Revisiting Predictions at the 70 Game Mark

Earlier this year, I wasted all of our collective time by putting up some predictions for the upcoming baseball season. How are they going now that teams are 70 games in?

Standings:
AL East – Yankees (First place by 1)
AL Central – Twins (First place by 1.5)
AL West – Rangers (First place by 3.5)
AL Wild Card – Rays (First by .003 over the Red Sox)

NL East – Phillies (Third place, 5.5 back)
NL Central – Cardinals (First place by 1.5)
NL West – Rockies (Third place, 4 back)
NL Wild Card – Braves (First place in East by 2.5)

Obviously I am pleased with the American League results, and I think I have a decent chance of pulling off the season sweep there. Odds are, at least one National League pick will miss, given that I have two teams off the pace. We will see.

Awards:
AL MVP – Evan Longoria – Been very good, but currently trails Robinson Cano and Justin Morneau in the MVP race.
AL Cy Young – Felix Hernandez – Been good, but not the best on his own team. Right now, the favorites look like David Price and Cliff Lee.
AL ROY – Brian Matusz – Disappointing year on an Orioles team even worse than expected.

NL MVP – Albert Pujols – In a supposed down year, he still leads the NL in OBP and OPS. He is quietly 4th in the NL in home runs. His biggest challenge is his own stats the last couple of years.
NL Cy Young – Chris Carpenter – This was a typo. As you can clearly see, I meant to type Ubaldo Jimenez.
NL ROY – Jason Heyward – Still the frontrunner, especially if Strasburg’s limited innings make him sit out September.

All in all, the predictions aren’t looking as bad as I expected. I expect both Cy Youngs to be deeply wrong, and I see little hope of Matusz turning things around for the ROY. Pujols might lose the MVP, but he will be in the debate as will Longoria. We will see.

Weekend Links

Let me point everyone to a few interesting pieces to tide you over until Monday:

Continuing a series I highlighted recently, River Ave Blues has wrapped up its series on Yankees free agent signings and the draft picks lost as compensation. See here for part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4.

Verdun2 recently wrapped up a series on the best World Series games of all time. Check them out, starting here with Game 1 through Game 8 (yes, 8 ).

Thomas Boswell offers 10 suggestions that Bud Selig’s new rule-change committee should consider taking up.

Wezen-ball guides you through the highest paid players in baseball history, starting in 1979 when Nolan Ryan received baseball’s first million dollar contract.

Check out this interesting article on the Colts’ recent win over Jacksonville. Unlikely every other piece on the Colts, it attempts to give players other than Peyton Manning some portion of the credit for winning.

Follow Up and a Pointer

Following yesterday’s piece on the Heisman Trophy, I want to highlight a flaw of only looking at the last 20 winners.  You get a very different story if you extend the number to 25.  Consider:

Barry Sanders
Tim Brown
Vinny Testaverde
Bo Jackson
Doug Flutie

Those are the five before my 20. Sanders was the most exciting running back I’ve ever seen, and he is already in the Hall of Fame. Tim Brown was for most of his career the second or third best receiver in all of football, behind Jerry Rice and even with Cris Carter. Vinny Testaverde was incredibly productive for 21 seasons, with the 6th most passing yards and 8th most touchdowns all-time. Bo Jackson was spectacular until his hip gave way. Even Doug Flutie, distinctly the weakest of this five, had a better NFL career than any QB in the last 20 years of Heisman winners, though Palmer can and should still surpass him. The last 20 Heisman winners have been abnormally weak. They succeeded an absolutely brilliant five year run. That should be what Mark Ingram really aspires to.

Second, consider these two posts over at River Ave. Blues. MLB has been giving draft pick compensation to teams that lose top free agents for the last 30 years. Mike Axisa traces the draft picks given up by the Yankees from 1979-1985 and from 1986-1991. The posts remind us, first, how weak the MLB draft is. Second, they remind us how little draft pick compensation seems to matter. For 13 seasons of free agents, the Yankees missed out on Wally Joyner and Joey Cora. Finally, the posts remind us why the Yankees lost for all of those years. Consider the crop of free agents acquired. For the most part, the Yankees picked up past their prime players who contributed little. Unsurprisingly, they did not win.

St. Louis Cardinals – The Second Best Franchise Ever

It is obvious that the Yankees are the greatest franchise in baseball history.  Whether you love them or hate them, approve of their methods, players, and ownership or not, 27 World Championships decides the question.  No team has dominated a professional sport in the USA in quite the way the Yankees have for the last 90 years.  Less obvious, but still as certain, is that the Cardinals are #2.

The Cardinals are third on the all-time wins list, trailing only the Braves and the Cubs. Both teams began in 1876, while the Cardinals date to 1882. The Cardinals, though, got off to a slow start upon moving to the National League in 1892. (They had previosly dominated the American Association.) They finished in the top half of the league twice before 1920, finishing 4th in 1901 and 3rd in 1917. They lost more than 100 games 4 times, dropping 102 and 111 in 1897 and 1898, then losing 101 and 105 in 1907 and 1908 respectively. They lost 99 in 1913 and have never been that bad again. The Cardinals have lost more than 90 games twice since 1916 (1978 and 1990). Consider that run of consistency for a minute. In comparison, even the Yankees have lost 90 games three times since the end of their greatest run of dominance in 1964 (to the Cardinals). No one can match the Cardinals for consistent competitiveness.

The Cardinals are third in all-time World Series appearances, their 17 trailing the Dodgers 18 by 1. Yet the Cardinals have won 10, second all-time, while the Dodgers have only won 6. Since the Cardinals began winning in 1926, they have been held out of the World Series in only 3 decades, the 1950′s, 1970′s, and 1990′s. In the 1990′s, they advanced as far as Game 7 of the NLCS in 1996 before falling to the Braves.

Because of their remarkable consistency and their success in the postseason, including going 3-2 in 5 Series against the Yankees (1926, 1928, 1942, 1943, and 1964), the Cardinals are distinctly baseball’s second greatest franchise.

The Most Overexposed Teams in Baseball

In a throwaway comment in the middle of a post on Zack Greinke’s Cy Young win, Joe Posnanski asks who the 5 most overexposed teams in baseball are. For the moment, let’s bracket the question of overexposed. We can return to that at the end of the discussion of the most exposed teams. Instead of just giving an off the cuff answer, I think we can bring some statistics to bear on the question.

1. New York Yankees

Technorati ranks the top blogs on the internet, breaking them down by category. Among sports blogs, only one single team baseball blog cracks the top 10, the LoHud Yankees Blog. Among the top 10 baseball blogs, 3 Yankees blogs make the list, versus two for all other teams. They broadcast all of their games, either on the team-owned YES Network or on one of the major networks. Only the Indians also own their own TV network. No team is as exposed as the Yankees, regardless of medium.

2. Boston Red Sox

The Red Sox exposure is manifested primarily through all of the sportswriters from the Boston area. Consider the impact of Bill Simmons at ESPN, Kevin Hench at MSN, Peter Gammons at ESPN, and even football writer Peter King at Sports Illustrated. Their highest rated blog, Fire Brand of the American League, comes in at only 31st on Technorati’s rankings. NESN does full coverage of Red Sox games, though it is not team owned like YES. It does have nationwide coverage through DirectTV.

3. New York Mets

The Mets edge out our next entrant for two important reasons: The Mets have one top-10 blog and 4 higher than the highest Red Sox blog. They have a very close relationship with SportsNet New York (SNY), which has nationwide exposure via DirectTV.

4. Chicago Cubs

The Cubs exposure is pushed, at least partially, by the laziness of sportswriters. A century of failure is a cheap story that can be trotted out on any occasion. They no longer have WGN showing nearly all of their games, limiting their national exposure in comparison to the Mets. They do have nearly complete coverage through regional networks. They lack the strong internet presence of the Mets, with no team blogs higher than Bleed Cubbie Blue at 46th. Nevertheless, it is impossible to glance through a newspaper or sports telecast without some mention of the dysfunctional Cubs.

5. Philadelphia Phillies

The Phillies could arguably be higher on this list. They have a remarkably strong internet presence, with 4 blogs higher than the first Cubs blog. They have strong regional coverage through Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia, but they lack the national exposure of the top 3 and the history of #4.

What makes a team overexposed? Look at closely at the list. The Yankees and Phillies just faced off in the World Series, while the Red Sox have won 2 of the last 6 series. Those 3 teams have won 4 of the last 6 World Series. The Mets and Cubs, in contrast, have been competitive, outside of this season, but have always come up short. They, then, have the least claim to the exposure they receive. The Yankees, Red Sox, and Mets clearly outstrip the rest of the MLB in national TV coverage, and because of this I think there is a severe drop off from the exposure of the Mets to the exposure of the Cubs.

What are your thoughts? What team have I left out that dominates the airwaves and the internet more than these 5?

The Fall of Dynasties: A Joint Book Review

How do dynasties fall apart?  At some point, dominant teams stop winning, and it can be for a variety of reasons.  To get a handle on how this might happen, I want to look at two books that address the topic:  October 1964 by David Halberstam and The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty by Buster Olney.

Halberstam addressed the end of the Yankees greatest run of dominance. From 1947-1964 (18 seasons), the Yankees made 15 World Series and won 10. They follow this up, though, with 11 years of futility before getting swept in the 1976 World Series. Why did the Yankees fall apart? As Millsy of the blog Prince of Slides mentions in previous comments, the start of the draft is not a sufficient explanation. As Halberstam notes, the fluke is the Yankees making the 1964 World Series, not their collapse the next year. By 1964 the Yankees are a team that is either past their prime (Mickey Mantle, Elston Howard, Bobby Richardson, Tony Kubek, Roger Maris, Whitey Ford) or too young to know how they will turn out (Jim Bouton, Al Downing, Mel Stottlemyre, Joe Peppitone). Given this, the old players continued to get old, and the young players, except for Stottlemyre, did not pan out. This highlights the chief problem of the Yankees; they did not have a good baseball organization. They had not stocked up on young players, and the few young players they had grabbed were not good enough. The collapse of the Yankee dynasty, then, is a collapse of Yankee scouting, particularly a failure by the Yankees to move aggressively for young African-American players.

The story in 2001 has some similarities. The 2001 team had serious age problems, as Paul O’Neill, David Justice, and Scott Brosius were soon to retire; Tino Martinez and Chuck Knoblauch were reaching the end of their effectiveness; and Orlando Hernandez was slightly older than Joe Torre. Again, the preceding years give some clues. The 2000 World Champions had only won 87 regular season games, only two more than the immortal 1987 Twins. The 2001 Yankees, it appears, were running on fumes. They had 5 players still in their primes (Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Alfonso Soriano, Andy Pettitte, and Mariano Rivera), and the only young regular was Soriano at 25. Of those 5, they would lose two in short order. At the same time, as Olney chronicles, the “sleeping giants” of the AL East would awake, as the Red Sox finally began to deploy their vast resources wisely. The 2001 team cursed with mismanagement, though in a different form than its 2001 predecessor. George Steinbrenner was always prone to impulsive behavior, leading to things as crazy as trading for a finished Raul Mondesi in 2002. Finally, the Yankees in this era did not do a good job developing young talent. Their best first round pick from 1993 (Derek Jeter) to 2004 (Phil Hughes, who still might develop into greatness) was Eric Milton, who they traded to the Twins. With this in-house drafting, they were completely dependent on the vagaries of free agency. It took until 2009 to overcome these problems.

Will the 2009 develop into a dynasty, or will it go the way of 1964 and 2001? It is hard to know now. Failures of scouting and player development are not readily ascertainable until years later. One thing these two collapses teach us is to watch Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes, and Melky Cabrera. Young Yankee players are the key to having a successful future. Jeter, Posada, and even Rivera will decline; age is inevitable. Will the young players be good enough to replace them? That is the great uncertainty.

The Length of Schedules

The length of the schedule is one of the most important differences between professional football and professional baseball. In football, teams regularly win at least 75% of their games, a record of 12-4. In baseball, the 1906 Cubs have the record for highest winning percentage ever, at .762, and are the only team with a regular season winning percentage greater than .750. The length of the schedule brings the problem of sample sizes to the league-wide level. In baseball, teams do from time to time win 16 straight games, including a 26-game winning streak by the 4th-place New York Giants in 1916. The different seasonal lengths obscure the greatness of individual teams.

In sports, as in life, flukes happen. Since the NFL went to a 16 game regular season in 1978, 5 teams have won at least 15 games in a season:

Season	Team	Record	Loss	Score
1984	49ers	15-1	Steelers	20-17
1985	Bears	15-1	Dolphins	38-24
1998	Vikings	15-1	Buccaneers	27-24
2004	Steelers	15-1	Ravens	30-13
2007	Patriots	16-0	N/A	N/A

Note that 2 of the 5 teams lost in blowouts, and the only undefeated team did not win the Super Bowl. In fact, only the first 2 of the 5 teams would go on to win the Super Bowl. In a shorter season like the NFL has, especially when combined with a one-and-done playoff system, the regular season is only marginally predictive of postseason success. By adding a third round to its playoffs, baseball has achieved something similar. To wrap up, let me give a quick comparison of the above 5 to five of the greatest regular season baseball teams:

Season	Team	Record	Losing Streak
1906	Cubs	116-36	3
1927	Yankees	110-44	4
1939	Yankees	106-45	6
1954	Indians	111-43	4
1998	Yankees	114-48	4

Putting the Champs in Context

Just how good were this year’s Yankees? With 103 wins, they were the 6th winningest team in Yankees history. By winning percentage, they drop to 18th. But those give us only a superficial glance at this team. Let’s look in a bit more detail to try and grasp its greatness.

The 2009 Yankees led the league in runs scored, hits, walks, home runs, OBP, SLG, and OPS. Their pitchers led the league in saves and strikeouts. Overall, this is a team with a dominant offense (OPS+ of 119) and an above-average pitching staff (ERA+ of 104). That is an objective look at this team, but teams are remembered much more subjectively. When assessing the greatness of a team, most fans, I suspect, point to the number of great players. How does this team do by that measure?

The Yankees have three Hall of Famers right now. Despite PED issues, A-Rod will cruise into the Hall of Fame, along with Jeter and Rivera. Jorge Posada will surely receive strong Hall of Fame consideration. He has been an excellent hitter, especially for a catcher, for the last 15 seasons. I think with 2 or 3 more good seasons, he could make the HOF. Andy Pettitte has already won 229 games and plays for the best lineup in baseball. His chance of winning more is quite good. Along with that, he leads this team in World Series appearances because of the 2005 Series with Houston. He will be hurt by PED issues and a high ERA. I think he will need 300 wins to make the Hall. Johnny Damon has 2,425 hits, putting him 3 to 4 seasons from 3,000. If he can stay healthy enough to reach that milestone, he will be another Hall of Famer. The rest of this team is too young to speculate about. Sabathia (28), Teixeira (29), and Cano (26), in particular, could all finish with great careers. All three could get hurt and be done by 2011. When they get into their mid-30′s, we can get a better grip on how they will be perceived long-term.

From this overview, this team should go down in history well. They have 3 Hall of Famers, and they will likely produce 2 or 3 more. Their lineup dominated the league, and their pitching was as good as it needed to be. To cement their legacy, though, they need to repeat.

How do you think this Yankee team will go down in history?

World Series Recap

The Yankees wrapped up the World Series last night in 6 games. Why did the Yankees win? The simple answer is that they were the better team. They had a better regular season, leading the majors in wins, and this translated into a superior postseason. Let’s break that down a little bit. In particular, I would like to return to the positional breakdown from my World Series preview in order to see how well the Series reflected pre-series expectations, as derived from the second part of my World Series preview.

1B – Pre-Series: Advantage – Yankees. Series: Yankees. This one is close, though for different reasons than pre-series. Both Teixeira and Howard were awful, but at least Teixeira did not set the record for strikeouts in a World Series.
2B – Pre-Series: Phillies. Series: Phillies. This matchup was even more of a blowout than expected, as Utley was the Phillies best player during the Series.
SS – Pre-Series: Yankees. Series: Yankees. Jeter had a very good series, hitting .407, while Rollins hit .217.
3B – Pre-Series: Yankees. Series: Yankees. A-Rod was not as good as he had been during the earlier rounds of the postseason, but he still managed a .973 OPS, good for second on the team and higher than his regular season numbers. As predicted before every round, Pedro Feliz can’t hit. That remains true.
RF – Pre-Series: Phillies. Series: Phillies. Werth had a very good Series, with an OBP of .417 and SLG of .579, both better than his regular season marks. Swisher, in contrast, went 2 for 15 with 4 walks.
CF – Pre-Series: Even. Series: Phillies. This comparison is thrown off by Cabrera’s injury. Gardner went hitless for the Series, while Cabrera was 2 for 13 before hurting his leg. Victorino, at 4 for 22, was only marginally better than a player hurt so severely as to be dropped from the roster.
LF – Pre-Series: Yankees. Series: Yankees. This comparison is between Damon and Francisco. Damon hit .364, while Francisco went hitless.
C – Pre-Series: Yankees. Series: Phillies. Posada was decent, but he only had a single extra base hit. Ruiz, in contrast, had a .722 slugging percentage, hitting 2 doubles, 1 triple, and 1 home run.
DH – Pre-Series: Even. Series: Yankees. This compares Matsui and Ibanez. Ibanez had a better series than he did a regular season, sticking up a .942 OPS. Matsui, though, was spectacular. The World Series MVP had an OPS above 2.000, a number truly absurd.
Only three hitter advantages switch, as the two even positions broke one for the Phillies and one for the Yankees. Only catcher switched from Yankee advantage to the Phillies. Once again, regular season performance is the best predictor of postseason performance.

Sabathia vs. Lee – Pre-Series: Phillies. Series: Phillies. Sabathia went winless, while Lee grabbed the Phillies only two wins. Lee was dominant in Game One and okay in 5, while Sabathia was merely okay in both Games 1 and 4.
Burnett vs. Martinez – Pre-Series: Yankees. Series: Yankees. Both had one good game and one bad game. Burnett’s good game was slightly better and his bad game slightly worse. I give him the slight advantage because of the timing of his loss: Burnett’s bad game forced a Game 6, Martinez’s ended the Series.
Pettitte vs. Hamels – Pre-Series: Phillies. Series: Yankees. Andy Pettitte looked like the Pettitte of old, while Hamels looks like he has forgotten how to pitch. Hamels picked a very bad time to have a slump.
Rivera vs. Lidge. – Pre-Series: Yankees. Series: Yankees. Rivera was once again dominant, pitching 5.1 scoreless innings and closing out all 4 Yankee wins. Lidge gave away Game 4, pushing the Phillies to the brink of elimination. His ERA for the Series: 27.00
Pettitte was the great surprise. He had a very good Series, picking up two wins. Hamels was the great flop, as he started Game 3 well, but then collapsed and could not get through 5 innings. The Yankees three-man rotation worked pretty well, as Sabathia and Pettitte both did well on short rest. The Phillies four-man rotation was not the problem for them, though, because Blanton pitched well in Game 4. For them, Martinez remained old, and Hamels pitched poorly. They could not recover from either problem.

The flukes of short series essentially evened out, with the Phillies doing better than expectations at two spots and the Yankees at two. The Yankees, however, had more advantages going in, and because of that they won the Series in 6 games, as predicted.

Chase Utley vs. Billy Martin

Last night, Chase Utley surpassed Billy Martin’s record for most home runs by a second basemen in World Series history.  Utley did this in two series, while Martin played in 5.  Undoubtedly, Utley is the superior player, both in the regular season and the postseason.  Nevertheless, a quick glance at Martin’s numbers reminded of the importance of sample size.  For six games in the 1953 World Series, Billy Martin was as good as any second basemen ever to play the game.

For a baseline, consider Utley’s numbers from this World Series. Through five games, he has hit .333 with 3 walks, for an OBP of .429. On top of very solid basic production, all six of Utley’s hits have been for extra bases, 1 double and a record-tying 5 home runs, giving him a slugging percentage of 1.222. He has scored 6 runs and driven in 8. I think we can all concede that Utley is in the midst of an all-time great World Series. In 1953, Martin matched him.

For the six-game series, Martin went 12 for 24 with a walk, hitting .500 with an OBP of .520. He also hit a double, two triples, and two home runs, for a slugging percentage of .958. In Game 2, Martin hit a home run in the bottom of the 7th to tie the game at 2. In Game 6, Martin drove in the game-winning and series-clinching run with a single in the bottom of the ninth. The first World Series MVP award was not given until 1955, so Martin did not receive official recognition for dominating the Dodgers and leading the Yankees to their fifth consecutive World Series win.

Utley is better than Martin. He is a better player and likely a better person. He is, at the moment, having a slightly better World Series. It is worth remembering, though, that if Utley slips at all, Martin can return to the pinnacle of single Series performances by a second basemen. At the least, Martin should remind us that over very short stretches, say 6 games, anything can and does happen.