SportsCade Editor's Choice

Report: Rutgers has secret side deals with Schiano

2008-07-23T18:47:19Z

A clause in Rutgers football coach Greg Schiano's contract reportedly allows him to leave without financial penalty if the university does not complete the 14,000-seat expansion of Rutgers Stadium by 2009.

Know Your Third-Base Coach

2008-07-22T20:30:43Z

Lately, the Yankees have had a rash of runners thrown out at the plate, third-base coach Bobby Meacham pinwheeling them on to their doom. In the recently concluded A’s series, somehow a sweep for the Yankees, it seemed as if they were being gunned down at home, batter after batter. I was curious if this was real or just an impression, so I asked our own Bil “Statsman” Burke to rustle up a ranking of teams by runners thrown out at the plate. These are honest-to-goodness, catcher-applies the tag plays, not force-outs on bases loaded grounders or anything like that. Here’s what he came up with.

In the following, Out is the total number of outs. The next three columns show what base the runner started from: B = Batter, which is to say home plate; F = First base, S = Second base, T = Third. The final column shows each team’s current third-base coach. We can’t generalize about the third base coaches from this data given that so many factors are in play here, from runners ignoring stop signs or falling down or the game state, but it is interesting that the number of chances a team takes doesn’t seem to correspond to the quality of its offense.

Team   Out   B   F   S   T    Coach
ANA     16   1   2   4   9    Dino Ebel
PHI     16   1   4   2   9    Steve Smith
BAL     14   0   2   4   8    Juan Samuel
NYA     13   0   1   7   5    Bobby Meacham
TBA     13   0   0   7   6    Tom Foley
MIN     13   0   3   3   7    Scott Ullger
SLN     13   0   1   3   9    Jose Oquendo
HOU     13   0   4   3   6    Ed Romero
LAN     13   0   1   3   9    Larry Bowa
DET     12   0   0   7   5    Gene Lamont
ARI     12   1   0   5   6    Chip Hale
SDN     12   0   2   3   7    Glenn Hoffman
CIN     12   0   3   2   7    Mark Berry
BOS     12   0   1   4   7    DeMarlo Hale
SEA     12   1   2   1   8    Sam Perlozzo
PIT     12   0   2   6   4    Tony Beasley
TOR     12   0   3   4   5    Nick Leyva
WAS     11   0   2   7   2    Tim Tolman
KCA     11   0   2   4   5    Luis Silverio
CLE     11   0   4   4   3    Joel Skinner
CHN     11   0   2   2   7    Mike Quade
OAK     10   0   1   3   6    Tony DeFrancesco
MIL      9   0   2   2   5    Dave Sveum
TEX      9   0   1   2   6    Matt Walbeck
COL      9   0   2   3   4    Mike Gallego
ATL      9   0   0   4   5    Brian Snitker
FLO      8   0   4   2   2    Bo Porter
SFN      8   0   0   4   4    Tim Flannery
NYN      8   1   2   1   4    Luis Aguayo
CHA      7   0   0   4   3    Jeff Cox
TOTAL  341   5  53 110 173

Not Your Average Joe (Blanton)

2008-07-23T11:00:08Z

Upon first glance, Joe Blanton appears to be a perfectly average major league pitcher. After all, his career ERA is 4.25 – exactly the same as the league’s ERA during that time. But if we look closer, we see that the newest Philadelphia Philly isn’t actually average; rather, he’s been the beneficiary of pitching over half of his innings in a favorable environment. Namely: McAfee Coliseum.

Joe Blanton has been a very consistent pitcher in his big league career. Every year since 2005, Blanton’s average fastball has been almost exactly 89 MPH. He’s thrown his fastball right around 55% of the time, and he’s thrown his slider, changeup, and curveball approximately 15% of the time each, respectively. His ability to throw his pitches has not changed from year to year.

In 760 career innings, Joe Blanton’s career ERA of 4.25 is exactly the same as the league’s ERA during that time. Blanton has, in other words, been incredibly average. And, considering the fact that he’s been durable as well, his “averageness” is very valuable. But if we look closer, we see that Blanton can thank luck and/or the Oakland Coliseum for some of his success.

In 760 career innings, Blanton has 431 career strikeouts, which equates to a rate of 5.1 batters per nine innings. This is below average, but just high enough to get by. Additionally, he has solid – but not amazing – control, having walked 202 in that span, or 2.4 batters per nine. Blanton has had two seasons of very average luck on balls in play – this year, his BABIP is .302, and last year his BABIP was .299. He has also had two seasons of tremendous luck – both good and bad – on balls in play: in 2006 his BABIP was .335, while in 2005 his BABIP was .248. Of the balls in play against him in his career, 45% have been grounders, 35% have been fly balls, and 20% have been line drives. Those numbers are almost exactly league average.

Blanton has made up for his below-average strikeout rate with an above average “ability” to suppress the long ball.

While approximately 11-12% of fly balls become homers on average, Blanton has given up only 69 homers on 892 career fly balls – good for 7.7%. Much of this likely stems from the fact that he has pitched for the Athletics during his entire career. You can find different sources for park factors, but according to this McAfee Coliseum depresses homers by 11%. When we adjust for the fact that Blanton made approximately half of his starts in the Coliseum, we can see how he was able to beat the league average in homers per fly ball by approximately 4-5%. Sure enough, we see that Blanton’s career HR/9 at home is lower (0.75) than his career HR/9 on the road 0.90).

But McAfee Coliseum is not only helpful for pitchers in suppressing homers, it’s also excellent for helping pitchers allow fewer hits – mainly because the extensive foul territory leads to more foul outs. In fact, Blanton benefited from this: although his walk rate and strikeout rate were virtually identical away from home as they were in Oakland, his hit rate in Oakland was much better than it was on the road. And, as expected, his ERA was also much better in Oakland than on the road.

	Home	Road
K/9	5.1	5.3
BB/9	2.3	2.5
HR/9	0.75	0.90
Hits/9	8.9	10.4
ERA	3.79	4.78

Blanton’s aggregate ERA was exactly league average (4.25) during this time, but this is mainly because of the fact that he pitched 54% of his innings in a very favorable environment.

Now, however, his home pitching environment has changed. Although he will face generally inferior competition in the National League – and will get to face the pitcher’s spot several times per game – Blanton will likely struggle in Citizens Bank Park. While pitching in Oakland saved 11% of his fly balls from becoming homers, pitching in Philadelphia will increase his homer total by _at least_ 5% (some measures have Citizens Bank Park inflating homers by as much as 16%). Thus, he should give up approximately 16% more homers in his home starts than he would have if he was still pitching in Oakland. Furthermore, Citizens Bank Park has allowed more hits than average, meaning that Blanton will likely struggle not only with increased homers, but also increased hits in general.

Joe Blanton is actually not an incredibly average pitcher, despite his career ERA+ of 100. Rather, he is a somewhat below-average pitcher who has appeared to be average because he has pitched over half of his innings in McAfee Coliseum. Now, although he is switching to the weaker league, Blanton will have to pitch half of his games in a harsh pitching environment. Pitching in Philly will be much more difficult for Blanton, and he will likely be exposed as the below-average pitcher that he is.

Below-average doesn’t mean bad or unhelpful. It just means that if the Phillies are expecting a guy with a 4.25 career ERA (or perhaps expecting even more, due to the league switch), they are going to be disappointed when the guy with the 4.79 career ERA in all games played outside of Oakland shows up and attempts to pitch half of his games in Citizens Bank Park.

Wolf to Astros

2008-07-22T19:32:00Z

Today we traded Randy Wolf to the Astros for RHP Chad Reineke.

As discussed a while back, given his contractual situation - free agent at the end of the year - Randy was a likely candidate to be traded before the deadline. The fact that the Astros had interest also wasn't a great surprise considering the history Houston's GM, Ed Wade, has with Randy going back to their days together in Philadelphia.

Though we didn't want to be in this position when we signed Randy last December, we are excited to add Chad Reineke into our system. This winter Baseball America rated Chad as the Astros' 7th best prospect, marking the second consecutive season that Chad has appeared on the Astros' top ten list. A 6'6" RHP, Chad is currently on the 40-man roster and a starting pitcher at AAA Round Rock. After being drafted in the 13th round in 2004, Chad went from short-season A through AA in 2 1/2 years with a combined 3.12 ERA in 283 ip. In 2007 in his first season in AAA, Chad split time between the rotation and the pen. This year he has pitched exclusively in the rotation (except for one 6-inning relief appearance) and has amassed 112 innings so far. His overall line is: 4.41 ERA, 112.1 ip, 112 hits, 35 walks, 100 strikeouts.

According to our reports, our scouts believe Chad has the potential for both a plus fastball and plus slider that could play in either the rotation or toward the back end of a bullpen. Houston certainly recognized this as well, as Reineke started seeing some time in the pen in 2007 similar to what Chad Qualls did when he was in AAA for the 'Stros. As a rotation pitcher, Reineke normally pitches around 90 mph, but our scouts have clocked him as high as 94 mph out of the pen, so we understand the reasoning. At 6'6" his angle to the plate has given hitters trouble, which could serve him well in both roles.

In each of the past two seasons Chad has gotten off to slow starts, posting a combined 8.66 ERA in April. In the months after April, however, his ERA has dropped to 3.71. In fact, over his last seven appearances, Chad has posted a 1.84 ERA over 44 innings with 30 hits, 11 walks, and 44 strikeouts. All in all, Chad is an interesting prospect whose arm, performance, and experience puts him pretty close to Petco. Hopefully, he'll have a chance to help us relatively soon.

Ranting after a devastating Mets loss

2008-07-23T13:43:27Z

There's no excuse for what I just witnessed. So I don't want to hear anything about the Mets being without closer Billy Wagner. You'd think professional athletes -- grown men -- could get three outs and protect a three-run...

Heyman's Latest: Sabathia, Dunn, Blake

2008-07-23T04:15:35Z

Another column from SI.com's Jon Heyman.

The Yankees "appear primed to make a big push" for CC Sabathia when he hits free agency. While Sabathia may prefer the West Coast, he reportedly will not be offering a discount to those teams. He'll want Johan money.
Heyman speculates that Adam Dunn could be a nice addition for the Yankees, one that might mostly cost just money. I know he hates playing baseball and all but the lack of interest is perplexing. Brian Cashman and Walt Jocketty have matched up a couple of times for trades, including one that sent Sterling Hitchcock to St. Louis in '03.
Heyman believes both the Yankees and Mets might consider Cleveland's Casey Blake.

Time's running out for contenders to make deals

2008-07-23T13:42:58Z

Time's running out for contenders to make a trade. Fortunately for them, Dayn Perry is here to fine-tune their wish lists.

Struggling Cubs can't match Petit, lose again to D-Backs

2008-07-23T13:42:57Z

Yusmeiro Petit became the latest starter to shut down sputtering Chicago, and the Diamondbacks made it two in a row over the Cubs with a 9-2 romp on Tuesday night.

Newman, Stewart play coy on potential partnership (AP)

2008-07-23T13:42:40Z

If Ryan Newman is indeed in line to join Tony Stewart's new team next season, neither driver is saying.

Vikings

2008-07-23T13:42:28Z

The Minnesota Vikings agreed to terms with two draft picks on Tuesday -- fifth-round defensive tackle Letroy Guion and sixth-round receiver Jaymar Johnson .

Urlacher signs one-year extension with Bears

2008-07-23T13:42:21Z

Six-time Pro Bowl linebacker Brian Urlacher signed a one-year contract extension Tuesday with the Chicago Bears on the eve of the team's first training camp practice.

Giants, first-round choice Phillips agree to terms

2008-07-23T13:42:18Z

The New York Giants agreed to terms with first-round choice Kenny Phillips on Tuesday night, and the Super Bowl champions will be heading to training camp with all their draft picks.

LeBron leaves Team USA practice with ankle sprain

2008-07-23T13:41:51Z

As Team USA's practice ended, LeBron James reclined on a table with trainers tending to his sprained right ankle. A horde of television cameramen surrounded James and the trainers before team officials shooed them away.

Phillies Win

2008-07-23T02:28:16Z

What the hell just happened? Phillies come from behind to beat the Mets 8-6.

We at Philly SportsCast are taking up a collection for Billy Wagner’s doctor - God bless the dude who sat him - interested in chipping in?

UPDATE:

Looks like Wagner sat himself…

On Tuesday, the Mets’ medical people advised the bruised Billy Wagner that he needed one more day of rest. Wagner subsequently met with Manuel to affirm the doctors’ decision. Manuel said that had Wagner made the case that he wanted to pitch, that he was ready if needed, he would have called on him. Wagner made no such case. He opted to sit this one out. Later, he told reporters that after watching the bullpen get slapped around, he had second thoughts.

Too late.

I wonder, Billy, was that the Mets’ way, the Yankees’ way or your way?

What would Mariano Rivera have done?

Wagner said that had this been September, it might have been a different story.

Guess what: There might not be a September story for the Mets.

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Jon Heyman: Is Sabathia California dreamin'?

2008-07-22T21:23:53Z

CC Sabathia, who hails from Northern California and currently lives there, is building a home in Southern California. So it's obvious his heart is on the West Coast.

Phillies stun Mets in ninth to grab NL East lead

2008-07-23T13:41:15Z

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Philadelphia Phillies moved to the top of the National League East on Tuesday after scoring six runs at the top of the ninth to beat the New York Mets 8-6.

Shut down Cubs

2008-07-23T13:41:12Z

Yusmeiro Petit became the latest starter to shut down sputtering Chicago, and the Diamondbacks made it two in a row over the Cubs with a 9-2 romp on Tuesday night.

Washburn too expensive, even for Yanks

2008-07-23T13:41:09Z

Jarrod Washburn donning Yankee pinstripes? Too much expensive baggage makes those chances remote, Ken Rosenthal says.

A-Rod Signs With William Morris

2008-07-23T01:25:41Z

Now here’s a high-upside move if I’ve ever seen one:

For Mr. Rodriguez, the move marks the latest turn in his relationship with Scott Boras, one of baseball’s most successful and controversial agents. It was Mr. Boras’s decision to announce during last year’s World Series that Mr. Rodriguez would opt out of his contract with the Yankees. That move dented the future Hall of Famer’s reputation and forced him to pursue a new deal directly with Yankees brass.

Mr. Boras, who has represented Mr. Rodriguez throughout his career, said he will continue to represent the slugger in any baseball-related negotiations. “I do Alex’s baseball work,” Mr. Boras said Monday.

Now, with what is likely the final contract of his sports career complete, Mr. Rodriguez is turning to William Morris to burnish his image as an athlete with appeal beyond his sport.

As much as I’ve been called a Boras apologist, he and A-Rod have left a lot of money on the table in terms of endorsements, largely because A-Rod hasn’t been very salable. Darren Rovell estimates that he is pulling in less than $2 million annually off the field, falling below at least forty other American athletes.

Maybe William Morris can change that. Granted, it’s a very tough job right now. Opting out during the World Series didn’t go over so well, and he’s been tabloid fodder more than once. But an even bigger issue is that he remains the second most popular player on his own team, and a lot of people consider Jeter the more accomplished player (especially in the media). Fair or not, Jeter has built a much better brand for himself, and that has translated to greater off-field earning potential.

One interesting aspect of the WSJ article is that William Morris may focus on long-term investments for A-Rod (a la Magic Johnson) instead of short-term earnings maximization (a la Tiger Woods). That’s a pretty reasonable goal, and corporate equity generally goes farther than a regular paycheck can.

But it will still be important to get A-Rod in the right light publicly, especially as he approaches Barry Bonds over the next several years. Needless to say, there will be an incredible amount of money at stake, and A-Rod’s image could be a huge determinant in how much he actually makes.

Feedback? Write a comment, or e-mail the author at shawn(AT)squawkingbaseball.com

A Crowbar To The Knee

2008-07-23T07:38:00Z

I don't think they've ever made a movie about that whole Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan situation. But if they ever did, you could easily cast So Taguchi as Jeff Gillooly. Playing the part of Kerrigan would be me in the fetal position screaming "Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy! Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy!" Because that's basically what I do every time So Gillooly picks up a bat. Or is that a crowbar that he takes to the knees and ankles of Met fans?

(Playing Tonya Harding in my Lifetime movie of the week would have to be that pain in the ass Shane Victorino ... only instead of a wedding video, Victorino would just dress up in a t-shirt that says "F-the Mets" with a Hawaiian grass skirt and he'd just do the hula ... or maybe that "I'm safe" dance he did at second base ... on the Shea Stadium mound all night.)

I mean, you have to be kidding me. Victorino, Taguchi, and Jimmy Rollins in the same six-run ninth inning rally? I'm shocked that Larry Jones wasn't instantly traded to the Phillies so he could have followed Rollins to the plate and put an end to the Mets franchise right then and there. And maybe Yadier Molina, Brian Jordan, and Terry Pendleton could have all come out wearing Phillies uniforms with crowbars in a conga line while taking their hacks at the pinata that is the Mets bullpen.

Not for nothing, but f**k!

Of course, people will be asking themselves if Johan Santana should have pitched the ninth inning. First off, Snoop Manuel gave an informed reason as to why he didn't trot Santana out, that he's very rarely gone past 100 pitches. Fine. And for those of you who scream at me hoping for a return to the old days where pitchers went nine innings, forget it. Outside of Roy Halladay, those days are dead and buried forever. Tony "I'm a genius" La Russa blew up the baseball landscape, it's time to move on.

But the most important reason to not bother complaining about that is that it doesn't matter who pitched the ninth inning because ...

wait for it ...

protecting a three run lead with three outs to go shouldn't be that hard!!!

Should it?

That's why Gary Cohen giving us the "this bullpen, thrust into unfamiliar roles ..." made me a little crazy (as if the bullpen didn't make me crazy enough to throw my shoe). No! No! No! Your role is to win the game!

You play ...

to win ...

the game!!!

Three outs, three run lead. At that point, is it really necessary to be a "ninth inning guy" to get three outs? One run lead, yes. There's definitely a difference between a set-up guy in the role of closer ... and a closer. Three run lead? Stop. Get three outs.

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?

Think about it. Have you ever seen So Taguchi and Jeff Gillooly in the same place at the same time?

And Luis Aguayo, I'm on to you. Endy Chavez doesn't get thrown out at home plate twice in one game unless he has help. You ran Jesse Orosco out of town with your season killing home run, and now you're back to finish the job like you were the villain in some awful sequel starring Steven Seagal. Now that Tom Glavine is gone the agency had to infiltrate the premises with another spy. And despite Jose Reyes' dopey decision to try to beat Victorino to second base instead of throwing out a slow-footed catcher (a move that would have had Hugh Fullerton circling his scorecard if it was 1919) my ... first ... guess ... is ... you.

The truth is out there, Aguayo.