Winning baseball

Question: Why did the Tampa Bay Rays make it to the World Series?

Answer: Because they hit a ton of home runs.

Question: Why did the Tampa Bay Rays lose the World Series?

Answer: Because they did not hit a ton of home runs.

It's passé in baseball to harp on doing the little things during the playoffs: bunting, sacrificing, hitting to the right side, stealing bases, etc. If you do these things well, the theory goes, you will be successful in October. Yet time and again, we find that it's the team that out-pitches or out-slugs their opponent that emerges victorious. That happened again this year. The Rays simply ran out of slug, and when they did, they lost. 

In fact, they lost despite stealing a record number of bases and scoring on not a few small ball plays. That's the irony of the whole situation. I'm sure not a few columnists will take the time to point out that home runs are fickle and that the Rays simply relied on them too much to be a winner. The problem is that this is true of virtually all teams, even (or especially) championship teams. When you don't hit for any power (with men on base), it's really tough to win.

Naturally, if someone could find the fountain of hit-home-runs-all-the-time, they could practically guarantee success in the playoffs. Since this is reality, where chance governs so much of the events that make up sporting events, sometimes the power just doesn't come when you need it. So it goes. All you can do is put the best team you can out there and hope that you get some breaks. That's not a flawed strategy or one-dimensional approach to the game. It's just The Way Things Are.

Hit for power and win; don't hit for power and lose. That's the lesson of these playoffs, even if the talking heads decide that the exact opposite is true.

Clutch

4.1 IP, 9 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 1 BB, 5 K, 3 HR

Inefficiency

Pete Abraham notes here (by way of this MSNBC article) that the Yankees paid 2.3 million dollars per win last year. The Rays paid only $451,000 per win.

This is actually misleading. In reality the situation is much worse. It's not possible for a baseball team to field a roster with zero payroll and it isn't likely that the worst roster a team could field (while still trying to win) would win zero games. In fact, the minimum a team could pay its players for one season is roughly 10 million dollars and the lowest win total they could possibly have is around 40 wins.

When you factor this in, what you realize is that the Yankees really paid about 199 million dollars for 49 wins, an embarassingly bad 4.1 million dollars per win. The Rays go up too; they really paid about $593,000 per win.

This distinction is actually important. For example, the Yankees are last in dollars per win, but when you adjust for the proper baselines, the Seattle Mariners are far more inefficient. Seattle paid 5.1 million dollars over the minimum payroll for each win over 40.

Inefficiency isn't just about spending tons of money. The real key to inefficiency is to pay a lot and get almost nothing for it. That's why the 40 win baseline is so important. Teams should not get credit for efficiency for winning games that they were going to win no matter how inept they were. Hell, even the 2003 Tigers managed 43 wins. They probably hold the record for inefficiency. By my back of the envelope calculations, they would have paid nearly 17 million dollars per win. If you fail to adjust for the proper baseline, they would appear to have only spent 1.4 million dollars per win.

Proper baselines: always important.

I would remiss if I didn't mention Doug Pappas in this post, since he is the man who pioneered this line of thinking, at least among those of us who follow baseball analysis on the Internet. Doug died in 2004 at the age of 41 while hiking on vacation. His presence and analysis is sorely missed. You can read his take on payroll analysis here and view his blog here. Rest in peace, Doug.

**EDIT** Fixed some egregious typos and reworded an awkward sentence.

A couple postseason thoughts

• Buck Martinez kept going on and on during tonight's Angels - Red Sox game about how hard closing was relative to setting up. He spouted nonsense about closers being able to pitch "with the game on the line" while setup men can't and how closers "want the responsibility" and feel like they're "carrying their 24 teammates on their shoulders."
  
  Sucks to be a set up man, eh? Not only do you somehow not know how to pitch with the game on the line (because, as we all know, runs in the ninth inning count twice or something), but you are also an irresponsible coward. Honestly, what compels people to talk about closing this way?
  
  Naturally, it gave me much satisfaction to see Jered Weaver, certified non-closer, close out a one run lead in the bottom of the twelfth against the heart of the Red Sox order. Closing: it just isn't that hard.
  
  
• Dustin Pedroia is now something like 0 for 17 in the postseason. He is coming off an MVP caliber season. He will not be accused of choking. Why? Mostly because he's short, white, scrappy, and low-paid. People will point to earlier postseason success instead of dwelling on his current slump. I hope someone can explain to me how this is fair to Alex Rodriguez.
  
  
• The bottom line with these two previous thoughts is that people on both sides of any argument can find anecdotal evidence to support their position. This is why eventually it becomes necessary to either prove a point logically from a set of common assumptions or to provide evidence from a rigorous examination of data. If you cannot do either of these, your argument deserves no respect.
  
  Interestingly, this rigorous examination of data is called "statistics." It is the science of science in a certain sense. It exists preciesly so that arguments can be settled instead of devolving into an endless series of platitudes and anecdotes. They aren't evil. They exist because sooner or later a question has to be settled from an objective basis. For the life of me, I don't understand why more people don't realize this.

20

I'd like to tell you that words cannot express how happy I am for Mike Mussina on securing his 20th win of the 2008 season. I'd like to, but it's not true. Here, let me show you how easy it is:

I'm really freakin' happy about this.

I'm mostly happy because people have unjustly branded Mike an inferior pitcher because that magical confluence of events that goes into reaching this particular arbitrary milestone never materialized for him until now. Those people are now forced to recognize The Moose as one of the best pitchers of his generation. This likely sows up a well deserved Hall of Fame spot. That makes me happy.

On the other hand, it should also give us all pause to reflect on how silly it is that for many, the key cog in Mike Mussina's Hall of Fame case was a meaningless game in September of his 18th Major League Baseball season. To many, Mike Mussina's career is now somehow significantly better because he won a game today; that his previous 535 starts are now somehow more meaningful because of his 536th.

That's a load of crap, and I hope everyone reading this realizes that. Before today Mike Mussina was a great pitcher. He didn't need this to be great. He needed it for other people to recognize his greatness. This win is a drop in the bucket; the garnish on an already excellent season; the signature on a masterpiece of a career.

But a Picasso would still be transcendent even if Picasso never signed it. The signature on a work of art has nothing to do with its inherent quality. It merely signals to otherwise uninformed that it is worthy of their respect and admiration.

People now respect Mike Mussina's career more than they ever have, even if they're only doing it because they saw his signature on what was already a masterpiece before he signed it. Sometimes you have to accept that people will do the right thing for the wrong reasons. Today, I can live with that.

Congratulations, Moose, from a fan who didn't need to see you sign your opus to know how special your career already was.

A-Rod sucks

So say Michael Kay and Al Leiter. It's more of the same "You gotta watch the games" garbage that always gets thrown around.

People, get this through your skulls: perception is not reality. Just because you perceive a pattern does not mean it exists. If I could communicate just one idea to people when it comes to analysis, this would probably be it.

A-Rod hasn't hit with men on base this year. So what? He'll probably finish 25 RBIs off his excellent-even-by-his-own-lofty-standards 2007. The Yankees are going to finish nearly 200 runs shy of their total from last year. Were you expecting Alex to drive in 300+ runs?! Surely there must be some other explanation. In fact, not only is it impossible to find any real evidence that hitting with men on base is a separate skill from simply hitting in general, but the difference between A-Rod's so-called "clutch" numbers and his overall numbers is vanishingly small.

What's the difference between A-Rod's pathetic .232 average with RISP and two out and a .300 batting average?

Five hits.

Five.

Hits.

What could we expect those hits to net the Yankees? Five runs? Seven? Ten? If A-Rod's five missing hits give the Yankees ten more runs, they'd likely be only five game behind the Red Sox instead of six. With six to play. Yeah. That's a huuuuuuuge difference.

With RISP regardless of outs, A-Rod is hitting only .261, a mammoth seven hits away from .300. Yeah. Seven whole hits. A truly gigantic difference.

With runners on base, regardless of scoring position, A-Rod is hitting a pedestrian .274, still seven hits away from .300.

Notice a pattern? Not only is the difference about as far from significant as possible, but as we increase the sample size, A-Rod's numbers become closer and closer to his overall numbers.

Do you want to know something else perhaps even more telling? A-Rod's OBP with RISP and two out is .424. That's higher than his overall OBP. His OBP with RISP regardless of outs is .398, still higher than his overall OBP. Perhaps no one wants to give A-Rod a pitch to hit when he can really do damage. Note that again as we increase the sample size, his OBP retreats to his normal level. This regression to the mean is the hallmark of random statistical noise.

Does this look like the profile of a choker or someone who had "it" last year and lost "it" this year? Or does it look like random statistical variation perhaps coupled with some very cautious pitchers?

Of all the Yankees' problems this year, A-Rod's performance is probably the very bottom of the list (OK, it's more of a problem than Mike Mussina). There is no reason, there is no reason, why we should ascribe A-Rod's "struggles" to anything other than the capricious whims of Lady Luck.

I'm sorry if that makes a worse story.

Is this blog dead?

Nope. Or at least, I hope not. Currently, and probably for the extended future, I am being crushed at work by a large project that does two things to me. First, it takes up more of my time than it used to. Second, it saps my mental energy to the point where I just don't want to think about analysis in any serious way. Whether or not you think serious analysis has been a requisite for posting here in the past, I certainly do not have the heart for it right now.

Nonetheless, there are still things I want to talk about, and I hope that in the future I will again be able to care enough to write about them here.

Some quick thoughts:

• So much for everyone who thought the Tigers were world beaters.
• So much for everyone who thought the Rays weren't.
• I would not worry too much about the New York Yankees going forward. Every team experiences years like this. New York is in an excellent position to recover.
• Joba Chamberlain must remain a starting pitcher.

I'll catch you all later.