would be league-best strong.

T-4. The Sex Cannons (Ang 2/Teddy 2)

We were right about:

This team making a run at the board for the first time in forever; the team's likely power production (finished 1st in HR and 3d in RBI).

We were wrong about:

The likely OBP production of the team; the idea that after one law degree, three jobs, one marriage, and 243 cans of Duke-blue face paint, our Peerless Leader would finally cash some money back out of this league. Don't feel too bad, though--we have it on good information that he sinks all of our league dues into T-bills for the duration of the season, so he at least sees some return on his time investment.

3. Hand Banana (Ang 1/Teddy 4)

We were right about:

The imminent implosion of Bronson Arroyo and consequent weakening of the pitching staff; how stupidly good the offense would be.

We were wrong about:

For the first time, I'm kinda stumped here. I dunno, maybe we were overly skeptical of Curtis Granderson?

2. Le Dupont Torkies (Ang 4/Teddy 3)

We were right about:

The weakness of the outfield as drafted (Bobby Abreu, Raul Ibanez, Chris Duffy); the relative ease with which the OF could be fixed on the fly during the season.

We were wrong about:

Jhohnhnhy Peralta as a bounceback guy; plus we were a little too down on the team as a whole, given the franchise's track record. Still, as with the last two teams, pretty close in general. Unlike . . .

1. Its Enrico Palazzo (Ang 7/Teddy 6)

We were right about:

Very little, though that's at least in part because we couldn't think of anything to say about them. We did glom onto the idea that a trade involving Mike Young could help them better allocate their talent, but that trade ended up happening after IEP had pretty well guaranteed themselves a spot on the board anyway.

We were wrong about:

What's the plural for mea culpa?

So, with that in mind, we approach the start of a new fantasy season. We'll try our hand at predictions again, though the above should be a reminder that they should be taken with a Bartolo Colon-sized lump of salt. Get ready for the draft, and somebody call me about trading for Jarrod Saltalamacchia!

Spring Training Thought for the Day: Midseason Form

Gee goodness, what the hell could Orlando Cabrera possibly see off in the distance at White Sox spring training that would cause him to react like that? We mean, the OC is coming off of a couple of surprisingly strong years in LA, and figures to get a nice park-effect bounce in his stats before heading off into free agency after the season. And, as we've amply demonstrated in our Spring Training series, it's not as though the Grapefruit League experience is all that alarming per se.

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So life should be good! I mean, seriously what could . . . oh.

Hey, hi Ozzie. Maybe it'd be an idea to hold off on hat-whipping your players until the games start? Just a thought; obviously, you've got to go with your gut here. Enjoy the season!

(Photo credits Phil Velasquez/Chicago Tribune and M. Spencer Green/AP, images originally posted here at the Tribune website.)

Jon Heyman: Font of Genius-Speak

It never fails to occur: baseball writers first attack sabermetricians, and then try to co-opt sabermetricians to prove their point, and in the process, prove their own lack of intelligence. Let's look at today's piece of genius from Jon Heyman of SI.com:

Even so, I wasn't shocked that stats people have taken issue with Rollins winning the MVP award. There are numbers crunchers out there -- including a firejoemorgan.com author who wrote a guest piece in Sports Illustrated last week -- who believe baseball writers rank somewhere between morons and idiots for voting Rollins as MVP over David Wright, who had a higher VORP. The stat people seem to believe VORP -- a Baseball Prospectus statistic that stands for Value Over Replacement Player -- defines a player, but why haven't many of them championed last year's VORP leader (Hanley Ramirez) as MVP instead?

I assume the stats guys favor Wright because he played for a contending team. I guess the rule is this: Highest VORP wins unless the VORP champion is playing for a loser.

If Wright's offensive stats were slightly better than Rollins', and I will accept that they were, especially considering the respective ballparks they play in (VORP accounts for ballparks), shouldn't Rollins get points for playing a superb shortstop compared to Wright's slightly-above average third base? And shouldn't Rollins get credit for showing extraordinary initiative and leadership? For helping his team barrel into the playoffs from seven games back with 17 to go, as opposed to Wright's team, which perpetrated a historic choke?

Though the Mets' collapse was no fault of Wright's, for the MVP to come off the all-time choke team, he'd better have a greater advantage in stats than this: Wright outhit Rollins .325 to .296, but both hit 30 home runs and Rollins beat Wright in Runs Created by 13. Wright's big advantage apparently comes down to the fact he got on base more often (his on-base percentage was significantly higher, .416 to .344), usually via a walk (he had 94 walks to Rollins' 49). To the stat guys, walking is more thrilling and much more valuable than actually winning the pennant.

Let's go ahead and ignore the moronic infatuation with "extraordinary initiative and leadership". Let's also just ignore the fact that Rollins didn't single-handedly win the pennant, and to insinuate he did is a somewhat large insult to Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and my boy, Fat Squirrel. Let's also put aside that Heyman for the umpteenth time has chosen to use his column and the fact that he somehow has a BBWAA card as a way to pick on people twice his intelligence level.

Let's instead note Joe Sheehan's article on this subject back in November, who cogently addresses the VERY FACT that Heyman raised: that VORP doesn't account for defense and that WARP is really the way to analyze a player's full complement of skills, and drops him from first to 9th on a real list. More importantly, it saliently states a truism that Heyman ignores:

I’m not sure what the answer to that is, but I know it isn’t "enough to make Matt Holliday or Jimmy Rollins the MVP." The NL MVP was one of Pujols, David Wright, or Jake Peavy, the three best players in the league who happened to play on three teams that didn’t make the postseason. The one-game, or half-game, difference between the Mets and Padres, and Rockies and Phillies, is so small that it doesn’t belong in this discussion. The excessive weight that the actual voters will put on that difference skews things in a way that makes it impossible to have a real discussion about value.

Word to the wise Jon: if you're going to misquote and misrepresent a subject, you're better off pulling a Joe Morgan and simply stating that you don't need to read it because you know better. At least then you have the facade of genius on your side. Instead, you look like you read a book and either the key part of the plot, or worse, were too stupid to get the point. I leave it to you to tell us which it is.

Spring Training Thought for the Day: Hope Springs . . . Occasional?

"You fired up for the season?"

"Yep."

"I can tell."

"Yep."

"Think we've got a shot at winning 70 games this year?"

"Nope."

"Me neither. Well, at least we get to live in Baltimore for 8 months."

" . . . "

" . . . "

"Yep."

"Yep."

* * *

(Photo credited to the AP; image originally published here on the website of the Baltimore Sun.)

Spring Training Thought for the Day: Cross-Training Can Be Valuable

Spring training is nothing if not grueling. Here Dustin Pedroia of the Red Sox wisely prepares for the coming Red Chinese invasion by brushing up on his ping-pong skills in a game against Kevin Youkilis. Which makes the whole thing worse, because the only part of Youkilis that has any chance of being in shape at this point in the season is his goatee.

Anybody else ready for the games to start?

(Photo credit Jim Davis of the Boston Globe; image originally posted here.)

Building a Better League: Introduction

This time of year, there are approximately 675,000 blog posts, articles and charts available with projections as to players stats, mock drafts and rankings. None of these articles, however, discuss a more fundamental question: how good is the fantasy machine?

Baseball, unlike other fantasy sports, seems to lend itself to a slew of variations, derivations, and modifications. You have the stalwarts like Ron Shandler who insist that if you're not doing a 4x4 single-league auction keeper league, as the Founding Fathers proclaimed, then you're a heathen. There are some that run 10x10 leagues. There are others that do points leagues, head-to-head leagues, stock market leagues, etc. There are those that do an auction, those that do a snake draft, and those that do a weird non-snake draft. And then there are ancillary issues like the stats used, frequency of changes, free agency, minor leagues and foreign players. There are without exaggeration 15,000 different ways to build the fantasy wheel.

For the next few weeks, we're going to look at the difference facets of the actual construction of a fantasy league, and examine what's "best", and I use quotation marks for the full realization that what's best for a frat house is not what's best for a bunch of guys who went to med school together in 1993. Life changes, priorities change, and obligations arise, and while we all love fantasy baseball, it's not easy for everyone to put it at the top of their priority list once you're not in school.

Still, that doesn't mean that we have to live in the Stone Ages and use batting average as a category. Or turn a semi-skilled activity into essentially a dice game. Fantasy baseball should resemble a Texas hold'em table: anyone could theoretically luck themselves into winning, but it takes skill, planning, foresight and luck to make it out victorious.

And that's what we'll be looking into: how do we design a fantasy league that: (1) Is fun; (2) Is fair; and (3) Is reflective of the realities of baseball to the greatest extent possible. It's moronic that Juan Pierre is more valuable than Ian Kinsler in fantasy baseball. How do we fix this?

To be continued.

Spring Training Thought for the Day: Gloves Are For Sallies

The worst part (although you can't tell from this picture) is that the ball actually came from behind him. Funeral services are set for Friday; in lieu of flowers, donations can be sent to the the Edwin Bellorin Memorial Scholarship Fund, which will benefit other victims of Passed Ball Sternal Chestectomyesis.

Bonus Thought:

(Photo Credits John Leyba of the Denver Post; original images posted here.)

Spring Training Thought for the Day: There's Still Time

Possible captions:

• Cubs pitcher Carlos Zambrano perfects his no-look, no-catch fielding style during spring training drills.
• Close enough--beer me.
• Juuuust a bit outside.

(Photo credit Morry Gash of the AP; image originally posted here on the Chicago Tribune website.)

Spring Training Thought for the Day: Everybody Dance!

Possible captions:

• Members of the Boston Red Sox demonstrate skills they learned during their offseason exhange program with the Bolshoi Balllet.
• Here come the Sharks/like a bat out of hell!
• Straight as a bunch of French horns.

Man, how can you not love spring training?

(Photo credit Jim Davis of the Boston Globe, image originally posted here.)

Six Early Derby Contenders

It's President's Day weekend, which means in addition to pitchers and catchers, we can start to look at Kentucky Derby horses for the first time. (What, did you think this blog could go 4+ months without a racing post? Gimme a break.) It's still pretty early in the process, and we've had exactly one standout horse so far in a field of hundreds, so it's a bit premature to make anything resembling an exhaustive list. Still, let's take a peek at the 6 most intriguing horses at this juncture. And no, that steed hat Giselle is riding is not one of them, sadly.

1. War Pass. Last year's two year old champ won all four of his starts and did so with aplomb. Plagarizing Andy Beyer went so far as to compare this colt to Seattle Slew, which is praise in its highest form. Let's settle down kids. His sire, Cherokee Run, is known for breeding sprinters and milers, not distance horses. Personally, I think he'll be running the wrong way on the far turn at Churchill in the Derby.

2. Pyro. He's got a mere two wins, but also has a pair of good seconds to War Pass last year, and rocketed from last to first to win the Louisiana Derby in a final quarter under 23 seconds, which is even better when you consider the pace scenario, and has made him everyone's future book favorite. Plagarizing Andy Beyer has compared this horse to Secretariat. It's clear that in his old age Beyer has morphed form resident curmudgeon to Dick Enberg.

3. Crown of Thorns. The spectacularly named son of Repent, he's got a pair of nice wins this year and is bred to run forever. The oddity here is that he's only run on synthetic surfaces, i.e., a substance neither dirt nor grass. (Think of it as something like that odd faux-clay shit you played tennis on in high school.) How is this going to translate to dirt? This is going to be a theme come April, by the way.

4. Monba. Everybody's "wiseguy horse", including mine, he should have won his last start with a horrendous trip in the Cash Call Mile. Well-bred to get the distance, he's probably Pletcher's best hope. While I'd normally advise against the hype horse, this is the second hype horse I've liked this century, the other being Monarchos who won easily at 10-1 on Derby Day. Forewarned is forearmed.

5. Court Vision. He won two races at Aqueduct so impressively last year, IEAH, which is literally a horse racing hedge fund, and an entity I'd call the KKR of the thoroughbred world, has bought a share of him with the idea that he'll represent their growth shares. Yes, insufferable pricks from the world of Stephen Schwarzman have officially entered racing.

6. Cowboy Cal. The Barbaro comparisons are inevitable, as he's 3-for-3 on the grass, and has the breeding to do well on the dirt. It's only a matter of time before Pletcher gives him a shot in a dirt race (Florida Derby?) rather than settle to have the next Kitten's Joy. However, if this horse also dies and/or leads to another 600 media hours of dealing with Barbaro's passing, we will all be much less for it.

What are the odds of one of these horses taking home the roses in May? Well, combined in last week's future pool, they received about 42% of the action, meaning the racing public says the odds are about 3-2 that the winner will come from that sextet. I'd lay those odds. There's a lot of racing between now and the first Saturday in May, and while these are the ones to watch, you wouldn't have put Giacomo, Smarty Jones, Funny Cide or War Emblem on a similar short list either.

Appreciate Her! (Go, Decatur!)

Introducing my entry in our fantasy league, the Decatur Commies, who will no doubt follow in the footsteps of their proud forebearers by finishing 5th this year. By order of the team owner (i.e., me), home runs hit by Commies this season will be celebrated by the singing (in rounds, if possible) of Sufjan Stevens' "Decatur, Or Round of Applause for Your Stepmother," which I expect will quickly supplant "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" as America's hardball anthem.
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The real-life Commies (which was short for "Commodores"--thus the sweet Thurston Howell cap on the logo) played intermittently in the Indiana-Iowa-Illinois League, the Missouri-Ohio Valley League, and the Midwest League from 1901-1974, winning 4 league titles in that span.
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The team boasts exactly one Hall-of-Fame alumni in Carl Hubbell, who played one season in Decatur before escaping to the New York Baseball Giants.
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That has a nice symmetry with my team, which has played against an array of owners in the Wankdorf League at this point, and which also boasts exactly one future HoFer in Johan Santana, along with a bunch of guys who in different circumstances would have been semi-pro cornshuckers rather than pro ballplayers.
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Anyway, it will be interesting to see if fantasy teams named after defunct Triple-I League affiliates spreads through our league this year the way that teams named after random 1980s comedy characters dominated last season. For those interested, the Bloomington Bloomers team name is still available at press time!

The Assimilation of Dice-K

Even though Daisuke Matsuzaka has only been in Boston for a single season, he seems to be acclimatizing nicely. He's adjusting his training regimen to better accommodate the demands of the U.S. game, and is feeling more comfortable addressing the media.

And oh, yeah--per the photo in the Boston Globe article linked above, he's also grown a mullet:

Look at that baby! That's the finest Boston sports mullet since Zho-ay Zhu-neau's heyday in the early '90s. And even more impressively, look how far he's come since his arrival in Boston last winter:

The Eastern European tight puffy coat of yore has been replaced with the glorious, flowing hair-neck so characteristic of Trans-Am drivers from Revere. By next year, Dice-K will be buying party-balls of Coors Light from Cumberland Farms, and by the end of his contract he'll be a racist douche just like the rest of RSN. One. Of. Us. One. Of. Us. . . .

Why Not To Sign Pitchers Long-Term Contracts

After "pass[ing] all physical exams and testing, as well as the MRI the club required [him] to take" [link] in the course of the negotiations, Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling now has been diagnosed by one doctor as having a shoulder tendon made of pasta. No, really:

Dr. Craig Morgan said yesterday [that] "Instead of being a single tendon, it's like three pieces of spaghetti or linguine, and when that happens it's end-stage disease in the tendon."

Manchester Union Leader article
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Leave aside the bite this injury takes out of Boston's starting pitching depth this year, and focus on what it means for the blood pressure levels of major league general managers like Theo Epstein. The Red Sox had multiple doctors examine Schilling before signing him to his most recent one-year contract. Yet the shoulders of pitchers are complicated to the point where those doctors all missed a frayed tendon that apparently resembled a plate of bucatini al'amatriciana. And this was an injury that was at least theoretically detectable at the time of the exam--most pitching injuries aren't.

This is all by way of a reminder that building a major-league pitching staff is an inherently fluky process. Even X-rays and MRIs can't give GM's the information they need to make informed decisions about pitchers, and its starting to look like the only technological advancement that would really make the nut is a time machine. As a result, I'm sure the Yankees have Dr. Emmett Brown sequestered away in a fallout shelter under the Bronx County Courthouse. But until he hits pay dirt, the randomness factor of pitcher injuries is going to throw some real- and fantasy-league teams into chaos every year.
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I suppose that's part of the fun. But it sure as hell makes it harder to fill out a keeper list.

Important Post-Super Bowl News Bulletin

Ten days 'til pitchers and catchers. Yes, really.

Once we finsh wrapping our heads around Asante Samuel's epic case of butterfingers, we'll start in with fresh fantasy and real-world baseball content. Until then, tide yourself over with some of our favorite baseball posts from Year One of the GRBG. Enjoy!

The GRBG Interview: Milton Bradley
Our Wildy Incorrect Predictions For Our Fantasy League
Our Favorite TA Player Comment of the Year (scroll down to "Evil Empire")
Overall TA of the Year
Pat Burrell Kills The Mets
Shut Up, Matt Damon
Fantasy vs. Reality

Bonus Super Bowl Meme: Arlen Specter is a Jackhole

Yesterday, Sen. Arlen Specter (R, Penn.) announced his intention to call NFL commissioner Roger Goodell before a congressional committee to explain the NFL's destruction of videotapes turned over by the Patriots in the wake of the signal-stealing allegations made by the Jets at the start of this season. In an article in the New York Times, Specter was quoted as justifying Congressional intervention thusly:

“That requires an explanation,” Specter said. “The N.F.L. has a very preferred status in our country with their antitrust exemption. The American people are entitled to be sure about the integrity of the game. It’s analogous to the C.I.A. destruction of tapes. Or any time you have records destroyed.” [ed. note--emphasis added]

No, Arlen. No it is not. You know, we've had some fun with dumb media stories and statements this week, but good ol' Arlen makes Emmitt Smith sound like Stephen Hawking (leaving aside the whole vocorder thing).

I mean, the NFL destroying coaching tapes is "analogous" to the CIA allegedly destroying tapes of U.S. government employees allegedly torturing prisoners? Really? Because I've watched a lot of football games over the years, and I've yet to see anybody tied down and beaten while electrodes are strapped to their genitals or whatever. The closest thing to torture I can remember as a Patriots fan was watching Hugh Millen play quarterback. I daresay that doesn't rise to the level of waterboarding.

Still, it's nice to see Arlen take a break from sponsoring such hard-hitting legislation as the Federal Milk Marketing Improvement Act of 2007 to take on the really big issues. Would that all public servants were so dedicated.

Back with some more light-hearted Super Bowl memes later this afternoon.