In spite of a questionable off-season approach to their designated hitter situation and a deadline deal that didn’t fill that vortex of suck, the Chicago White Sox are in first place on the backs of Alex Rios, Alexei Ramirez, Paul Konerko, and most of the pitching staff. After facing Baltimore for one more tonight, they will be going into a critical 3 game series against division rival Minnesota. It doesn’t get us anywhere to look at the past, so the question is what can the White Sox do to maximize the value of the players they have going forward?

The most glaring weakness is still the DH spot. Mark Kotsay has received the majority of the playing time here, and he has also been the team’s least valuable hitter. Kotsay has posted a slash line of .228/.305/.378, with a wOBA of .299. Kotsay’s –0.7 WAR is not only the worst on the team, but tied for fourth worst in the MLB among players with 280 or more PAs. It’s clear that Kotsay isn’t getting the job done, but who is the most viable choice to replace him?

Young Cuban slugger Dayan Viciedo is an interesting option. He’s posting a .361 wOBA (.310/.310/.521) in his first 71 PAs. On the surface, that looks great, but his .333 BABIP is unsustainable for someone as… um… husky as Viciedo. Also, his walk rate of 0% is going to be exploited soon enough (Viciedo’s already swinging at 39.8% of balls outside of the strike zone). It’s clear that even with his incredible power, he’s just not ready for the Majors, and would likely be eaten alive in the playoffs.

Mark Teahen is nearing the completion of his rehab stint in Charlotte, and could be back with the club in the next week. The .255/.340/.387 (.317 wOBA) line he put up while starting at third base isn’t the most stunning, but against RHP he’s hitting .287/.376/.444 (.363 wOBA).

Andruw Jones has played in the DH role some, while also serving as the fourth outfielder. Andruw’s .204/.312/.444 line gives him a .336 wOBA, placing him in the neighborhood of being a league average hitter. Jones benefits from facing lefties, against whom he posts a line of .235/.350/.515 (.376 wOBA).

So based on those numbers, the answer to the DH scenario appears to be a Teahen/Jones platoon, right?

Wrong.

Well, half right. The White Sox currently have a right fielder who, while being a good hitter, is just terrible defensively. I’m of course referring to Jermaine Dye Carlos Quentin. Quentin’s line of .232/.328/.488 (.352 wOBA) is solid in it’s own right, but Quentin’s a great candidate to improve that line, thanks to the impending regression of his .213 BABIP. Quentin’s defense in the past two seasons has been quantifiably terrible. Back to back UZR/150s of –25.2 and –34.2 (the former in LF) have shown that Quentin can’t get the job done, and that he’s a DH (or maybe a first baseman, but that’s a discussion for 2011).

Teahen, meanwhile, has a UZR/150 of just –2.0 in 261 games in right. Jones, in 42 games this year, has a UZR/150 of 8.6. A platoon of these two players also would help the oft-injured Quentin stay healthy, keeping his dangerous bat in the lineup.

The White Sox are in a position that most didn’t think they could be in after the first two months of the season. The team has had some breaks, but if they’re going to compete with a very good Twins team, they have to utilize their players effectively. Getting Quentin out of the outfield and Mark Kotsay out of the lineup? Well, that’s just smart baseball.

It’s safe to say that Andruw Jones has been one of the most disappointing baseball players in recent memory. Just five years ago, Jones was in the middle of a fantastic season wherein he hit 51 homers with a .922 OPS (despite a .240 BABIP) and was worth 8.3 WAR. As recently as 2007, he slammed 26 long balls while driving in 94 and accumulating 3.8 WAR.

Then disaster struck. In 2008, after signing a two-year, $36 million with the Dodgers, Jones absolutely tanked, hitting just .158 with three homers and a .505 OPS; he struck out in more than a third of his at-bats and his once prodigious power disappeared, as evidenced by his Michael Bourn-esque .091 ISO.

In the 160 games Jones has played with the Rangers and White Sox in 2009-10, he’s regained some of his lost power, bashing 32 homers with a .244 ISO in just under 600 plate appearances. However, those numbers don’t seem particularly special for a guy who’s spent the majority of his time at first base and DH, especially when combined with a putrid .209 batting average. No one’s mistaking him for an All-Star.

And yet, there is no doubt that Andruw Jones belongs in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Wait, what?

For starters, let’s not be too hasty and dismiss his earlier offensive accomplishments. In 12 years with the Braves, he averaged 33 homers and 98 RBI per 162 games with an .824 OPS. He hit the 20/20 club three times, including his 31/27 season in 1998.

His 403 career homers put him 46^th all-time — ahead of current Cooperstown residents Al Kaline (399), Jim Rice (382), Ralph Kiner (369), and Albert Pujols (okay, so he’s not in the Hall of Fame yet, but I’m sure they’re already planning out his plaque). And while 31 was a tad on the young side for a complete collapse, don’t forget that he had established himself as a key part of the Braves’ outfield before he was old enough to drink. But all of that is just icing on the cake.

Forget everything he did at the plate, on the basepaths, or in the dugout; if for no other reason, Andruw Jones deserves to be enshrined because of what he did in center field. Jones isn’t just one of the best defensive outfielders of his generation — he’s arguably the best-fielding outfielder of all time, and surely ranks among the top glovesmen in baseball history at any position.

Jones won 10 consecutive Gold Gloves from 1998-2007. Even opening it up to players who were honored in multiple, nonconsecutive years, that beats Ichiro (nine), Torii Hunter (nine), Andre Dawson (eight), Jim Edmonds (eight), Larry Walker (seven), and Kenny Lofton (four). The only outfielders who have ever done better are Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente (12 apiece), but I’m sure you’ll join me in condoning Jones for not quite living up to their lofty standard.

Of course, you could argue that Gold Gloves are a popularity contest, and aren’t necessarily the best way to determine the game’s best defenders (see “Kemp, Matt” and “Jeter, Derek” last year). It’s true, they don’t accurately describe Jones’ accomplishments — they don’t do them justice.

According to TotalZone (used for seasons from 1954-2001) and Ultimate Zone Rating (2002-now), Jones has saved 274.3 runs in his career with his glove. Two-hundred seventy-four point-three runs. That’s about 28-wins worth of value for his career without taking into account anything he’s done with his bat.

If that number isn’t terribly impressive to you, perhaps you should consider the context: it’s the best score of any outfielder in baseball history, and a look at the Top 10 shows that it’s not particularly close:

These statistics are far from perfect, and there’s definitely an argument to be made that the older numbers are particularly flawed. But even if we can’t use it to compare players of different eras (could the margin of error really be more than 70 runs?), we can see just how amazing Jones has been by comparing him to his contemporaries. If you noticed that the only other names of those 10 who played at the same time as Jones were Bonds (whose days as a serviceable fielder were numbered by the time Jones made his debut) and the woefully unappreciated Jordan, you can probably see where this is going.

Darin Erstad (146.6)? Ichiro (120.2)? Carl Crawford (119.8)? Lofton (114.5)? Mike Cameron (110.7)? Walker (86.0)? Edmonds (57.5)? None of them even come close. In fact, Jones’ score is better than any two of those names’ combined.

It’s not just outfielders, either. Jones’ TZR/UZR is the second best of all-time, behind only Brooks Robinson. Compare his 274.3 runs saved with Cal Ripken Jr.’s 181.0, Ivan Rodriguez’ 156.0, Luis Aparicio’s 149.0, and Omar Vizquel’s 136.4. He even beats true defensive legends like Joe Tinker (180.0), Honus Wagner (85.0), and the amazing Ozzie Smith (239.0). If you can go toe-to-toe with the “Wizard of Oz” in the field, you barely need a pulse offensively to deserve a place in Cooperstown.

Jones hasn’t had time to slowly build up his score by being a consistently solid fielder; instead, he grabbed the bull by the horns and has enjoyed some of the best individual defensive seasons in baseball history.

In 1998 — at age 21 — he was worth 35 runs in the field, which at the time was tied for the second-best defensive performance since tracking began in 1950. In 1999, he promptly went out and beat that, earning 36 TZR. All told, he appears on the Top 80 list for single-season Total Zone Rating five times. And that’s not including UZR, which has been kinder to him than TZR since 2003.

Will the BBWAA vote him in when his time comes? Probably not. Even assuming the voters have learned how to use the newfangled defensive metrics by then (far from a sure thing, given that a majority of NL Cy Young voters implicitly declared wins to be the most important pitching statistic last year), there are too many reasons for them to doubt his candidacy.

While TZR and UZR make sense and are great tools for getting a general idea of a player’s defensive prowess, they’re too inconsistent for fans to take as the word of God (though, in my opinion, a 70-run lead is more than enough to cancel out the margin of error). Aside from that, you’ve just got a free-swinging, power-hitting outfielder (a dime a dozen over the last 20 years) who fell off a cliff right before his 32nd birthday. He’d have to return to his younger form and maintain it for at least a few more years in order to have a realistic shot at Cooperstown.

But, as the Beatles once sang, “all you need is glove” (unless I heard that wrong), and that’s what Ozzie Smith proved when he got more than 90 percent of the vote for the Hall of Fame in 2002. Combine phenomenal defense with a solid bat (remember those 403 homers?) and there’s no question Andruw Jones deserves a spot in Cooperstown.

Lewie Pollis is a freshman at Brown University studying political science. He also contributes to BleacherReport.com, ManCaveSports.org, and Green Pages, the quarterly publication of the U.S. Green Party.

WASHINGTON D.C., August 10^th – Five no-hitters.  Two of them perfect games.  A third perfecto lost.  And then there was Brandon Morrow, losing his no-hitter with two outs in the ninth.  The 2010 season has been branded as the Year of the Pitcher.  But statistical evidence points in a different direction.

This chart summarizes the runs-scored data for the 2000-2010 seasons.  While the runs scored per game figure for this season is clearly the lowest in the set, there are multiple available factors that determine that it’s a normal fluctuation.

The first is the basic standard deviation.  The average of the set is approximately 9.35 RS/G, and the standard deviation is approximately 0.28 RS/G.  The z-score column indicates a particular point’s distance from the mean in terms of the standard deviation.  Ninety-five percent of the time, a point is expected to be within two standard deviations from the mean, or have a z-score between 0 and 2.  As we can see from the chart, the 2010 season fits neatly into that range, with a z-score of approximately 1.7.

The second is the percentile change between each season’s RS/G figure.  If we take the absolute value of each percentile change, we find that each year, the runs-scored total differs from the previous year’s total by about 3.81% in one direction or the other.  This season hits that mark almost exactly, featuring a 3.79% drop from the previous year.

And there isn’t a definitive trend, either.  Of the ten points in the data sent for changes, six were drops from the previous year, and four were increases, leading to the basic average of -1.37%, which equals about -0.14 RS/G over the course of a season.

In conclusion, statistical factors point in the direction of this season being a normal fluctuation in terms of runs scored.  We’ve certainly seen dominance from the mound, and this could turn out as being the most pitching-heavy season in recent memory, but it’s well within normal, and could easily go right back the other way at the drop of a hat.

After getting shelled by the Texas Rangers on June 2^nd, 2010 (2.2 IP, 6 earned) Gavin Floyd’s ERA weighed in at a rotund 6.64, to the uninitiated it would appear that he was having a terrible season, but what is the truth?  During Floyd’s early season struggles it was pretty clear that luck was not on his side as his BABIP in April was 369 and in May slightly better but still high at 343, while his strand rates during those months were 55.8% and 66.8 un-respectively.  Floyd is throwing harder (FB velocity 2009-91.8, 2010-92.4), missing just as many bats (2009 contact%-77.8, 2010-77.0) and even getting hitters to chase his pitches more often (2009 o-swing%-27.6, 2010-28.3).

Someone in my fantasy league made a comment regarding Floyd’s terrible season and I commented “outside of a brutal BABIP and low strand rate, Gavin Floyd has essentially been the same pitcher” to which I was basically ridiculed.  But as we can see from this chart, Gavin Floyd was and is the same pitcher and therein lays the beauty of advanced pitching metrics like FIP or xFIP and the use of the peripherals that help gather these stats (BABIP, strand rate, HR/FB etc).

When we look at K/9, BB/9 and xFIP from April all the way through this year and even from last season’s totals we see what xFIP is attempting to do for us, take out all of the noise and some of the factors pitchers cannot control (such as what happens after the ball is put in play) and give us a real idea of how said pitcher is performing, relatively speaking.

Look at how steady the xFIP column is in particular, even when Floyd had a month in which his ERA was 6.49, his xFIP remained calm and cool at 4.09.  But just as important look at his unbelievable Bob Gibson-like 1.01 ERA from July, again his xFIP tempers this and brings us all back to planet earth as it checks in at 3.35.

This is simply breaking down who Gavin Floyd is as a pitcher and this is also a simple way to explain and show the value and usage of xFIP.  I think it also helps show how useless ERA really is when evaluating a pitchers overall value and performance. 

For those curious, since that June 2^nd shellacking Floyd has gone on a hellacious run – 62.1 IPs, 45 hits, 14 BB – 52 K’s, good for a 1.74 ERA and 0.95 WHIP.  All things considered Floyd is having a career year, who would’ve guessed?

Reading Joe Posnanski’s latest piece about the struggles of the Royals, in which he opines about the fact that they’re a bad offensive team despite leading the league in batting average and showing no desire to promote two of their more intriguing young players (Alex Gordon and Kila Ka’aihue), I kept being struck with two pervading thoughts: (a) it must be terrible to be a fan of the Royals and (b) why would anyone do it?

Posnanski, of course, has become something of a darling in the sabermetric world not only for his excellent and insightful writing but for his acceptance and use of some of the more involved stats that we use to measure ballplayers. As such, he’s able to look past the fact that his Royals are taking pride in leading the league in hitting and have no interest in advancing beyond using batting average to measure players. Walks to them are res non grata, Posnanski argues, and he does so in the sort of tone that suggests that he has come to believe that there is no hope for change on the horizon. Which, you know, as long as Dayton Moore’s in charge, that does seem to be the case. But in any event, that’s really what made me wonder why Posnanski – and the other fans of the (disproportionately well-represented on the internet) Royals – keep following a team that gives them nothing in return.

Now, I suppose that on the surface, it makes sense: you root for the team you root for, and if you don’t root for the team that you grew up near, then you’re destined to be labeled a fair-weather fan. Such is life. But, perhaps because I adopted the Braves as my favorite team when they were on TBS every day and the Cubs were terrible, I don’t understand why that has to the case. See, sports is entertainment; we watch them because we enjoy the athletic splendor and all, but mostly because we are entertained by our favorite players going out there and plying their trade – because it’s fun.

If I had my copy of FreeDarko’s Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac with me, I’d quote here from their bit about liberated fandom. As it is, though, there is this post (first two paragraphs being of especial relevance) that will have to suffice for the moment; essentially, it argues for the eschewing of The Home Team in favor of the players that we actually enjoy watching. Are you a Cubs fan, but can’t stand watching a team put runners on third base with fewer than two outs in the 9^th 10^th and 11^th innings and not score them even though come on just hit a freaking sacrifice fly or at the very least try a suicide squeeze*? Don’t concern yourself with it; soak in the good times to be had in watching Carl Crawford steal bases or Vladimir Guerrero defy age or…oh, boy…or Albert Pujols beat down the doors to Cooperstown.

*I petitioned for this to happen in each of the three aforementioned innings. People say the triple is the most exciting play in baseball. People are wrong. The brief burst of drama and immediacy that a squeeze provides is unlike anything else in baseball. And it’s not for only that reason that I don’t understand why we don’t see more suicide squeezes, but also because it seems a really easy way to get a run, no? As long as bat hits ball, your chances of scoring a run are far higher than if you’re just letting the guy at the plate hit.

Two things: (1) Outs are almost always the dominant outcome of any game. Teams simply don’t put 27 men on base very often; they will always make enough outs (sometimes as few as 12; far more often 27) to finish a game. (2) Don’t think of batting average relativistically. Viz., think of them as percentages, not in the context of your baseball experience. A .330 hitter sounds like he’s really good at hitting…but ultimately, it means that he’s been getting hits in one-third of his at-bats and making outs nearly 70% of the time. If you’ve a guy on the team hitting .501, then, sure, let him swing away. But hits simply do not happen all that frequently; bunting is a much easier way to put the ball in play.

That’s the kind of suggestion I can make nowadays, what with the availability of MLB.tv and the internet making it easy to follow any team. During the World Cup – and immediately after – people loved to talk about how this would be the World Cup that got people into soccer. Now, they say this after nearly every Cup where the USMNT doesn’t get totally embarrassed, but this one was Different because we have the Internet and can keep track of our Nation’s Heroes as they play for Club Teams over in Foreign Lands. Similarly, though infinitely more effectively, people can follow any baseball team, or any selection of players, that they choose. At the risk of sounding like a shill for MLB, MLB.tv has a feature where you can select any player in the league, and they’ll alert you when he comes up to bat or in to pitch. I myself follow guys like B.J. Upton, Jay Bruce, Ichiro, Matt Wieters, Colby Rasmus and Pablo Sandoval that I wouldn’t be able to see otherwise – guys whose careers I enjoy more than, say, Melky Cabrera’s*.

*This is perhaps the wrong time for me to be writing this article, because this Braves team is probably the most enjoyable one to watch since Andruw Jones and the Baby Braves ruled the roost. Cabrera and Eric Hinske were the only two guys I could think to speak of derisively and I don’t hold any particular grudge against them. I guess Derek Lowe isn’t all that fun, but it doesn’t seem fair to pick on pitchers.

So why shouldn’t I just declare myself a fan of baseball, rather than the Braves? Everyone knows that Seinfeld bit about how having a favorite sports team is like rooting for laundry; what makes the Braves’ laundry so compelling that I should forego the pleasure of watching Jose Reyes and Hanley Ramirez and Chase Utley and Stephen Strasburg? I imagine the answer to this question is ‘it just is,’ or some similarly vague and far-reaching statement. Perhaps the tribal nature of fandom is so engrained in sports fans’ minds that there’s no turning away from it; perhaps people think there is a greater reward to be gleaned from “suffering”* through a team’s ups-and-downs and winning a championship.

*Y’know, for all the good there is in sports, it sure is a bastion of hyperbole. People love to throw around how Cleveland fans have “suffered” because they haven’t had a team in their city win a title in so long, and don’t have any real prospects of doing so in the near future. With the culture of superlatives that dominate sports, is it any wonder that Dwyane Wade dropped his 9/11 line? I’m going to stop there because the only thing more grating than that hyperbole is the moralizing and holier-than-thou attitude inherent in telling people that they’re not feeling real pain, and turn on the news if you want to see tragedy.

I don’t like that view. Sports isn’t life; sports is a diversion from life – it’s a forum for unparalleled conflict resolution (winners, losers, champions, meticulous documentation and quantified performance) and enjoyment of things we don’t see in everyday life (e.g. 450-foot home runs and diving catches and walkoff celebrations*).

*Though I do think this could (and should!) be brought into offices and schools. Say you just gave a really great presentation; you could have the audience cheering throughout your conclusion and hitting a crescendo as you nail the last syllable of ‘thank you,’ and then they vault over their tables and mob you and everyone jumps around. You could even rig the projector to drop company-color confetti. If this were commonplace I’d almost be excited to graduate soon.

So why do we arbitrarily bring unpleasantness into the equation? Why do we self-identify as fans of a team of guys that we may not like? Why do stat-minded guys like Rany Jazayerli and Rob Neyer and Joe Posnanski put themselves through the drudgery of a Royals team that couldn’t be more antithetical to their baseballing values? It is an inherently jingoistic, paleolithic process, a throwback to the days when the United States was a name and not a realized concept. I do think that there is a place for fandom in sports; I would argue that the incredibly fluid player movement in the NFL leaves fans rooting for teams as the only constants in a league of flux, and that watching a game where you don’t care for (or actively dislike) both teams is painful. But, with all due credit to those exceptions, I do not think that we need to subvert our enjoyment of sports and call ourselves ‘fans’ of a team. We don’t need to slog through inning after inning of uninspired baseball that’s not played to our liking when there are so many options out there. We can cast off the shackles of supporting a last place team and enjoy watching whomever fits our fancy; we can, or indeed should, be a fan of the game without being a fan of a team.

If Kevin Youkilis is the “Greek God of Walks,” does that make Cliff Lee his mortal enemy? It’s an interesting query to ponder, considering Cliff Lee’s complete refusal to walk batters this season. At this pace, Lee is set to shatter the single season record for K/BB ratio. Given that the record for highest K/BB isn’t as universally celebrated as the single season home run or RBI leaders, let’s take a closer look at Cliff Lee’s historic season.

The current record holder in K/BB rate is Bret Saberhagen, who posted a K/BB rate of 11.00 over 24 starts in 1994. By comparison, in 13 starts this season Cliff Lee’s current K/BB rate sits at 14.83. While the list of K/BB leaders is littered with players from the 1800s, recent players on the list include Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez, Greg Maddux, Ben Sheets, and Carlos Silva. Since it’s difficult to compare players from the 1800s with players today, let’s take a look at how Lee stacks up against the recent control freaks.

Player               GS     K/BB     K/9     BB/9     FIP    WAR  WAR/GS

Cliff Lee            14    15.17    7.27     0.48    2.58    3.8    0.27

Bret Saberhagen      24    11.00    7.26     0.66    2.76    5.2    0.21

Curt Schilling       35    9.58    10.97     1.15    2.40    9.7    0.27

Pedro Martinez '99   29    8.46    13.20     1.56    1.39   12.1    0.42

Pedro Martinez '00   29    8.88    11.78     1.33    2.17   10.1    0.35

Ben Sheets           34    8.25    10.03     1.22    2.65   8.0     0.24

Carlos Silva         27    7.89    3.39      0.43    4.18   3.0     0.11

Greg Maddux          33    8.85    6.85      0.77    2.43   8.2     0.25

A quick look at the table reveals the true dominance of Cliff Lee this season. On a per start basis, Lee is set to post a better WAR than every pitcher on the list except Pedro Martinez. While WAR/GS is a crude way to predict Lee’s WAR going forward, it does tell us how incredible his performance has been in the first half for the Mariners/Rangers. It’s also worth noting that even though he struggled in his Rangers debut, Lee did not give up a walk, increasing his K/BB rate while decreasing his overall BB/9 on the season. Despite a K/9 rate in line with Saberhagen, Lee is on pace to best Saberhagen in every single category in the table. Outside of the big strikeout guys (Schilling and Martinez), Lee may actually outproduce every other player in the table.

Even though K/BB leader isn’t a highly distinguished title, it’s certainly a sign of a player’s dominance in a particular season. No pitcher in the history of baseball has shown the amount of control Lee has exhibited this season. Since Lee’s strikeout rates are only above-average, you might expect batters to make a lot of contact against Lee, leading to more hits and a higher WHIP. This hasn’t been a normal season for Lee, however. The lefty has posted a WHIP of 0.95 this season, the top mark in the league. Some of that can be attributed to luck, but his current BABIP of .291 is actually fairly close to his career average of .305. With the recent trade, however, it’s going to be tough for Lee to match or improve on his numbers going forward. Leaving Safeco (and the Mariners defense) and moving to Texas will affect Lee’s numbers slightly. Despite that move, Lee still has a chance to complete one of the finest seasons by a pitcher. Even if Kevin Youkilis is Cliff Lee’s mortal enemy, I think it’s safe to say that every hitter despises Lee, especially this season.

*This article was originally written for FoulPole2FoulPole.com.

It doesn’t take a hardcore sabermetrician to realize that the All-Star vote is a sham. After all, the undeniable best catcher in the game received only the 11th-most votes at his position, and Omar Infante made the cut while MVP candidate Ryan Zimmerman had to sit at home (not the fans’ fault, but still).

But even if it’s impossible to distinguish the game’s best players by looking at the vote totals, I wondered if it would be possible to gather some more unorthodox information from the results: namely, the impact of fans’ biases on their ballots.

I quickly scratched out an equation for a statistic I made up, called “All-Star Score,” to measure how deserving a player is of fans’ votes for the Midsummer Classic:

All-Star Score = (Wins Above Replacement* + 2) ^ 2

*—numbers as of the All-Star Game

I calculated the All-Star Scores for each player listed on the ballot and added them together. I then added up the total All-Star votes cast (Major League Baseball releases the vote totals for only the Top 25 outfielders and Top 8 vote-getters at other positions per league, so I used 300,000 as a baseline for those players whose results were not available) and divided that by the composite All-Star Score to find out what the average All-Star Score Point was worth (just under 74,000 votes).

Finally, I calculated the votes-per-All-Star Score points ratios for each team, then divided that by the league average to get an estimate of what proportion of votes each team’s players got relative to what they deserved. The numbers below show each team’s relative figure as a percentage—a “Bias Score” of 100 would mean the team received exactly the right amount of support (of course, no club came out at 100).

I’m fully aware of the flaws in my experiment: the statistics used were compiled after the voting, not during it; I’m sure my 300,000-vote estimate for the lower-tier players is extremely generous to some and a big low-ball to others; and, of course, there’s no guarantee that my little equation represents the ideal proportion of All-Star votes a candidate should receive.

Nonetheless, I think the results are both somewhat meaningful and interesting:

Tier 1: The Unloved (79 and below)

If you look at the vote totals, seeing the Royals and A’s at the top of the list shouldn’t come as a surprise: they’re two of the three miserable teams that didn’t get a single player on the voting leaderboards. Meanwhile, the starting nine for the Orioles—the only other club to be completely neglected—have been so bad that Baltimore landed in the middle third of the Bias Scores despite having the absolute minimum number of votes. Ouch.

It’s no surprise to see struggling teams like the Indians and Diamondbacks fall this low, but I would have expected Padres, Blue Jays, and Nationals fans to show their favorite players a little more love in light of their teams’ expectations-beating early performances. And I’m shocked that the Rockies haven’t been able to generate more excitement, what with their recent string of comeback wins in playoff races.

However, I’d say the biggest upsets here are the teams from Chicago—particularly the Cubs. North Side fans have a reputation of being among the most loyal and passionate in baseball (after more than a century without a championship, they’d have to be). It’s a telling sign that something is very wrong in Wrigleyville.

Tier 2: The Average (80 to 120)

The first team that jumps out at you here is Boston: how can Red Sox Nation be classified as a relatively unbiased fanbase? Take a look at the leaderboards and it becomes clear. Adrian Beltre finished behind Michael Young, Kevin Youkilis got barely half the votes of scuffling Mark Teixeira, even local hero David Ortiz fell behind the anemic Hideki Matsui. Derek Jeter has been better than Marco Scutaro, fine, but does he really deserve six times as many votes?

Two teams in this grouping redefine pathetic. A 20th-place finish for Andrew McCutchen is enough to put the Pirates squarely in the middle of the pack because their eight candidates have combined to be of less value than Dan Uggla. Astros fans, meanwhile, turn out to have a positive bias because of Lance Berkman’s eighth-place finish at first base. That’s what happens when your team has a negative composite WAR.

The two AL West teams are both interesting cases. The Mariners don’t have much of a reputation for a strong fan base, but people love Ichiro and the now-retired Ken Griffey Jr. raked in over a million votes. Given that the Rangers have the third-highest team vote total in the game, you might expect them to have a far higher Bias Score. But you might not realize that Texas also has the third-highest composite WAR.

Tier 3: The Coddled (121-150)

Most of these names were pretty predictable. The Brewers are probably the most surprising team to be ranked this far up. Their high score is entirely the fault of Ryan Braun, who led all outfielders with just under 3 million votes despite a significant offensive dropoff and horrific defensive, even by his standards.

Tier 4: The Overindulgent (151-190)

Eight years ago, the Twins were on the verge of falling victim to contraction. Three years ago, the Rays had never finished a season with more than 70 wins. If you’d said then that both teams would soon have some of the most passionate fans in baseball, you would have been laughed out of the room.

Tier 5: The Insane (191 and up)

I’m sure some commenter will accuse me of writing this article for the sole purpose of blasting the Yankees. I’ll say here for the first and only time that, while their coming out on top was somewhat predictable, this is just how it happened.

Just look at the vote totals. A-Rod over Beltre two-to-one, Curtis Granderson over Alex Rios by a nearly three-to-one margin, Teixeira over Paul Konerko almost five-to-one, Jeter over Cliff Pennington by over 10-to-one. Is there any logical explanation for that? And this isn’t even taking into consideration Nick Swisher’s Final Vote victory over Youkilis.

I’ll be the first to admit that this isn’t a definitive study—the rankings would surely be shuffled around if the full, precise vote totals were available (especially towards the lower end), and I don’t think anyone believes for a second that fans in Houston are more loyal than their counterparts in Boston. But I still think the results are somewhat telling, so in the future, fans in Minnesota and Wisconsin might want to think twice before complaining about East Coast bias.

Lewie Pollis is a recent high school graduate from outside of Cleveland, Ohio. He will be attending Brown University starting in Fall 2010. For more of his writing, click here.

I originally wrote this on Amazin’ Avenue, an analytics-friendly (to say the least) Mets blog/community.  It was well received so I am submitting it for cross-posting here.

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A week or so ago, the Mets award-winning television team (well, the Gary and Ron parts) started talking sabermetrics — specifically, BABIP.   They tore it a new one, and for the most part, it’s because they didn’t understand what BABIP meant, or did, or… whatever.  It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that they talked about BABIP.  Which is horrible, because they’re going to botch it 100% of the time.  And that’s our fault, not theirs.  It’s time to stop using it.

By itself, batting average on balls in play means nothing.   It tells us how often a player gets a hit during the at bats when he doesn’t homer or strikeout, which in and of itself is worthless.   We know better.  Gary and Ron know better.  BABIP doesn’t differentiate between lineouts and popouts.  It treats a double in the gap the same as a bloop single.  Gary and Ron know it, and they laugh at our geekiness.  We don’t care how hard a guy hits a ball.  We’re nerds and the numbers don’t tell us that.  Literally:

Gary: Conversely, if a pitcher has a particularly low batting average on balls in play, they like to tell you it’s going to rise eventually. Well, to me that doesn’t make any sense. Certain guys hit the ball harder than other guys hit it. Certain pitchers induce more groundballs or more weakly hit balls than others. That’s part of what you’re trying to do. Am I totally off base with that?

Ron: No I totally agree with you, I think that for the average hitter, to have a high average putting balls in play, it’s probably because they do have some lucky hits. But certain hitters, like [David] Wright, hit the ball hard almost all the time.

Of course, we know it too.  We measure line drive rates and stuff like that.  We have xBABIP!   Yeah, go us!  And no, we don’t differentiate between the bloop single and the gap double — well, not independent of line drive percentage, etc.  But that’s the whole point.  We’re trying to measure how lucky the batter has been.  We want to know what the batter’s expected batting average is.

So let’s just say that.  Stop with the BABIP.  Stop with the esoteric number which only means something in relation to another number (BA) and even then really needs to incorporate other numbers (e.g. LD%) to truly say what we want to say.   Let’s do this instead.

1) Call it “Expected Batting Average.”

Obviously, BABIP isn’t a player’s expected batting average.  BABIP is a tool we use to try and figure out a players xBA (ooh! I acronymifieid it!), but that’s OK.   Let’s figure out the xBA and call it xBA.

2) Explain it in words.

Start with this:

Know what the difference between hitting .250 and .300 is? It’s 25 hits. 25 hits in 500 at bats is 50 points, okay? There’s 6 months in a season, that’s about 25 weeks. That means if you get just one extra flare a week – just one – a gorp… you get a ground ball, you get a ground ball with eyes… you get a dying quail, just one more dying quail a week… and you’re in Yankee Stadium.

That makes a ton of sense.  It has to.  It’s from Bull Durham.

But you know what?  Dying quails are fluky.  They’re luck.  Ground balls with eyes, same thing.  Flares, gorps, whatever.  Luck. That’s what Crash is saying there. The difference between a .250 hitter and a .300 hitter is a little bit of luck each week.

Guys who hit the ball hard, they don’t need as much luck.  Turn those grounders into line drives and those dying quails into warning track doubles and they’re hits — to hell with luck.  Luck is for guys like Alex Cora and Gary Matthews Jr. and that guy Rick Evans or something.

We say, screw that.  Let’s look at each at bat.  If a guy hits a frozen rope that’s caught, we know that’s not his fault.  Over time, that’ll even out, and he’ll get more hits.  If a guy strikes out, that’s an out every time.  Same with a pop up.  That won’t even out.  Homers?  Always a hit.  Grounders with eyes?  Well, that’s usually an out, and that’ll even out over time to.  We look at every single at bat and ask if the guy hit the ball hard enough to “make his own luck.”  That’s xBA.

(And you know what?  At the end of the day, that’s what BABIP turns into, too.  Except that BABIP sucks, because it doesn’t actually start there, in either name or by its equation.)

3) Drop the arrogance of specificity.  Use ranges when possible.

We’re measuring luck.   Luck isn’t exact.   So we’ll never be right on the money.  You’ll never be able to find a season where a significant number of players have an xBA equal to their actual batting average.  That makes us look stupid, when in fact, we’re just being arrogant — by being so exact.

We should use ranges.  xBA should be the 50% confidence interval, not the midpoint thereof.  More made up numbers: If a guy’s xBA is .285, it’s probably better expressed by saying that it’s between .279 and .291, or whatever.  It makes that .290 BA not seem “lucky” (it really isn’t) but tells us that a .274 is really unlucky.   In other words, it does the job — without the excruciatingly nerdy exactitude we are (wrongly) associated with.

It’s our job to communicate this stuff.  It’s not their job to get smarter (they’re not dumb) or to figure it out themselves (they’re busy) or that they don’t respect us (true, but fixable).  The problem is semantic, not logical, and semantic problems can — and indeed, must — be fixed by revising our language.  It’s time to stop using BABIP.

Dan writes a daily email newsletter, “Now I Know,” which shares something interesting to learn each day.

With the Major League season at its halfway point, and the Jays quickly running away from the playoff hunt, it’s time to look at the top man in their minor league system and see if there’s room to work him into the everyday line-up in The Bigs. This would of course be Brett Wallace, acquired in the Roy Halladay trade this off-season in a three-way deal involving Philadelphia and Oakland. Brett started his pro career at third base, but was moved to first base to start the season in order to mitigate his defensive shortcomings. This also works out nicely for the Jays because the only one in Wallace’s way is the incumbent Lyle Overbay.

Overbay has been a Blue Jay since 2006, and hopefully Toronto GM Alex Anthopoulos makes this year his last. Praised for his defensive abilities (all too often by the Jays’ commentators) he has actually been a below average defender so far this year with a UZR of -1.5, which doesn’t make him a laughing stock, but also doesn’t make up for his below-average .320 wOBA, or (almost exactly average) .334 park-adjusted wOBA. But when you consider that he’s playing the most “hitter-friendly” position, average just doesn’t cut it. So if Overbay is an average to below-average player, is Wallace an upgrade?

Brett Wallace has produced a solid .300/.362/.503 triple-slash in AAA Las Vegas, but with the Pacific Coast League being hitter-friendly we need to take these stats with a grain of salt. Thanks to StatCorner, though, we have a park-adjusted wOBA for Wallace, and it is an above-average .361 wOBA. Expecting it to drop when he goes to the majors, Wallace still projects to be an average hitter and at least as good a hitter as Overbay has been so far this year. Throw in the hitter — and especially HR — friendly nature of the Rogers Center, and Wallace could be a fairly productive player in the Jays’ power-hitting line-up. While it will be hard for Wallace to keep his batting average at the .300 mark, having a 23.2% line-drive rate in the minors just reeks of above-average BABIP (if he keeps it up) which should help him to a sustainable .270-280 avg at the Major League level.

The only problem now is getting rid of Lyle Overbay. The Jays are looking to be big sellers at the deadline, with John Buck, Alex Gonzalez and Lyle Overbay himself being UFAs. All three of these guys should be moveable to teams with a weakness at thin positions (Catcher and Shortstop). Overbay has also been hitting better as the season progresses and could look like an attractive and cheap option for a team like Tampa Bay who is lacking at the DH spot, or a NL contender such as the Reds (as a world series DH) or the Giants. He could conceivably bring in a B- or C+ prospect, depending on how much of his salary the Jays are willing to pick up. With the Giants also lacking at shortstop, the Jays could package the two together and try to pry away a high-level prospect from them, although a Bumgarner is probably out of the question.

All in all, the Jays should actively be looking to shop Overbay ASAP and give Wallace a good long look this season to see if he can cut it at the major league level, and thus get a better idea of where the organization is at moving forward

What is the All-Star Game really about? Joe Posnanski ponders that question in his most recent article.While Posnanski doesn’t answer the question directly, he presents the different opinions of the All-Star Game. When I think about the All-Star Game, I tend to use a combination of two opinions Posnanski presents.

• It’s all about watching the best players in baseball.
• It’s all about watching the best players IN THE FIRST HALF (which is a different thing).

Following that line of reasoning, there is no doubt in my mind that Stephen Strasburg belongs on the NL All-Star Team this season.

Let’s examine the potential arguments against putting Stephen Strasburg on the All-Star team.

1. He hasn’t pitched enough to justify an All-Star selection.

Strasburg has pitched about as much as any reliever on either All-Star team this season. As a matter of fact, the only reliever on the team with more innings pitched than Strasburg is Pittsburgh’s Evan Meek. The skeptics are so quick to point out Strasburg’s lack of playing time, but very few actually seem to realize that most of the relievers selected have actually pitched fewer innings.

2. He’s pitched well, but it’s a small sample. How do we know he won’t regress?

This argument goes hand in hand with our first point (somewhat). Strasburg has accumulated a larger sample (albeit barely) than most of the other relievers selected. A look at his advanced stats reveals a pitcher that is as good as advertised.

Stat	Strasburg	Rank (Among All Pitchers/Among Starters)
K/9	13.01		4th/1st
K/BB	5.3		13th/4th
FIP	1.77		2nd/1st
xFIP	1.88		1st/1st

*Minimum of 30 innings pitched this season

Among starting pitchers, Strasburg ranks 1st in K/9, FIP, and xFIP. Those are truly terrifying numbers for any pitcher, especially a rookie. That level of dominance certainly suggests that Strasburg is already one of the best pitchers in baseball, and is worthy of pitching in the All-Star Game.

3. The league will adjust to Strasburg the second time around.

I suppose this part of the argument cannot be proved until Strasburg gains more experience in the major leagues. At the same time, this is Stephen Strasburg we are talking about! The most hyped pitching prospect in baseball since… well, maybe ever. As the stats in the table above show, it’s not as if Strasburg is using “smoke and mirrors” to confuse opponents. Anyone who has watched Strasburg pitch this season can tell you that he already has three plus pitches, and inferior hitters look useless against him. Much like Mark Prior, it appears only injuries can derail Strasburg’s dominance.

4. He’s young, he will have more opportunities to pitch in the All-Star Game.

Personally, I hope Strasburg goes on to pitch in a number of All-Star Games. The fact is, pitchers are so unpredictable these days, that we can’t be sure Strasburg will remain healthy throughout his career. Perhaps I am overreacting, but because pitching is so uncertain, we can never be 100% sure one guy will remain healthy. If I had to bet, I would guess Strasburg makes a number of All-Star Games throughout his career, but we just never know.

Chances are, Strasburg’s inclusion to the NL Roster would be one of the best things to happen to the MLB. Ratings would probably be higher if Strasburg was on the team. This was the same guy who broke NERD, Carson Cistulli’s method for picking the most exciting baseball games on any given day. Also, and no disrespect to Arthur Rhodes here, most baseball fans would likely rather see Strasburg come out to face Crawford-Hamilton-Morneau in a tie game than Arthur Rhodes. Strasburg’s rise to the majors has been one of the biggest stories of the 2010 season, and this was an opportunity for the “Legend of Strasburg” to grow larger.

Again, Strasburg has already proven that he is a fantastic young pitcher. He will very likely make a number of All-Star Games throughout his career, so I shouldn’t overreact to one snub. While I have dedicated this article to Strasburg, there are many players who were snubbed that were even more deserving than Strasburg this season. I still stand by my premise that Strasburg should have been included on the NL Roster, but (barring health) I’m so glad I will be able to watch his magnificence for many years to come.

*This article was originally written for FoulPole2FoulPole.com