Hope springs eternal...

I hope to summarize here how I understand the Mariners current situation in the context of how I understand what makes a Baseball team win. Interspersed are the questions I still have (if there's an answer out there, I haven't read it, and if there isn't, I don't have the passion or skill to figure it out myself.)

It's nearly impossible to say anything new about the M's or Baseball in general these days. I don't know how Dave Cameron sleeps, but between USSMariner and Fangraphs, he must average more than three posts per day (955 posts in 15 months on Fangraphs alone!), and he is only one of several contributors to USSM. Add the often-insightful (and often "colorful," shall we say) commentary and analysis on Lookout Landing and the beat reporting found on the Seattle Times Mariners Blog, it's no surprise that most of us that started blogs during the early years of the Bavasi regime have quit, officially or unofficially. What is there to say?

Like many fields, quanitative baseball analysis is getting more and more technical. I used to be ahead of the curve using OPS and range factor, but you used to be ahead of the curve if you were using a modem. I later "upgraded" to VORP and Zone Rating, but I only have a vague idea about wOBA and xFIP and tRA in the same way my grandfather had a vague idea about what the Internet was. Needless to say, I have an easy time being convinced by the preeminent bloggers and a hard time adding anything to the discussion. What follows is not supposed to be an original argument, just an assessment of where one long-time fan sees going on in baseball in general and with the Mariners specifically.

Voros McCracken was mostly right
The only really reliable way to project pitching performance in the future is to assume pitchers can't control the batting average of balls in play (BABIP). The more groundballing a pitcher is, the better chance he has of avoiding home runs, but BABIP is higher on ground balls. The way to reduce BABIP is to have a great defense behind you.

For the Mariners, the spacious Safeco Field outfield allows flyball pitchers to succeed more than in other contexts, as long as they have a defense to turn those flyballs into outs. And the M's have that.

Ben Franklin should have coined aphorisms (no pun intended) about baseball
"A run prevented is a run scored," might have been his maxim. It doesn't matter if you win 3-1 or 10-8; what matters is that you score more runs than your opponent. (Is it that simple? Is it harder to reliably win low-scoring games, since the margin of victory is small?)

The Mariners have applied this principle to the extreme, improving due to their increased run prevention, having allowed the fewest runs of any American League team this year. In fact, if you add the runs scored and runs allowed totals together, the Mariners have the lowest total in the AL by far. They have taken the low-scoring offense, low-run-allowing defense model as far as you can take it. (The AL comparison makes more sense here than all-MLB, since NL offenses have to include pitchers.) Can the M's improve any further by improving their defense? Or must they look to other areas?

The Mariners drive an Acura, but not a Porsche (of which the Yankees own a fleet)
The M's still rank tenth in MLB payroll this year, but indications from the front office are that we won't likely increase our ranking signficantly. In the last ten years, the M's have been as low as 15th and as high as 7th, but they have never been the highest spenders in their division.

For the last eight years, the Yankee's payroll has been twice the median MLB payroll, despite the increase in revenue sharing and luxury tax:


So, the M's can spend some money, but don't have a money tree in the backyard.

Defense is a Bargain and Pitching is a ripoff, and hitting is...
...you get what you pay for?

Dave Cameron has repeatedly (and for the most part, convincingly) argued that what many have called good pitching is really mostly good defense. Jarrod Washburn is Exhibit A in this case. Washburn was marginally better this year than last, but the defense was exponentially better. He's come back to earth, and we've lost little by replacing him with Ryan Rowland-Smith.

Free Agent pitchers are almost always a bad deal. And again we are reminded that the attrition rate for pitching prospects is much higher than for hitters.

Which brings me to the set of my most pressing questions:
Since the Mariners have limited resources, doesn't it make sense to focus on acquiring--through free agency or player development--good hitters?
Can they offset a lack of elite pitching talent with enough hitting and defense to make them competetive for a playoff spot?
How much should they pay to retain the valuable players they have (in particular, Felix Hernandez)?

And finally: if the Mariners can go from forehead-slapping dumb to giddy-laughter smart in one season, how much longer will they be able to exploit market inefficiencies caused by other ignorant front offices? How much longer until every front office knows how to rightly evaluate defense? How much longer before the advantages of being smart can't overcome the advantages of being rich?

There is a fantastic discussion about what we might expect (and hope for) regarding Jose Lopez over on USS Mariner. Some commenters are taking on Dave Cameron's argument in a compelling way, no easy feat. Which is why you should go vote for Dave in his blogging scholarship contest--where would we fans be without USSM sanity?

The most anticlimatic World Series victory will occur if this Game 5 is called on account of rain.

Mariner's president Chuck Armstrong nixed the deal for Jarrod Washburn, according to Geoff Baker. Several theories about about why he did show up on Baker's blog entry and the comments:

• Armstrong wanted a valuable player in return, not just the savings of not having to pay him. The problem is that Washburn isn't just under contract for 2008; he's due $10M in 2009. This is about like going to a store and insisting on an exchange instead of a refund.
• Having let Bavasi run a little wild with spending and payroll, Armstrong decided he'd be taking a more involved roll in personell/payroll decisions. Fine. Except this decision was to save money, not spend it. Armstrong's interference increases payroll next year. How is that being more fiscally responsible?

No matter how you want to dress it up, it comes down to this: Chuck Armstrong thinks he can evaluate baseball talent. He thinks Jarrod Washburn is worth something. More than that, he thinks that his opinion about Washburn is so trustworthy, he's going to override his interim GM. Moreover, nobody was going to give up a decent player for Washburn; Armstrong thinks his opinion of Washburn is more accurate than the entire league.

Bavasi may be gone, but the M's management won't really undergo a significant change until Armstrong steps aside.

DMZ at USSMariner recently posted an essay on the fans' attitudes toward Alex Rodriguez, then and now. Though I appreciate his generally thoughtful examination, I disagree on several points.

First, I think the reason Seattle fans felt betrayed (and certainly the the reason I did) was that he was so unbelievably good. We're not crying over the Randy Winns that left. The vitriol spouted at A-rod indicates the fans' passionate about baseball and the Mariners, not their ignorance.

In addition, my memory is that A-rod seemed to make a BIG deal that his decision wouldn't be based on the financials, that he wasn't just looking for the highest bidder. And after the deal, A-rod still tried to defend the decision without acknowledging that the money had played a big part. That disingenuousness after the deal was not only kind of pathetic, but also called into question the sincerity of his earlier claims. DMZ is right to say we felt played for fools, but he isn't nearly as charitable to us for feeling that way as he is to A-rod for taking the deal.

DMZ calls his years with Seattle "an act of generosity," but that really hinges on 1) an inequitable contract system for which Alex had no part in creating and 2) a decision to sign an extension. He claims his agent was advising him not to sign the extension, but that, it appears, is a conjecture, not based on any verifiable source. If he wants to refrain from condemning A-rod based on conjecture, he has to refrain from exonerating him in the same manner.

DMZ claims he is not "refuting" the myth, as he did with Randy Johnson, but "examining" it, but I think that is misleading. He is clearly refuting the myth, arguing that A-rod did not deserve the anger bestowed on him. His worst conclusion about Alex Rodriguez is "we don't really know."

Personally, I'm over the whole saga now, it having been several years. My reaction at the time, which was echoed by many fans, was probably too heated, more vicious that A-rod really deserved. But DMZ's examination is too charitable toward A-rod.

I come to this conclusion: Alex Rodriguez is a fantastic player and a lousy celebrity, good on the field and terrible with the press. He would have done better (and would still do better, even now) to stop trying to ingratiate himself to the press and the public, and let his play on the field do the talking.

Rather than bandy about all kinds of excuses for how long it has been since I posted here, let me get to my topic: the accessibility of a stats-based understanding of baseball. Mostly in response to Graham's post over at Lookout Landing, I want to suggest ways that the statistically minded baseball fans might better engage the general public (We'll call them 'GP' from here on out).

A large part of the problem with these conversation is a lot of snarkiness on both sides. Much like talk-show personalities of either political persuasion, I hear a lot of arguments that ooze contempt, as the proponent of one point of view constructs a straw man to ridicule his or her opponent. We can start to change that tone by admitting when we were wrong and what are the limits of our analyses. For example, the guys over at USSM have admitted (though I can't seem to find a specific reference) they've been wrong about Raul Ibanez, that his late-career production has been a pleasant surprise. More directly in response to Graham: yes, we should explain why VORP makes sense, but also freely admit that it doesn't account for defense at all, making it only a useful tool for comparing offensive production.

Another suggestion: rather than simply roll our eyes at the mention of 'intangibles,' we need to argue how any intangibles that have real value are going to show up in the stats. "Hustle" is going to show up in defensive evaluations, baserunning statistics, infield hits, etc. "Veteran Leadership" is going to show up in consistently successful pinch- and clutch-hitting situations, a lack of hitting slumps, or an improved performance by teammates. If it doesn't show up in the stats, then it doesn't help the team win, and we shouldn't care about it.

Finally, effective arguments from statistics acknowledge the GP's perception, even if that perception turns out to be an illusion. For example, a pitcher may appear to have a run of effective seasons with a low ERA, but those gaudy numbers are more a result of the defense behind him, and a likely unrepeatable streak of stranding runners. (Hello, Jarrod Washburn.) Simply saying, "ERA is meaningless, so Jarrod Washburn is a mediocre pitcher" lessens our credibility.

My hope is that the more clearly we can articulate the value of statistics in evaluating talent, the more clear it will become to Seattle sportwriters (and ultimately, the M's front office), that the team needs to take quantitative tools for talent evaluation much more seriously. That is, the smarter everyone else is, the dumber the front office will look.