The current state of affairs and the current state of a movement (Occupy Wall Street) and a countermovement (We Are the 53%) are nothing short of fascinating. There are some specific and some general grievances on both sides but fundamentally, I think the issue is simply a difference of opinion and when it comes to opinions, there are no right answers; there is only belief.
OCCUPY WALL STREET
Occupy Wall Street began September 17th (according to the about page on their website) and since then the movement has spread to cities across the United States and around the world. It seems that the essence of their movement is they want to eliminate the greed and corruption amongst the top 1% of wage earners (leading to the catchy populist slogan “We Are the 99%”). Furthermore, OWS “is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations.”
In theory this is a noble goal but in practice eliminating it is extremely problematic. I spent some time a while ago surfing through some of their discussion forums and the one theme that I found is there are some seriously pissed off people including one fanatic who advocated replacing our system of money with a system of hugs and kisses (“would you rather be rich is money or rich in hugs and kisses?” is a question he posed) and then would not debate his points openly with any commenters and instead used extremely profane language to put them down. Alas, this is to be expected on public internet forums. What I did notice were some radical themes that kept coming up; eliminating the monetary system (and going to a more communal economic and social structure) and bringing down capitalism (and redistributing the ill-gotten gains of the wealthy few) to name just two.
What I find most fascinating about the OWS movement is their lack of specific goals and I’ve heard theories from both sides of the issue as to why that is. From the people who are not yet convinced that this is a viable movement, they say that one of the biggest advantages to not stating any specific goals is they can declare victory at any point and nobody can refute them. When someone points out that nothing tangible was accomplished, they can simply reply that their goal was to raise awareness. The flipside of the coin is some people believe that in the life of this movement, it’s too early to state specific goals. Rather, you need to let the movement progress by itself and you have to see where it will go without trying to steer it in any particular direction. As far as I am concerned, I have an extremely difficult time getting revved up about this movement because I don’t know where it is going and anyone who says they do know where it’s going and the endgame is flat-out lying. If you ask ten different people what their purpose for being out on the streets of the Big Apple is, you are liable to get ten different answers but they all seem to center around two things; the banks and the government.
It has bothered me to an extreme degree that by saying “We Are the 99%”, they are attempting to demonize 1% of Americans. According to the Census Bureau, right now there are an estimated 312,571,660 people in the United States. That would mean that 3,125,717 people are responsible for the economic state of affairs in this country and they need to have their wealth repossessed and redistributed to the masses…
Something doesn’t add up here. How much did Alex Rodriguez and his $25-30 million salary contribute to the mortgage crisis? Did the doctors and lawyers that make more than $500,000 a year cause bankers to give mortgages to people who couldn’t possibly pay them back if the market should take a downturn? My point is simply to say that if we’re going to go after greed and corruption, we need to make sure that we are going after the greedy and the corrupted, and not those that are taking advantage of their education and skill set to earn a wage that is on par with what they would earn on the open market for their services. It is my personal belief that the number of people truly responsible for the mortgage and banking crises is far smaller than 3.1 million. However, “We Are the 99%” is a far catchier slogan than “We Are the 9,999 out of 10,000”
So what it comes down to, as far as I’m concerned, is who do you want to blame and what do you want done? Before I can lend a shred of personal support to this movement, I need that question answered in a satisfactory manner and blaming a group of people because of how much money they make is blatant discrimination and I refuse to be a part of it.
There are some legitimate issues that people have raised in conjunction with this movement and they have nothing to do with eliminating our monetary system or redistributing wealth. Money should not equal influence when it comes to our political system. Personally I believe that eliminating it entirely is impossible but a reduction in that level of influence would be very welcome to me. Most importantly, some protestors are saying that the bankers who broke laws (which helped bring about the mortgage crisis) need to be brought to justice. I could not possibly agree more. However, it seems to me that those viewpoints are somewhat marginalized and the vast majority of people are decrying their personal situation and many of them are asking where the government is to catch them when they fall.
They talk about student loans, they talk about the lack of affordable healthcare, and mostly they talk about unemployment and underemployment and they ask where the government is to help them. In a nutshell, I believe that this viewpoint is terrible. It sounds tremendously good in theory that when the average American is knocked down for one reason or another, their kindly Uncle Sam is there to help them back on their feet but this is where that fantasy needs a reality check. We live in a country where the federal government has run a budget deficit of more than $1 trillion each of the last three fiscal years (with 2011’s figure of $-1.65 trillion an estimate). Why, why in the wide world of why should that entity spend MORE money?
“They shouldn’t spend more, they should spend the money they have better.”
I completely agree. The size of the federal government has ballooned in the past twenty years under both Republican and Democratic presidents. Measured by the difference in expenditures from the last year of their predecessor to their last year in office, federal expenditures rose by 29% under President Clinton, 64% under President Bush, and so far 28% under President Obama. From 1992-2011, federal expenditures have increased by 176% ($2.43 trillion) while federal income (most of which comes from taxes) has increased by only 99% ($1.08 trillion). There are two exceedingly simple ways to make up this enormous (and growing) disparity; cut spending or increase revenue in the form of taxes.
WE ARE THE 53%
Relatively soon after the OWS movement started, another anti-movement started as well; We Are the 53%. The number is a reference to a study done by a non-partisan government organization that estimated that only 53% of Americans actually pay federal income tax due to the deductions and tax thresholds below which all federal tax monies collected are refunded. The 53%ers message to the 99%ers is simple; stop waiting for your handout and go get a job.
I believe that this is an overly simplistic interpretation of the OWS movement and I expressed my disbelief that anyone would ask the government to spend more money in our current budgetary and economic climate. However, I do believe that their point is valid. Life is hard but if you grab hold of your bootstraps and pull hard enough (through honest hard work) you will find yourself living the American dream. My sense is that that is the gist of the of the 53%ers message. If I’m wrong, please feel free to set me straight.
INCENTIVE
I’ll bet you were wondering where that word would come into this whole foray into a very contentious situation. Hopefully your incentive for reading this far has been to find out what incentive has to do with all of this.
As I was surfing around the forum page on OWS’s website (found here - http://occupywallst.org/forum/ - warning, some language not appropriate for all audiences) a few thoughts started to gel in my mind. The next morning, I read a paper first published in February of 1848 and was nothing short of shocked to find some of the same rhetoric as I was seeing on that forum page. The paper? None other than the Manifesto of the Communist Party, written by Karl Marx.
I am not saying this to demonize the OWS movement. I do not think that communism and socialism are dirty words; I didn’t live through the tense times of the Cold War. My shock was due to surprise, not outrage. Since some of the people involved in the OWS movement were advocating that we move further from capitalism (if not just do away with it completely) I thought it prudent to know the other side of the spectrum and thus, was inspired to read this document. It is a well written, well thought out, and extremely incendiary piece. I can also see how any person of modest means that feels oppressed would find the theories put forth extremely appealing.
It is necessary to keep some perspective about us though. As wide as income and wealth inequality are in this country, they are not nearly as far apart as the separation between the serfs and the tsars in Russia in 1917. Anyone who says our economic climate is as bad as that is just wrong.
This leads us to two great questions that are very difficult to answer:
First, where on the economic spectrum between pure capitalism and pure communism should we fall?
Once there, what role should our government play in the economy?
The second question cannot be answered without first answering the first so let’s tackle that one first. The economic term for a marketplace where all wealth is seized by the government and is distributed evenly is an Egalitarian market. The problem with this system is there is no incentive.
The price that you get for a good or service is most likely set by the State; there is no incentive to make a better product.
The wage that you earn is the same no matter what your individual skills or education or experience are; there is no incentive for you to chase down opportunity.
The wage that you earn is the same no matter how much work you put it; there is no incentive to put in the extra time and effort to make more money because you won’t.
These are the pitfalls of the communist model. The system is Utopian but the problem is that Utopia does not exist in the real world and it is in the real world that communism fails. This is the part of me that agrees with the 53%. Why should I have to go to work for 40 hours a week and work hard and then pay taxes that I don’t get back every spring so other people can sit back and collect unemployment without ever having to work a single day? This is a part of our government and our welfare state that simply enrages me. I am sure that many of the unemployed that are currently occupying Wall Street would rather be working; I’m not talking about those people. I’m talking about the ones who see government handouts as an alternative to working; not as means to get by while finding another job. That is a large reason why we have an enormous deficit and an enormous debt but that is an issue for the second question I posed and I’m not done answering the first one.
So what happens when you introduce incentive into the markets? Some people work the same as always (be it little or lots) while others work harder. They work 50, 60, even 80 hours a week, staying away from their families except for a few minutes before and after dinner (after work and before bed), in order to be rewarded for their hard work… and they are. Some people go to college, sometimes even working terrible hours at a bad job to pay for their schooling because they know that when they finish and achieve a degree, whether it’s a bachelor’s, graduate, or professional degree, the market will reward their work with a higher wage… and it does.
Incentive is the fuel that drives this country more than anything else. It’s not that we necessarily want to be the best, it’s that we know that if we put in more work, we will be better. Capitalists strive to be better while communists do not. If that doesn’t show you exactly where I fall on this particular issue, let me make it just a little more plain. Capitalism brought about peace in a way that arms and peace talks could not. There is free enterprise in Russia and China where thirty years ago there was not. China is going to overtake the United States in terms of overall economic size (in terms of Gross Domestic Product, or GDP) within the next few years and it’s all due to that free enterprise and the desire of their people to get better economically and more importantly the incentive that is now in front of them. They see what they can achieve if they work for it… and so they are.
In short, the government should not dictate who gets what job or who gets how much money. The market is extremely efficient at doing just that and an economy driven by free markets is called capitalism.
From this point forward, I’m going to assume that we’ve chosen a capitalist model instead of the communist model and the reason is simple; the second question I posed was about the government’s role in the economy and in a communist model it’s simple… collect all money and then distribute evenly. In a capitalist society, it’s far more complicated. According to famous economist Adam Smith, there is an “invisible hand” that will move the market to an equilibrium point where a certain number of a good is produced and the market as a whole want to buy that same number of that good at a certain price. If the price is too high, producers want to sell far more than people want to buy and this creates a surplus. Gradually, the producers will realize that if they want to sell more and thus make more money, they can’t charge that high price. As they lower the price, people buy more of that good and the producer makes more money. The opposite is true if the price gets too low. This is one of the simplest and most powerful theories in all of economics; the theory of supply and demand.
There are many things that can upset this delicate balance but in our society, one dominates over all the others; the government. The vast majority of the time that the government interferes in the market, the overall efficiency of the market is decreased. For most markets, this is a bad thing but for a select few, government influence is a good thing. For instance, a side effect that does not factor into the price of a good is called an externality and they can be good or bad. The textbook example of a negative externality is pollution. Before environmental legislation (such as the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act) was passed, there was no incentive for certain industries to reduce the level of pollution that they produced while making a good. Thus, harmful chemicals were put into the environment and the people at large were harmed.
For a more specific example, let’s look at gasoline. Benzene was used as an “octane enhancer” for many years due to its octane number of 120. The only problem is that benzene is extremely carcinogenic. The federal government mandated that gasoline can no longer have benzene in it and because of that, the public is better off.
The other example of government influence benefiting the people at large is the steps that the government has taken to ensure competition in the marketplace. In short, monopolies are bad for the economy as a whole and they can easily exploit the people who buy their products. Starting with the Sherman Act in 1890, the government has levied fines in the billions and has taken the drastic measures of breaking up companies that seek to reduce competition in the marketplace. Unless you bought gasoline that originated from BP, the odds are fairly good that they last time you filled up your car, you bought gasoline from a former part of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Empire.
Other than those rare cases, the government is a hindrance to economic efficiency, plain and simple. Where capitalism gets sticky is the difference between efficiency and equity. Just because a market runs efficiently and the quantity of a good supplied equals the quantity of that good demanded does not mean that the allocation of resources is fair. This is yet another role of the government and this is an issue that I believe is central to the points of both OWS and the 53% movements. Both sides think the redistribution of wealth is unfair; social conservatives believe that too much is taken in the form of taxes and handed back to the people who are less economically fortunate. The social liberals believe that more money should be reclaimed from the wealthiest Americans and given back to those who can’t afford as many luxuries.
There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to tax policy and social aid programs. Social and fiscal conservatives have a model that is more economically efficient and is also more heartless. Their liberal counterparts have a model that is far less economically efficient but people don’t need to worry about starving to death if they lose their jobs. I personally believe that there is unbelievable room for compromise. Government agencies have had their budgets increase to the point that there is an incredible and distressing level of wasteful spending. If you want those agencies to operate more efficiently, all you have to do is reduce their budgets. Tell them that they need to do the same job with 10% less funding and after the shock of having their budget cut wears off, they will find a way to make it work. The flip side of the coin is our economy is balanced on a razor’s edge and something needs to be done about it. I would support a moderate increase in taxes under one condition; every penny of those new taxes goes towards paying off our $14 trillion debt.
Fanaticism is the enemy in this case. Winston Churchill once said that a fanatic is one who “can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject”. If we are going to rebuild this economy and make it bigger and better than ever, we need to work together. We need to find the central ground, socially and economically, where most of this country’s citizens reside. The Democratic and Republican parties are straying further and further from the center of the political spectrum in a dangerous game of one-upsmanship that very nearly caused us to default on our debt and plunge us into a depression that would have lasted for years if not decades… all to make a point. That cannot be allowed to happen. All of this leads me to the last point that I’ll make in this ode to our society and economy – there are 537 people who owe their jobs to us. They work for us. We need to remember that…
THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE
There are 435 Representatives, 100 Senators, a Vice-President, and a President that wield enormous power because we, the people, of the United States of America, handed it to them. If we want something bad enough and we perceive an injustice, we need to stand up and let them know in a unified voice that this is what we want and we’re willing to elect different people until we get it.
Some of the few issues that I’ve heard from the OWS movement that I think are legitimate points are the corruption in our political process and the fraud perpetrated by some bankers that helped bring about the mortgage crisis three years ago. One of my single biggest issues with the Occupy Wall Street movement and the “We Are the 99%” people is nothing can be resolved on either of these issues by picketing bankers on Wall Street. As long as the focal point of this movement is Wall Street, nothing substantial will be accomplished. So what should these people be doing and where should they be picketing (or demonstrating perhaps would be a better word)?
They should be demonstrating at the corner of East Capitol Street, NE and 1st Street, NE…
At the US Capitol building!
If you want money to not buy influence in politics then say that you won’t vote for someone who accepts money from certain lobbies and if they don’t tell you who their campaign contributions are coming from, don’t vote for them.
If you want bankers to be indicted for fraud because they had appraisers artificially inflate the price of homes so they could make more money, tell your Congressman, Congresswoman, or Senator that if they don’t go after these people, you won’t re-elect them. Tell the President that if he doesn’t direct the Department of Justice to look into this, you won’t send him back to the White House.
The federal government works for us at our pleasure. We reshape our government every two years and yet many people do not realize the awesome power we as citizens have. The problem is that power is only useful if it is applied well.
The Occupy Wall Street movement might just be doomed to fail because they are yelling and screaming at a group of people (bankers) who have no incentive to listen. Just a few miles to the south (227 miles by car) is a group of people who do have the incentive to listen to us, the citizens of this country. And that group of 537 people can command the attention of the bankers that helped cause this recession.
Until that happens, OWS is just tilting at windmills.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Saturday, August 27, 2011
The Economics of Baseball
We all know that baseball is a sport, a game even. However, for a large number of Americans and a smaller number of people around the world, it is also a business. Home-grown players are drafted, developed, and sometimes traded or just let go, drawing the ire of the local fans. Some players become known as the sentimental “good guy” types while others get labeled as mercenaries. Some of it is fair and some of it isn’t but it is the way it is. Through all of this labeling and wheeling and dealing, there is one universal constant; money.
Money is a constant throughout our American lives as we pursue the American dream but in professional sports, the numbers get blown to a rarified air that only a very small fraction of one percent of all people in this country get to experience. Amongst professional sports, baseball is unique in the way the money is dispersed. In the NFL, for example, the difference in costs and revenues between a large market team like the New York Giants and a small market team like the Jacksonville Jaguars is relatively small. In baseball, the difference between the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays is extremely large.
In the coming lines and paragraphs, I’d like to examine the financial structure of Major League Baseball through a lens adorned with good old dollar signs and see what comes up. This is not going to be a normative piece; I am not going to postulate the way that MLB should run their business. Rather, I am going to simply look at their model and draw a few conclusions and hopefully leave you (my loyal reader) more thoroughly educated than you were when you clicked on this link.
…
We all know that baseball salaries are ridiculously higher today than they ever have been in baseball history. In 1990, one of the first years with reliable salary data on baseball-reference.com, the 26 teams in MLB spent a combined $346,626,190 on player salaries. To show you just how ridiculous contracts can get, if he hits all of the milestone incentives, Alex Rodriguez’s current contract will end up being worth $305,000,000.
To start into the economics lingo, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is one of the tools used to measure inflation and in doing so, it also helps give us an idea of how much a dollar is worth at one point in time versus another point in time (to attempt to restore some sanity to the number, Alex Rodriguez’s salary last year would be $2.63 million in the season that Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs).
The US economy has gone through periods of high inflation and even a few periods of deflation since 1913 (when the CPI was first tracked). The average inflation rate over that 97 year period is a very modest 3.24% and that figure is even more impressive when you consider that national economies that lack the discipline of the US have experienced hyperinflation rates of 24,000% (as Zimbabwe did in February of 2008).
So why am I talking about inflation rates? Because salaries in MLB have gone up and it’s irresponsible to look at those numbers without taking inflation into account. For instance, in the 15 year period from 1995-2010, total player salaries in MLB increased an average of 8.45% every year. Over that same time period, the CPI increased by an average of 2.42% per year so we can clearly say that there is more going on here than just inflation. But before we go too far into evaluating why salaries are increasing at rates higher than inflation, we have to make sure we’re comparing Fujis to Fujis instead of Fujis to Galas. A dollar in 1995 had more buying power than a dollar today. Using the CPI figures, we are able to evaluate salaries with a common frame of reference.
As economists would say, this is the difference between “nominal” salaries and “real” salaries. In short, nominal salaries are the actual numbers printed on the checks while real salaries normalize those values with a common frame of reference in mind. When you throw all this in the hopper, what you get is that the average salary per team increased from $25.8 million in 1995 to $87.1 million in 2010 (or increasing by 8.45% per year, as mentioned above) in nominal terms. In real terms, and 2000 dollars, average team salary has increased from $29.2 million to $68.8 million, or 5.89% per year.
The end result is that the average inflation rate has been 2.42% and the average inflation of MLB salaries has been 5.89% from 1995-2010. Now we can go back and ask the question; what is causing this? There are many different things that can affect the cost of labor for a company and at its simplest, that is what players are to the MLB. However, there is one that has a greater effect that any other; revenue.
If a company isn’t making a lot of money, they won’t pay high salaries (even though the NBA is doing its very best to do just that). According to MLB, in 1995 their collective revenue was $1.4 billion and in 2010 it was a record $7 billion. If we put the numbers through the same analysis as the salaries, we find that while player salaries have increased 5.89% per year from 1995-2010, league revenue has increased an average of 8.70% per year over the same time period.
Before you yell and scream too much about the ridiculous amounts of money that players are being paid, remember that they get that much money because the market will bear those salaries. If the owners start making less money, they will start to hand out smaller and smaller contracts.
INDIVIDUAL VALUE
At this point, I’d like to narrow my focus a bit and explore the meaning of value when it comes to players. Sabermatricians have worked tirelessly over the past few years to come up with new ways to evaluate players and near the forefront of this revolution is one of my favorite metrics, Wins Above Replacement (WAR). This extremely complex metric takes into account as much as is possible in order to boil down a player’s contributions into a single number adjusted for the era they play in, the individual ballparks they played in, and even the teams they played against.
But the question that nagged at the back of my mind for countless hours is how much bang do owners receive for their buck? How often does a big contract pay off and how often do owners reap the rewards of a team friendly contract for a player that exceeds everyone’s wildest expectations?
And so those questions provided the backdrop for my research. I examined the salary figures and WAR values from 2000-2010 in an attempt to draw some conclusions about trends when it came to the contracts that owners gave certain types of players and certain patterns started to emerge. A question that I’d like to pose to you at this point is what type of player do you think is the most valuable to an MLB franchise? Please allow me to be a bit more specific with my definition of value in this context. What group of players has maximized on field production while minimizing their salary? Yeah, I apologize, that’s still a bit vague.
Young players.
In the height of the Steroid Era, which I will say happened roughly from 1996-2003 (ish) older players were far more valuable and indeed put forth some of the best seasons in MLB history. Barry Bonds had a five year run from 2000-2004 that is one of the best collections of seasons ever. In 2000, his WAR was a very good 8.7 but that was just his jumping off point. His next four seasons produced WAR values of 12.5, 12.2, 10.3, and 12.4. So what’s the big deal? For those five seasons, he was 35, 36, 37, 38, and 39 years old, an age where the vast majority of professional athletes begin to break down and become a shell of what they were at a younger age.
In the years since the Mitchell Report, congressional hearings, and perjury and obstruction of justice cases, players have gone back to aging the way they always used to; poorly. There has been an incredible youth movement in the past five years that has not only restored some sanity and equilibrium to the way talent evaluators look at players of a certain age, but has also reinvigorated America’s interest in baseball. After all, when the details of the Steroid Era started to come out, fans became very cynical about players and how they went about achieving their accomplishments. People also became cynical about the motives of the players who were bulking up and becoming huge and putting forth huge number while filling their bank accounts with a king’s ransom.
Today, it is the young players that rule baseball. There are still greedy men throughout baseball but there is a sense that the playing field is far more even and players are succeeding based on talent and hard work rather than what pharmacist they know. In my opinion, this has instilled once again a sense of the purity that once made baseball America’s pastime so long ago.
All you have to do to know that I’m right is look at the roster and salary breakdown (by age) of nearly any team that plays their home games outside of the Bronx or Boston. In 2000, 29% of salary money went to player under the age of 30. The 30-34 age brackets earned 50.3% while players over 35 earned 20.66% of salary money. From 2001-2004, the breakdown of salaries skewed towards older players with the three demographics earning 32.7%, 45.3%, and 22.0%, respectively. Before you dismiss this relatively small increase as trivial, realize that over those 4 years, roughly $7 billion was paid in salary so that represents an increase in salaries for players over 35 of $23.9 million per year.
Last year, those demographic breakdowns were 32.8%, 49.6%, and 17.6%. Money is no longer being given out to older players and it is instead being used on younger who provide much more performance per dollar spent. But what about those seasons from Bonds that I just mentioned and the excellent seasons that Roger Clemens had even after turning 40? That certainly proves that older players can still have some value, doesn’t it?
Yes, it does. The problem isn’t the Bonds’ and Clemens’ of the world. It’s Carlos Lee, who last year (at the age of 34) put forth a season in which he was worth 2.5 wins LESS than your average replacement player… while earning $19 million. When you look at the worst seasons of the last ten years given a combination of poor performance and high salary, the average age of the 50 worst player seasons is 33.8 years old. The average of the top 50 is 25.4 years old.
The following is a graph of average salary and average WAR by age. Given how much noise there is in the data below the age of 24 and above the age of 40, I simply eliminated those. Given how few players fall into those two categories, the sample size isn’t large enough to draw significant conclusions.
This graph says it all; once players turn 30, general managers across baseball are taking their chances with many players. Before they turn 30 there is a large disparity between their performance and their salary but why does this happen? LeBron James had a contract worth more than $20 million before he took the court for the Cavaliers and Sam Bradford had a contract guaranteeing him more than $50 million before he took a snap for the Rams.
The NBA and NFL pay much more on potential at first and then only later is actual performance taken into account. In baseball, draft busts are costly because of the actual pick and not as much because of the money that was invested in the picks. If Stephen Strasburgh doesn’t pan out for the Washington Nationals, they are out $15 million, which is a lot of money but imagine if he had become a Cy Young candidate in his first few years.
One of the most famous examples of this is Albert Pujols. In his first three years with the Cardinals, he was valued at 6.9, 5.8, and 10.9 WAR; in short, he had three incredible seasons given that he was 21-23 years old for those seasons. Here’s the ridiculous part; he was paid a grand total of $1.7 million for those three seasons.
Baseball is alone in that you have to make it to the highest level of the sport and perform before you get your big payday. Granted, there are always stories of unheralded players coming out of college in the NBA or the NFL who hit it big once they make it to the pros but those are few and far between. No matter how much fanfare a player receives after being drafted, few baseball players have the paychecks to match their skill sets until they do well in the majors. For every example like Evan Longoria (who signed a 6 year, $17 million contract very shortly after reaching the majors) there are countless examples of players who played for less than $1 million and were All-Stars before being paid like them.
I’ve been talking about the value of players given both their salary and WAR and I want to explain briefly how I arrived at the figures. Essentially, I gave each player season a percentile rank given the best and worth performance and then gave them a percentile rank given their salary. The twist is that instead of the highest salary having a percentile rank of 100, I gave the lowest salary that rank. I don’t want us to confuse value with worth. In 2003, Albert Pujols was worth more than his $900,000 salary and given that he produced 10.9 WAR that season, he was extremely valuable to the Cardinals because of his combination of high production and low cost. I’m not making a value judgment about the salary structure in baseball; I’m just trying to find patterns. Once I got these two values, I simply averaged them, giving me a scale of value from 0-100.
This is a graph of the results of this analysis, plotting salary on the x-axis against total value on the y-axis. I understand that there are a ton of dots on the graph (8,840 to be exact) but don’t miss the forest for the trees. What this essentially shows is that significantly higher total value is found in the players earning less than $5 million in a season.
Also notice that amongst the 7,153 players who earned less than $5 million in a season, there is less variance than among the 1,687 players who had seasons earning more than $5 million. The highest total value by a player earning over that threshold was 85.3 while the lowest was 21.6. For the players below that threshold, the limits were 94.0 and 46.6. All that this basically says is that younger players are surer bets and if they don’t work out, it’s not like you were paying them much to begin with.
So what does all this mean in the grand scheme of Major League Baseball? Is it only a matter of time until draft picks are given contracts of $50 million over a number of years? Doubtful. However, there will always be owners and general managers that will thumb their nose at the conventional wisdom and give a 31 year old player a 10 year, $275 million contract when there are no other bidders in the auction.
I believe that cooler heads will exert more influence in the coming years and the number of players that are grossly overpaid will decrease. You already have an organization that is famous for not ever wanting to give a contract longer than three years to a starting pitcher in the Philadelphia Phillies. Despite the fact that they’ve violated that rule twice recently, they still gave two of the best pitchers in the game contracts of four years (Roy Halladay) and five years (Cliff Lee). If Halladay had reached the open market and Lee had taken the best offer, they both would have signed for much longer for many more dollars.
Teams are beginning to realize the benefits of taking a chance on young transcendent players because in the long run, that allows them to sign these players to less than their market value if they were to hit the open market. As out of whack as the recent extensions given to Ryan Braun, Troy Tulowitzki, and Carlos Gonzales seem, if they became free agents in three years after 3-5 years of extremely good production, they all could have commanded $20 million per year. None of their deals have an average annual value close to that.
There will always be teams willing to pay a premium for the best talent but I believe what you will find is small market teams that are building around young players will have their day in the sun and will compete with the big boys and that is just one small part of what makes baseball grand.
…
Thank you for sticking it out this long with me; I know I was more than a bit long-winded this time around. Hopefully you enjoyed what you read and found it somewhat informative. If you are interested in the raw data that I used to draw these conclusions, just let me know and I can provide it. All salary and WAR figures were found on baseball-reference.com.
Until next time, enjoy the baseball!
Money is a constant throughout our American lives as we pursue the American dream but in professional sports, the numbers get blown to a rarified air that only a very small fraction of one percent of all people in this country get to experience. Amongst professional sports, baseball is unique in the way the money is dispersed. In the NFL, for example, the difference in costs and revenues between a large market team like the New York Giants and a small market team like the Jacksonville Jaguars is relatively small. In baseball, the difference between the New York Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays is extremely large.
In the coming lines and paragraphs, I’d like to examine the financial structure of Major League Baseball through a lens adorned with good old dollar signs and see what comes up. This is not going to be a normative piece; I am not going to postulate the way that MLB should run their business. Rather, I am going to simply look at their model and draw a few conclusions and hopefully leave you (my loyal reader) more thoroughly educated than you were when you clicked on this link.
…
We all know that baseball salaries are ridiculously higher today than they ever have been in baseball history. In 1990, one of the first years with reliable salary data on baseball-reference.com, the 26 teams in MLB spent a combined $346,626,190 on player salaries. To show you just how ridiculous contracts can get, if he hits all of the milestone incentives, Alex Rodriguez’s current contract will end up being worth $305,000,000.
To start into the economics lingo, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is one of the tools used to measure inflation and in doing so, it also helps give us an idea of how much a dollar is worth at one point in time versus another point in time (to attempt to restore some sanity to the number, Alex Rodriguez’s salary last year would be $2.63 million in the season that Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs).
The US economy has gone through periods of high inflation and even a few periods of deflation since 1913 (when the CPI was first tracked). The average inflation rate over that 97 year period is a very modest 3.24% and that figure is even more impressive when you consider that national economies that lack the discipline of the US have experienced hyperinflation rates of 24,000% (as Zimbabwe did in February of 2008).
So why am I talking about inflation rates? Because salaries in MLB have gone up and it’s irresponsible to look at those numbers without taking inflation into account. For instance, in the 15 year period from 1995-2010, total player salaries in MLB increased an average of 8.45% every year. Over that same time period, the CPI increased by an average of 2.42% per year so we can clearly say that there is more going on here than just inflation. But before we go too far into evaluating why salaries are increasing at rates higher than inflation, we have to make sure we’re comparing Fujis to Fujis instead of Fujis to Galas. A dollar in 1995 had more buying power than a dollar today. Using the CPI figures, we are able to evaluate salaries with a common frame of reference.
As economists would say, this is the difference between “nominal” salaries and “real” salaries. In short, nominal salaries are the actual numbers printed on the checks while real salaries normalize those values with a common frame of reference in mind. When you throw all this in the hopper, what you get is that the average salary per team increased from $25.8 million in 1995 to $87.1 million in 2010 (or increasing by 8.45% per year, as mentioned above) in nominal terms. In real terms, and 2000 dollars, average team salary has increased from $29.2 million to $68.8 million, or 5.89% per year.
The end result is that the average inflation rate has been 2.42% and the average inflation of MLB salaries has been 5.89% from 1995-2010. Now we can go back and ask the question; what is causing this? There are many different things that can affect the cost of labor for a company and at its simplest, that is what players are to the MLB. However, there is one that has a greater effect that any other; revenue.
If a company isn’t making a lot of money, they won’t pay high salaries (even though the NBA is doing its very best to do just that). According to MLB, in 1995 their collective revenue was $1.4 billion and in 2010 it was a record $7 billion. If we put the numbers through the same analysis as the salaries, we find that while player salaries have increased 5.89% per year from 1995-2010, league revenue has increased an average of 8.70% per year over the same time period.
Before you yell and scream too much about the ridiculous amounts of money that players are being paid, remember that they get that much money because the market will bear those salaries. If the owners start making less money, they will start to hand out smaller and smaller contracts.
INDIVIDUAL VALUE
At this point, I’d like to narrow my focus a bit and explore the meaning of value when it comes to players. Sabermatricians have worked tirelessly over the past few years to come up with new ways to evaluate players and near the forefront of this revolution is one of my favorite metrics, Wins Above Replacement (WAR). This extremely complex metric takes into account as much as is possible in order to boil down a player’s contributions into a single number adjusted for the era they play in, the individual ballparks they played in, and even the teams they played against.
But the question that nagged at the back of my mind for countless hours is how much bang do owners receive for their buck? How often does a big contract pay off and how often do owners reap the rewards of a team friendly contract for a player that exceeds everyone’s wildest expectations?
And so those questions provided the backdrop for my research. I examined the salary figures and WAR values from 2000-2010 in an attempt to draw some conclusions about trends when it came to the contracts that owners gave certain types of players and certain patterns started to emerge. A question that I’d like to pose to you at this point is what type of player do you think is the most valuable to an MLB franchise? Please allow me to be a bit more specific with my definition of value in this context. What group of players has maximized on field production while minimizing their salary? Yeah, I apologize, that’s still a bit vague.
Young players.
In the height of the Steroid Era, which I will say happened roughly from 1996-2003 (ish) older players were far more valuable and indeed put forth some of the best seasons in MLB history. Barry Bonds had a five year run from 2000-2004 that is one of the best collections of seasons ever. In 2000, his WAR was a very good 8.7 but that was just his jumping off point. His next four seasons produced WAR values of 12.5, 12.2, 10.3, and 12.4. So what’s the big deal? For those five seasons, he was 35, 36, 37, 38, and 39 years old, an age where the vast majority of professional athletes begin to break down and become a shell of what they were at a younger age.
In the years since the Mitchell Report, congressional hearings, and perjury and obstruction of justice cases, players have gone back to aging the way they always used to; poorly. There has been an incredible youth movement in the past five years that has not only restored some sanity and equilibrium to the way talent evaluators look at players of a certain age, but has also reinvigorated America’s interest in baseball. After all, when the details of the Steroid Era started to come out, fans became very cynical about players and how they went about achieving their accomplishments. People also became cynical about the motives of the players who were bulking up and becoming huge and putting forth huge number while filling their bank accounts with a king’s ransom.
Today, it is the young players that rule baseball. There are still greedy men throughout baseball but there is a sense that the playing field is far more even and players are succeeding based on talent and hard work rather than what pharmacist they know. In my opinion, this has instilled once again a sense of the purity that once made baseball America’s pastime so long ago.
All you have to do to know that I’m right is look at the roster and salary breakdown (by age) of nearly any team that plays their home games outside of the Bronx or Boston. In 2000, 29% of salary money went to player under the age of 30. The 30-34 age brackets earned 50.3% while players over 35 earned 20.66% of salary money. From 2001-2004, the breakdown of salaries skewed towards older players with the three demographics earning 32.7%, 45.3%, and 22.0%, respectively. Before you dismiss this relatively small increase as trivial, realize that over those 4 years, roughly $7 billion was paid in salary so that represents an increase in salaries for players over 35 of $23.9 million per year.
Last year, those demographic breakdowns were 32.8%, 49.6%, and 17.6%. Money is no longer being given out to older players and it is instead being used on younger who provide much more performance per dollar spent. But what about those seasons from Bonds that I just mentioned and the excellent seasons that Roger Clemens had even after turning 40? That certainly proves that older players can still have some value, doesn’t it?
Yes, it does. The problem isn’t the Bonds’ and Clemens’ of the world. It’s Carlos Lee, who last year (at the age of 34) put forth a season in which he was worth 2.5 wins LESS than your average replacement player… while earning $19 million. When you look at the worst seasons of the last ten years given a combination of poor performance and high salary, the average age of the 50 worst player seasons is 33.8 years old. The average of the top 50 is 25.4 years old.
The following is a graph of average salary and average WAR by age. Given how much noise there is in the data below the age of 24 and above the age of 40, I simply eliminated those. Given how few players fall into those two categories, the sample size isn’t large enough to draw significant conclusions.
This graph says it all; once players turn 30, general managers across baseball are taking their chances with many players. Before they turn 30 there is a large disparity between their performance and their salary but why does this happen? LeBron James had a contract worth more than $20 million before he took the court for the Cavaliers and Sam Bradford had a contract guaranteeing him more than $50 million before he took a snap for the Rams.
The NBA and NFL pay much more on potential at first and then only later is actual performance taken into account. In baseball, draft busts are costly because of the actual pick and not as much because of the money that was invested in the picks. If Stephen Strasburgh doesn’t pan out for the Washington Nationals, they are out $15 million, which is a lot of money but imagine if he had become a Cy Young candidate in his first few years.
One of the most famous examples of this is Albert Pujols. In his first three years with the Cardinals, he was valued at 6.9, 5.8, and 10.9 WAR; in short, he had three incredible seasons given that he was 21-23 years old for those seasons. Here’s the ridiculous part; he was paid a grand total of $1.7 million for those three seasons.
Baseball is alone in that you have to make it to the highest level of the sport and perform before you get your big payday. Granted, there are always stories of unheralded players coming out of college in the NBA or the NFL who hit it big once they make it to the pros but those are few and far between. No matter how much fanfare a player receives after being drafted, few baseball players have the paychecks to match their skill sets until they do well in the majors. For every example like Evan Longoria (who signed a 6 year, $17 million contract very shortly after reaching the majors) there are countless examples of players who played for less than $1 million and were All-Stars before being paid like them.
I’ve been talking about the value of players given both their salary and WAR and I want to explain briefly how I arrived at the figures. Essentially, I gave each player season a percentile rank given the best and worth performance and then gave them a percentile rank given their salary. The twist is that instead of the highest salary having a percentile rank of 100, I gave the lowest salary that rank. I don’t want us to confuse value with worth. In 2003, Albert Pujols was worth more than his $900,000 salary and given that he produced 10.9 WAR that season, he was extremely valuable to the Cardinals because of his combination of high production and low cost. I’m not making a value judgment about the salary structure in baseball; I’m just trying to find patterns. Once I got these two values, I simply averaged them, giving me a scale of value from 0-100.
This is a graph of the results of this analysis, plotting salary on the x-axis against total value on the y-axis. I understand that there are a ton of dots on the graph (8,840 to be exact) but don’t miss the forest for the trees. What this essentially shows is that significantly higher total value is found in the players earning less than $5 million in a season.
Also notice that amongst the 7,153 players who earned less than $5 million in a season, there is less variance than among the 1,687 players who had seasons earning more than $5 million. The highest total value by a player earning over that threshold was 85.3 while the lowest was 21.6. For the players below that threshold, the limits were 94.0 and 46.6. All that this basically says is that younger players are surer bets and if they don’t work out, it’s not like you were paying them much to begin with.
So what does all this mean in the grand scheme of Major League Baseball? Is it only a matter of time until draft picks are given contracts of $50 million over a number of years? Doubtful. However, there will always be owners and general managers that will thumb their nose at the conventional wisdom and give a 31 year old player a 10 year, $275 million contract when there are no other bidders in the auction.
I believe that cooler heads will exert more influence in the coming years and the number of players that are grossly overpaid will decrease. You already have an organization that is famous for not ever wanting to give a contract longer than three years to a starting pitcher in the Philadelphia Phillies. Despite the fact that they’ve violated that rule twice recently, they still gave two of the best pitchers in the game contracts of four years (Roy Halladay) and five years (Cliff Lee). If Halladay had reached the open market and Lee had taken the best offer, they both would have signed for much longer for many more dollars.
Teams are beginning to realize the benefits of taking a chance on young transcendent players because in the long run, that allows them to sign these players to less than their market value if they were to hit the open market. As out of whack as the recent extensions given to Ryan Braun, Troy Tulowitzki, and Carlos Gonzales seem, if they became free agents in three years after 3-5 years of extremely good production, they all could have commanded $20 million per year. None of their deals have an average annual value close to that.
There will always be teams willing to pay a premium for the best talent but I believe what you will find is small market teams that are building around young players will have their day in the sun and will compete with the big boys and that is just one small part of what makes baseball grand.
…
Thank you for sticking it out this long with me; I know I was more than a bit long-winded this time around. Hopefully you enjoyed what you read and found it somewhat informative. If you are interested in the raw data that I used to draw these conclusions, just let me know and I can provide it. All salary and WAR figures were found on baseball-reference.com.
Until next time, enjoy the baseball!
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Rugby World Cup Tune-Up (Canada vs. USA)
The United States National Rugby Team played their final tune-up before heading overseas for the 2011 Rugby World Cup and despite playing in front of a capacity crowd on their home field in Glendale, Colorado, there was much left to be desired, losing to Canada 27-7.
This was as close as the Eagles ever got to competing... the opening kickoff.
If there was a theme for the Eagles Saturday night, it was missed opportunities. Several times the Eagles were able to slash through the Canadian defense and rip off huge chunks of yardage but almost invariably, they would proceed to cough up the ball due to sloppy passing or poor support of the ball carrier. Late in the second half when the game was all but over, the Eagles had a nice sustained drive deep into Canada territory and it looked as if they might be able to thrust the ball over the goal line for a final defiant salvo. Alas, that series went much the same as several others as the Eagles rucked poorly and Canada stole yet another defensive ruck.
Despite their poor play in the first half, the Americans punched through for a late try to make the score 10-7 at halftime but it should have been much different. They missed two very makeable penalty attempts and then squandered not one but two Canadian sin bin stints (which also overlapped for 5 minutes, giving the Eagle a 15-on-13). With a little better passing and kicking, it could have easily been 20-10 Eagles at the half.
However, I need to give credit where credit is due. No matter what the Eagles did, the Canadians were flying to the ball. When the Eagles had sustained attacks and were able to move the ball all the way out to the wings, they would look up and find themselves in a 3-on-5 against the Canadian defense or worse.
The Canadian offense was nothing spectacular but it was solid. They didn’t give the ball away much and they didn’t lose many offensive rucks. Most importantly, they didn’t force the ball and they waited for their opportunities and when they got them, they took advantage of them. Of their four tries, all of them came off of transition attacks started by a breakaway of 30 yards or more. The Canadian defense was very good in the bend-but-don’t-break sense, allowing several large chunks of yardage but only allowing one try and stopping the Eagles within ten yards of the goal line several times.
From here, the Eagles have one more tune-up in Japan before the World Cup. Both Canada and the US are probably aiming for a third place finish in their respective pools but that will be a tall task for both. Canada is playing with New Zealand, France, Japan, and Tonga while the Eagles are grouped with Australia, Ireland, Italy, and Russia. If they play like they did last night, Canada might be able to sneak into third place while the Eagles will be hoping to win a match.
This is the first of quite a few posts about rugby that will be coming in the next two months. I will be in New Zealand for the matches played in Wellington this September (and early October) and will be posting my thoughts about the matches as well as some pictures from them. These are the five matches that I’ll be attending:
September 11th – South Africa vs. Wales (Pool D)
September 17th – South Africa vs. Fiji (Pool D)
September 23rd – Australia vs. USA (Pool C)
October 1st – France vs. Tonga (Pool A)
October 2nd – New Zealand vs. Canada (Pool A)
Stay tuned for more updates as well as some pictures from camping and backpacking in New Zealand!
This was as close as the Eagles ever got to competing... the opening kickoff.
If there was a theme for the Eagles Saturday night, it was missed opportunities. Several times the Eagles were able to slash through the Canadian defense and rip off huge chunks of yardage but almost invariably, they would proceed to cough up the ball due to sloppy passing or poor support of the ball carrier. Late in the second half when the game was all but over, the Eagles had a nice sustained drive deep into Canada territory and it looked as if they might be able to thrust the ball over the goal line for a final defiant salvo. Alas, that series went much the same as several others as the Eagles rucked poorly and Canada stole yet another defensive ruck.
Despite their poor play in the first half, the Americans punched through for a late try to make the score 10-7 at halftime but it should have been much different. They missed two very makeable penalty attempts and then squandered not one but two Canadian sin bin stints (which also overlapped for 5 minutes, giving the Eagle a 15-on-13). With a little better passing and kicking, it could have easily been 20-10 Eagles at the half.
However, I need to give credit where credit is due. No matter what the Eagles did, the Canadians were flying to the ball. When the Eagles had sustained attacks and were able to move the ball all the way out to the wings, they would look up and find themselves in a 3-on-5 against the Canadian defense or worse.
The Canadian offense was nothing spectacular but it was solid. They didn’t give the ball away much and they didn’t lose many offensive rucks. Most importantly, they didn’t force the ball and they waited for their opportunities and when they got them, they took advantage of them. Of their four tries, all of them came off of transition attacks started by a breakaway of 30 yards or more. The Canadian defense was very good in the bend-but-don’t-break sense, allowing several large chunks of yardage but only allowing one try and stopping the Eagles within ten yards of the goal line several times.
From here, the Eagles have one more tune-up in Japan before the World Cup. Both Canada and the US are probably aiming for a third place finish in their respective pools but that will be a tall task for both. Canada is playing with New Zealand, France, Japan, and Tonga while the Eagles are grouped with Australia, Ireland, Italy, and Russia. If they play like they did last night, Canada might be able to sneak into third place while the Eagles will be hoping to win a match.
This is the first of quite a few posts about rugby that will be coming in the next two months. I will be in New Zealand for the matches played in Wellington this September (and early October) and will be posting my thoughts about the matches as well as some pictures from them. These are the five matches that I’ll be attending:
September 11th – South Africa vs. Wales (Pool D)
September 17th – South Africa vs. Fiji (Pool D)
September 23rd – Australia vs. USA (Pool C)
October 1st – France vs. Tonga (Pool A)
October 2nd – New Zealand vs. Canada (Pool A)
Stay tuned for more updates as well as some pictures from camping and backpacking in New Zealand!
Cy Young Award Race Update
When last we checked, Jered Weaver wasn’t just leading the race for the 2011 American League Cy Young Award; he was running away with it. Despite Justin Verlander’s brilliance, Weaver had just been flat out better and his margin in my prediction formula was sizeable. In the senior circuit, Roy Halladay (surprise, surprise) was putting up the best numbers but in a shocker, Jair Jurrjens was giving him a good run for his money.
So where do we stand now that we’re about halfway through August with an average of 119 games in the books for each team?
Roy Halladay is still the best pitcher in the National League. His score of 148.4 is nearly ten points ahead of the second best starter in the NL (teammate Cole Hamels at 139.3). He is 15-4 with a 2.51 ERA, a 1.05 WHIP, an average GS of 62.6 (2nd best in the NL), and a strikeout to walk ratio of 7.76:1. However, there is one guy who can say that he’s actually pitched better than Halladay this year.
Johnny Cueto of the Reds is just 8-5 but his 1.94 ERA leads the Major Leagues and his ERA+ (adjusted for opponent’s and park factors) is a full 31 points ahead of Jered Weaver’s second best mark (205-174). So why is Cueto just over 16 points behind Halladay in third place in the NL Cy Young standings? Simple; innings pitched.
Cueto has thrown 120.1 innings and the last time I crunched these numbers, he wasn’t even among the qualifiers because he hadn’t thrown enough innings. By contract, Cole Hamels has thrown 172.0 innings and Halladay is tied for the NL lead in innings with Clayton Kershaw at 175.2. You can argue the merits of including something like innings pitched in a formula like this but in my view, it’s simple. The difference between Halladay and Cueto is 55.1 innings and 23 earned runs, which would come out to an ERA of 3.74. Considering that the league-wide ERA this year is 3.90, to match Halladay’s production the Reds need a reliever that can pitch roughly 5% above league average. That may not sound like much but when you consider that that is a decent workload for your average reliever, the Reds need an extra pitcher on their roster while the Phillies can use that roster spot for another position player.
That, in my opinion, is where the value of innings pitched comes in. Granted, if Halladay wasn’t pitching as well as he is, those innings wouldn’t be nearly as valuable but the fact remains; every inning he pitches is an inning that the Phillies bullpen doesn’t have to pitch. Come October when every inning and every pitch is so terribly important, the Phillies could very well have the freshest bullpen in the league. What is that worth in the time of year that every pitch is thrown at 110% and pitchers get tired faster?
Now that you’ve had a chance to think about the importance of innings pitched (especially when they are quality innings) think about this. So far this year, 13 pitchers have thrown more than 170 innings and the lowest average of innings per start in that group is Ian Kennedy at 6.8 innings per start. With the exception of Chris Carpenter (who ranks 38th) all of these pitchers also rank in the top 20 in my Cy Young Formula (out of 111 qualifying pitchers). There are only two teams that have more than one pitcher on this list and both teams have THREE pitchers with this many innings. It’s not too surprising that the Angels have hung around with the Rangers despite not having a great year; the trio of Jered Weaver, Dan Haren, and Ervin Santana have thrown that team on their back and carried them to where they are now, ten games above .500 and just three games behind the Rangers. Then there is the trio in Philadelphia who have predictably pitched very well but when you compare them to each other, it’s closer than you might think.
The Angels trio has combined to go 35-19 with a 2.88 ERA and a WHIP of 1.04. Those numbers for the trio of Halladay, Hamels, and Lee are 40-18, 2.65, and 1.04. The won-loss record difference is easily explained by the fact that the Phillies are on pace to be a historic team in terms of wins and losses while the Angels will be lucky to win 90 games. When you compare the per-game averages of the two trios, they are nearly indistinguishable.
Team-IP-H-R-ER-BB-K
GS
LAA-7.0-5.8-2.4-2.3-1.5-6.3
61.1
PHI-7.1-6.2-2.2-2.1-1.2-6.8
62.3
My entire point here is to say that even though the Phillies have been very good in the starting pitching department. The Angels have been nearly as good due to the emergence of Ervin Santana as a #3 pitcher. But is Jered Weaver the best pitcher in the AL?
At this point, not anymore.
A month and a half ago, Jered Weaver and Justin Verlander ranked 1st and 2nd, respectively, in the league in my Cy Young Formula. Today, they are still 1-2, just not in the same order. In some small ways, Jered Weaver has come back to the pack and Justin Verlander has pitched about the same. At the beginning of July, their core numbers looked like this:
Name: W-L, ERA, WHIP, IP, CYF
Weaver: 10-4, 1.92, 0.92, 131.1, 147.5
Verlander: 11-3, 2.32, 0.86, 135.2, 130.2
This is what those same numbers look like today.
Weaver: 14-6, 2.13, 0.97, 181.1, 179.9
Verlander: 17-5, 2.35, 0.87, 195.0, 189.8
Now this is really starting to split hairs between two starters having great years but soon enough the voters will have to do it as well. The only real differences are the margin in ERA and innings pitched. In July, Weaver’s lead in ERA was four tenths of a run and now that is down to 0.22 runs, just over half what it was. Six weeks ago, the innings pitched was practically a wash with Verlander having pitched 4.1 more. Today, that margin has increased to 13.2. When you add those up, along with Verlander’s overall brilliance and higher strikeout totals, that has led to more than a 27 point swing in the Cy Young Formula.
I know that it seems simplistic to break down the AL Cy Young race to two pitchers but before you start spouting the case of any other pitcher, consider this; the next highest ranked AL pitcher is CC Sabathia but the formula gives him only 144.3 points, drastically behind both Weaver and Verlander. This is the definition of a two horse race.
So where do we stand now that we’re about halfway through August with an average of 119 games in the books for each team?
Roy Halladay is still the best pitcher in the National League. His score of 148.4 is nearly ten points ahead of the second best starter in the NL (teammate Cole Hamels at 139.3). He is 15-4 with a 2.51 ERA, a 1.05 WHIP, an average GS of 62.6 (2nd best in the NL), and a strikeout to walk ratio of 7.76:1. However, there is one guy who can say that he’s actually pitched better than Halladay this year.
Johnny Cueto of the Reds is just 8-5 but his 1.94 ERA leads the Major Leagues and his ERA+ (adjusted for opponent’s and park factors) is a full 31 points ahead of Jered Weaver’s second best mark (205-174). So why is Cueto just over 16 points behind Halladay in third place in the NL Cy Young standings? Simple; innings pitched.
Cueto has thrown 120.1 innings and the last time I crunched these numbers, he wasn’t even among the qualifiers because he hadn’t thrown enough innings. By contract, Cole Hamels has thrown 172.0 innings and Halladay is tied for the NL lead in innings with Clayton Kershaw at 175.2. You can argue the merits of including something like innings pitched in a formula like this but in my view, it’s simple. The difference between Halladay and Cueto is 55.1 innings and 23 earned runs, which would come out to an ERA of 3.74. Considering that the league-wide ERA this year is 3.90, to match Halladay’s production the Reds need a reliever that can pitch roughly 5% above league average. That may not sound like much but when you consider that that is a decent workload for your average reliever, the Reds need an extra pitcher on their roster while the Phillies can use that roster spot for another position player.
That, in my opinion, is where the value of innings pitched comes in. Granted, if Halladay wasn’t pitching as well as he is, those innings wouldn’t be nearly as valuable but the fact remains; every inning he pitches is an inning that the Phillies bullpen doesn’t have to pitch. Come October when every inning and every pitch is so terribly important, the Phillies could very well have the freshest bullpen in the league. What is that worth in the time of year that every pitch is thrown at 110% and pitchers get tired faster?
Now that you’ve had a chance to think about the importance of innings pitched (especially when they are quality innings) think about this. So far this year, 13 pitchers have thrown more than 170 innings and the lowest average of innings per start in that group is Ian Kennedy at 6.8 innings per start. With the exception of Chris Carpenter (who ranks 38th) all of these pitchers also rank in the top 20 in my Cy Young Formula (out of 111 qualifying pitchers). There are only two teams that have more than one pitcher on this list and both teams have THREE pitchers with this many innings. It’s not too surprising that the Angels have hung around with the Rangers despite not having a great year; the trio of Jered Weaver, Dan Haren, and Ervin Santana have thrown that team on their back and carried them to where they are now, ten games above .500 and just three games behind the Rangers. Then there is the trio in Philadelphia who have predictably pitched very well but when you compare them to each other, it’s closer than you might think.
The Angels trio has combined to go 35-19 with a 2.88 ERA and a WHIP of 1.04. Those numbers for the trio of Halladay, Hamels, and Lee are 40-18, 2.65, and 1.04. The won-loss record difference is easily explained by the fact that the Phillies are on pace to be a historic team in terms of wins and losses while the Angels will be lucky to win 90 games. When you compare the per-game averages of the two trios, they are nearly indistinguishable.
Team-IP-H-R-ER-BB-K
GS
LAA-7.0-5.8-2.4-2.3-1.5-6.3
61.1
PHI-7.1-6.2-2.2-2.1-1.2-6.8
62.3
My entire point here is to say that even though the Phillies have been very good in the starting pitching department. The Angels have been nearly as good due to the emergence of Ervin Santana as a #3 pitcher. But is Jered Weaver the best pitcher in the AL?
At this point, not anymore.
A month and a half ago, Jered Weaver and Justin Verlander ranked 1st and 2nd, respectively, in the league in my Cy Young Formula. Today, they are still 1-2, just not in the same order. In some small ways, Jered Weaver has come back to the pack and Justin Verlander has pitched about the same. At the beginning of July, their core numbers looked like this:
Name: W-L, ERA, WHIP, IP, CYF
Weaver: 10-4, 1.92, 0.92, 131.1, 147.5
Verlander: 11-3, 2.32, 0.86, 135.2, 130.2
This is what those same numbers look like today.
Weaver: 14-6, 2.13, 0.97, 181.1, 179.9
Verlander: 17-5, 2.35, 0.87, 195.0, 189.8
Now this is really starting to split hairs between two starters having great years but soon enough the voters will have to do it as well. The only real differences are the margin in ERA and innings pitched. In July, Weaver’s lead in ERA was four tenths of a run and now that is down to 0.22 runs, just over half what it was. Six weeks ago, the innings pitched was practically a wash with Verlander having pitched 4.1 more. Today, that margin has increased to 13.2. When you add those up, along with Verlander’s overall brilliance and higher strikeout totals, that has led to more than a 27 point swing in the Cy Young Formula.
I know that it seems simplistic to break down the AL Cy Young race to two pitchers but before you start spouting the case of any other pitcher, consider this; the next highest ranked AL pitcher is CC Sabathia but the formula gives him only 144.3 points, drastically behind both Weaver and Verlander. This is the definition of a two horse race.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
IS 2011 THE YEAR OF THE PITCHER?
Last year many writers lauded the Major League Baseball season as the second coming of the “Year of the Pitcher” with 1968 being the first incarnation. This season some of those same writers are saying that this is actually the next “Year of the Pitcher” and it even prompted one writer to say that we are entering the “Era of the Pitcher”. My goal is simply to examine those claims and put some statistical analysis in place to determine which year in the Cy Young era should truly be called the “Year of the Pitcher”.
METHODS
Anyone who has read (almost) any of my posts about pitching know my love of the Bill James metric, Game Score. It is specifically designed to reward good results (strikeouts, longer outings) while penalizing bad results (hits, walks, runs, earned runs) and it boils down an entire pitching performance into one simple number. The “typical” scale is 0-100 but there are examples (albeit rare ones) of starting pitchers going into the negative or above 100.
Here’s the wrinkle; for this analysis, I didn’t use just starting pitching. I used all the pitching numbers so essentially, I’m giving pretty much all teams credit for the innings bonuses in the Game Score (GS) metric. Thus, when I present the GS values, they are presenting the ability of that team or league to maximize strikeouts while minimizing walks, hits, and runs of all kinds. While I understand there is more to pitching than striking batters out, I also acknowledge that it terms of minimizing the chances for something to go wrong as the team in the field, nothing does it better than a strikeout. The batter does not hit the ball in fair territory and fielders are not given the chance to make an error. The astute baseball fan would point out that a batter can reach base on a third strike that comes in the form of a passed ball or wild pitch. However, so far in 2011, there have been 197 passed balls and 874 wild pitches… out of 407,666 total pitches thrown (0.26%). There have also been 1,749 errors committed out of 106,022 total chances (1.65%). Therefore, so far this season, the likelihood of a ball in play turning into an error is five times higher than the likelihood of a pitched ball ending up with a wild pitch or a passed ball.
The next step that I took is I compared the ERA of each individual season to the overall ERA of the Cy Young era (1956-present). I fully understand the pitfalls of ERA but over a large enough sample size, the aberrations will even out and give a decent snapshot of what is actually going on. Lastly, to obtain the single metric with which I compared individual seasons, I took the GS and divided it by 114 (the “perfect” Game Score) and multiplied it by the percentage deviation from the overall average ERA. For example, the league average ERA since 1956 has been 4.00. If the ERA in a particular year was 3.60, then the value I’d plug into this formula is 110.
(4.00-3.60) = 0.40 / 4.00 = 0.1 + 1 = 1.1 x 100 = 110
An ERA of 4.40 would yield a value of 90
(4.40-4.00) = 0.40 / 4.00 = 0.1… 1 – 0.1 = 0.9 x 100 = 90
Thus,
(GS/114)*(ERAadj) = Pitching Factor (PF)
The results were quite almost exactly what you might expect. The following is a list of the top 10 individual seasons during the Cy Young Era and their PF’s (with the last two seasons thrown in for reference).
Rank (out of 56) – Year – PF
1 – 1968 – 0.676
2 – 1972 – 0.614
3 – 1967 – 0.614
4 – 1963 – 0.581
5 – 1965 – 0.575
6 – 1971 – 0.572
7 – 1966 – 0.570
8 – 1964 – 0.558
9 – 1976 – 0.554
10 – 1969 – 0.549
16 – 2011 – 0.523
34 – 2010 – 0.482
42 – 2009 – 0.438
56 – 2000 – 0.361 (last)
As you can see, progress has been made over the past few years but we are still a long ways from saying that the pitching today is on par with that of the late 60’s. Even if you want to throw out 1968 as an aberration (which is valid since it was the last year that the height of the mound wasn’t uniform and mandated) let’s compare this year to #2 overall, 1972. The league wide ERA in 1972 was 3.26 and the overall GS was 59.13. This year those numbers are 3.85 and 57.43, respectively. That 57.43 GS this year ranks 9th overall, up from 16th in 2010.
What we are truly seeing is a combination of factors. First of all, steroids are making their way out of baseball and while I’m sure some players still use, I’m sure that number is significantly down from 2000 when the league wide ERA was 4.77, the highest of the Cy Young era. Secondly, we are seeing a number of young pitchers that are threats to throw a shutout or even a no-hitter every time they go out to the mound. On top of that, teams are getting smarter with their young pitchers and we’re finding a crop of pitchers under 30 that are pitching longer innings than in the last decade and they are effective later in games and later in the season. Lastly, the cut fastball is becoming more and more popular around MLB and pitchers are finding that it is an extremely effective pitch. If you need any proof at all, just look at Mariano Rivera, who has thrown one pitch for virtually his entire career and even though his velocity has decreased through the years, he is on pace to put up an ERA+ over 200 (over 100% better than league average) for the eighth time in nine years… at the age of 41.
Before I move on to the individuals that are driving the increase in chatter about this being the “Year of the Pitcher”, I want to shed some light on another factor that is showing up in the raw data. If you look at a graph of the league wide ERA’s or the runs per game or even the hits or walks allowed per game, there isn’t a ton of deviance. Obviously you have some, given that in 1968 the ERA was 2.98 and it was 4.77 in 2000. There is one statistic that I didn’t mention that features very prominently in the GS calculation that has not stayed constant over the years and is one of the driving forces behind the impression that we are in a golden age of pitching; the strikeout.
In 1956, pitchers struck out an average of 4.69 batters per 9 innings pitched, which works out to 17.4% of outs recorded. In 1968, the average was 5.89 per 9 innings (21.8% of outs) which is a tick above the overall average for the past 56 years (5.86). So far this year, that number is 7.00 per 9 innings, actually down from the all-time high set last year (7.13). Here’s the real question then; are strikeouts the measure of a good pitcher?
My answer is that they contribute but they are not all there is to pitching and I think that your answer to that question greatly defines how much of a renaissance pitching is having in baseball right now. It is certainly better than the time from 1998-2003 but it is still a far cry from a time when a pitcher allowed just 38 earned runs in 304.2 innings.
INDIVIDUALS
The question is simple; what was the best single-season pitching performance in the Cy Young Era (1956-present)? The answer is slightly more complicated because again, it depends on what you value. I tried to encompass everything and personally, I think I did fairly well but I will readily admit that I am biased towards my own method. I’ve talked about the formula I use to judge starting pitchers before but I’ll briefly recap its components.
ERA+
This is the part of my formula that relates one era to another. This metric adjusts a pitcher’s ERA to account for things like the field they pitched on as well as the opponents they pitch against and the league average for that particular season.
Game Score
Simply put, this metric rewards a pitcher for good results (more innings pitched, strikeouts) and detracts for bad results (hits, runs, and walks allowed).
Innings Pitched.
I’ve posed this exact same question before but I’ll do it again. You have two pitchers with identical stat lines; an ERA of 2.50 and a WHIP of 1.00. One of them pitched 200 innings and another pitched 250 innings. Which would you rather have? Obviously, you want the latter because pitching more innings is more valuable to your team.
The actual formula I use is this:
(ERA+/100)x(GS.ave/114)x(IP)
Using this formula, these are the top ten seasons of the past 56 years
Bob Gibson (1968) – 524.70
Pedro Martinez (2000) – 406.27
Dwight Gooden (1985) – 390.67
Steve Carlton (1972) – 383.36
Sandy Koufax (1966) – 370.66
Wilbur Wood (1971) – 353.88
Vida Blue (1971) – 353.25
Roger Clemens (1997) – 349.89
Gaylord Perry (1972) – 347.77
Ron Guidry (1978) – 344.15
The biggest difference between Gibson and Martinez at the top is simple.
Bob Gibson’s ERA+ was 258 and Pedro’s was 291. Advantage: Pedro
Bob Gibson’s GS.ave was 76.10 and Pedro’s was 73.34. Advantage: Gibson
Pedro Martinez pitched just 217.0 innings in 2000, the fewest of any pitcher in the top ten by 44 innings. Bob Gibson pitched 304.2 innings in 1968.
To put it simply, Pedro might have been slightly better than Gibson but Gibson was at that level of excellence for 87.2 more innings.
…
Yes, pitchers are performing better than they have in the past twenty years and if they do better in the second half of this season, we might be able to rank this season up there with some of the best seasons of the past thirty years. However, to put this year up there with the best pitching seasons of all time is nothing short of laughable. No-hitters and the best ten pitchers in the game do not set a precedent for the entire sport. If this were truly the year of the pitcher, then we would be saying that the worst pitcher on any staff would be a good pitcher on the staffs of other seasons and we aren’t to that point yet.
I am enjoying this rebirth of pitching more than anyone else I know and I have always liked 1-0 games more than 11-10 slugfests. Home runs are fun in batting practice but in the game I want to see the best hitters in the world acting like it.
I want to see them hitting behind runners to move them over a base.
I want to see them taking a pitch on the outside corner to the opposite field, taking a single instead of trying to hit a home run and making an out instead.
I want to see a middle of the order hitter square around to bunt and actually look like he knows what he’s doing.
I want to see a batter NOT try to hit a home run with two strikes and realize that a weak single helps the team more than a strikeout.
I guess when it all comes down to it; I want to see more batters hit like Edgar Martinez did.
And that’s the overwhelming impression that I get from all of this number crunching I’ve done. Yes, pitching is better now than at any point in the past ten years and there are more good or great pitchers that I would pay money to see pitch than at any point for quite some time. Since we’re giving credit where credit is due, let’s give blame where it is due as well. Batters are not adjusting to this new era of baseball well and the result is bad approaches to the plate and easy outs. In the 2009 World Series, the one batter that didn’t scare me in the Phillies line-up was Ryan Howard. This was the same guy who in the four regular seasons leading up to that had hit well (.278/.379/.589) and had hit the ball far (198 home runs and 572 RBI). Why wasn’t I afraid? He’s not a good hitter and he’s even worse against left handed pitching. What was the result?
Game 1 – 2-5 with 2 doubles
Game 2 – 0-4 with 4 K’s
Game 3 – 0-4 with 3 K’s
Game 4 – 1-4
Game 5 – 0-2 with 2 BB’s… and 2 K’s
Game 6 – 1-4 with a 2-run homer that came with the Phillies down 7-1
Total that up and it’s just ugly. Batters want to hit home runs and drive in runs. They want gaudy video game numbers that lead to contract’s like Howard’s 5 year, $125 million extension that he recently signed.
It’s time for the country to fall out of love with the home run and appreciate the nasty 2-1 slider that induces an inning-ending double play.
It ain’t sexy but it wins ballgames.
METHODS
Anyone who has read (almost) any of my posts about pitching know my love of the Bill James metric, Game Score. It is specifically designed to reward good results (strikeouts, longer outings) while penalizing bad results (hits, walks, runs, earned runs) and it boils down an entire pitching performance into one simple number. The “typical” scale is 0-100 but there are examples (albeit rare ones) of starting pitchers going into the negative or above 100.
Here’s the wrinkle; for this analysis, I didn’t use just starting pitching. I used all the pitching numbers so essentially, I’m giving pretty much all teams credit for the innings bonuses in the Game Score (GS) metric. Thus, when I present the GS values, they are presenting the ability of that team or league to maximize strikeouts while minimizing walks, hits, and runs of all kinds. While I understand there is more to pitching than striking batters out, I also acknowledge that it terms of minimizing the chances for something to go wrong as the team in the field, nothing does it better than a strikeout. The batter does not hit the ball in fair territory and fielders are not given the chance to make an error. The astute baseball fan would point out that a batter can reach base on a third strike that comes in the form of a passed ball or wild pitch. However, so far in 2011, there have been 197 passed balls and 874 wild pitches… out of 407,666 total pitches thrown (0.26%). There have also been 1,749 errors committed out of 106,022 total chances (1.65%). Therefore, so far this season, the likelihood of a ball in play turning into an error is five times higher than the likelihood of a pitched ball ending up with a wild pitch or a passed ball.
The next step that I took is I compared the ERA of each individual season to the overall ERA of the Cy Young era (1956-present). I fully understand the pitfalls of ERA but over a large enough sample size, the aberrations will even out and give a decent snapshot of what is actually going on. Lastly, to obtain the single metric with which I compared individual seasons, I took the GS and divided it by 114 (the “perfect” Game Score) and multiplied it by the percentage deviation from the overall average ERA. For example, the league average ERA since 1956 has been 4.00. If the ERA in a particular year was 3.60, then the value I’d plug into this formula is 110.
(4.00-3.60) = 0.40 / 4.00 = 0.1 + 1 = 1.1 x 100 = 110
An ERA of 4.40 would yield a value of 90
(4.40-4.00) = 0.40 / 4.00 = 0.1… 1 – 0.1 = 0.9 x 100 = 90
Thus,
(GS/114)*(ERAadj) = Pitching Factor (PF)
The results were quite almost exactly what you might expect. The following is a list of the top 10 individual seasons during the Cy Young Era and their PF’s (with the last two seasons thrown in for reference).
Rank (out of 56) – Year – PF
1 – 1968 – 0.676
2 – 1972 – 0.614
3 – 1967 – 0.614
4 – 1963 – 0.581
5 – 1965 – 0.575
6 – 1971 – 0.572
7 – 1966 – 0.570
8 – 1964 – 0.558
9 – 1976 – 0.554
10 – 1969 – 0.549
16 – 2011 – 0.523
34 – 2010 – 0.482
42 – 2009 – 0.438
56 – 2000 – 0.361 (last)
As you can see, progress has been made over the past few years but we are still a long ways from saying that the pitching today is on par with that of the late 60’s. Even if you want to throw out 1968 as an aberration (which is valid since it was the last year that the height of the mound wasn’t uniform and mandated) let’s compare this year to #2 overall, 1972. The league wide ERA in 1972 was 3.26 and the overall GS was 59.13. This year those numbers are 3.85 and 57.43, respectively. That 57.43 GS this year ranks 9th overall, up from 16th in 2010.
What we are truly seeing is a combination of factors. First of all, steroids are making their way out of baseball and while I’m sure some players still use, I’m sure that number is significantly down from 2000 when the league wide ERA was 4.77, the highest of the Cy Young era. Secondly, we are seeing a number of young pitchers that are threats to throw a shutout or even a no-hitter every time they go out to the mound. On top of that, teams are getting smarter with their young pitchers and we’re finding a crop of pitchers under 30 that are pitching longer innings than in the last decade and they are effective later in games and later in the season. Lastly, the cut fastball is becoming more and more popular around MLB and pitchers are finding that it is an extremely effective pitch. If you need any proof at all, just look at Mariano Rivera, who has thrown one pitch for virtually his entire career and even though his velocity has decreased through the years, he is on pace to put up an ERA+ over 200 (over 100% better than league average) for the eighth time in nine years… at the age of 41.
Before I move on to the individuals that are driving the increase in chatter about this being the “Year of the Pitcher”, I want to shed some light on another factor that is showing up in the raw data. If you look at a graph of the league wide ERA’s or the runs per game or even the hits or walks allowed per game, there isn’t a ton of deviance. Obviously you have some, given that in 1968 the ERA was 2.98 and it was 4.77 in 2000. There is one statistic that I didn’t mention that features very prominently in the GS calculation that has not stayed constant over the years and is one of the driving forces behind the impression that we are in a golden age of pitching; the strikeout.
In 1956, pitchers struck out an average of 4.69 batters per 9 innings pitched, which works out to 17.4% of outs recorded. In 1968, the average was 5.89 per 9 innings (21.8% of outs) which is a tick above the overall average for the past 56 years (5.86). So far this year, that number is 7.00 per 9 innings, actually down from the all-time high set last year (7.13). Here’s the real question then; are strikeouts the measure of a good pitcher?
My answer is that they contribute but they are not all there is to pitching and I think that your answer to that question greatly defines how much of a renaissance pitching is having in baseball right now. It is certainly better than the time from 1998-2003 but it is still a far cry from a time when a pitcher allowed just 38 earned runs in 304.2 innings.
INDIVIDUALS
The question is simple; what was the best single-season pitching performance in the Cy Young Era (1956-present)? The answer is slightly more complicated because again, it depends on what you value. I tried to encompass everything and personally, I think I did fairly well but I will readily admit that I am biased towards my own method. I’ve talked about the formula I use to judge starting pitchers before but I’ll briefly recap its components.
ERA+
This is the part of my formula that relates one era to another. This metric adjusts a pitcher’s ERA to account for things like the field they pitched on as well as the opponents they pitch against and the league average for that particular season.
Game Score
Simply put, this metric rewards a pitcher for good results (more innings pitched, strikeouts) and detracts for bad results (hits, runs, and walks allowed).
Innings Pitched.
I’ve posed this exact same question before but I’ll do it again. You have two pitchers with identical stat lines; an ERA of 2.50 and a WHIP of 1.00. One of them pitched 200 innings and another pitched 250 innings. Which would you rather have? Obviously, you want the latter because pitching more innings is more valuable to your team.
The actual formula I use is this:
(ERA+/100)x(GS.ave/114)x(IP)
Using this formula, these are the top ten seasons of the past 56 years
Bob Gibson (1968) – 524.70
Pedro Martinez (2000) – 406.27
Dwight Gooden (1985) – 390.67
Steve Carlton (1972) – 383.36
Sandy Koufax (1966) – 370.66
Wilbur Wood (1971) – 353.88
Vida Blue (1971) – 353.25
Roger Clemens (1997) – 349.89
Gaylord Perry (1972) – 347.77
Ron Guidry (1978) – 344.15
The biggest difference between Gibson and Martinez at the top is simple.
Bob Gibson’s ERA+ was 258 and Pedro’s was 291. Advantage: Pedro
Bob Gibson’s GS.ave was 76.10 and Pedro’s was 73.34. Advantage: Gibson
Pedro Martinez pitched just 217.0 innings in 2000, the fewest of any pitcher in the top ten by 44 innings. Bob Gibson pitched 304.2 innings in 1968.
To put it simply, Pedro might have been slightly better than Gibson but Gibson was at that level of excellence for 87.2 more innings.
…
Yes, pitchers are performing better than they have in the past twenty years and if they do better in the second half of this season, we might be able to rank this season up there with some of the best seasons of the past thirty years. However, to put this year up there with the best pitching seasons of all time is nothing short of laughable. No-hitters and the best ten pitchers in the game do not set a precedent for the entire sport. If this were truly the year of the pitcher, then we would be saying that the worst pitcher on any staff would be a good pitcher on the staffs of other seasons and we aren’t to that point yet.
I am enjoying this rebirth of pitching more than anyone else I know and I have always liked 1-0 games more than 11-10 slugfests. Home runs are fun in batting practice but in the game I want to see the best hitters in the world acting like it.
I want to see them hitting behind runners to move them over a base.
I want to see them taking a pitch on the outside corner to the opposite field, taking a single instead of trying to hit a home run and making an out instead.
I want to see a middle of the order hitter square around to bunt and actually look like he knows what he’s doing.
I want to see a batter NOT try to hit a home run with two strikes and realize that a weak single helps the team more than a strikeout.
I guess when it all comes down to it; I want to see more batters hit like Edgar Martinez did.
And that’s the overwhelming impression that I get from all of this number crunching I’ve done. Yes, pitching is better now than at any point in the past ten years and there are more good or great pitchers that I would pay money to see pitch than at any point for quite some time. Since we’re giving credit where credit is due, let’s give blame where it is due as well. Batters are not adjusting to this new era of baseball well and the result is bad approaches to the plate and easy outs. In the 2009 World Series, the one batter that didn’t scare me in the Phillies line-up was Ryan Howard. This was the same guy who in the four regular seasons leading up to that had hit well (.278/.379/.589) and had hit the ball far (198 home runs and 572 RBI). Why wasn’t I afraid? He’s not a good hitter and he’s even worse against left handed pitching. What was the result?
Game 1 – 2-5 with 2 doubles
Game 2 – 0-4 with 4 K’s
Game 3 – 0-4 with 3 K’s
Game 4 – 1-4
Game 5 – 0-2 with 2 BB’s… and 2 K’s
Game 6 – 1-4 with a 2-run homer that came with the Phillies down 7-1
Total that up and it’s just ugly. Batters want to hit home runs and drive in runs. They want gaudy video game numbers that lead to contract’s like Howard’s 5 year, $125 million extension that he recently signed.
It’s time for the country to fall out of love with the home run and appreciate the nasty 2-1 slider that induces an inning-ending double play.
It ain’t sexy but it wins ballgames.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
First Half Review
So, half the season has come and gone and sure enough, most of the standings look exactly as many people predicted them several months ago. The Rangers are in first place – despite a recent surge from the Angels – after their American League Championship season of a year ago and the Giants have opened up a sizable lead in the NL West after beating the Rangers last October. Neither is terribly unexpected mostly because the AL West is extremely weak and the NL West has more than its share of drama surrounding one of its better teams and the injury bug has bitten another of the favorites.
In the central, the Tigers have overcome a horrendous pitching staff to get to first place on the back of staff ace Justin Verlander. They have also taken advantage of the inevitable decline from the Indians who started the season very hot but haven’t maintained their level of play. Despite uneven, injured, or downright terrible play, both the White Sox (5) and the Twins (6.5) are within striking distance and are two good weeks from taking control of the division.
In the NL Central, a few teams made some improvements to their teams to try and make a run at the division this year but still they are all chasing the Cardinals which is apparently the team veterans join to resurrect their careers. The most heartwarming tale of the entire season comes from the NL Central where the Pittsburgh Pirates are 47-43 and just one game out in the division. They are searching for their first winning season since 1992 and for the sake of one of the sports older franchises, I’m pulling for them all the way. If Pujols comes back to his regular form, there is little chance that they could catch the Cardinals and there is an even smaller chance of them winning the wildcard but nevertheless, it’s a truly great story for the Pirates.
In the east are the two divisions that have truly given us little to talk about in terms of teams exceeding or falling short of preseason expectations. After one month of the season, I predicted the order of finish in the AL East would be Yankees, Red Sox, Rays, Blue Jays, and Orioles. At the All-Star break, the only difference is the Red Sox are leading and the Yankees are in second but seeing as how there is only a one game difference between them, I’ll give myself full credit for that one. In the National League, I was not fooled by Florida’s fast start but I still didn’t see their nose dive coming and I also didn’t see the Mets playing respectable ball either.
Predicted Order: Phillies, Braves, Marlins, Nationals, Mets
Current Order: Phillies, Braves, Mets, Nationals, Marlins
What has replaced surprise teams in my opinion are individuals who are exceeding expectations or are quietly having outstanding seasons at the halfway point (or, frankly, those who are doing the opposite of that).
THE GREAT AND THE UGLY
Adrian Gonzalez (.354/.414/.591, 17 HR, 77 RBI)
Jose Bautista (.334/.468/.702, 31 HR, 63 RBI)
First of all, I knew Gonzalez was good but I never fully appreciated how much his lineup and Petco Park were holding him back. Now freed from his San Diego purgatory, he is on pace to set career highs in all three slash categories (.304, .407, .551 are his previous career highs) as well as smash his career highs in hits and RBI (he’s on pace for 230 and 139 with career highs of 182 and 119). If the Red Sox keep winning with their shaky rotation and he keeps hitting the way he is, it’ll be hard for writers to not punch his name as AL MVP.
As for Bautista, I guess you could say he’s answering a lot of the critics who were saying that he was a one-hit wonder last year (and while I may not have said it, I was definitely thinking it… Jose, I apologize for doubting you). As for those of you out there who are jumping to the PED conclusion with his sudden power stroke, an article was written a while ago on espn.com talking about how the Pirates were trying to make him a slap hitter. If you watch a few of his home runs you can tell he’s not a slap hitter.
However, the other reason I doubt he’s using PED’s (based on very little) is he is a dead pull hitter. Nearly all of his 54 homers last year and 31 this year have gone out to left field. If you look at the list of guys that were suspected of using PED’s or tested positive (Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez) these guys all hit a ton of home runs to the opposite field which requires either far better discipline or far more strength (or some combination thereof). What I see is a guy who is comfortable at the plate and he’s only swinging at the pitches that he knows he can drive to left. I don’t see a guy who is juicing.
Adam Dunn (.160/.292/.305, 9 HR, 34 RBI)
Dan Uggla (.185/.257/.365, 15 HR, 34 RBI)
I never saw either of these coming. Dunn is still walking (47 thus far) and Uggla is still hitting the long ball but not much of anything else is happening for these two guys who were paid big money to supplement their respective lineups. I can’t say anything that hasn’t already been said so I’ll leave it at this; if these guys get hot, watch out for the White Sox and the Braves.
PITCHERS
With relatively few noteworthy performances (to the point of being transcendent) that has left the baseball world to the pitchers and they are taking the sport over. Many have referred to 2010 as the Year of the Pitcher, Part II and some are saying that this year pitchers are even more dominant. I’m not going to go that far and I’m in the process of putting together some numbers which said what I’ve suspected all along; pitching had a bigger advantage over hitting than they do today… but that’s for another day.
Since it is the All-Star break I’ve thrown the numbers into my magic formula which predicted Roy Halladay and Felix Hernandez for the Cy Young Awards a year ago. To give you an idea of scale, Felix Hernandez had a score of 242.58 while Halladay was second in baseball at 228.93. The next highest American Leaguer was Clay Buchholz at 164.14.
So far, your American League Cy Young winner of the first half should be…
Jered Weaver, with a score of 164.60 followed by…
Justin Verlander (158.41)
James Shields (125.40)
CC Sabathia (115.13)
Josh Beckett (109.49)
…and in the NL it should be…
Roy Halladay, with a score of 125.91.
Cole Hamels (122.78)
Jair Jurrjens (122.31)
Cliff Lee (102.15)
Tommy Hanson (87.62)
Before you ask why the scores are so low, it is because one of the components in my formula is innings pitched. Last year Halladay pitched 250.2 innings and thus far this year he’s only thrown 143.1 (which leads the NL); hence, the difference. Also of note, all of the top five pitchers in the National League are from the two teams with the best records in the NL… coincidence? Not at all.
PREDICTION TIME
AL/NL Cy Young Awards:
See above
AL MVP: Adrian Gonzalez
Depending on your definition of what the “most valuable player” is, you could put any one of several names in here. Where would the Blue Jays offense be without Jose Bautista? Where would the Tigers be (with their incredibly bad pitching staff) without Justin Verlander? However, I believe that there is a bit of a tradition of taking the best player from the best team when there are several candidates and the player that fits that description is Gonzalez.
NL MVP: Prince Fielder
Not too long ago, it looked like this was going to be Jose Reyes and he still might come back from his hamstring tweak and put up video game style offensive numbers while playing a good defensive shortstop. I wouldn’t bet on it though since his game is heavily reliant on speed. If he comes back too soon or isn’t at 100%, his numbers will be good but not otherworldly. In the east, no non-pitcher is really taking the reins as an MVP favorite and the voters have gotten over their love affair with Ryan Howard (finally). In the west, one of the best overall players (and certainly the best player on the defending champion Giants) destroyed his ankle and where are they now without him? Oh yeah, first place. That leaves the central and no player has stood out above his peers more than the Prince.
Playoff Teams (AL):
Red Sox
Tigers
Rangers
Yankees (WC)
Playoff Teams (NL):
Phillies
Brewers
Giants
Braves (WC)
Here are the differences between now and early May when I first predicted the order of finish:
- The Rockies have not played well and the Giants have.
- I originally predicted the Cardinals or Reds coming out of the central but I have a better feeling about the Brewers.
- I originally picked the Yankees to win the east instead of the wildcard. Either the Red Sox or Yankees will win the east and the other will take the wildcard.
PLAYOFF PREDICTIONS
AL:
Yankees over Tigers
Red Sox over Rangers
Red Sox over Yankees
NL:
Phillies over Brewers
Braves over Giants
Phillies over Braves
And finally, good pitching will always beat good hitting (except when it doesn’t, as Yogi would say)…
WORLD SERIES
Phillies over Red Sox
Enjoy baseball after the extended break and soon I’ll be back to examine the claim that this is the year of the pitcher once again (or heaven forbid, the ERA of the pitcher!)…
In the central, the Tigers have overcome a horrendous pitching staff to get to first place on the back of staff ace Justin Verlander. They have also taken advantage of the inevitable decline from the Indians who started the season very hot but haven’t maintained their level of play. Despite uneven, injured, or downright terrible play, both the White Sox (5) and the Twins (6.5) are within striking distance and are two good weeks from taking control of the division.
In the NL Central, a few teams made some improvements to their teams to try and make a run at the division this year but still they are all chasing the Cardinals which is apparently the team veterans join to resurrect their careers. The most heartwarming tale of the entire season comes from the NL Central where the Pittsburgh Pirates are 47-43 and just one game out in the division. They are searching for their first winning season since 1992 and for the sake of one of the sports older franchises, I’m pulling for them all the way. If Pujols comes back to his regular form, there is little chance that they could catch the Cardinals and there is an even smaller chance of them winning the wildcard but nevertheless, it’s a truly great story for the Pirates.
In the east are the two divisions that have truly given us little to talk about in terms of teams exceeding or falling short of preseason expectations. After one month of the season, I predicted the order of finish in the AL East would be Yankees, Red Sox, Rays, Blue Jays, and Orioles. At the All-Star break, the only difference is the Red Sox are leading and the Yankees are in second but seeing as how there is only a one game difference between them, I’ll give myself full credit for that one. In the National League, I was not fooled by Florida’s fast start but I still didn’t see their nose dive coming and I also didn’t see the Mets playing respectable ball either.
Predicted Order: Phillies, Braves, Marlins, Nationals, Mets
Current Order: Phillies, Braves, Mets, Nationals, Marlins
What has replaced surprise teams in my opinion are individuals who are exceeding expectations or are quietly having outstanding seasons at the halfway point (or, frankly, those who are doing the opposite of that).
THE GREAT AND THE UGLY
Adrian Gonzalez (.354/.414/.591, 17 HR, 77 RBI)
Jose Bautista (.334/.468/.702, 31 HR, 63 RBI)
First of all, I knew Gonzalez was good but I never fully appreciated how much his lineup and Petco Park were holding him back. Now freed from his San Diego purgatory, he is on pace to set career highs in all three slash categories (.304, .407, .551 are his previous career highs) as well as smash his career highs in hits and RBI (he’s on pace for 230 and 139 with career highs of 182 and 119). If the Red Sox keep winning with their shaky rotation and he keeps hitting the way he is, it’ll be hard for writers to not punch his name as AL MVP.
As for Bautista, I guess you could say he’s answering a lot of the critics who were saying that he was a one-hit wonder last year (and while I may not have said it, I was definitely thinking it… Jose, I apologize for doubting you). As for those of you out there who are jumping to the PED conclusion with his sudden power stroke, an article was written a while ago on espn.com talking about how the Pirates were trying to make him a slap hitter. If you watch a few of his home runs you can tell he’s not a slap hitter.
However, the other reason I doubt he’s using PED’s (based on very little) is he is a dead pull hitter. Nearly all of his 54 homers last year and 31 this year have gone out to left field. If you look at the list of guys that were suspected of using PED’s or tested positive (Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez) these guys all hit a ton of home runs to the opposite field which requires either far better discipline or far more strength (or some combination thereof). What I see is a guy who is comfortable at the plate and he’s only swinging at the pitches that he knows he can drive to left. I don’t see a guy who is juicing.
Adam Dunn (.160/.292/.305, 9 HR, 34 RBI)
Dan Uggla (.185/.257/.365, 15 HR, 34 RBI)
I never saw either of these coming. Dunn is still walking (47 thus far) and Uggla is still hitting the long ball but not much of anything else is happening for these two guys who were paid big money to supplement their respective lineups. I can’t say anything that hasn’t already been said so I’ll leave it at this; if these guys get hot, watch out for the White Sox and the Braves.
PITCHERS
With relatively few noteworthy performances (to the point of being transcendent) that has left the baseball world to the pitchers and they are taking the sport over. Many have referred to 2010 as the Year of the Pitcher, Part II and some are saying that this year pitchers are even more dominant. I’m not going to go that far and I’m in the process of putting together some numbers which said what I’ve suspected all along; pitching had a bigger advantage over hitting than they do today… but that’s for another day.
Since it is the All-Star break I’ve thrown the numbers into my magic formula which predicted Roy Halladay and Felix Hernandez for the Cy Young Awards a year ago. To give you an idea of scale, Felix Hernandez had a score of 242.58 while Halladay was second in baseball at 228.93. The next highest American Leaguer was Clay Buchholz at 164.14.
So far, your American League Cy Young winner of the first half should be…
Jered Weaver, with a score of 164.60 followed by…
Justin Verlander (158.41)
James Shields (125.40)
CC Sabathia (115.13)
Josh Beckett (109.49)
…and in the NL it should be…
Roy Halladay, with a score of 125.91.
Cole Hamels (122.78)
Jair Jurrjens (122.31)
Cliff Lee (102.15)
Tommy Hanson (87.62)
Before you ask why the scores are so low, it is because one of the components in my formula is innings pitched. Last year Halladay pitched 250.2 innings and thus far this year he’s only thrown 143.1 (which leads the NL); hence, the difference. Also of note, all of the top five pitchers in the National League are from the two teams with the best records in the NL… coincidence? Not at all.
PREDICTION TIME
AL/NL Cy Young Awards:
See above
AL MVP: Adrian Gonzalez
Depending on your definition of what the “most valuable player” is, you could put any one of several names in here. Where would the Blue Jays offense be without Jose Bautista? Where would the Tigers be (with their incredibly bad pitching staff) without Justin Verlander? However, I believe that there is a bit of a tradition of taking the best player from the best team when there are several candidates and the player that fits that description is Gonzalez.
NL MVP: Prince Fielder
Not too long ago, it looked like this was going to be Jose Reyes and he still might come back from his hamstring tweak and put up video game style offensive numbers while playing a good defensive shortstop. I wouldn’t bet on it though since his game is heavily reliant on speed. If he comes back too soon or isn’t at 100%, his numbers will be good but not otherworldly. In the east, no non-pitcher is really taking the reins as an MVP favorite and the voters have gotten over their love affair with Ryan Howard (finally). In the west, one of the best overall players (and certainly the best player on the defending champion Giants) destroyed his ankle and where are they now without him? Oh yeah, first place. That leaves the central and no player has stood out above his peers more than the Prince.
Playoff Teams (AL):
Red Sox
Tigers
Rangers
Yankees (WC)
Playoff Teams (NL):
Phillies
Brewers
Giants
Braves (WC)
Here are the differences between now and early May when I first predicted the order of finish:
- The Rockies have not played well and the Giants have.
- I originally predicted the Cardinals or Reds coming out of the central but I have a better feeling about the Brewers.
- I originally picked the Yankees to win the east instead of the wildcard. Either the Red Sox or Yankees will win the east and the other will take the wildcard.
PLAYOFF PREDICTIONS
AL:
Yankees over Tigers
Red Sox over Rangers
Red Sox over Yankees
NL:
Phillies over Brewers
Braves over Giants
Phillies over Braves
And finally, good pitching will always beat good hitting (except when it doesn’t, as Yogi would say)…
WORLD SERIES
Phillies over Red Sox
Enjoy baseball after the extended break and soon I’ll be back to examine the claim that this is the year of the pitcher once again (or heaven forbid, the ERA of the pitcher!)…
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Final Thoughts on the Finals ('10-'11)
NBA FINALS
Before I delve too deeply into the issues that everyone has been obsessing over since the end of the NBA finals last Sunday, I must give credit where credit is due.
I offer my sincere congratulations to owner Mark Cuban, head coach Rick Carlisle, and team and finals MVP Dirk Nowitzki. I counted the Mavericks out several times and believed what I read when some analysts picked Portland as the team most likely to beat a higher seeded team in the first round. Even after that, I wasn’t sure that they’d be able to beat the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Lakers. After that, I wasn’t sure how they’d be able to handle a team with two budding stars that could jump out of the gym and over the geriatric crows wearing Mavs uniforms. After that, I was sure that they would not be able to hang with a group of three young stars (I’m not going to distinguish between “stars” and “superstars”) who seemed to be playing their best basketball and were peaking at the right time.
What happened? 4-2, 4-0, 4-1, 4-2.
Don’t I look stupid?
So how did they do it? The easy answer is that they scored more points than the Heat in 4 of their 6 games but that’s not really anything new. As long as Dirk has been playing for the Mavericks, they have been one of the most efficient offensive teams in the league. The problem was always at the defensive end and this year they changed all of that. The additions of Brendan Haywood and Tyson Chandler are probably the reason that they hoisted the trophy over the weekend because now, Dirk doesn’t have to play the five. He can play the four where he is taller and longer than just about anyone he’ll match up with. At the five, he had to match up against Shaquille O’Neal. At times in the Finals, he was matched up against Dwayne Wade.
No offense intended but if you’re Nowitzki and it’s the fourth quarter of an important game of the NBA finals, which match-up would you rather have? D-Wade is a great player and if he was guarding Dirk, it was because of a switch but it still illustrates my point. Dirk has never been the bang down low, grab 15 rebounds and control the paint kind of guy. He’s much better roaming the perimeter and sometimes going into the post to take advantage of a mismatch and the additions of Haywood and Chandler allowed him to do that.
So the Mavericks were better offensively and they were better defensively. Another aspect which is ever more important than either of those is that the Mavericks were better mentally. Why should a 15 point deficit late in game 2 (already trailing one game to none) faze them when they faced similar circumstances against the Thunder? Why should that bother them when everyone… and I mean everyone… wrote them off after coughing up a 24 point lead late to Portland in a win for the Trailblazers that tied the series.
Interestingly, I would normally say that there are two ways to handle adversity; wilt under the added pressure or stare it down and resolve not to go down without a fight. However, I’m adding a third category that is a subset of the second and this is where the Mavericks incredible run falls; they didn’t change a thing.
I’m sure there were minor tweaks here and there by Rick Carlisle (who might finally get his appreciation amongst fans) and some guys shot better or made better decisions but they were the same team that made it this far. They never tried to reinvent the wheel. They knew that Portland overcoming a 24 point lead was an aberration and if they played their game they would prevail (they did). They knew that the Thunder having a big lead late didn’t matter because Dirk was already in the zone of a lifetime and all they had to do was feed him the ball and they’d prevail (they did). They knew that Miami’s cockiness was on display after D-Wade’s potential series changing three pointer gave the Heat a 15 point lead late in game 2 and they knew that the Heat would expect the Mavs to clench up the rest of the way. They knew they just had to do the same thing they always had and the shots would start to fall and they would prevail (they did).
What I’m really going for here is the difference between confidence and cockiness. The Heat were cocky; the Mavericks were confident. If you need any more evidence, look at Nowitzki’s game 6. He finished the game 9-27 from the field but if you just saw that, you would miss a lot of key information. He was 1-13 in the first half from the field (1-13!!!) and in the second half he shot a much more Dirk-like 8-14. What changed at halftime (or the end of the third quarter when he was still just 4-20) that made him superhuman once again in the fourth quarter? In my opinion, nothing changed. Many of his shots were in-and-out type misses and he knew eventually those would start falling and sure enough, they did and the Mavericks prevailed once again.
The difference is that when athletes are put under pressure, some believe that it will require a superhuman effort to get passed the obstacle in front of them and that is the clenching that I saw from the Miami Heat (with the exception of LeBron who I will get to later). What the Mavericks taught us this postseason is they knew they were capable of getting past anything; all they had to do was keep going, keep grinding and they would eventually prevail…
…and they did.
LEBRON
So much has been said about LeBron James in the few days since the season ended that to repeat them here would be nothing short of ludicrous. Basically, what all the talk has boiled down to is this:
LeBron James is not better than Michael Jordan.
All that I wonder about that statement is what took us so long to figure it out? For the past 13 seasons the media has obsessing combed over college basketball as well as the NBA looking at tomorrow’s bright young players and whenever they’ve found one sufficiently dazzling, they have asked the question…
Is the next Michael Jordan?
First it was Allen Iverson, or “The Answer” (presumably to the question I just posed) and then when we realized that he was going to struggle to shoot even 45% from the floor (which he did twice in 14 seasons while Jordan shot better than 45% all 12 of his full time seasons in Chicago) we moved on to Kobe Bryant. Here we might have found a decent player to compare to Michael Jordan. In a lot of ways, their career arcs are very similar from enormously physically gifted 2 guard to more of a jump shooter as their career took a toll on their legs.
Now, we’re onto LeBron James.
Yes, I’m sure there have been others that have borne the mantle of the “Next Michael Jordan” but frankly, I don’t care because I’m here to say this. Nobody has ever put the entire package of physical skill, basketball skill, and a downright ridiculous will to win in the same body the way Jordan has. Nobody. To claim that anyone has achieved a truly Jordan-esque level is unfair to that player as well as to Jordan himself. Many people have had the first one or the second one or even both of the first two and James belongs in that category. But nobody has ever matched that skill with the will to win the way Jordan did and the only others that might be able to say they had that will to win were not as basketball blessed as Jordan was. To be perfectly clear, I’m not saying that Jordan didn’t have to do one day of work and was just that good to begin with. I feel very comfortable saying that nobody worked harder on those Chicago teams than Jordan did and everyone else worked that hard because they saw their superstar working that hard.
So if LeBron James is not the next Michael Jordan, where does he fit in the pantheon of greatness? For the answer to this, I’m going to defer to Charles Barkley, a guy I always loved to watch play and never liked to watch comment on a basketball game. I don’t know why, he’s always grated on me. Anyways, Barkley said that a better comparison for James would be Magic Johnson and he hit the nail so precisely on the head, it’s scary.
When Magic was drafted number one overall following the 1978-1979 season, he went to a team that had gone 47-35 the year before and had a young(er) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who still had 787 games and 16,246 points left on his tires. The onus was not on Magic to save that franchise. On top of that, two years later the Lakers would draft James Worthy (#1 overall after a 57-25 season and their second title in three years) and the three of them would form the core of that run which included 9 Finals appearances in 12 years.
When Larry Bird was drafted, the Celtics were not nearly so well off. However, two years after the Celtics drafted Bird, they drafted another future Hall of Famer in Kevin McHale and then acquired a 26 year old Robert Parish from Golden State and a 29 year old Dennis Johnson from Phoenix. There you have the core of a team that played in the Finals five times and won three.
The seven players drafted since LeBron James have COMBINED for 7,045 points and 2,560 rebounds in 940 games. For comparison’s sake, James has played in 627 games and has 17,362 points and 4,451 rebounds.
I’m not trying to make you feel sorry for James; not one bit. All I’m saying is this; if James had been drafted to a good team with several good players and there had been other scoring options, I think he would have preferred to play the role of more of a point forward as opposed to the primary scoring option. When he kept deferring to Wade and Bosh in the Finals, I don’t think his only fault was being overwhelmed by the moment. I think part of it is he doesn’t want to carry the scoring burden and I think that might have been part of the reason he went to Miami; he would be playing alongside two legitimate scorers who could carry the load while he did what he always wanted to do; distribute.
Do I think this is a character flaw? Not at all. On the court, James is a very unselfish player and asserted himself in the playoffs more out of necessity (due to Wade’s struggles and Bosh’s inconsistency) than out of a will to take over. The problem is that people saw the scoring he was doing in Cleveland and immediately put him up in the realm of Jordan and they never really thought about whether or not he wants to be remembered as a scorer or a passer.
Do I consider the Heat’s season a failure? No, I don’t. It’s not a success either but this group of guys hadn’t experienced adversity together yet (now they have) and didn’t know how to react. I foresee a far more relaxed and comfortable group next year and I don’t see anyone stopping them.
That’s all for now but soon I’ll be writing something that has been stewing since November… open arrogance amongst the best athletes of today and how my respect for them would grow if their open arrogance did too…
Before I delve too deeply into the issues that everyone has been obsessing over since the end of the NBA finals last Sunday, I must give credit where credit is due.
I offer my sincere congratulations to owner Mark Cuban, head coach Rick Carlisle, and team and finals MVP Dirk Nowitzki. I counted the Mavericks out several times and believed what I read when some analysts picked Portland as the team most likely to beat a higher seeded team in the first round. Even after that, I wasn’t sure that they’d be able to beat the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Lakers. After that, I wasn’t sure how they’d be able to handle a team with two budding stars that could jump out of the gym and over the geriatric crows wearing Mavs uniforms. After that, I was sure that they would not be able to hang with a group of three young stars (I’m not going to distinguish between “stars” and “superstars”) who seemed to be playing their best basketball and were peaking at the right time.
What happened? 4-2, 4-0, 4-1, 4-2.
Don’t I look stupid?
So how did they do it? The easy answer is that they scored more points than the Heat in 4 of their 6 games but that’s not really anything new. As long as Dirk has been playing for the Mavericks, they have been one of the most efficient offensive teams in the league. The problem was always at the defensive end and this year they changed all of that. The additions of Brendan Haywood and Tyson Chandler are probably the reason that they hoisted the trophy over the weekend because now, Dirk doesn’t have to play the five. He can play the four where he is taller and longer than just about anyone he’ll match up with. At the five, he had to match up against Shaquille O’Neal. At times in the Finals, he was matched up against Dwayne Wade.
No offense intended but if you’re Nowitzki and it’s the fourth quarter of an important game of the NBA finals, which match-up would you rather have? D-Wade is a great player and if he was guarding Dirk, it was because of a switch but it still illustrates my point. Dirk has never been the bang down low, grab 15 rebounds and control the paint kind of guy. He’s much better roaming the perimeter and sometimes going into the post to take advantage of a mismatch and the additions of Haywood and Chandler allowed him to do that.
So the Mavericks were better offensively and they were better defensively. Another aspect which is ever more important than either of those is that the Mavericks were better mentally. Why should a 15 point deficit late in game 2 (already trailing one game to none) faze them when they faced similar circumstances against the Thunder? Why should that bother them when everyone… and I mean everyone… wrote them off after coughing up a 24 point lead late to Portland in a win for the Trailblazers that tied the series.
Interestingly, I would normally say that there are two ways to handle adversity; wilt under the added pressure or stare it down and resolve not to go down without a fight. However, I’m adding a third category that is a subset of the second and this is where the Mavericks incredible run falls; they didn’t change a thing.
I’m sure there were minor tweaks here and there by Rick Carlisle (who might finally get his appreciation amongst fans) and some guys shot better or made better decisions but they were the same team that made it this far. They never tried to reinvent the wheel. They knew that Portland overcoming a 24 point lead was an aberration and if they played their game they would prevail (they did). They knew that the Thunder having a big lead late didn’t matter because Dirk was already in the zone of a lifetime and all they had to do was feed him the ball and they’d prevail (they did). They knew that Miami’s cockiness was on display after D-Wade’s potential series changing three pointer gave the Heat a 15 point lead late in game 2 and they knew that the Heat would expect the Mavs to clench up the rest of the way. They knew they just had to do the same thing they always had and the shots would start to fall and they would prevail (they did).
What I’m really going for here is the difference between confidence and cockiness. The Heat were cocky; the Mavericks were confident. If you need any more evidence, look at Nowitzki’s game 6. He finished the game 9-27 from the field but if you just saw that, you would miss a lot of key information. He was 1-13 in the first half from the field (1-13!!!) and in the second half he shot a much more Dirk-like 8-14. What changed at halftime (or the end of the third quarter when he was still just 4-20) that made him superhuman once again in the fourth quarter? In my opinion, nothing changed. Many of his shots were in-and-out type misses and he knew eventually those would start falling and sure enough, they did and the Mavericks prevailed once again.
The difference is that when athletes are put under pressure, some believe that it will require a superhuman effort to get passed the obstacle in front of them and that is the clenching that I saw from the Miami Heat (with the exception of LeBron who I will get to later). What the Mavericks taught us this postseason is they knew they were capable of getting past anything; all they had to do was keep going, keep grinding and they would eventually prevail…
…and they did.
LEBRON
So much has been said about LeBron James in the few days since the season ended that to repeat them here would be nothing short of ludicrous. Basically, what all the talk has boiled down to is this:
LeBron James is not better than Michael Jordan.
All that I wonder about that statement is what took us so long to figure it out? For the past 13 seasons the media has obsessing combed over college basketball as well as the NBA looking at tomorrow’s bright young players and whenever they’ve found one sufficiently dazzling, they have asked the question…
Is
First it was Allen Iverson, or “The Answer” (presumably to the question I just posed) and then when we realized that he was going to struggle to shoot even 45% from the floor (which he did twice in 14 seasons while Jordan shot better than 45% all 12 of his full time seasons in Chicago) we moved on to Kobe Bryant. Here we might have found a decent player to compare to Michael Jordan. In a lot of ways, their career arcs are very similar from enormously physically gifted 2 guard to more of a jump shooter as their career took a toll on their legs.
Now, we’re onto LeBron James.
Yes, I’m sure there have been others that have borne the mantle of the “Next Michael Jordan” but frankly, I don’t care because I’m here to say this. Nobody has ever put the entire package of physical skill, basketball skill, and a downright ridiculous will to win in the same body the way Jordan has. Nobody. To claim that anyone has achieved a truly Jordan-esque level is unfair to that player as well as to Jordan himself. Many people have had the first one or the second one or even both of the first two and James belongs in that category. But nobody has ever matched that skill with the will to win the way Jordan did and the only others that might be able to say they had that will to win were not as basketball blessed as Jordan was. To be perfectly clear, I’m not saying that Jordan didn’t have to do one day of work and was just that good to begin with. I feel very comfortable saying that nobody worked harder on those Chicago teams than Jordan did and everyone else worked that hard because they saw their superstar working that hard.
So if LeBron James is not the next Michael Jordan, where does he fit in the pantheon of greatness? For the answer to this, I’m going to defer to Charles Barkley, a guy I always loved to watch play and never liked to watch comment on a basketball game. I don’t know why, he’s always grated on me. Anyways, Barkley said that a better comparison for James would be Magic Johnson and he hit the nail so precisely on the head, it’s scary.
When Magic was drafted number one overall following the 1978-1979 season, he went to a team that had gone 47-35 the year before and had a young(er) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who still had 787 games and 16,246 points left on his tires. The onus was not on Magic to save that franchise. On top of that, two years later the Lakers would draft James Worthy (#1 overall after a 57-25 season and their second title in three years) and the three of them would form the core of that run which included 9 Finals appearances in 12 years.
When Larry Bird was drafted, the Celtics were not nearly so well off. However, two years after the Celtics drafted Bird, they drafted another future Hall of Famer in Kevin McHale and then acquired a 26 year old Robert Parish from Golden State and a 29 year old Dennis Johnson from Phoenix. There you have the core of a team that played in the Finals five times and won three.
The seven players drafted since LeBron James have COMBINED for 7,045 points and 2,560 rebounds in 940 games. For comparison’s sake, James has played in 627 games and has 17,362 points and 4,451 rebounds.
I’m not trying to make you feel sorry for James; not one bit. All I’m saying is this; if James had been drafted to a good team with several good players and there had been other scoring options, I think he would have preferred to play the role of more of a point forward as opposed to the primary scoring option. When he kept deferring to Wade and Bosh in the Finals, I don’t think his only fault was being overwhelmed by the moment. I think part of it is he doesn’t want to carry the scoring burden and I think that might have been part of the reason he went to Miami; he would be playing alongside two legitimate scorers who could carry the load while he did what he always wanted to do; distribute.
Do I think this is a character flaw? Not at all. On the court, James is a very unselfish player and asserted himself in the playoffs more out of necessity (due to Wade’s struggles and Bosh’s inconsistency) than out of a will to take over. The problem is that people saw the scoring he was doing in Cleveland and immediately put him up in the realm of Jordan and they never really thought about whether or not he wants to be remembered as a scorer or a passer.
Do I consider the Heat’s season a failure? No, I don’t. It’s not a success either but this group of guys hadn’t experienced adversity together yet (now they have) and didn’t know how to react. I foresee a far more relaxed and comfortable group next year and I don’t see anyone stopping them.
That’s all for now but soon I’ll be writing something that has been stewing since November… open arrogance amongst the best athletes of today and how my respect for them would grow if their open arrogance did too…
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