Lookout Landing

Faces

2009-11-09T06:03:28Z

Joey Eischen looks like he can't believe he got released by the Nationals.

Points Of Contention: Rob Johnson's Defense

2009-11-09T05:31:32Z

Writing is easier when you don't have to think up an intro.

In terms of things we know we can measure pretty well, Rob Johnson the defender doesn't stand out, at least not in a good way.

His error rate, for whatever that's worth, is about average. His four in 754.1 innings matches up well with the league-average rate of 6.1 per 1000.

His arm is decent. He's thrown out 20 of 71 would-be base-stealers - a rate of 28.2% - against a 27.6% league average.

He kind of sucks at blocking balls. His 2009 rate of passed balls was twice the league average, and the Mariners were a bottom-third team in wild pitches. In addition, I couldn't tell you how many times I saw Johnson flat-out drop a pitch that hit him in the glove.

These factors were covered in devil_fingers' evaluation of 2009 catcher defense, and in that study, it was determined that, based on his errors, arm, and ability to receive, Johnson was about two runs below average in the field. Now it's obviously important to remember that understanding performance in a single season isn't the same as understanding true talent, but given these numbers and all of our own observations over the course of the year, I don't see any particular reason to believe that Johnson is a superior defender when it comes to things we can directly measure.

And yet he's developed this whiz-kid reputation. Why? Because, out of guys who caught at least 50 games last season, Johnson posted the lowest CERA - ERA against as a catcher - in the league, at 3.23. This versus Kenji Johjima's CERA of 4.86. Pitchers weren't giving up as many runs throwing to Johnson as they were throwing to Kenji, and this - pretty much this alone - earned Johnson both a lot of playing time and a generally favorable standing among fans.

So given that he doesn't really do anything else well, either standing at the plate or crouching behind it, one's opinion of Rob Johnson comes down to one's opinion of this statistic. Those who like Johnson do so because they feel he helps keep the opponent off the board, while those who don't do so because they don't believe CERA reveals an ability on the catcher's part to control a game. This should be examined.

The absolute first thing we have to do with CERA is consider the pitchers. Catchers don't catch an equivalent distribution of arms, and sure enough, Johnson was catching the bulk of the team's better talent. Felix Hernandez, Erik Bedard, and Jarrod Washburn made up more than half of Johnson's PA's caught, while for Johjima, they made up just 9.4%. For this reason, we should expect their CERA's to be considerably different. The guy who catches the better pitchers is almost always going to post the more flattering rate of runs scored.

However, we wouldn't expect their CERA's to be that different, so clearly there was an additional performance effect. I looked at how the bullpen did throwing to each guy a few weeks ago and, sure enough, their walk and strikeout rates were a little better with Johnson than with Kenji. The picture's a little messier with starting pitchers since the distribution was so skewed, but the take-home message here is that the difference in CERA's was more than simply the difference in pitchers caught.

So with that in mind, the question becomes one about sustainability, about whether or not this sort of thing is reflective of an actual ability and is therefore repeatable on a year-to-year basis. This being beyond my capability, thank goodness for Keith Woolner. All year long, when people have talked about the significance of CERA, others have referred back to work done on the subject a decade ago, and that work was done by Woolner at Baseball Prospectus. Here's the original study, here's a follow-up, and here's a later study done after receiving some criticism from Bill James.

Read those articles. I know they're heavy on the math and somewhat lacking in floral prose, but if you're interested in this subject, then Woolner's work is required reading.

There's too much in there for me to summarize point-by-point. But in the end, Woolner didn't find strong evidence of an effect. He didn't find weak, potentially insignificant evidence of an effect. He found no evidence of an effect. At all. Even just looking at the extremes, the absolute best and worst catchers in Year X, they regressed all the way to the mean in Year X+1. Woolner's ultimate conclusion:

For now, at least, the hypothesis most consistent with the available facts appears to be that catchers do not have a significant effect on pitcher performance.

Based on CERA and its component metrics, Rob Johnson had a much better season of game-calling than Kenji Johjima. But given that this effect has never been shown to be repeatable, we probably shouldn't label it game-calling at all, as doing so implies an ability. We don't actually know if what we're trying to measure exists, and until we do, the most responsible approach is to side with the null hypothesis. There's no proof. There's no proof that Johnson's alleged greatest strength is even the least bit significant, or real.

What's funny is that, if we're just scrounging for as much evidence as we can find, there's a lot more evidence that Kenji was bad than there is that Johnson is good. Kenji was here for four years. In three of those years, his numbers were a lot worse than those of his backup(s), and in the fourth they were about equal. For Johnson, we have one year. 80 games. With that in mind, it makes more sense to suggest that Rob Johnson looked good simply because he wasn't Kenji Johjima. There's more reason to dock the latter than there is to credit the former.

But we needn't focus on that paragraph, because Woolner's work trumps it. Nobody's ever verified that game-calling is a skill, and because of that, if one wants to believe that Johnson calls a great game, then one needs to provide a lot of evidence. Tons of it. Years and years and years' worth. Rob Johnson has started 82 games behind the plate in his Major League career. It is impossible for one to conclude anything about game-calling over a span of 82 games.

Working in Rob Johnson's favor is that pitchers like him. The reason he caught so much of Felix, Bedard, and Washburn is because that's what Felix, Bedard and Washburn wanted. If the pitchers feel like Johnson calls a good game - if the pitchers feel comfortable throwing to him - then that has value. You want your pitchers to feel comfortable when they're going to work. But then Greg Maddux felt most comfortable throwing to pretty much anyone but Javy Lopez, yet of the 12 catchers who caught Maddux for more than 25 games, opponents put up the second-lowest OPS with Lopez behind the plate. Comfort is good, but it's not proof of ability, nor is it a trump card. If you have two guys who're pretty much equal, and a pitcher would rather throw to one of them, then that's fine. But if you have two guys, and one of them is measurably better than the other, then the responsibility falls on the pitcher to feel comfortable with the guy who maximizes the team's chances of winning.

Rob Johnson is a 27 year old Major League catcher who, in his rookie season, became a favorite of some high-level pitchers and coaches. In that regard, he's off to a hell of a start. But a lot of fans have gone so far as to suggest that he's a valuable player, the reasoning being that he keeps the other team off the board. We can't say that. We can't say that and have it mean anything, because that statement has yet to be confirmed. We will know that Rob Johnson is a valuable player if and only if he improves in the areas we know we can measure. And while PITCHfx may allow for someone down the road to show that game calling is a legitimate, repeatable ability, it would really put my mind at ease if Rob Johnson would think about maybe swinging a bat.

Heads Up, Sounders Fans

2009-11-07T07:23:58Z

SBN is looking out for you.

Go visit.

Faces

2009-11-06T23:28:03Z

Alejandro de Aza looks like at first he didn't really want to go to the party, but then someone told him there would be Triscuits and he's all "I love Triscuits!"

Mariners Fan? Jobless? Hate Cancer?

2009-11-06T23:01:08Z

Next Tuesday, between 11am - 1pm, Jamie Moyer will be signing the 2010 Moyer Foundation calendar at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. The calendars, which you can see here, cost $5 and benefit Hutch School for children whose lives have been affected by cancer. You may feel disinclined to spend $5 on a signed calendar somewhere else when you can spend $5 on a signed baseball card from eBay without leaving your seat, but if you buy a card instead of a calendar, you're basically ruining a child's life, and Jesus, man, that's sick, you're sick, I don't know how you live with yourself.

Seriously, $5 to help some kids and get a little face time with one of the most uniquely successful athletes in the history of professional sports. Plus, autograph! And I guess people still use calendars. If you have the money, time, and transportation, there's no reason not to go.

M's & Jack Wilson Discussing M's & Jack Wilson

2009-11-06T21:17:13Z

Dejan Kovacevic link, as mentioned in the comments:

Jack Wilson, the Pirates' shortstop most of this decade, is discussing a multiyear extension with Seattle that would keep him from becoming a free agent.

The Mariners are believed to have offered a two-year contract worth more than the two-year offer the Pirates made Wilson -- $8 million -- shortly before trading him July 29.

I don't know if JJ Hardy was ever on Z's radar, but now that he's off the table, Wilson's about as good a shortstop as this team's going to be able to get without surrendering something(s) of considerable value. So, rather predictably, the M's are seeing if they can extend him for a couple years for something below the $8.4m price of his 2010 option. While Kovacevic doesn't give us a number, mentioning only that it's worth more than $8m (total, not per year), I can't imagine Z would go beyond $10-12m, so that should be in the ballpark. Which...well, it's not amazing, but Wilson's a perfectly legitimate everyday shortstop, and Kenji Johjima's return home helped alleviate the budget problem a little bit. So provided Wilson re-signs for a reasonable price, which is the likelihood, then all things considered I'll be happy with it. Yay defense, and all that.

J.J. Hardy to the Twins

2009-11-06T17:09:29Z

Carlos Gomez is the return. More later.

[Source]

Later: Hardy is a guy that we'd all been hoping that the Mariners would make a play on this offseason to address the shortstop position, so it's a bit of a shame that he's been taken off the table so early and for what appears to be a fairly low price - one we doubtless could have paid. Gomez is a slightly below average centrefielder for league minimum, and the Brewers had top prospect Alcides Escobar waiting in the wings and a hole in CF with the departure of Mike Cameron, but I have a hard time thinking we couldn't have beaten that price.

In terms of money/talent, the deal makes a good amount of sense for both sides. The Twins get a big upgrade at shortstop, the Brewers deal from depth to cover a weak position (albeit not that well) for free, and have some more money to play with in free agency. As the return for a guy like Hardy, Gomez the talent is rather underwhelming, but the financial flexibility he provides is useful. Could/should the Brewers have gotten more for him? Yes. But they didn't, which is where this deal becomes weird from the Milwaukee side. They had an asset which had less value to them than to the rest of the league, but they sold him for his value to them rather than anyone else's, which is not the best trading strategy in the world.

Junior's Decision Likely To Come Before Long

2009-11-06T08:29:02Z

Not a whole lot to say on this, but Dave passed along the link, so I might as well post it:

Goldberg [Griffey's agent] said he was scheduled to meet with the Mariners soon and any decision on Griffey's future with the team -- and in baseball -- would be made sooner rather than later.

We'll tackle this story once it's resolved. For now, just something to think about. It's not exactly news, but at this point in the offseason, it might be close enough to qualify.

Best & Worst In Hidden Value, 2009

2009-11-06T04:35:10Z

Baseball players can make contributions in a number of different ways, the most obvious and talked-about of which is how they do at the plate. Defense, position, and baserunning tend to be brushed off as secondary concerns. What follows are the top and bottom 15 in the sum of these latter three values, as determined by UZR, Fangraphs' position adjustment, and Baseball Prospectus' EQBRR.

Note that catchers aren't measured by UZR, so the worst ones are getting a boost and the best ones are getting it in the shorts. However, no catchers are likely to deserve placement on either list, except maybe Gerald Laird. So.

TOP 15		BOTTOM 15
Franklin Gutierrez	35.2	Bobby Abreu	-20.3
Nyjer Morgan	27.3	Nick Johnson	-20.3
Michael Bourn	26.0	Carlos Quentin	-20.4
Ryan Zimmerman	26.0	Carlos Lee	-20.5
Ben Zobrist	25.1	Aubrey Huff	-20.8
Evan Longoria	23.8	Ryan Braun	-21.3
Chone Figgins	22.3	Adam Lind	-22.0
Chase Utley	22.0	Delmon Young	-22.5
Ryan Sweeney	21.9	Andre Ethier	-22.9
Elvis Andrus	21.7	Jose Guillen	-24.8
Rajai Davis	20.7	Billy Butler	-25.7
Brendan Ryan	18.5	Michael Cuddyer	-25.8
Jack Wilson	17.9	Jermaine Dye	-27.2
Adrian Beltre	17.4	Brad Hawpe	-27.5
Ian Kinsler	17.0	Adam Dunn	-48.0

Neither Guti's placement at the top of the list nor Dunn's placement at the bottom should come as a shock; Guti plays a mean center field and runs pretty well, while Dunn's an athlete in the way people used to think glass is a liquid. The 29-run gap between them with the bat is erased here by the nearly threefold difference in "hidden" value. Franklin Gutierrez is awesome. Adam Dunn is not.

I don't think any names here really stand out. At least, they shouldn't. Notice the three Mariners in the top 15 and the bottom 15 being 47% AL Central. Turns out Chase Utley can run well too.

The best way to look at this would be to take a multiyear window such that we could smooth out statistical anomalies or misleading UZR. However, for whatever reason I can't load BP's '07 and '08 baserunning data, so we're stuck with what we have. If you ignore baserunning and focus on UZR + Position, then the 07-09 top three come out as Utley/Gutierrez/Hardy, while the bottom three are Dye/Hawpe/Dunn.

Mets decline JJ's option

2009-11-06T03:36:25Z

Mets decline JJ's option

$1m buyout instead of an $8.6m option. This'll be an interesting name to watch; JJ would make a great buy-low candidate for a bad team looking to cash him in at the deadline, but on the other hand, it was the Red Sox who wound up with Takashi Saito for $1.5m a year ago, so this could go any number of ways. What's important is, we win.

Faces

2009-11-06T03:24:57Z

Travis Denker looks like he just ran into an old friend at the beach but doesn't know if his buddy recognizes him anymore, which is a bummer because Travis really wants to give him a hug.

On the Teahen --> White Sox Deal

2009-11-06T01:51:39Z

Since this doesn't involve our team or division, let's be fairly brief:

The winner: Mark Teahen

The losers: Josh Fields (the other one), Chris Getz

Overview: Kenny Williams was so disappointed with Fields and Getz being unable to live up to their minor league numbers that he couldn't just non-tender the pair. Instead he paid $5 million to banish them to Kansas City. Harsh.

Moral: Do not disappoint Kenny Williams.

The Yusmeiro Petit Addition

2009-11-05T05:49:55Z

More photos » by Gene J. Puskar - AP

Yusmeiro Petit checks to see if he smells

Browse more photos »

Major League Baseball has informed me that I'm free to talk about this now, so off we go. Also, congratulations, Alex.

Anyway, yeah, the Mariners picked up Yusmeiro Petit off waivers from the Diamondbacks today. Petit was made available because (A) he ran an ERA near six, (B) Arizona wanted to clear some roster space, and (C) he's out of minor league options. The M's, having just freed up a lot of room, decided, hey, why not? Nothing wrong with another warm body capable of starting a game.

Petit's name has long been in the middle of the neither-of-us-get-it-so-let's-try-maybe-shouting-really-loud stats vs. scouts debate, as his exceptional minor league numbers didn't match up with his middling repertoire. You see, Petit's the rare righty with a sub-90 fastball, but he's found a way to ride that, a change, and a breaking ball he likes to throw over a broad range of speeds all the way into the big leagues. The problem is that it hasn't exactly worked out for him against the highest level of competition, but he has still been able to have a little bit of success, proving that you don't always need to throw Major League stuff to retire Major League bats.

Petit's a guy that pounds the zone, mixes his pitches, and works up, with predictable results - he doesn't walk many, he gets his strikeouts, and he allows an obscene amount of fly balls and home runs. Despite a 2.5 career K/BB to date, the home runs have killed him. He's given up 50 through 229.1 innings with a HR/FB of 13.6%, which are just staggeringly bad numbers for a big league pitcher. His career 5.44 FIP reflects this inability to keep the ball in the yard and makes Petit out to be little more than a replacement-level pitcher.

However, there are two ways of thinking about that. One way is to look at Petit's four partial Major League seasons, see a ton of home runs in each of them, and conclude that hitters just pound his hittable arsenal. He throws 87, right? Of course he's going to be an exception to the law of HR/FB.

That way is wrong. The proper way of thinking about Petit's home runs is that he's accumulated his numbers over just 36 starts and 71 total appearances, the equivalent of maybe a season and a half. Do we expect HR/FB to be stable after a year and a half? Braden Looper just posted a 15.8% rate over 34 starts. You have to assume that a guy will perform normally until proven otherwise, and with Petit, he has a long way to go before he's proven otherwise. If you look at his Hit Tracker numbers, it's not like the home runs hit against him are taking off. It's luck until it's not, and as such, we should expect Petit's HR/FB to behave going forward.

Regress Petit's home runs and all of a sudden you're looking at a more useful pitcher, a pitcher capable of doing enough to have some success in a big park like Safeco. He'll always give up his dingers, but an above-average K/BB cures a lot of ills.

The only problem, then, is trying to account for the league switch. For his career, he's struck the pitcher out 28 times without walking him once. Take those away and his K/BB drops to 2.1 (I know K/BB isn't great, but it's simple, so bear with me), which is a bit more alarming. Remove the pitcher and add in the DH and you're back to having a guy who's likely to run an ERA north of 5 based on his track record, and then he's a fringey #5/6 who you're hoping either gets lucky or builds on some of his potential.

And that's why the Diamondbacks cut him loose - though Petit has his upside, he just doesn't project to be that useful without a little luck or improvement. Yeah, he had a 6.3 K/BB in the high minors five years ago, but as we've learned from Doug Fister, awesome minor league K/BB ratios don't translate that well when you don't have good stuff. The hitters up here are smarter. They're smarter, and they're better.

Petit, I imagine, is here to serve as insurance and as a Spring Training trial. As insurance, he's a warm body that makes it a little easier to dangle one of the starters we already have in the system. And as a trial, the M's could see how he looks in Peoria, with some good pitching maybe earning him a roster spot since we have tons of starters who I think could go back to Tacoma. Petit's nothing spectacular, but he's also not bad, and who knows, maybe a big park would give him the confidence to trust his stuff a little more.

It's not a groundbreaking move. I don't know why I've spent so long talking about this. I guess it's just cool to have the M's do something again, and plus Petit's got a neat little story. But just because it's a minor pick-up doesn't mean you should forget about him as quickly as you forgot about Reegie Corona. Petit has a shot. And a guy with a shot, I suppose, is a guy worth discussing.

Petit claimed

2009-11-05T03:49:40Z

Petit claimed

Heads up. Mariners claimed Yusmeiro Petit. Heard from Dave, and this is the only link I can find right now.

Points Of Contention: Jose Lopez's Offense

2009-11-05T01:05:05Z

We can just skip the whole background section, right? To many, Lopez's improvement as a hitter is a sign of things to come. To others, Lopez is a decent but by no means extraordinary bat that is approaching a plateau. Figuring out which it is will be of considerable importance as the Zduriencik front office works to move the team forward. So: is Jose Lopez turning into the guy a lot of people thought he'd be back when he was a prospect, or is the likelihood that he's just about maxed out?

I'll try to be as brief as possible.

The first thing to understand is where Lopez is as a hitter right now. And for this, it's imperative that you're able to look past the round, pretty 25 home runs he just hit. Over the last two years, Lopez has posted a .765 OPS, a .327 raw wOBA, and has been 0-5 runs above average after adjusting for park. Perfectly acceptable, of course, but far from great; for all intents and purposes, he's been about as good as Fred Lewis. Nobody considers Fred Lewis a great hitter or anything, right? Okay.

Now, Lopez has made it abundantly clear that he prefers to be aggressive at the plate. He's consistently posted above-average swing rates and O-Swing rates, with his Z-Swing rates fluctuating between average and above-average. What this means is that, while Lopez likes to swing, he doesn't always have the best judgment. Which should come as a surprise to no one. He's not exactly an injudicious hacker or anything, but he's a free swinger, and both Chone Figgins and Adam Dunn drew more unintentional walks in 2009 than Lopez has drawn since 2004.

Plate discipline doesn't usually change very much over a player's career, at least not until he gets old. You'll see some guys make incremental improvements and other guys lose their feel, but by and large, if you're aggressive when you come up, you're aggressive through your peak. With Jose Lopez, then, we shouldn't expect to see him learn a different approach. Better numbers could make pitchers throw him fewer pitches in the zone, but he's unlikely to get much better at identifying what's a strike and what's a ball. He is what he is.

Not drawing a lot of walks means that an aggressive hitter is leaving a source of potentially significant value on the table. In order to be successful and productive, then, he has to make up for this by doing one or some or even all of the following:

(1) Make contact

(2) Run well

(3) Put the ball on the ground (closely related to #2, really)

(4) Hit for power

Vladimir Guerrero is perhaps the most obvious example of a hacker who's made it work. He's made it work by, throughout most of his career, pulling off #1, #2, and #4. Alfonso Soriano's gone with #2 and #4. Ichiro, of course, favors #3 over #4 to go with his #'s 1 and 2, allowing him to beat out a ton of grounders. It's a different path, but not necessarily a worse one. The point is, aggressiveness, on its own, is not a problem. You don't have to be Nick Johnson if you want to have a career.

Now let's look at how Jose Lopez does here:

(1) Check. Lopez's career contact rate is 86%, well north of the ~80% league average. He's a free swinger, but he's a free swinger who's able to get the bat on the ball an awful lot.

(2) No dice. Lopez may have stolen 31 bags as an 18 year old, but these days he's a big boy. Not that I'd call him slow or anything, but his 12 infield hits last year tied him with Kevin Youkilis, Dunn, and Jason Bay.

(3) Not anymore. Lopez used to have an above-average groundball rate, but he's trended away from that, finishing just outside the bottom third in 2009.

(4) Check, sort of. Lopez hit 17 homers in 2008 and 25 homers in 2009, posting a .191 Isolated Slugging Percentage well above his career mark. This power has been what's elevated Lopez from what he was in 2006 to what he was this past season.

In order for Lopez to improve on what he was in 2009, he could improve his discipline. Conceding this as unlikely, however, he then would have to improve on one or some of those four points. Looking at them again:

(1) Lopez's contact rate is already high, and his rate in 2009 was not significantly different from his rates in 2005 or 2006. I find the suggestion that Lopez could make more contact than he already does to be dubious.

(2) Players don't get faster. As Lopez ages, he's only going to lose footspeed, not gain it.

(3) Possible, but then since he's not blessed with the best speed, this isn't going to help him anyway.

(4) And now we've gotten to the heart of the matter. Those who say Lopez's star is only on the rise believe that he's packing more power potential. Those who say he's near his ceiling don't see it.

So which is it? Just how much more power can we expect to see out of Jose Lopez going forward?

The thing about power spikes is that, generally, they don't come out of nowhere. They're preceded by flashes of power to all fields, and occasional glimpses of considerable strength. Wladimir Balentien, for example, only hit seven homers this year, but his 489-foot dinger off Daniel McCutchen was the longest hit by anyone all season. This is evidence that, while Balentien's far from a complete hitter, he has the potential to drive a lot of pitches out of the park. One also notices that, of Balentien's 15 career homers, six have gone up the middle or the other way. Combine these bits of information with his famously long swing and I don't think anyone would be surprised if a year or three from now he ended up on or near the longball leaderboard.

There are signs. Which makes me wonder, where are Lopez's signs?

Yes, he hit 17 homers in 2008 and 25 homers in 2009. Each added significantly to his previous career high. But home runs, by themselves, don't necessarily tell you that much. How is his actual *power*?

To answer this, I think we realistically only need to consider three things:

Jose Lopez has hit 70 home runs in his Major League career. He has pulled 66 of them to left field. Three have gone up the middle, and one has gone the other way. Every single one of his 42 homers these last two years has gone to left.

Hit Tracker Online provides data going back to 2006, covering 63 of Lopez's 70 home runs. Six of them had a standard distance of more than 400 feet. The longest came in at 415. The fastest, meanwhile, came in at 109.8mph off the bat.

He has a pretty quick, compact swing.

Lopez isn't weak. Weak guys don't hit 25 homers while spending half their time in Safeco Field. But when you go through the data, you can't help but feel like, if Lopez were packing more power potential, he would've demonstrated that ability at least a couple times at some point. Where are the deep flies to right field? Where are the two or three fastballs he just stepped into and slaughtered to left? It's clear that Wlad has a high power ceiling. We know that Franklin Gutierrez has some raw strength. But Lopez? Rob Johnson hit a ball 430. Mike Carp hit a ball 426. Jose Lopez has yet to hit a ball beyond 415, with the majority of his homers just clearing the left field fence.

When you go through Lopez's numbers looking for signs of more power, what you come away with are signs to the contrary - indications that he doesn't have much further to go, suggestions that perhaps even reaching 25 was a stroke of good luck. Of all the players to hit at least 25 home runs in 2009, Lopez had the lowest average distance, finishing just below other anomalies Ben Zobrist and Aaron Hill. Just because he hit 25 doesn't mean this is his new level of true talent. If anything, I'd say that we should project Lopez to hit for a little less power next year, not more. Because he just hasn't flashed the kind of ability more befitting a 25-homer sort of guy.

I don't want to say there's no chance, and I certainly don't intend to convey the impression that I think Jose Lopez is bad. As far as the former is concerned, unlikely doesn't mean impossible - baseball analysis is just probability. And as for the latter, Lopez has been a ~league-average player these last two years, and at 26 years old, there's little reason to believe he's about to get worse. This is, after all, supposed to be his career peak. He's a fine player.

It's just...Jose Lopez has been teasing Mariner fans since he was a teenager, but at this point, I think we have enough evidence to say that he's probably not going to turn into a big-time power threat or run producer. There's always a chance that he develops more pop, and who knows, he may even get better at telling balls from strikes, but the odds say he's better suited for a supportive role, rather than a featured one. And that's something that, as they examine all the different possibilities this offseason, Jack Zduriencik and his assistants are going to have to take into account.

11/4: Open World Series Game 6 Thread

2009-11-05T00:14:20Z

Pedro Martinez

#45 / Pitcher / Philadelphia Phillies

Height: 5-11

Weight: 195

Bats: R

Throws: R

Born: Oct 25, 1971

Andy Pettitte

#46 / Pitcher / New York Yankees

Height: 6-5

Weight: 225

Bats: L

Throws: L

Born: Jun 15, 1972

No matter how it turns out tonight, I will concede that this World Series has been far more compelling than I expected.

Faces

2009-11-04T21:03:03Z

Kurt Birkins looks like he just realized the person he was making fun of to a friend was in the same room the whole time.

Regression's A Powerful Force

2009-11-04T06:42:27Z

No new ideas presented here. I just remember that, back when I was first learning about regression, one of the things that stuck with me was seeing how the top batting averages in the league in Year X looked in Year X+1, so here's a similar concept with a different, more contemporary statistic. What you see below are the top 20 players in WAR in 2008 and how they then did in 2009. Accompanying them is an old friend.

Please try to keep this in mind if you notice that Franklin Gutierrez is having a tough time repeating as a superstar.

Faces

2009-11-04T04:02:37Z

Lew Ford looks like he spits when he talks.

Old School Gameday

2009-11-04T01:31:59Z

Old School Gameday

So this is amazing