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Exec Sum - What the Article Says

Counselor Mojo calls our attention to this Lookout Landing article by Thirteen, claiming that it is "one of the best articles written about the Mariners all summer."  He's right.  In the article, Logan says:

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JUST THE FA'AX, MA'AM

1.  Michael Saunders hit .270/.360/.560 the first six weeks of this year.  Then he has hit .270/.360/.560 since the All-Star Break.  In between, there were about two months.

2.  There have been about 180 shoulder injuries reported by Yahoo in the last 12 years.  (He counted these up by hand!)

3.  About 80 of those could be compared to Michael Saunders' shoulder injury.  (His premises are sound, IMHO.)

4.  Logan took a shipload of time, compiling monthly stats splits for these 80 guys AS THEY RETURNED from injury.  (This is the kind of thing that Bill James does, sit in his office and burn a day going through 1956 Sporting Newses.  It is the kind of thing that Bobby Fischer did, sit in his room and burn a day leafing through old Russian chess magazines.)

5.  The 80 players were -- as a group -- weak in ISO (homers, doubles) the 1st month ... terrible!, the 2nd month ... and back to normal the 3rd month.

6.  When the BACK shoulder was injured -- the left one for Saunders -- stats dropped off only a little on return.

7.  When the FRONT shoulder was injured -- the right one for Saunders -- the 80 players' power dropped off a whale of a lot.

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INFERENCES BY LOGAN

Saunders' shoulder injury was mid-May, and his slump precisely coincided with the expected 2 months' slump.

Since Saunders rebounded to an EERILY PRECISE echo of his pre-injury form, we have every right to ask whether that level is his true non-injury level.

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QUIBBLES BY DR. D

1.  Logan quibbles with his own article more than Dr. D would -- he sells it more modestly than it deserves to be sold.  It always makes me smile wryly when somebody takes 30 hours compiling such an awesome paper and then goes "aw, shucks, this is probably wrong."  It isn't probably wrong.  It's definitely right.  But ... he who humbles himself shall be exalted, right?

2.  This chart right here can be taken as a light bulb, an atomic kernel of truth in baseball.  In fact, what is news to you, me and the rest of the blog-o-sphere, is probably perfectly obvious to the Mariners.  Saunders was probably being afforded those 2-3 months with an air of, "Well, of course he's not going to drive the ball until his shoulder comes around."  So all of this is in that category of, riveting to us, probably trivially obvious to the Mariners (and to Gordon).

3.  That's not to diminish Logan's work in any way.  He has put numbers to a baseball truism.  Bill James makes quite a handsome living doing exactly that.

4.  There isn't any way that there's an exact 60-day waiting period on shoulder injuries for all patients.  Dr. Grumpy or Gordon could explain exactly why.  But the sharpness of Logan's graph is compelling.  The reality can't possibly be as simple as that, but the truism underneath it could:  front shoulders take power with them when they leave.

5.  I don't know if May 15 was when Saunders hurt his shoulder.  Was it?  How bad was it?

6.  The front shoulder / back shoulder split is pure genius.  ::golfclap::  (Though Richard Sherman was shocked that anybody would catch a ball on him, none of us are shocked to get a great read from LL.)

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Implications for the Mariners

Michael Saunders may be a 4-7 WAR player after all.

Suddenly it seems like he probably is.  p > 50%.  That's how convincing Logan's article is.

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Dr's R/X for the Mariners' Future Actions

Let Michael Saunders play and find out who he is.

Don't trade him to the Red Sox tomorrow.  Wait at least until next week.

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Insta-Blog

This is going to sound like a pitch for employment, but it isn't.  It's just such an obvious point I don't know why it isn't talked about more.

Ronald Reagan, as governor of California, used to hire loads of staff to Exec Sum problems for him.  He demanded that they be reduced to 1/2 of 1 page so that he could scan dozens a day.  His political opponents took it as proof that he was simple-minded; in fact, Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov have "seconds" do exactly the same thing for them in the arena of world-class chess.

You would think that Jack Zduriencik and Eric Wedge have interns working for them -- lots of guys will work free in this situation -- providing Exec Sums of everything on Hardball Times, Baseball Prospectus, Fangraphs, etc., with a little section at the end, "Implications for the Mariners."  But why do we suspect that they don't have this?

Without any question, Zduriencik should know EVERYTHING important, written every day, in baseball, and it should take him 10-20 minutes to riff through it.  In top-flight chess, this is an axiom.  Grandmasters have to have "full information" -- they've got to know everything written that day.

One of you whiz kids, high school or college, could prepare a day's worth of these and mail them to Zduriencik, offering to do them for free.  It probably wouldn't be long until you weren't working for free any more.  

Logan's article (if it weren't already posted in Seattle) would be front-and-center in a compilation like that, a gem of an article among 1,000 ... with the caveat, as we mentioned, that probably guys in uniform probably knew all along about front shoulders and power.  ;- )

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If anybody wants to do that, start a blog that Exec Sums everything on HBT, BP, etc, with an "Implications for the Mariners" section, I'll be your first subscriber, at $10-15 per month.

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SSI Postscript

Why should the front shoulder be so much more important than the back one?  There is a comments thread at LL with lots of interesting suggestions.  Here are mine:

1.  Whatever Mo' Dawg says, go with that.  He's spent 30+ years thinking about front shoulder vs. back shoulder.  You and I have spent a coupla days.

1a.  As far as why the shoulder would feel worse 30 days into the return, I don't think it's hard to guess.  The practice time makes it feel worse, probably.  Then the body finds its level.  Or not.

2.  As a general rule, the better the hitter (golfer), the more the power comes from the front side.  Me?  I use my back side, my right bicep.  I'm a kludge, a weekend warrior.  You and I push the bat/club through.  Pro's pull it through.

3.  As a general rule, the more a hitter is letting go of the bat with the back hand, the more the power comes from the right side.  Michael Morse and Jim Thome bludgeon the ball.  Michael Saunders is an EXTREME front side hitter.

4.  We will watch the rest of Saunders' season with GREAT interest.  .270/.360/.560, that's a Ken Griffey batting line.  In the Kingdome.

Way to Go amig-O,

Dr D