Oakland

Chicks Dig the Long Ball, dept.

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Howard Lincoln "Hey, But At Least We Hit Home Runs Now," Dept.

James found, in 1983, that teams heavy on HR power won a lot of postseason series. He doesn't know how it's gone since then ... maybe one of you gennlemen want to count it up. Don't count the teams that were so similar in HR capability that they muddy the water.

Have the "Home Run" teams won so far in 2013?

In the AL, there were not serious disparities in HR ability.

Boston 178 homers -- over -- Tampa 165 homers
Detroit 176 homers -- over -- Oakland 186 homers

In the NL, there were two series in which an HR team faced a run-scoring team:

St. Louis 125 homers (and 783 runs) -- over -- Pittsburgh 161 homers (634 runs)
Los Angeles 138 homers (and 649 runs) -- over -- Atlanta 181 homers (and 688 runs)

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The homer metric would have been 0-for-2 this year. And, of course, James didn't call the HR factor an absolute -- it's one of 16 slider bars on the equalizer deck, but simply the biggest one.

The Dodgers overcame their HR deficit with superior pitching, right? ... whoops ... Atlanta had a 122 ERA+. Slap me silly. I wished I lived in Raleigh... the Braves were led in ERA+ by Kris Medlen, who is part of the Iwakuma-Erasmo-Medlen stylistic trio. Maybe Erasmo will do the same for us next year... lose in the ALDS, that is.

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Aaron Barbosa - a Classic McNamara Win

Q. Is a Willie Wilson type an impact player, or just sort of a joke -- 80 SB's but no real value?

A. Did you know that Willie Wilson used to get 6-7 WAR per season? I didn't.

Bill James, a Royals fan, tells a tremendous story about how Wilson was ruined by a hitting coach, precisely in the 1983 season, suddenly and permanently ruined by a simple change in hitting approach. Barbosa takes the approach used by the pre-1983 Wilson.

Yes, a superfast player can be an MVP candidate with 2 homers. Denard Span is not the ceiling here.

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Q. The template seems obvious enough. Why wasn't Barbosa drafted?

A. As Spec pointed out, you've got a 157-lb. player coming from an area that --- > scouts do not take seriously. The label is quickly and thunderously applied to the forehead. "Nice little college player."

Hey, let's suppose you knew that Barbosa could hit .290 in the bigs. That would still leave him as --- > a nice 4th outfielder for a real major league team, right? ...... ::ulp::

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Q. Why did the Mariners grab him?

When Do You Start Thinking About a No-Hitter?

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... their white-knuckle win in Houston was the key that unlocked the season. Now sitting at 4-and-0, the Seahawks are in a position that feels about like Justin Verlander's after he retires, oh, let's say, the first 11 batters he faces.

Bill James jumped into a debate one time, where a bunch of guys were laughing about fans who were so naive as to mention no-hitters in the 4th inning. James said, "oh, I think about it in the first inning. It's a good way to spend the first few innings, until the first batter gets on."

The Alley

If you’re looking for the best of the hole-in-the-wall California dive bars, The Alley in Oakland has few rivals. This quaint little piano bar offers up a charm that can’t be found in most places, not to mention decently priced drinks and pub grub. The interior is a mish-mosh of oddities, most of the decorations having been left there by actual customers of the pub. Don’t forget to bring a few suggestions for the resident pianist and make sure to bring cash as well, because they don’t take credit cards at The Alley. Has anyone been to The Alley before? What

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Finding Obscure Leaderboards on Baseball-Reference.com

Our pal Wishhiker noticed that no less than 42% of Dustin Ackley's strikeouts were "looking" at called strike three. He wondered how that stacked up to other hitters in the majors.

Not surprisingly, he had a hard time finding those kind of stats, because, for some reason, baseball-reference.com makes them rather hard to find.

But here's how.

A the top of this post you see a screenshot from the b-ref homepage. In the grey bar, you'll see the sixth tab over is called "leaders." If you hover over that, you'll get a drop-down box that looks like this:

Kendrys - why value isn't determined in a vacuum

Dave Cameron put up a nice post on the Big Blog about how Morales is not a big bat. He is a good hitter, not a great one, and not one of the best 60 hitters in the league by wRC+, and thus paying him the $14 million qualifying offer is silly; he simply won't earn that on the market so even offering it is guaranteeing we'll have to overpay him because he'll snap that cash right up.

Rebuilding or reloading?

This is gonna be me musing about the state of the Ms and our frustration with the wait to build a contender in general. Be warned and hang on.

As we wander into our annual September irrelevance, the gnashing of teeth around the blog-o-sphere is increasing. Baker sums it up well with his article today:

And sometimes, you’ll get it wrong. Sometimes, the Josh Hamilton signing might not work out.

Justin Smoak

First, let me apologize for not posting more ridiculously rambling articles recently. Finishing up my second fiction novel for release, so that's been occupying my time. Several new September additions and the post-script on the 2013 season should keep us busy looking both backwards and forwards, though.

And for one of those cases, we have Justin Smoak, who's been brought up in several recent shouts.

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First maxim: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

A Few Starter-Reliever Conversions

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Cases For and Against

In baseball history, you could find dozens of RP-SP conversions that worked, and dozens that didn't. Run your little "study" :- ) and you're going to wind up concluding this: All you can do is try it, and see how it works for this guy.

Kendrys Morales This Winter

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Q. Good game today.

A. Yeah, man. First inning, Franklin on 2B. Some young righty flamethrower fired a ball into the RH batter's box. Kendrys leaned out like Ichiro and rifled a Kendry-ball back up the middle. 1-0 M's.

Saunders, then got (1) squeezed by the ump and (2) minced by the Sox, in that order. Which is the way it's going without Zunino. Sigh. There went our little run, out the door along with one headshake-inducing young rookie catcher pheenom.

But another day, another coupla hits for Big Ichiro. And he missed a Pesky Pole HR by ten feet or so.

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Q. Is Kendrys Morales going to be next winter's version of Adam LaRoche?

A. He's not, no.

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Q. Is he the type of player hurt most by the broad-brush comp system?

A. He is, yes.

I love this insight, the one that Big Blog pointed out (and that others have brought up here). They underlined the fact that there is now a LaRoche/Morales class of quality 3.0 WAR* player who is going to be caught in the gears of this system. This is a fascinating type of player who will now (often) be leveraged quite visibly by his retaining team.

From the Mariners' point of view it's an exciting opportunity -- Morales is a good player, and one you could win your next pennant with, and one that the current comp system actually helps you retain.

Why that should be a blinkin' Greek Tragedy, that once in a while a team has a nice inside track on its own player, I dunno. But according to MLBTradeRumors.com, the Mariners have indeed long intended to extend Morales precisely this "qualifying offer." Morales has been a likely future Mariner for some time now; we all just didn't know it.

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Q. Does Morales resent this situation?

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