White Sox add Iguchi
The White Sox signed Tadahito Iguchi to a two-year deal with an option for a third. ESPN’s story here. Japanese stats. Without having seen any kind of translations, I have to say that on first glance I’m not impressed — power hasn’t crossed the water for Japanese players in general, and there’s not much else to his offensive game.
Schwarz follow-up, new blog
Alan Schwarz writes a quick bit following up on the discussion that quotes (twice) from one excellent comment made here by dw, who has his own site, Client and Server. So Schwarz reads U.S.S. Mariner, apparantly. Hi Alan! We’re big fans! Please plug the site sometime!
And also, it’s a really slow time for news. I almost wish the team would invite some local celebrity to spring training so we could write about it (Jon Keister? GM Ford? Is Neal Stephenson still in town?)
Also, #1 most-frequent USSM commenter David Corcoran’s got a blog of his own now. Using advanced projection software, we can guess that based on his past history, he’ll be posting 20-30 times a day in 15-50 word increments. I’d put him on the link bar on the left, but thought I’d give him a plug. If you liked his comments, you’ll love his blog.*
To get to McCall, Idaho, for what it’s worth, draw a line on a map eastwards from Portland and another line northwards from Boise and drive to the intersection. You’ll be pretty close. Going east from Salem would actually be a little better.
* not a guarantee
The M’s stathead is Olkin
Tomorrow the Mariners will announce* the hiring of a “player acquisition consultant” or, as this has been long-rumored, a “stathead”. It’s Mat Olkin (note the one ‘t’, please). Standard USA Today head shot appears on the upper right of this page, and I know he’s probably wincing about that.
Olkin’s written a baseball annual of his own (the “Baseball Examiner”) and is the author of some good, meaty work on the relationship between batters, their power, and their ground-ball/fly-ball tendencies (it’s not as strong as you’d probably guess, but yes, ground balls don’t go out of the park). He found that today’s pitchers throw as many pitches as old-time guys, but in fewer innings (duh, right? well, he wrote that in 1998).
Olkin’s one of the STATS Inc guys, who probably sits around and swaps smart emails behind the scenes with Bill James and the cabal of his former assistants (Neyer, Sickels, etc). He’s best known for writing his “Mat at Bat” column for Sports Weekly, which used to be Baseball Weekly when I bought it (um, which shouldn’t be taken as a dig on Mat). His stuff’s run all over the place: “Bill James Baseball Abstract, Baseball Prospectus, Ron Shandler’s Baseball Forecaster, the STATS Major League Scouting Notebook, the STATS Baseball Scoreboard and the STATS All-Time Sourcebook.”
I believe he’s also done work on Japanese translations, though I can’t locate it (unfortunately, trying to hunt down links through Google is a mess in part thanks to those annoying link farmers who mirror Amazon for affiliate money).
Also, check this out. For pitchers, a long time ago Olkin suggested you could estimate ERA as
OBP x SLG x 31 = Predicted ERA
And that actually has more value in determining what future performance is going to look like as actual ERA does.
If you know me, you know I totally dig the easy-to-use good-enough stat like that.
Now, generally the role of these guys is to pipe up with interesting thoughts on player deals. Like if the M’s were thinking about trading for Miguel Batista, he might say “hey look, his K rate sucks. And it’s sucked for a while.” Or suggest minor league free agents worth investigating. Maybe look at Japanese players who are free agents or might be posted, try and come up with some projections. Maybe he’ll spend his time surfing the web and sending emails to people who are insufficently enthusiastic about Mariners prospects. We don’t know really.
In some organizations, these guys have a lot of say. But there isn’t an team in the majors where they’re running the show. Okay, maybe Boston, and even then the ownership steps in on important transactions.
Will the Mariners listen to him? There’s no way to tell. That he’s not going to be living here and hanging around the offices all the time is probably a good indicator he’ll be offering his thoughts from a ways off when the team’s looking for another voice. But I’m just speculating — maybe he’ll end up traveling with Bavasi and be someone they want in every meeting because he’s so smart.
We’ve made some comments here in tip-toeing around this before that Olkin’s not the greatest guy they could have hired, and I regret saying that. In my mind, if Iwas running a team and I wanted to hire a guy to offer input on player acquisitions, I’d hire Gary Huckabay… who’s working for the A’s. So he’s not available. I’d hire Keith Woolner if it was stat-centric, or maybe even Clay, but who knows if they’d even take such a job? I’d hire Dave seven days a week and twice on Sundays if it was something like “stat-informed minor league roaming scouting dude” but they’ve already got a strong scouting organization, so it’ s unlikely that’s what they’re after…
Without knowing what the exact job’s going to be, it’s stupid for me to imply there’s someone out there who’s better for it. I don’t know, and I like Mat and respect his work enough that I should have waited for more information on what the job is, and see how he does.
But, as part of what I wrote in the Mariners chapter of BP2005 (buy it now! $12 freaking dollars!) about this:
[…] for the first time, the team has someone in the big chair who doesn’t simply dismiss innovation in baseball management. Bavasi may not get it but he understands there’s something worth getting.
We don’t know how this is going to work out. But to quote SportsNight —
“If you’re dumb, surround yourself with smart people. If you’re smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you.”
That they’re trying, looking outside the industry hires like Dan Evans and Jimy Williams, people to find a smart guy like Mat Olkin in order to get a new voice in the organization — you have to be happy about this.
Update! The Oregonian is the first newspaper to pick this up, here (warning: faking your own demographic info may be required) John Hunt, you may remember, knows Olkin through Baseball Weekly.
* unless I’ve been badly misinformed, in which case it’ll be announced some other time
Hargrove, camps, other good stuff
I’ve got a new column up at the PI on Mike Hargrove’s managerial tendencies in past jobs, one of two. I dig it. This follows the other delayed one that went into the remaining lineup decisions and team defense. I’ll mention too that if you’re enjoying these (even as I try and find the right voice in writing them) it’s worth your time to let the powers that be know, especially if you want to see the kind of stat-informed, detailed M’s writing in print (and if you do, be cool).
Then there’s a bit at Baseball Prospectus (subscribers only) arguing that there are no camps in the scout versus performance thing, and that we all are scouts and statheads, and we use both approaches all the time.
Which, in turn, brings up another topic. I turned in my resignation at BP a while ago. People here have noticed I wrote about my association in the past tense, because they’re eagle-eyed, and I’ve had an little post in draft status for a while about it. I’ll probably edit and publish that today, now that I’ve said this. If I quit, why am I writing?
The short version is — giving up my position internally, such as it was, and not writing a column regularly doesn’t mean I’m not going to write there at all. I’ve got two chapters and an essay in BP 2005, and a bunch of chapters in the other thing I’m not sure we’re talking about publically yet but which is really cool.
Sele signs
Check it out here, and elsewhere.
It’s not a big signing, so I’ll save the 1,000 word essay for something else. Sele hasn’t been effective in a long time– the last time he posted a good strikeout rate was 2000. That’s a long way from today. He just doesn’t have the stuff any more. I think the injuries have clearly taken him down. Disturbingly for the “innings eater” label, he had problems with “shoulder fatigue” and “dead arm” last year, which is never good.
I don’t see a lot of upside here, and if they’re bringing in guys to challenge Franklin for the 5th starter job, I’d rather see them take bizarre gambles on… Steve Sparks, say, a knuckleballer who might do well in Safeco (who knows?). Someone who might turn out to be a significant upgrade on Franklin if it works out.
Dave adds: I really like the Reichert signing, and think this is a great example of that. Reichert is every bit as good as Franklin and could be an effective swing man for nothing. It’s a pretty good group of NRI’s, much better than what Gillick usually brought in.
Villone signs
Throwing good money after bad, the M’s gave Ron Villone a two year contract worth $4.2 million today.
Say hello to Shigetoshi Hasegawa, part deux.
Benji Gil
The Mariners signed veteran UT Benji Gil to a minor league contract with the NRI tag, which means he’ll be headed to spring training with everyone else, but won’t be on the 40-man for now. Gil’s a lot like Bloomquist, actually, except older — he’ll be 32 this season, doesn’t hit much at all, can play the infield positions decently. He’s not a good glove, though, so you’re giving up offense and defense for versatility.
Last year he spent a little time in the minors, started the year with the rockies, got released, signed with Chicago to play in Iowa (AAA) and then ended in July the Cubs released him and he played a little with Toledo (also AAA). He didn’t hit in either of those places either.
While a strong spring training might win him the veteran UT spot on the team, even I’m going to say they’re likely to be better off with Bloomquist. I’d say it’d be worth it to end the Bloomquist fixation, but with the ex-Angel former World Series champion aura, I’m afraid Gil addiction would be even worse for the team.
Cool Bryan Price article
Submitted first by long-absent super-reader Aditya Sood:
“How I learned to pitch“. It’s an interesting read, worth checking out.
Historical tidbit for Jan 13
I believe this was the June 20th, 1886 game between Detroit and Chicago. I found this cool for a couple reasons. From the Sporting News account, which quickly gets into
… the manifest unfairness of Umpire Gaffney, particularly in the last game of the series. His fining of Anson was unjustifiable. He imposed the first fine, $10, before the big Captain was half way in from first base, and he raised it fifty before Anson had time to open his mouth. Directly the Captain started talking Gaffney went fifty better.
How crazy is that they could levy fines like that? But it gets better. The writer speculated about whether or not the umpire was affected by “the good feeling which Gaffney received at the expense of the admirers of the Detroit club” (I have no idea what that means, but from the rest of the article it sounds like Gaffney stayed in Detroit during the season, lodged by team supporters) and by accepting a flower boquet given to him before the game.
Anson refused to pay, saying “Not I, not a dollar, not a penny. If Gaffney does not remit the fines I’ll have him fired, or my name’s not Anson.”
And the other players complain that he’s for Detroit and the fans cheer for him (“Every time Gaffney came on the grounds the crowd cheered him until the windows rattled a half-mile away. He’s for them every time and they know it, too”).
So you get umpires with the power to fine players random amounts of money, allegations of bribery or at best partisanship, the threat of firing an ump if he doesn’t relent from his fines — and it’s all in the game story. They wrote about this stuff. Also on that front page is a story about the court troubles of some players accused of throwing games, and a notice that “An individual named A. Markworth has been obtaining certain goods about town on the statement that he is an employee of the SPORTING NEWS. Markworth is a forger and beat, and has no connection with this paper whatsoever.”
Really, though, $110 was a huge amount of money to a player in 1886. I’m surprised Anson didn’t beat the guy up on the spot and incite a riot.
MLB new drug policy
Details on ESPN, elsewhere.
Highlights include a suspension for first time offenders, random repeat testing (so it’s not one test and that’s it for the year), expansion of banned drugs, and whatnot.
I have to applaud, again, MLB and the union for their reasonable, rational approach to this problem. I know from the polls that the majority of people disagree with me, but both sides have approached this even in the face of government threats and public cry looking to strike a reasonable and workable agreement. Given the contentious history between these two, this is cause for hope for the next CBA negotiations.
And yet, I wonder if even this is going to be enough. People who believe that baseball is riddled with steroids and that it has destroyed the game, are they going to be satisfied with anything short of lifetime bans for first-time offenders? Can a reasonable, mutually-agreeable approach to working on this issue ever placate the irrational gut repulsion some feel about the whole issue?
This is good news.
[comments off, based on historical precedents]