One of the local FM radio stations here in Houston is celebrating “Baseball Week” all this week, with baseball-themed interviews (including Jose Canseco and the guy who is auctioning off Barry Bonds’ 762nd home run ball and who sounds like he is perpetually stoned), Astros updates, and other various items. And, God bless ‘em, they are really trying. In fact, on Monday they posted a poll on their website that had the question, how many games will the Astros win this year?

So I figure this will look like most of these things I have seen before and have some options like less than 70, 71-75, 76-80, 81-85, etc. But that is assuredly not what I found. You had four options that looked like this:

1. 0-40
2. 41-80
3. 81-120
4. 121-162

Huh? I mean winning 40 or less or 121 or more - is that even possible? And of course a few real smart folks voted for those top and bottom two, but otherwise it was like 45% for number 2 and 45% for number 3. One of the more scientific polls ever created, if you ask me.

But that got me thinking. What would it really take for the 2008 Astros, or any team, to win 40 or less or 121 or more. So I decided to first look back in history. First, the worst teams in major league baseball history, by number of wins:

1. 1899 Cleveland Spiders - 20 Wins, 134 Losses
2. 1916 Philadelphia Athletics - 36 Wins, 117 Losses
3.  1962 New York Mets - 40 Wins, 120 Losses
4. 2003 Detroit Tigers - 43 Wins, 119 Losses

And now the best teams, by wins, in MLB history:

1. 1906 Chicago Cubs - 116 Wins, 36 Losses
2. 2001 Seattle Mariners - 116 Wins, 46 Losses
3.  1998 New York Yankees - 114 Wins, 48 Losses

Essentially, we have had three teams win 40 or less over a full season (though 2 of those teams played 154 game seasons), and no team has ever reached 120 wins. But I did not want to stop there; I wanted to look at how futile or magnificent a team would have to be to reach these win milestones. First, the 40 win or under plateau.

Using our trusty Pythagenpat formula again, we can work backwards to find out how many runs a team would have to score and allow to only win 40 games.

Winning 40 out of 162 gives you a winning percentage of roughly .250 or 25%. So let’s say for arguments sake you have an average park, pitching staff and defense, and your team allows exactly the average number of runs in a season to their opponents. From 2001-2007, the average runs allowed by a major league team was 768, so we will start with that number.

With the formula being to first solve for the exponent, using: X=((rs+ra)/g)^.285. With X being the exponent, you then calculate rs^X/rs^X+ra^X = Winning Percentage. Working backward, and sparing you the math, a team that allowed 768 runs (thus being an average team in that department) would need to score about 415-420 runs to fall right into that .250 winning percentage.

For some context, no one this decade has had fewer than the 574 runs the Dodgers scored in 2003. So we are talking about more than 150 runs less than that team, assuming an average runs allowed total. 420 runs scored only means 2.59 runs per game. Now I don’t want to steer you in the wrong direction here. In the dead ball era, this number was routinely matched and even bested. Your NL record for fewest runs is 371 by the St. Louis Cardinals, led by the great Red Murray and his .282 batting average and 62 RBI. For the AL, the record for fewest runs is 380 by the 1909 Washington Senators, captained by Bob Unglaub and his .265 average with 41 RBI.

Now for the other side. To win at least 121 games would mean a winning percentage of 75%. We will use our same 768 runs to define our average defense/pitching staff/park. Working backwards, using the same formula as before, we can find that a team that allowed 768 runs over a 162-game season would have to score right at 1300 runs (give or take 10 or so on each side) to equal a .750 winning percentage.

This number certainly is more than any team has ever scored in one season in major league baseball, and would equal more than eight runs per game for 162 games. Although, it doesn’t outpace the historical leaders in runs scored by one team by that much. In the AL, the 1931 New York Yankees (did you think it would be anyone else?) scored 1,067 runs, led of course by Ruth and Gehrig. More surprisingly, in the NL, the 1894 Boston Beaneaters scored 1220 runs, led by an amazing nine players who batted .320 or better - and five of them had better than 100 RBI. Of course that was a different time and game, so just in the context of this decade, no one has scored more than 978, the 2000 Chicago White Sox, still more than 300 runs behind our 121-win team.

So certainly both of these situation are unlikely to happen this season, or in any season in the near future. Seeing what a team would have to achieve to accomplish these makes it seem as though we may not see either happen the way the game is played today.

There are not many things more beautiful to me than a ballpark open for the first time in the spring, or a perfectly executed hit and run, or a majestic homerun that clears a park. I can always find beauty in the simplest of forms at a baseball game, and there are not many things that rival what I see at the park.

But something that tops everything on that list is my new baby girl.

I have taken the past eight weeks off from doing something I love that in the end means nothing to spend time with someone I now adore and that now means everything. Now that things are starting to get back to a normal schedule (or as normal as it will be), I hope to be able to pick back up where I left off and get back to some research.

While I will never doubt the beauty of my new daughter, beauty on the baseball field or in the box score is something that has been debated for more than a century. Specifically with statistics, as we have seen in the past, the naked eye can often lie when it comes to observing and, in turn, trying to qualify a “good” player. Everyone knows the old quote from Bull Durham about the difference between a .250 hitter and a .300 hitter:

“…one extra flare a week, a ground ball, a dying quail… you’re in Yankee Stadium.”

Essentially, it’s VERY hard to tell between a mediocre, .250 hitter and a great .300 hitter. So when fans, announcers, managers, or anyone make general statements about how hitters perform based on what they see or what they believe, it’s always best to take it with a grain of salt.

A situation like this came up towards the end of the 2007 regular season as I was watching an Astros/Brewers game in late September.

In a game that featured two of the Majors’ top rookies for the season, the announcers on Fox Sports began discussing the value that Hunter Pence and Ryan Braun had on their teams this past year. In noting that both of them had very good batting averages (Braun finished the year at .324, Pence at .322) a comment was made along the lines of “rookies will typically hit for a higher average when they arrive in the majors because the quality of the pitchers is much better in the majors and they are able to be around the plate much more than their minor league counterparts.”

I don’t have the transcript of the game in my possession, so please don’t take that word for word, but the general idea is there. That because hitters see more hittable pitches when they come to the majors, they will be better hitters when it comes to average.

So I immediately thought, can this be true? Never mind that pitchers in the majors hit their spots better and their fastballs are faster and their breaking balls have more movement. And forget that defenses are better, travel is more brutal, and playing time for rookies is usually more sporadic; does that actually translate into better stats for rookies when they are facing tougher competition? That got me thinking about 2007 and using it as a case study for rookie production in the majors vs. their minor league numbers.

These broadcasters did not qualify their statement by specifying any level of the minor leagues, so it is pretty easy to pull a list of rookies and their 2007 MLB batting averages and compare them to their minor league career averages. I chose rookies with at least 150 plate appearances so we could see hitters who at least had routine/daily at bats. Here is the list of the 55 who qualified (actually there were 56, but Akinori Iwamura has no minor league stats to work with) ranked in order of their 2007 MLB batting average:

A simple count of these rookies shows that only 14 out of 55 (or 25%) out-performed their career minor league batting averages in their first major league season. And out of those 14, four of them beat their minor league total by .005 or less. Running a simple correlation of the two sets of numbers shows that the two sides (minors and MLB 2007) are not statistically significant (with r=.191 and p=.162). Simply speaking, looking at a player’s minor league average before 2007 would not be a good way to predict or even estimate their batting averages as a major leaguer in 2007.

You will always have your studs coming out of the minors who find a way to translate that talent into almost instant success in the majors such as Ryan Braun, Hunter Pence, and Troy Tulowitzki. But does everyone remember all of the experts’ preseason Rookie of the Year, Kansas City’s Alex Gordon? He was actually being hailed as the next Mike Schmidt. But after a few benchings and a .247 average on the year, he did not receive a single vote in the category. And what about Justin Upton, Elijah Dukes, and others who were supposed to pay immediate dividends? There are plenty just like them who did not pan out as originally advertised. And not to say Gordon won’t become Schmidt….just not this year.

So, if average is not a good predictor of success from the minors to the majors, what might be? We need to look at a more cumulative offensive statistic, not just one that says, “I got this many hits in this many at-bats.”

What I want to propose is Runs Created per Game or RC/27. We are all pretty familiar with the stat Runs Created. It simply takes into account a player’s offensive production based on runs he created for himself and for others on his team and tallies it into a calculable, sum total. What RC/27 does is ask the question, “what if there was a whole lineup of X player? How many runs would that lineup score per game?” For example, in 2007, the top three in the category were David Ortiz (surprisingly first at 10.86 runs/game), Alex Rodriguez (10.49), and Magglio Ordonez (10.12). That tells you how good these guys were - can you imagine a team that would average more than 10 runs per game? The Yankees had the highest average in 2007 with 5.83 runs per game (and their best month was September at 6.67).

Anyway, RC/27 will take into account not only the runs created by the batter by themselves as well as opportunities presented to that player by teammates and how he performed in those circumstances. Using the same 55 players, here is the list of their career minor league RC/27 numbers vs. their numbers in their rookies seasons of 2007:

Running the correlation again, we see that the numbers for RC/27 comparing minors to 2007 MLB ARE statistically significant (r=.268 and p=.05). So while not perfect, Runs Created per Game would be a much more reliable stat to judge performance across levels of competition.

My guess is that this would be partially due to the fact that a player’s pure talent should eventually translate across the levels he plays in, whether good or bad, in looking at how he performs on offense individually. Average only accounts for one piece of the offensive puzzle: how many times did I get a hit in my times at bat? It doesn’t account for walks, what type of hit it was, who was on base, whether they got the hit with one out or two outs, etc.

Another theory of mine is that in the majors, these rookies will be playing and batting in a lineup of players that (should) actually belong in the majors. I imagine that would lead to more consistent opportunities of plate appearances with men on base, men in scoring position, and also competent hitters batting behind them, allowing something like RC/27 to stabilize quicker with less variance than something like average where it is solely reliant upon batter and pitcher; one at bat. But, then again, that’s just my opinion, and the topic of a whole other post with different numbers to crunch.

Unfortunately, this is a difficult study to continue to quantify. The statement proposed by the announcers about the averages in their rookie seasons qualifies the research and limits the set of data we can use for the players. Once their second year comes around, they are not rookies anymore and their MLB numbers can’t be used anymore.

But if someone wanted to take on the task of comparing the numbers from say 1986 to 2006 for rookies and see how they correlate, I would be very interested to see it. Would average then become significant over 20 years? Would RC/27 become less so? I would be curious to know.

Just be sure to always question what you hear if it doesn’t sound right to you. There’s a good chance it’s not based on facts.

And welcome back to Baseball Notes. More to come soon…

On September 11, I attended the Astros-Cubs game here in Houston that the Astros won 5-4 in 11 innings thanks to a Luke Scott walk-off triple off of Ryan Dempster. During games, as is my custom, I will usually try to pick up on some interesting trend, or notice something I have never seen before, or try to predict pitches, etc. You know, nerdy stuff. Well, something caught my attention that day and I have been thinking about it since.

Perhaps it is because I have Carlos Lee in my most competitive fantasy league, but I was noticing that night how many times he led off an inning. So when I got home, I checked the play-by-play, and sure enough, he led off an inning four times in his five at bats that night. In fact, the only time at bat where he did not lead off an inning was in the first inning. As a cleanup hitter, you would think that his first at bat would have been the most logical to lead off an inning if the first three batters were sat down in order in the first inning. But just like I thought, he led off the 4th, 6th, 8th, and 11th. One of the reasons this caught my attention was because a caller on a local radio show called about this same topic a few weeks ago and it stuck with me. But, not wanting to trust what that guy said or just my observation from Tuesday night, I went to check the numbers.

Carlos Lee has led off an inning 142 times this season including the Sept. 11 game. Is that a lot? A little? Somewhere in between? Obviously, leadoff hitters will have a lot more times leading off an inning because they do it every game. Number 8 and 9 hitters will do so much less frequently because they have so many fewer plate appearances than the guys in the top of the order. So Carlos Lee needs some peers to compare him to. And since inevitably I will quit rambling and look at how these many times leading off an inning led to decreased numbers of opportunities with men on base, I figured I would compare him to his fellow run-producers. I have included a list of the top 31 RBI leaders in the majors as of the Sept. 11 games (that is to say, everyone who had at least 90 RBI by that point). And, yes, I am aware that RBI is always a flawed stat to use to compare players, but since this ties in directly with the conclusion of my previous post where it was found that plate appearances with men on base, and not average or OBP with men on base, has a higher correlation with strong RBI numbers, it seems like an appropriate list to use.

Here is the list, with their homeruns and OPS when leading off an inning included:

As you can see, Carlos Lee is tied for third when counting both leagues and comes in first overall in the NL for number of times leading off an inning. Other interesting trends here:

1. As might be expected, the highest numbers of those leading off innings come from cleanup hitters like Lee, Morneau, A-Rod, Ordonez, Martinez, etc. Conversely, the lowest numbers are held by hitters in the third spot such as Utley, Hafner, Ortiz, etc. This makes sense because three-hole hitters are guaranteed that they will have at least one at bat per game where they do not lead off.

2. Of these 31 players, 16 have an OPS higher than their overall number when they lead off an inning, and 15 have a number lower. So in this small group of statistical data, no definitive conclusion can be drawn using OPS that this elite group of hitters are any more clutch when they come up with men on base as opposed to no one on. In this exercise, you know they are coming up with no men on in the plate appearances.

3. The four guys that typically hit in front of A-Rod, Morneau, Lee, and Wright are Bobby Abreu, Torii Hunter, Lance Berkman, and Luis Castillo (since he was traded), respectively. Of those four, you can definitely argue that three of them had significant portions of their seasons where they struggled or were in slumps (Berkman, Abreu, and Castillo). Could it be that the leaders in PA while LOI simply just fell into that because pitchers challenged the guys in front of them more frequently because they did not want to face these sluggers with men on base?

But getting back to Lee for a second, how do the numbers represented above affect Lee’s personal season statistics, or the Astros’ numbers for that matter?

According to Baseball Prospectus, there are only eight major leaguers who have had more PAs this season with runners on base than Carlos Lee. This surprising stat comes while Lee plays for a team that is 27th out of 30 teams in runs scored this season and a team that is 23rd in OBP. The other eight players ahead of Lee all play on teams that are in the top eight in the majors in runs scored. And if my addition is correct, only Alex Rodriguez has more plate appearances leading off an inning plus PAs with runners on than Carlos Lee.

What does all of this tell us? Nothing, really. Just that Carlos Lee has had some absolutely fabulous bad luck this year, his first as an Astro. Lance Berkman has gone from from a Hall of Fame type year in 2006 to merely just a good year in 2007, which apparently has included plenty of rally-killing third outs. Nothing could have helped the Astros this year - not even 142 more plate appearances for Lee with men on base. Lee would have to have created 120 more runs to account for 12 more wins, the number of games out of first the Astros currently find themselves.

But to have some fun with the numbers, we can certainly do some predicting here. Here is what we will use:

1. Maybe not so surprisingly, only Vladimir Guerrero has driven in a greater percentage of his team’s runs than Carlos Lee at 16.8%

2. In 2007, 50.3% of Lee’s PAs have come with men on base.

3. Lee has an OBI% (others batted in) of 17.5% - around 35th in the majors for qualified batters.

4. Lee’s breakdown of runners on each base per PA with men on and his percentage of driving runners in from those bases looks like this:

1B - 74% of PAs with men on - drives them in at a rate of 6.8%
2B - 43% of PAs with men on - drives them in at a rate of 18.2%
3B - 23% of PAs with men on - drives them in at a rate of 50.7%

5. The mean number of PA leading off an inning of the 31 listed above is 115.

So, let’s give Lee 115 PAs leading off an inning instead of 142. This gives him an extra 27 PAs throughout the season. Based on the the 50.3% from above, 14 of those will now come with men on.

Using the other percentages, 10 PAs will come with men on first and he will drive in one of them. Six of those PAs will come with men on second, and he will drive in one of them. Four of the PAs will come with men on third, and he will drive in two of them.

In the end, if we make Carlos Lee the average slugger/run producer, we only add four more RBI to his Sept. 11 total, and he now has 109.

When you have fellow batters like Lance Berkman in front of you all season who are constantly making inning-ending outs, there is not much you can do to change your luck. A lot was made here in Houston at the beginning of the season about having such a great tandem of 3-4 hitters in Berkman and Lee. But hindsight and Berkman’s “down” year and OBI% of only 16.3% shows that the Astros perhaps could have done a bit more damage with those two in the opposite spots in the lineup. But, again, it would have taken a lot more than “a bit more damage” to save the Astros’ season.

__________

Of course, as I write this, Lee just led off an inning with a homerun for the Astros on Thursday night.

I can’t tell you how much talk oxygen is wasted in this town talking about Adam Everett. People just can’t make up their mind whether they love him or hate him, whether he should be here or on his way out. On a team where the biggest struggle this season has been offense, someone who just last week got their average above .210 is normally vilified and persecuted to no end.

So it’s time to put this discussion to an end. I listen to a couple of sports talk shows every day on my home from work, and one host routinely laments that Adam Everett is a “net loss” when it comes to his overall body of work; that there is no way Everett’s outstanding glove can make up for his weak bat.

Really? Well, that is what I aim to find out.

First, the easy part. Let’s see how bad Everett is offensively. Through June 8, citing The Hardball Times, Everett has created 21 runs so far in the 2007 season (22nd amongst shortstops). His RC/27 is a horridly low 3.7 (what a full team of Everetts would score per game).** At this pace, Everett would have 57 Runs Created by the end of the season. To compare, in 2006, here are some final shortstop RC numbers:

Derek Jeter - 138
Jose Reyes - 125
Miguel Tejada - 104
Orlando Cabrera - 82
Yuniesky Betancourt - 64
Jack Wilson - 59
Khalil Greene - 54
Adam Everett (20th amongst SS) - 52

Using these numbers, Everett’s Value Over Replacement Player is -6.0 (23rd lowest in the majors for 2007). That means that he has created six runs less for his team that a replacement player off the bench or from the minors would have created in the same amount of plate appearances. That puts his VORP per game (or VORPr) at -.120. So, if after 60 games, his VORP was -6, and if he keeps up a pace of -.120 per game for the season, after 102 games, his total VORP for 2007 would be -18.24. That’s 18 runs created less than some scrub on the bench; or, in other words, gawdawful. To put it in comparison, the worst player in terms of VORP in 2006 was Clint Barmes at -20.5. Brad Ausmus was almost as bad with -17.5, and Everett had -8.7.

So a -18.5 would put him as one of the worst, if not the worst hitter in the league - which, granted, is what he is.

Now we need to look at the defensive numbers. First, we will throw out all of the ones that don’t matter. Here are some of Everett’s basic defensive stats and his rank amongst all fielders in the NL:

Errors: 6
Fielding Percentage: .978 - 8th
Assists: 179 - 3rd
Double Plays Started: 13 - 13th
Double Plays Turned: 20 - 2nd
Innings: 478 - 9th
(Balls In Zone does not come out until the end of the season)

Why do I say these don’t matter? Because Everett can not control the circumstances that determine these stats: a scorer decides error or not, and thus fielding percentage; and he can not control if there is a man on first and if the batter hits a groundball, starting a DP, etc.

So we will use something that does matter. For the first time, Michael Lichtman (working with Tangotiger) has released his defensive Ultimate Zone Ratings in-season. These stats are widely regarded around baseball as the ultimate source in defensive runs saved because, on defensive plays and players, Lichtman takes into account what park the game is played in, pitcher’s GB/FB tendencies, the base/out situation, ball trajectory, and more. The spreadsheet for this year, released on May 31, can be found here.

Lichtman has Everett third in the majors so far, having saved nine runs through May 31. Nine runs saved through 53 games averages out to 18.5 more for the rest of the season for a total of 27.5 runs saved with his defense in 2007.

So, we now have the projected total value of Everett’s run contribution (-18.5) and his projected total in defensive runs saved (27.5). The difference here is a plus nine, not a net negative number.

But just because he has a net positive, does not automatically mean he belongs in the lineup. He must be compared to his peers to show true value. So, I have done the work for you. Below, in decreasing order, is the net value of all NL shortstops for 2007, using the same projections I used for Everett:

So with as bad as Everett has been, he still has a net run value higher than four shortstops just in the NL. Over the next couple of days, I will run this for the AL and see how many he bests in that league as well. And remember, these are just the starting shortstops; don’t even get me started on Ronny Cedeno, Wilson Valdez, or others.

If Everett were to have even a little bit of a turnaround and reach last year’s numbers of -8.7 VORP, he would pass Eckstein and would be in Khalil Greene territory.

Like has been said many times before, Everett is the perfect player for a team that already has a strong offense. The problem is, the Astros decidedly do not. So, Everett’s obvious individual shortcomings at the plate get magnified and his defense gets overlooked.

But, if you don’t want to take my word for it, that’s fine. Lisa Gray found an excerpt from Michael Lichtman responding to Adam Everett doubters. He essentially says the same thing I have found here, and he at least knows what he is talking about.

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**On the other hand, the Runs Created for Biggio, Ensberg and Lamb so far this year are 19, 17, and 9 respectively, but we’re not talking about them right now.

As of today, I will also be blogging about the Astros on www.fangraphs.com. I wrote about Fangraphs a few weeks ago as one of my obsessions and favorite places to play around online, and I highly recommend you check it out; not just the Astros page, but the whole site.

The Astros blog (done from the Win Probability Added perspective) can be found at http://www.fangraphs.com/astros/. Bookmark it and read it when you can.

As of now, I plan to try and post an entry after each series to analyze how things shook out for the ‘Stros and how well they performed in the situations that would have either won or lost them the games. My plan is to post the first of those a day or so after the Rockies series is over.

If you are not familiar with Win Probablity or Leverage Index, don’t worry! Click on this link to the representative Cardinals blog on Fangraphs and scroll down until you see “What is WPA?” on the right side. Erik, the blogger, has linked to a number of great articles and references you can review for more information on WPA and LI.

So check it out whenever you can. I will still be posting on this site at the same pace (hopefully), but will make this one more about baseball in general and the Fangraphs blog about the Astros.

Ryan

So the sudden demotion of Brad Lidge after one save opportunity and one case of mop-up duty this season got me thinking about the long, long, term affects of Lidge and other closers who have given up walk-off homeruns in critical or season/series-altering situations.

A lot has been made of the “psychological” affect a hit or homerun like the one Pujols hit in game 5 of the 2005 NLCS can have on a closer. Does he lose his edge? Does it have long-term effects? Will it alter how he pitches and, in turn, his ability to deceive hitters and get them out?

This project will consist of six closers I could think of off the top of my head who gave up pivotal or series-ending hits (5 homers, one single) that cost their team a lead, game or series in the past 25 years (when closers have actually had prominent, defined roles). I will then look at the effect it had or has had on their careers to this point, including immediately after their infamous outing. Starting with the earliest and then going to the most recent:

Donnie Moore
ALCS Game 5 - October 12, 1986
Dave Henderson 9th inning homerun off Moore to give Boston a 6-5 lead

SITUATION: Considering what really matters, this one is the most tragic of them all. Needing one strike to send the Angels to the World Series, Moore gave up a two run shot to Henderson in the 9th and Boston took a 6-5 lead. The Angels actually tied the game in the 9th but eventually lost in 11 and then proceeded to lose the next two games and the pennant as well. Lost in all of this is the fact that the Angels entered the 9th with a 3 run lead, but Mike Witt and Gary Lucas could not close the door. Only the Henderson run was charged to Moore with the other three assigned to Witt and Lucas. But the media, fans, and history only remember Moore, the closer, giving up the homerun with a 2-strike count.

RESULT: Moore pitched a scoreless 9th in the decisive game seven when his team was down 8-1. He pitched two more years in the majors following 1986 and totaled 41 appearances, a 4.13 ERA and nine saves in ‘87 and ‘88. Moore constantly commented how he would always be remembered for only one pitch, and that was his legacy. This led to his retirement, a struggle with depression, and, ultimately, his suicide in 1989.

Dennis Eckersley
World Series Game 1 - October 15, 1988
Kirk Gibson 9th inning game-winning homerun

SITUATION: No description really needed. One of the best closers in baseball. MVP of the league with two hurt legs. Dodgers down two in the ninth with two outs. Vin Scully says “you want to talk about a roll of the dice.” The fist pump. Again with Scully, “I don’t believe what I just saw!”
The heavy underdog Dodgers rode that momentum to a World Series title in five games. That home run is not hit, who knows what happens?

RESULT: He pitched one more inning that series, a scoreless ninth when his team was down in game 4. All Eckersley would do after this game is save 326 more regular season games, dominating for seven or eight seasons including the amazing 1990 where he had 48 saves and a 0.61 ERA. 1988 was only his second year closing, and this little setback does not seem to have affected him at all. Although, while Eckersley would have continued success in the playoffs (7 saves), he curiously gave up another walk-off hit in game 2 of the 1990 World Series against the Giants, a year where he was literally unhittable. In that tenth inning of game 2, he gave up back to back to back hits after only one third of an inning. He had only given up 41 hits in 74 innings the whole year.

Rick Aguilera
World Series Game 3 - October 22, 1991
Mark Lemke drives in David Justice in the 12th for the walk-off win

SITUATION: With the bases loaded and two outs in the top of the 12th, Rick Aguilera is, for some unknown reason, called in to pinch hit. He, of course, fails, and is then asked to pitch in the bottom of the inning. After a single and stolen base, Mark Lemke drives in Justice with a walk-off single. Aguilera saved the first two games of this classic series and was asked to hold the third, but could not do it. A win here would have given the Twins a commanding 3-0 lead, but instead the Braves won three straight games. Aguilera actually got the win in game 6, pitching two scoreless innings before Puckett hit his famous walk-off homerun. And we all know about Jack Morris’ epic game the next night. The Twins coming back and winning this series saved Aguilera from all the second guessing and interrogation that would have resulted had the Braves won that series.

RESULT: As we saw, he pitched very effectively only a couple of nights later in game 6 with no lingering affects. Also in only his second year as a closer, Aguilera would go on to save 237 more games, while only having an ERA over 4.00 once in the next nine years. Strangely, though, Aguilera only made it to the post-season one more time in his career, 1995, where he had a 13.50 ERA - and only pitched two-thirds of an inning.

Mitch Williams
World Series Game 6 - October 23, 1993
Joe Carter’s walk-off homerun to win the World Series off the Wild Thing

SITUATION: With a one-run lead going into the ninth, the Phillies were about to force a game seven when Mitch Williams imploded and gave up a walk, single and then a homerun to give the Blue Jays the title. Williams had already been up and down in the series, pitching 1.2 hitless innings for a save in game 2, but then giving up three runs in two-thirds of the eighth inning in game 4 to take the loss in a crazy 15-14 game. That set the stage for game 6 and Joe Carter’s ridiculous hops around the bases.

RESULT: He wasn’t called the “Wild Thing” for nothing. Williams had 186 saves in his career up through 1993 and was wildly effective, posting ERAs of anywhere from 2.34 to 4.63. After that World Series, however, his career was effectively over. While still only 28 at the time of that walk-off, he was out of baseball for good by age 32. He saved only six more games after that World Series loss and had ERAs of 7.65, 6.75 and 10.80 before he left for good. The ‘93 series essentially ended his career; he was immediately traded to the Astros who dropped him before the next season was two months old.

Mariano Rivera
World Series Game 7 - November 4, 2001
Luis Gonzalez hits a bloop single to win the World Series

SITUATION: The unhittable, unbeatable Mariano Rivera had already pitched the eighth where he struck out three men to preserve a 2-1 Yankee lead. By the time the ninth inning came around, Rivera had given up only one run in 15 innings in the 2001 postseason. Three more outs and the Yankees have won four Series in a row. But things started to unravel. Mark Grace singled. Damian Miller tries to sacrifice him, and Rivera makes a throwing error, putting men at first and second. Another sacrifice by Jay Bell does not work, with the lead runner being retired. Men on first and second with one out. Then it really gets ugly. Tony Womack doubles, bringing in one. Craig Counsell is hit by a pitch to load the bases. And Luis Gonzalez steps to the plate with the infield drawn in….There is a book written about this game: “The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty” by Buster Olney.

RESULT: After a good but not stellar 2002, Rivera has gone on to have four of the most dominating seasons a closer has ever had including being the runner-up to the Cy Young in 2004 and 2005. His career postseason ERA is 0.81 with an 8-1 record and 34 saves. Any remains from the 2001 series with the Diamondbacks have been eliminated in his mind, as far as I’m concerned. He is the greatest closer of our time.

Brad Lidge
NLCS Game 5 - October 17, 2005
Albert Pujols homers off Lidge to send the series back to St. Louis

SITUATION: In hindsight, Lidge had pitched four innings over the previous three games, saving them all, so bringing him in for a fourth straight day may not have been the best idea, even with a 4-2 lead. Nonetheless, Lidge struck out the first two batters before Eckstein beat out a single, Edmonds walked, and Pujols stepped up to the plate. Here was one fan’s reaction after the game: “When I saw him hit that homerun, and how high and fast it was leaving the ballpark, I half-expected it to shatter a light stand and rain sparks down on the field.” Fortunately for the Astros, they won in St. Louis to clinch the series in six games. Lidge did not appear in that game.

RESULT: Immediately after this series, Lidge pitched in three of the four World Series games, losing two of them and not factoring in the other. He gave up a walk-off homerun to Scott Podsednik in game two (who had not had a HR all season), and an 8th inning RBI single to Jermaine Dye for the only run in the decisive game. The following year, 2006, Lidge struggled mightily and was removed from the closer role three times. His 2006 numbers included five losses, six blown saves, and a 5.28 ERA. A lot of people say his luck was bad as he had 104 Ks in 75 innings and a League Adjusted ERA of only 4.54, but he clearly was not the same. Through two games of 2007, his ERA was 16.20 and he was removed from the closer’s role yet again.

So there you have it. Six devastating losses by six established closers. While the sample size is small, you can see that a devastating walk-off or loss does not necessarily mean a breakdown in subsequent years. In our study, three went on to have great success while three went on to break down after their respective game.

This leads me to believe that any problems are not the result of mechanical or physical flaws. There is also not a consistency between pitchers who had to go out and pitch right away vs. pitchers who had an offseason to think about their shortcomings. There is also no consistency between pitchers who had been closing games for two years or less vs. pitchers who had been establish major league firemen. Further still, there is no consistency between pitchers whose teams ended up winning the series vs. the teams that did not.

Unfortunately, we can not measure or quantify a pitcher’s psyche or fortitude, but any problems may lie there. Which makes any similar future situation almost impossible to predict.

Much of the information used here was from Retrosheet and Baseball Reference.

When it gets to be the end of September or beginning of October, you start to see a lot of papers and media outlets grade players and teams from the previous year based on how they performed the past six months. What I am going to do in this exercise is VERY briefly give a predicted grade to all players on the Astros’ 25-man roster and write sentence about each as to why I think they will perform at the level of that grade for the season. And away we go…

Roy Oswalt A+

I think that this is his year. All of his peripheral numbers such as BB ratio, Isolated power, WHIP and GB/FB ratio have so good for three years…plus, he was first in the NL in VORP with 72.4 last year. We just need to give him the run support. I think he gets no lower than #2 in the Cy Young voting this year.

Lance Berkman A

He was so unbelievably good last year, it is almost impossible to repeat what he did in such a sorry lineup - according to BP, he accounted for 8.5 of the Astros’ wins by himself last year. He had Hall of Fame numbers and will look to repeat them, but fall just short in ‘07.

Carlos Lee A-

Once he learns how to play defense against that crazy 20-foot wall in left field, he should come close to being worth what we paid for him. He won’t steal 19 bases again, but should have plenty of RBI opportunities. His average will probably dip a little bit, too - but walks will be up.

Morgan Ensberg A-

This grade is predicated upon Garner’s brilliant experiment of putting Ensberg in the two hole. His .396 OBP last year was 11th in the NL, and that was with a .235 average! He should just stand there and draw walk after walk and score run after run; and I think he will. Defense should be solid again, too.

Dan Wheeler A-

Will undoubtedly be asked to close some games this year as well as pitch at least 75 innings and hold all 8th inning leads. He was up to the task last year as he ranked 4th in the NL with 24 Holds while also going 9 for 12 in save opps. and posting an ERA of 2.52.

Chad Qualls A-

Ranked right behind Wheeler with 23 Holds in ‘06 and will be pitching a lot more in the 8th inning this year as well as multiple innings on occasion. Last year, he appeared in exactly half of the Astros’ games; a trend that should continue. He also had a stellar average of Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP) of only .266 (14th in the NL with pitchers that threw at least 75 innings). It that proves to not be a fluke, a great season should be ahead.

Mike Lamb B+

Lamb had the best hitting year of his professional career in 2006 with an .836 OPS in only 381 at bats. The defense at third is still in suspect as he has been tagged with giving up 10 runs for the Astros over the past three years in part-time duty. He should see less time at third this year and more at first and possibly the outfield where he is less of a liability. Not many teams can produce a back-up or pinch hitter who slugs .475 like Lamb did last year, especially not a left handed one (he hit .324 and slugged .497 against righties).

Chris Burke B

We know he is going to struggle in centerfield. My guess (and hope) is that he sees a lot more time at second base after the All-Star break when Pence is called up and Biggio is resting. His value will be increased then as he continues to improve at the plate. These numbers only really matter for fantasy, but I can see a 15/15 year from Burke with a strong slugging pct. from all the doubles he will hit. Starting off hitting sixth will take some of the pressure off of him of a full-time job.

Mark Loretta B

Here are the OBPs for Loretta over the past five years: .345, .360, .391, .372, .381. I don’t know if there are many other bench players I would rather have than Mark Loretta. Combine that with the fact that he can play second, short and third and you have a solid addition to this team (sorry, Eric Bruntlett). Oh, and when he spent a third of the season with the Astros a few years ago, his OBP was .481! And another thing, last year he was in the top ten in the AL in at-bats per strikeout. Dude gets on base.

Chris Sampson B

I was watching the game last June 7 when Sampson got the spot start against the Cubs. All he did in that one was pitch 7 innings giving up three hits and no runs while showing some wicked drop on the sinker to get groundball after groundball out. I really like this guy, and with a full season to work on his pitches against major leaguers, I feel like he can do some things.

Jason Jennings B-

Jennings is supposed to replace Andy Pettitte this year. Let’s compare the two from 2006 (Pettitte pitched two and a third more innings):
VORP: Jennings, 50.8 - Pettitte, 30.3
ERA: Jennings, 3.78 - Pettitte, 4.20
HR/9: Jennings, 0.72 - Pettitte, 1.13
And that was from Jennings pitching at Coors field. I am thinking he will do just fine in replacing the Deer Park native. Let’s just hope we don’t only have him for one year.

Jason Lane B-

The reason I give him a grade this high after barely batting .200 in 2006 is that he will primarily serve as a backup unless something happens to Luke Scott. Lane will be in against a lot of left handers where he has an OBP of .335 and SLG of .486 for his career. The averages say he can’t be as bad as 2006 again, but if he is, get Pence up here in a hurry.

Trevor Miller B-

As the left-handed specialit, Miller posted the lowest ERA of his career last season at 3.02 as well as his lowest WHIP at 1.09. Left handers only hit .224 against him with an OBP of only .280. People think he is old, but he is only 33. I see a little bit of regression back to mean from those amazing numbers, but a solid year is still on the way (with no Mike Gallo to worry about this year).

Rick White B-

OK, now here is a pitcher who is old. He will be 39 this year (a kid compared to Williams and Roger Clemens) and in his 14th season. So why such a high grade? Remember, these grades are based on prospective value for what they will be asked to do this season. White is asked to be the Russ Springer of seasons past and his spring ERA of 0.69 and ability to go more than one inning in multiple ST, when your endurance is not what it is in August, games is encouraging to me.

We are getting into the dregs, so less figures and explanations from here on out.

Brad Lidge C+

If you break down the numbers, there were only 5 games that ruined his season in 2006. In the five games where he took the loss, Lidge’s ERA was 20.25 in 4 innings with a WHIP over 3. In the 32 games he saved, his ERA was 1.42 with 47 Ks in 31.2 innings. Still, it’s something in his head, and that can be hard to fix. He is on a short leash this year.

Orlando Palmeiro C+

You have to have him on the team I guess. Good backup, defensive OF and a left-handed contact hitter who never strikes out (he has struck out 221 times in 11 seasons).

Luke Scott C+

He deserves an A+++++ for his second half last year. Forget about him repeating that and look for a more modest .280/24/81 line this year. Only reason it’s a C+ is because of all the expectations people have for him.

Adam Everett C

An F for offense and an A+ for defense. That averages out to a C in my book. Best defensive shortstop in the game.

Humberto Quintero C

Hopefully Ausmus is not playing in 140 games like last year. Quintero will be better than Ausmus in his sleep, so he is serviceable as a backup. Not great on defense, not great on offense, but he did post a .296/.342/.421 line in 322 PAs at Round Rock last year.

Craig Biggio C-

Sentimentality aside, he really is done, and has been for two years. His OBP as a leadoff hitter or #2 guy in ‘06 was .306….horrible. And according to BP’s defense rating, Fielding Runs Above Average (FRAA), he was a -13 last year. Basically an average second baseman would rate as a zero. Biggio was minus 13. Best of luck in your last year and at the Hall of Fame; you were a great player.

Dave Borkowski C-

The most boring player and least discussed on the Astros. Last pitcher off the bench in my opinion.

Woody Williams C-

I know he has been an Astros killer in the past (if you can’t beat him, buy him), but is it such a good idea to put a 40-year-old flyball pitcher (2006 GB% of only 37%, and no, the other 63% was not from strikeouts) in Minute Maid Park? We’ll see I guess.

Brian Moehler D

On second thought, maybe Moehler should be the last guy off the bench. Hopefully he can give us a spot start or two if Jose Lima or Carlos Hernandez are not available.

Wandy Rodriguez D-

I heard at least two interviews during spring training where the Astros’ brass said Wandy was penciled into the fourth spot because he has won 19 games over the past two years. Well, guess what? He has lost 20! And his ERA has been 5.60! You know I love VORP, and Wandy had a -4.6 VORP in 2006. Meaning he is 4.6 runs worse than just your run-of-the-mill starter you could pick up off waivers or call up from Triple A. Don’t get me started.

Brad Ausmus F

What more can be said. He had a -17.5 VORP last year, second worst amongst full time players. Every year the BP team nominate players for their Christian Guzman Award for who they think will have the lowest VORP for the upcoming season. Four out of 13 chose Ausmus. Last year he threw out 22% of base-stealers, yet still won a Gold Glove. My wife thinks he is hot, if that counts for anything.
So there you go. Long enough? What do you agree or disagree with? Anything you think I have totally off?

Congratulations everyone - you’ve made it through another offseason. Barely, I know. It was rough, but we did it together, with our hot stoves and our winter meetings and our fantasy guides. Spring training seems like it has lasted as long as the regular season, and it is time to put up or shut up.

As an Astros fan, I love this time of year. I am usually never excited to see a train or a bunch of over-sized oranges or green grass, but I sure am when I visit Minute Maid Park for the first time for a season; my home away from home. And I know I will cherish every single time this year that I see Biggio lead the team onto the field during his final season.

Opening day is great because there are so many questions and so few answers. How will Jennings and Williams do in their new home? Will Carlos Lee’s defense be as bad as his offense is good? Will the Rocket make a (fourth) farewell tour? Does Lidge still have it?

For Astros fans, whether it’s during the offseason or regular season, there is really no better place to follow the team online than at The Dugout, a brilliant blog run by Lisa Gray. This is a great blog, hosted by MVN, that has been going strong for more than three years (probably back when blogs were still Web Logs). In fact, it was once voted by Deadspin to be the best Astros blog on the net. Lisa has all the inside scoop on everything Astros, as well as interesting links and her own thoughts on the state of the team. Check it out when you have a chance, either through the link in this post or on the Blogroll.

So who cares where the pundits project us to finish? Hope springs eternal at the beginning of every April. Email me or leave a comment and let me know your favorite Astro memory from this year or year’s past.

And I’ll see you at the ballpark…

This time of year, everyone has their own idea about how the upcoming baseball season is going to shape up (including myself). But what also happens this time of year, is we tend to put a little more stock into what the national or local experts have to say about how our favorite team or player will finish. We trust their opinions. They get paid to do this, they must be right, right? They know a heck of a lot more than Joe Beerlover out there hashing out predictions with his buddies, right?

Well, today everyone has access to the same information and it is all free and available to you in about five mouse clicks. There are no secrets anymore - if you don’t realize that people think Felix Hernandez is going to break out this year, then you just aren’t trying anymore. Simultaneous scoresheets and internet box scores and message boards give us all the information the experts have.

So with that being said, let’s look at how some of the experts are predicting the Astros to do this year and we will look at the end of the year and see who was closest. You can click on the link for each one to take you to the respective page about the Astros’ upcoming season.

ESPN - They must have about one trillion people that cover baseball year round. On this page, you can see the predictions of 10 of their best baseball writers. They range from predicting a first place finish (88-74, and Eric Karabell is my new favorite baseball analyst by the way) to 5th in the central (78-84), and everywhere in between. There are other neat little tidbits of information on this page, too.

SI.com - Peter King writes this interesting piece about the Astros and Brad Lidge (wait, I thought he was their main football guy?). They project the ‘Stros will finish fourth in the division and will be the 19th best team overall in baseball in 2007.

Fox Sports - Dayn Perry lays out his 2007 power rankings here and has the Astros ranked 20th overall. He says they will finish fourth behind St. Louis, Chicago and Milwaukee. I wish Ken Rosenthal had offered his thoughts and opinions as he seems to always be in tune with the goings-on in baseball. But he probably would have picked them fourth as well.

Baseball America - Not much analysis or reasoning here, but BA predicts the Astros will also finish fourth in the division this year. Jim Callis wrote this and made the predictions, and he is a guy whose stuff I really like and read frequently, but I certainly hope he is wrong this time. At least he has us beating out the Cubbies.

Baseball Prospectus - As you know by now, BP uses formulas and algorithms to predict most things they do. For records, they use the Win Expectancy formula which means they have to predict the runs scored by the Astros and runs scored against the Astros. They do this by projecting everything out for each player, which I have gone into before and won’t do so again here. Anyway, they predict an 80-82 season for Houston and have them finishing fourth in the division (with the Brewers winning).

The Hardball Times (new on March 30) - THT also has a good stable of writers and researchers and they have a good site for quick reference to statistics like Runs Created and Win Shares and things like that. This page shows the predictions of 15 writers for each division and playoff round for 2007. Of the 15, two have the Astros finishing second, one has them finishing third, nine have them ending up fourth, two have the Astros in fifth, and one has them in sixth. That is the first time I have seen a prediction for the Astros to finish last.

So overall, the majority of baseball people out there have Houston finishing fourth. It has been a long time since we finished that low, my friends. As a matter of fact, they have had only one losing season in 15 years….and we all forgot 2000 anyway.

The consensus is that three main things have to happen in order for the Astros to be competitive and have a chance at the division. Here they are in my order of importance:

3. Brad Lidge has to time warp back to pre-Pujols 2005. He has been saying all the right things for a year and a half now, it’s time to start backing it up with results. He should have a short leash over the next two months.

2. The Astros have to improve their run-scoring ability. Carlos Lee should help with that considerably, so that’s good news. And once Mr. 3000 gets 70 hits, Garner will hopefully wise up and put Burke at 2nd and Pence in CF. That should emphatically improve our runs scored in the second half.

1. Roger Clemens has to put the spikes back on for Houston. And sooner rather than later.

So how do you think the Astros will finish this year? And if you have a favorite team you would like to see similar projections for, let me know. I will get to it as soon as I can.