Whale

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At Bill James Online today, ten years on, Bill released a behind-the-scenes blow by blow that reveals what happened at the Boston Bullpen By Committee debacle in 2003.  

As many of you know, James was hired by the Red Sox in October 2002, after having been baseball's wisest man for 20 years past.  One of the first things the Red Sox did was try to exploit James' insights on relievers' Leverage Index:  it's theoretically more efficient to use your Closer in a tie game, 8th inning, than it is to use him when ahead 5-2 in the 9th inning.

The Boston press misconstrued this as a Closer By Committee strategy, screamed loud and long before the season began, and then .... the Boston relievers mangled SIX games on their first road trip.  For a few brief shining moments, it looked like Baseball(TM) was going to be able to beat back the sabermetric tide, get James powerflushed, and retreat to the days of Babe Ruth on the team bus yakking with the faithful beat writers.

To make a long story short, Bill James gracefully absorbed the press' screaming.  He refused to run around saying, "Hey, it's not ME who said any of that.  It's the OTHER guys who are failing in this front office."  He played rubber popup punching clown in his first few months as a Sox VP, acted as a "heat shield" for the rest of the Boston front office, and apparently endeared himself to other Boston suits for doing so.  

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Sez Taro,

Would love to see Capps in the rotation. Even if you shave 3-4 mph off, hes going to be one of the hardest throwers in the game. He could be a better SP prospect than Walker, but hidden due to circumstance and perceptive age arcs. You never know.

Then go out and do your own Fister deal with those excess prospects.

Sez Terry McDermott,

I like the idea of Capps starting, too, but I don't think it's something that is likely to happen. I talked to two people in the org about this - one a player and one who would be heavily involved in the decision - and both said the same thing: right now he can't control his breaking ball consistently enough to start.

Almost half (48%) of his off-speed pitches this year were called balls. Doesn't mean he can't learn to control it. He's just never had the need to throw it much.

If you were to neon-flash those two super-poster light bulbs in alternation, what color would you get?  The one that says "Capps does indeed look like he could be a Chris Sale or Alexi Ogando.  But the M's would laugh at such an idea at this point in Capps' career; it's kind of a naive suggestion."

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Q.  Do you think TJM's sources represent the consensus?

A.  Now that he mentions it, I'm sure this is EXACTLY the way that the dugout looks at Carter Capps, and I'm 100% positive that it would become the #1 factor in any conversion talk.

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Q.  What do you think of the M's decision to fire Chambliss?

A.  There are SSI posts that know what they're talking about.  Below that, you have SSI posts that are mostly guessing.  Below that, you have complete and utter baloney.  50 yards below that, you have this post.

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Chris Chambliss?  For our purposes, suffice it to say that there are a whale of a lot of guys who are in ML clubhouses because they add street cred.  The "presence" of a Chris Chambliss type of person, looking eye to eye, is immense.  

You've heard about Tim Johnson, who became a MLB(TM) manager because of, literally because of, stories he could tell about Viet Nam.  Both to his players, and to his superiors, making hiring decisions.  Well, Chris Chambliss can tell stories:  stories about Catfish and Ron Guidry and Sparky Lyle, about Billy Martin, about how the Yankees recovered from Thurman's death, about how he won the Yankees that one Series, or was it that other one?, and in Chambliss' case those stories UNDERstate his experiences.

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Q.  How did he walk four guys?  He only had eight walks this year, with 1.3 BB's per nine innings.

A.  Two things, one minor one major.  The minor thing, he looked a bit fatigued to me, a bit flat.  

The F/X has Dr. D's back on this one.  His velocity was off, only 92.1 MPH average on the fastball, and the scatterchart has his command way off.  On this Brooks Baseball strike zone grid, notice that the yellow changeups are not nicely grouped just below the knees as they often are.  To those who've been paying close attention, the yellows will appear shockingly sloppy:

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We've always compared fatigue, with pitchers, to basketball shooters trying to feather a shot in the 4th quarter when their legs are gone.  The shooter starts using the large muscles to heave the ball, rather than the fingertips to feather it.  It's not a question of focus.  It's a question of your muscles not responding.

Evidence could be multiplied ... take our word or don't, that the kid was tired.

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Q.  That's the minor thing.  What was the major?

A.  That a computerized strike zone -- even with a letter-strict interpretation would have called "strike" on 68 of Erasmo's 100 pitches.  The home plate ump actually only gave him 60.

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Q.  What if I want to argue that 220 plate appearances in NYY is a small sample size?

A.  Then Dr. D would recommend that you take a stats class and learn what a sample is.

;- ) and then he would have a question for you:  "Suppose that Ichiro had flopped in NYY, batting .199.  Would you have called that a small sample, or would you say yeah, that's what I thought?"

Can't have it both ways.  He left town.  If he could have failed, he could have succeeded.  Man up.  His performance in New York matches the best ones of his career.

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Q.  Okay, I would have declared victory if he had hit .242 as a Yankee.  So I'll man up.  Suppose we do take his NYY numbers as indicative.  How good is he still?

A.  He was batting .324 / .346 / .466 before Saturday's game (two hits from the #2 slot, a single and double and SB, thanks for asking).  His BABIP as a Yankee is .343, which is below his career average of .347.