Joe Jackson talks briefly to a newsboy about yesterday's news
by DanUpBaby on Nov 20, 2009 5:52 AM EST
435 comments
It's the most famous young face in the history of baseball—it's the symbol of purity corrupted, of the sport's loss of innocence in the face of organized crime and a gambling scandal that nearly ended baseball as young boys everywhere knew it.
Outside the courthouse there's a nervous crowd milling around, waiting for news. Suddenly there's a burst of activity and "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, surrounded by well-wishers, ex-fans, photographers, reporters, and baseball players, pushes through the double doors and takes the steps with his easy grace. The crowd is shocked into silence—the reporters' questions are so much rhubarb—but one brave, stoic newsboy, carrying his accusing newspapers guiltily, steps into the baseball great's path and begs, his voice quivering with the weight of posterity on its back: "Say it ain't so, Joe! Say it ain't so!"
Having gotten his lede, the lucky reporter stalks back to the newsroom. But after his famous silence the fallen hero gives the newsboy a measured look and says, "Well, it depends on what you mean. Certainly I was mixed up with bad people who were doing bad things. But in the end either the facts or the sheer gravitas of my story will vindicate me, and that's all I can really ask for."
The baby-faced newsboy sniffles a little. No more than ten or eleven, by the looks of it, he's already an old hand at the business. "I—I'm glad to hear that, Joe, I really am, but that's not what I'm askin' about. Didn't you see the paper? Haven't you been paying attention? I got signed by the Royals!"
435 comments | 0 recs |
Rule 5: You do talk about the Rule 5 draft
by DanUpBaby on Nov 19, 2009 6:00 AM EST
912 comments
Nothing exemplifies the Hot Stove season quite like worrying about the Rule 5 draft. Most of the players don't stick it out all year; most of the ones that do are eventually traded for Ronnie Belliard or Blaine Boyer; and most of the time it would be completely absurd to spend time thinking about this. Fangraphs won't return my calls, but according to my new WARP/seconds-in-your-limited-lifespan converter most of these guys peak around fifteen, twenty seconds. (Brian Barton, simply because his nickname was briefly "Enunciate It", broke the curve at forty-five.)
But it is November, and I already did a VEB Theater, and though it kills me to say it there is no baseball going on at Busch Stadium. So let us take solace in the dim light of this good news: the Cardinals will probably not lose a useful player to the Rule 5 draft this year. In approximate order of near-term usefulness:
ALLEN CRAIG
WHY WE SHOULDN'T BE THINKING ABOUT HIM: He doesn't really have a position; he's a minor league slugger who played in the PCL, so his numbers are vaguely suspicious; he strikes out too much and doesn't walk enough.
WHY WE WILL ANYWAY: He's looking more likely every day to spend significant time in left field in 2010, and there's a non-zero chance that he has a hot month while David Freese burns and Tony La Russa is suddenly convinced he can play third. He's never crushed a league, but he's also been extremely consistent level to level—in his three full seasons he's always hit .300, always hit 20 home runs, and always managed an OBP over .365. If the Cardinals find a left-handed outfielder they're comfortable with he is the ideal short side of a platoon.
912 comments | 0 recs |
November Rain
by the red baron on Nov 18, 2009 10:42 AM EST
790 comments
I'm sitting in my living room staring out on a grey and very nasty November morning. Ordinarily, I welcome such inclement weather; I usually love the rain and the clouds and the cold whistling wind. However, I have an awful day ahead of me, including a trip to traffic court in Webster Groves this evening, and I just can't bring myself to work up any sort of real cheer.
This past weekend I went to see a movie at the St. Louis Film Festival with a friend of mine named Alex. (By the way, huge plug for the Festival; if you've never been, go and buy a ticket to something. Doesn't matter what. Just go and see something you wouldn't ordinarily see. I promise it will be a good experience.) Alex is a girl, and a remarkably pretty one at that. She's also most likely reading this, as she thinks the things I write are funny (even when they aren't meant to be), which makes what I'm about to dwell on potentially uncomfortable, but I don't particularly care.
790 comments | 17 recs
Waino, the Cy Young, and Me — a poem by Chris Carpenter
by DanUpBaby on Nov 17, 2009 12:02 PM EST
415 comments
I got this in the mail last night, and I think it's worth a post. I'll turn this over to VEB-er MikeJGolde, the responsible party:
I took apart Carpenter's (awful) article about Wainwright and reconstructed it into something more appropriate.
His work of art follows the jump:
415 comments | 2 recs |
Rookies of the Following Year
by DanUpBaby on Nov 17, 2009 6:00 AM EST
116 comments
Well, I can't really blame the BBWAA for picking Chris Coghlan, the lone standout hitter in a year filled with pitchers who were excellent for half of a season. Among players whose names we at VEB habitually remember he might have been the most underrated of the SBN picks. McCutchen probably had the better year, but much of our evidence to that effect is locked up in Coghlan's awful UZR (and, to be fair, +/-.)
He'd never played left before 2009—he was blocked at second by Dan Uggla, which says something about either Coghlan's infield defense or Florida's decision-making process—so it's plausible that he was really ten runs worse than the average left fielder, but it's hard for me to imagine a young corner outfielder who doesn't hate baseball doing that much damage. Uggla's probably done in Florida, so we might never know just how terrible Chris Coghlan was. But in the infield that .390 OBP will make up for a lot of it.
But he and the AL choice, Andrew Bailey, illustrate this year's BBWAA thought process pretty well. Both leagues were stocked with good candidates who were, superficially, pretty similar, and difficult to distinguish, let alone rank. In the National League there was a run on pitchers who threw about half a season's worth of games with lovely ERAs; in the AL stood Elvis Andrus and Rick Porcello, wunderkinds who put together competent but rarely spectacular seasons at young ages. To deal with the matter of separating these tightly matched competitors, the AL went with something completely different. Neither pick is bad, but they're both... a little weird.
116 comments | 0 recs
Wainwright for Carpenter, Carpenter for Wainwright, Somebody for DeJesus
by DanUpBaby on Nov 16, 2009 6:00 AM EST
440 comments
At the P-D they're taking good advantage of the Cardinals' dual Cy Young candidates, as they've gotten both Wainwright and Carpenter on record as being Spartacus. (I would have liked one more, maybe PINEIRO: Why Joel Pineiro should win the Cy Young.)
For my money Wainwright's take on Carpenter is more interesting:
But we should talk about this year. This year he just out-executed everybody. If he wouldn't have lost that time because of injury, would we even be talking about this? [...] When you're facing Chris Carpenter, the opposing pitcher had to throw a shutout, or he didn't have a chance. The opposing team, I have to believe, probably went into the game against Chris Carpenter preparing to be shut out.[...]
No one has taught me more than Chris Carpenter. You know the story. After a start this year, Chris pulls me in to look at some video - old film, new film, all of it. He said my arm slot was 3 or 4 inches different, and the next day we're playing catch and with each throw he's telling me if it's right. Nope. Yep. Nope. Nope. Yep. Not just anybody can do that, can see from 60 feet a difference of less than 5 inches in every throw. After that, my fastball had movement. I got my slider back. I had confidence in my pitches.
If you want to make an argument for team chemistry being important, for good clubhouse guys making a difference, I think this is the one to make, not the Affable Kevin Millar Defense. Your dopey designated hitter giving somebody the hot-foot to Loosen Things Up probably won't make a significant difference in the standings or the clubhouse. (As is the case with matters of attendance, it's always seemed to me that the difference between a good clubhouse and a tense clubhouse, at least as far as the fans and reporters are able to tell, is how often the team's winning.)
But I can see the value in superstars who happen to be interested in and preternaturally gifted at things often left to the coaches. It's one thing if Dave Duncan tells you your arm slot is different; it's another if Chris Carpenter, who is touching 96 miles per hour right now, at this very moment, says so while you're both loosening up.
440 comments | 0 recs |
The good and the bad of Ryan Franklin
by vivaelpujols on Nov 15, 2009 3:15 AM EST
114 comments
This year Ryan Franklin was an enigma. Thanks to a nifty .269 BABIP (compared to a league average of .300) and an 85.7 strand rate (compared to a league average of 70%), his production was far better than you would expect based off of his peripheral statistics. His ERA was excellent at 1.92; however, his FIP was a good, not great, 3.31. And due to a super low HR/FB ratio, his xFIP was even higher, at 4.23. Simply put, his career year wasn't so great when you adjust for luck.
What makes that worse is that he seemingly fell apart down the stretch. His low BB rate rose, his low K rate plummeted and his low BABIP got a little bit less low. During that time, he had regressed the pitcher he once was. His command was worse, his stuff was not biting as much as it usually did and his goatee had finally completely taken over his face. Obviously, that's what happened... or was it?
I have a theory that Franklin actually didn't pitch much differently than he usually did, it's just his luck and timing were different. I'll be honest, this is part of a larger study I'm working on, so I'm using you guys as guinea pigs, but I'll think you'll enjoy it nonetheless
What I did was take all of Franklin's appearances this year (65 including post season and all star game), and sort by wOBA allowed. I took the 15 worst outings and the 15 best outings from him all year, at least as measured by wOBA, and pulled the aggregate PItch f/x data for each group. I then took the two groups and looked at several attributes of the pitches, to see if I could spot any differences. For fun, when I show you the graphs and data, I won't label them, so you could try to figure out which is which.
114 comments | 0 recs
holliday overload
by tom s. on Nov 14, 2009 8:00 AM EST
311 comments
just like i can't get used to christmas carols at the grocery store before thanksgiving, the MAJOR LEAGUE DRAMA of WHERE WILL HE SIGN? is starting to get goddamn old. and there's still a week left before he goes on the market. front page articles everyday on what admittedly is probably about the only interesting baseball topic in st. louis right now have begun to wear me down. right now, i no longer really care. i just want the damn thing over. i know i should care. i know we're talking about what could be one of the top twenty-five players in baseball (13th among position players by WAR in 2009), and we're probably talking about a 9-figure contract that could hamstring the club for the next 5, 6, or more years if done wrong. i know all this. i just can't read another article whose basic theme is the same thing we've been batting around since we stopped yammering about "HFS (tm) BRETT WALLACE AND MORTENSON?"
he's going to cost a lot of money.
like a lot of money. a metric shit-ton. like maybe the household income of 2,500 ordinary american families. since each family has an average of 2.6 members, that's a decent size town - like a population the size of Brentwood, MO. do the cards have that much money? probably. is that the best way to spend it? uhh . . . the cheap answer is it depends on the years and the actual dollar amounts. the real answer is i have no clue whatsoever. there's no question he's better than everybody else on the market -- claims from the Bay camp notwithstanding: the Bay camp, incidentally, IS the Holliday camp. i'm a big fan of some of our rising OF prospects, an issue i rarely see discussed on the boards in relation to the holliday signing, and, while none of them look like a 6 WAR player like holliday, i could easily stomach a year of mike cameron with allen craig cameos, followed by a year of DJTools, henley, and craig running wild in the OF at league min, allowing us to spend some money on retaining albert and getting some needed high-ticket players.
the holliday contract will just be a huge leap; a decision that could make or break a franchise for years. and i am so sick of talking about it.
311 comments | 0 recs
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NL Central Standings
| W | L | PCT | GB | STRK | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
St. Louis
|
91 | 71 | .561 | 0 | Lost 6 |
|
Chicago
|
83 | 78 | .515 | 7.5 | Lost 1 |
|
Milwaukee
|
80 | 82 | .493 | 11 | Won 3 |
|
Cincinnati
|
78 | 84 | .481 | 13 | Won 2 |
|
Houston
|
74 | 88 | .456 | 17 | Lost 3 |
|
Pittsburgh
|
62 | 99 | .385 | 28.5 | Lost 2 |
(updated 11.20.2009 at 12:05 PM EST)
Certain photos copyright © 2009 by Associated Press or Getty Images. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of Associated Press and Getty Images is strictly prohibited.
Most Commented
Rule 5: You do talk about the Rule 5 draft
by DanUpBaby 1 day ago
912 comments | 0 recs
November Rain
by the red baron 2 days ago
790 comments | 17 recs
Wainwright for Carpenter, Carpenter for Wainwright, Somebody for DeJesus
by DanUpBaby 4 days ago
440 comments | 0 recs
Waino, the Cy Young, and Me — a poem by Chris Carpenter
by DanUpBaby 3 days ago
415 comments | 2 recs
Joe Jackson talks briefly to a newsboy about yesterday's news
by DanUpBaby about 11 hours ago
405 comments | 0 recs