A Musing Interview

Richard Lederer has his third off-season interview posted now. This one is with Baseball Musings author David Pinto. It's another interesting read, so go check it out.

Warning: non-baseball post

So, I finally got around to seeing The Matrix Revolutions and I must say that I enjoyed it. I had heard a lot of bad things about it, but I wasn't a bit disappointed with it. Some of the scenes were a bit too long, but I'm satisfied with the way they wrapped everything up and, unlike many people, I'm happy they made three movies.

The Matrix trilogy may be one of my all-time favorite trilogies because it addresses some very interesting questions. It makes you wonder about certain things, and it doesn't claim to have the final, absolute answer about such things. It's a good thing that there are things you are left wondering about when you watch any of the Matrix movies (if you care enough to think about such things).

There are a lot of uncertainties in the world, some of which we never even think about. The Matrix raises questions about a lot of those things, and provides some thoughtful insight into what some alternatives might be. If you allow yourself to do so, you can ponder a lot of neat philosophical questions while watching the Matrix.

The main focus of the movie is choice. What is choice? Do we have choice? Is there such thing as fate? They even pose an interesting theory about choice, saying that you've already made your choices, you just need to understand them. It's an interesting theory because it's not completely outside the realm of possibility.

What if we have already subconsciously made all of our choices already? We all have moments of indecision, of thought, of debate in our lives. Are those moments just us trying to understand a decision we've already made? If we've already made our choices, is there any way we can change them?

Like I said, these are interesting philosophical questions (at least to me, but I was a philosophy major...). And there are many more questions posed in the trilogy.

What is love? What is power? Which is more important? What is compassion? What is control? Which is more important? What is happiness? What is perfection? Is it better to have happiness and sadness both or to have perfect happiness but not be able to appreciate it because there is nothing to compare it to? What is faith? Is faith necessary?

All of these are things that people like me love to think about, and movies like the Matrix give us reason to think about these things. There is, however, one question that the Matrix almost totally ignored that I would have liked to see addressed. That would be the question of knowledge.

Most of us think that we know quite a lot of things. I know that I'm sitting in a chair. I know that I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving. I know that Rochester is a city in New York. I know that the Earth is round. I know that the Boston Red Sox won the first World Series in 1903. I know that my girlfriend is afraid of spiders. I know that 1+1=2. I know that all squares are also rectangles. I know that the sun will set tonight.

All of those are things that I know and they are all different sorts of things. The Traditional Analysis of Knowledge says that there are three conditions for a person, S, to know a thing, p:

1) S must believe p
2) p must be true
3) S is justified in believing p

The third condition is important because I could say that I believe the Red Sox will win the World Series in the year 2020. If it turns out that the Red Sox actually do win the World Series in the year 2020, I will not have known today that they would despite my believing it and it being true because I have no justification for thinking that they will win the World Series 17 years from now.

There are some problems with the Traditional Analysis of Knowledge, but I don't really want to get into all of them today. What I want to get into is the unique opportunity the Matrix had to discuss knowledge.

As you may know, there are some people who are called skeptics. They basically think that we do not know the kinds of things most people generally assume we do know. One argument they use is the Evil Demon or Brain in a Vat theory. I'll give you the Brain in a Vat example, but they're really the same theory.

Suppose there are two people: Bryan and Brain. Bryan is a normal person who does normal things and has normal sensory reactions to those things. Brain is just a brain in a vat whose senses are manipulated in such a way that he always thinks he's doing whatever Bryan is doing. When Bryan eats an orange, both Bryan and Brain have the sensation of eating an orange and both think they know that they are eating an orange. Bryan is correct because he is eating an orange. Brain is not correct because he is not eating an orange.

Since it is possible to have the sensation of doing something and not actually be doing that thing, skeptics say, then you cannot have knowledge of such things because you don't know if you are like Bryan or like Brain. Many people disregard this argument because they think it's impossible that we're all just brains in vats being prodded in such a way that we feel like we're doing things.

However, that's exactly the scenario the Matrix provides. Every human being is hooked up to a computer program that makes them think they're living a normal life when in fact they're merely sitting in a vat of goo. Since every person who escapes the Matrix believes that it is possible to feel like you are leading a normal life when in fact you are just hooked up to a machine, they should all wonder about whether or not they really know anything at all.

For instance, if they were to prick their finger in the real world, they would have exactly the same sensation as if they pricked their finger inside the Matrix. How do they know that this is real when that was fake?

How do they even know they've escaped the Matrix? The machines realize that some people will not accept the Matrix program and will want to rebel against it. What if they created a Matrix sub-program for those rebels that makes them think that they have escaped the Matrix and are living in the real world and are helping other people to escape the Matrix, but really they're still in their vat of goo?

Isn't that at least a possibility if it was possible to be hooked up to the Matrix in the first place? You think people are upset about the Matrix movies now? Imagine if the third movie had ended with the revelation that everybody was still hooked up to the Matrix and none of that stuff had actually happened.

At the very least, I would have liked to see some discussion about knowledge in the movies, but that's about my only real criticism. And maybe they thought about including it but decided that it would be too confusing for most people to care about, I don't know. Overall, though, I'm very pleased with the Matrix trilogy and I don't really understand most of the criticisms that have been levied against it.

Maybe I'm just weird though. At any rate, back to baseball tomorrow.

Catching up

Nothing really major has happened recently, but there have been quite a few transactions over the past week or so and I haven't really said much about any of them yet. So, today I'm going to give my thoughts on some of the things that have been going on.

First, I want to talk about three free agent signings that say a lot about the teams that made them. Here they are:



Toronto signs Pat Hentgen

Seattle signs Raul Ibanez

Houston re-signs Jose Vizcaino

One of those free agent signings is good, one of them is bad and one of them is just a waste of time and money. The signing I think is good is Pat Hentgen.

Hentgen had Tommy John surgery in 2001 and came back at the very end of 2002, but was not effective at all. He was not very good in the first half of this season either, posting a 5.25 ERA before the All-Star break. However, Tommy John surgery generally takes 18 months to recover from, and Hentgen posted an impressive 3.10 ERA after the All-Star break.

Now, I know Hentgen wasn't really that good over that period of time. He gave up 13 home runs (1.34 HR/9IP), walked 27 batters (2.79 BB/9IP) and struck out 57 batters (5.90 K/9IP) in 87 innings. However, he will only cost the Blue Jays $2.2 million dollars and there's at least a chance that he could pitch 180-200 innings with an ERA below 4.00. Even if he has the same 4.09 ERA for the season that he had last year, he will be an improvement for Toronto, which had a 4.69 team ERA last year.

The Blue Jays have signed a player who has a shot at improving their rotation a lot, and should definitely improve it at least a little, and they didn't use too much money or lose a draft pick (because Hentgen's not a Type A, B or C free agent).

Raul Ibanez, on the other hand, is a Type A free agent. Since the Mariners signed him before the arbitration deadline, they must give the Royals their first-round draft pick (Kansas City will also get a sandwich pick). In return for this draft pick and what is reportedly a $13-million deal over three years, Seattle gets a 31-year-old left fielder who doesn't play defense well and who hit .294/.345/.454 (.799) in a great hitter's park.

Ibanez hit .316/.361/.482 (.843) at home this year and .274/.328/.427 (.755) on the road and now he moves to a great pitcher's park. The absolute best numbers I could see Ibanez putting up next year are .280/.340/.430 (.770). Want to guess what the left fielder Ibanez will be replacing did this year? Randy Winn hit .295/.346/.425 (.771) and he played much better defense than Ibanez did.

And that comparison is assuming that the Mariners re-sign Mike Cameron, who hit .253/.344/.431 (.774), and get rid of Winn, which certainly isn't a sure thing. It's entirely possible that they won't be able to re-sign Cameron and Winn will end up playing center field. In that case, Seattle's defense would suffer in center field and in left field and the offense wouldn't improve at all (and it would probably get worse, because I don't really think Ibanez will reach the absolute best numbers I could see him getting).

Bill Bavasi has a whole off-season remaining to get this team ready for the 2004 season, but his first move as the Seattle GM is terrible. And the fact that Ibanez will be playing in Seattle for three years would scare me as a Mariners fan, because his offense and defense aren't going to get better as he gets older.

Finally, we have the Astros and Jose Vizcaino. The Astros have moaned for a long time now that they don't have much money and they traded Billy Wagner to free up some money because they don't have enough. So, after trading away one of the best relievers in the game to save money, what do they do? They go out and spend $1.2-million on Vizcaino.

Vizcaino is a utility infielder and he's not really a good one. For his career, he's a .272/.319/.345 (.664) hitter. This year, he hit .249/.281/.365 (.646). The best OPS+ in his entire 15-year career is 91, which he did in 2002. This year, he had an OPS+ of 65, which is staggeringly bad, but amazingly only his fifth-worst OPS+ for a season in which he had at least 150 plate appearances.

What I'm trying to say is that there are a lot of players in the minor leagues who could do Vizcaino's job just as well as he does, or maybe better. Any of those minor leaguers would cost Houston a league-minimum salary, which would save the Astros about a million dollars. A million dollars may not seem like a lot when talking about baseball, but if you're going to cry poverty, you shouldn't start throwing money into the fireplace a million dollars at a time.

Houston's re-signing of Vizcaino means one of two things. The Astros aren't really poor and can afford to overspend on a subpar utility infielder by a million dollars or the Astros aren't very smart and don't know that they just wasted a million dollars. I'll give you this quote from GM Gerry Hunsicker to help you decide which it is:

"This was a very important signing for us. Jose is a very versatile player. He's a very steady player. I probably have more confidence in him at the plate when we need a big hit than I do anybody on our team. In addition, he's a quality person and a tremendous influence on his team. He's a team player, he's a quality individual and a great role model. He's certainly the type of player we continue to look to bring into this organization." (The bold is from me, of course)

Next, I'd like to discuss a couple of trades that are somewhat related:





A's trade Hernandez and Long to San Diego for Kotsay

A's trade Lilly to Toronto for Kielty

Let's look at what this mean's for Toronto first, because the benefits are easiest to figure out there. This is an excellent trade for the Blue Jays. Toronto had an excellent offense last year and losing Bobby Kielty doesn't really hurt them because they've still got Carlos Delgado, Vernon Wells, Josh Phelps, Reed Johnson and Frank Catalanotto. They also have younger players like Gabe Gross and Jayson Werth who may be ready to play in the majors next year.

So, the Blue Jays didn't really need Kielty. They did need better pitching, and Ted Lilly is a good bit better than some of the guys they had in the rotation last year. Still just 27 years old, Lilly had a 4.34 ERA, 1.33 WHIP, 7.42 K/9IP, 2.93 BB/9IP and 1.21 HR/9IP in 178.1 innings. That's not all that special, but he was particularly impressive in his final seven starts of the season, going 6-1 with a 2.06 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, 41 strikeouts, 11 walks and 2 homers in 39.1 innings.

It's entirely possible that Lilly will only be an average starter next year, but it's also possibly that he could finally put everything together and pitch a full season with an ERA in the 3.50-3.75 range. If the Blue Jays can re-sign Kelvim Escobar, their top four starters will be Roy Halladay, Escobar, Hentgen and Lilly. Is there anybody out there who doesn't think that's a whole lot better than Halladay, Escobar, Corey Lidle and Mark Hendrickson?

From San Diego's perspective, the deal's a little more complicated, but it still looks like the Padres did well. Ramon Hernandez was one of the four best catchers in the AL this year and he will be a definite asset to a team that hasn't had a real catcher recently. His offense is above average and he's very well regarded defensively. In fact, much of Lilly's success in the second half of the season is credited to Hernandez as there were reports (I don't know if they're true or not) that Lilly was not allowed to shake Hernandez off for a period of time.

The rest of the deal from San Diego's perspective is that they now have a definite (unless more trades are made) starting outfield of Brian Giles, Ryan Klesko and Xavier Nady, with Terrence Long as the fourth outfielder. The defensive alignment will probably be Giles in center, Nady in right and Klesko in left while Long is probably only better in the field than Klesko.

If the Padres still had Mark Kotsay, he probably would have seen a good deal of time in center and Nady, who I'm not sold on as the real deal, would have spent more time on the bench. This outfield is probably a little worse offensively and a good deal worse defensively, but it's probably worth it for the upgrade at catcher.

If Hernandez deserves his reputation as a good signal-caller, then his addition will be especially important because the Padres have a lot of young pitchers who could benefit from his help. All in all, I like this trade from the Padres point of view.

When talking about Oakland, we have to take the two trades in conjunction. The A's lose their fourth-best pitcher and their starting catcher and gain two outfielders who are better than what they had. Adding Kielty and Kotsay to the team will allow them to mix-and-match with Eric Byrnes and Jermaine Dye and most likely have a much better outfield than they had last year.

Losing Lilly doesn't really hurt Oakland because the A's still have Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito, who are as good a top three as any team has. Oakland also has Rich Harden and Justin Duchscherer, who are probably ready to be major league starters full-time now. The A's also have Joe Blanton in AA, who is supposed to be their next great pitcher. So, like the Blue Jays with their outfielders, the A's were dealing from a position of strength with Lilly.

The big loss for the A's is Hernandez, and I'm not sure exactly how big a loss it is because I don't know how they plan on addressing it. Oakland has three players in its system that it could probably use at catcher next year -- Adam Melhuse, Scott Hatteberg and Mark Johnson.

Melhuse is a 31-year-old who has spent most of his career in the minor leagues. He hit very well in his brief time with the A's this year and has generally hit well in the minors. Hatteberg has been Oakland's first baseman the last two years, but didn't really hit well enough to be a first baseman last year. He was a backup catcher with the Red Sox, but he can hardly throw at all and probably couldn't catch every day, if he still can at all. Johnson has a .311 career OBP, having played most of his games with the White Sox. Billy Beane said the first thing he would have done if he had taken the Boston GM job is trade Jason Varitek and give the starting job to Johnson, who had a .369 OBP in Sacramento this year.

None of those players are great options for your starting catcher, but I'm sure Oakland could mix-and-match the three of them and come up with an adequate replacement for Hernandez. Also, they could still sign a catcher in free agency or trade for a catcher. Jeremy Brown had a nice .388 OBP in AA for Oakland, but he's probably not quite ready to be catching in the big leagues.

I'm kind of on the fence about whether or not I like these trades for the A's, and the determining factor will probably be what they end up doing about the hole at catcher. If they can fill it reasonably well, then they have done a good job improving their outfield. If not, then they probably didn't improve their outfield enough for the cost they incurred.

NL MVP

Time for my choices for the final award of the year -- the NL MVP award. Unlike all of the other awards, this one is between just two people. There are only two people who have a case for winning the award and, unless the BBWAA is even more screwed up than I thought, there are only two people who will get first-place votes. If everybody with a ballot is thinking clearly, there should even be only two people who are listed in the top two on any ballot, it's that obvious who the top two players were this year.

5. Todd Helton, 1B, COL

Helton probably won't get much support at all because his team wasn't very good and because most people think he gets so much help from Coors field that he'd need to hit about 80 homers to be considered an MVP, but he had another excellent season. Even when you factor in his home park, he was the best first baseman in the majors.

Helton hit .358/.458/.630 (.1088) while missing just two games this year. He had 49 doubles, five triples, 33 homers, 135 runs, 117 RBI, 111 walks and 72 strikeouts. He also had a .345 EqA, 131.9 EqR and 73.3 RARP.

He was second in the NL in OBP, batting average, walks and runs and third in OPS, SLG and EqA. He ranked fourth in EqR and RARP and sixth in RBI.

He certainly was helped out by Coors Field, where he had a 1.219 OPS. However, playing for Colorado meant that the three parks he had the most at-bats in after Coors Field were all pitchers parks -- Dodger Stadium, Qualcomm Stadium and PacBell Park. That certainly had something to do with him posting a .949 OPS on the road.

I don't think it matters that much at first base, but his defense is generally considered to be very good. So, he was the best offensive player at his position (easily the best in the NL) and he's a very good defensive player (most likely) and he only missed two games. Sounds like he deserves to be number five in the MVP voting to me.

4. Javy Lopez, C, ATL

Lopez had an unbelievable season, and in the AL he probably would have gotten my vote for MVP. Unfortunately for him, he played in the NL, so he's fourth on my ballot. That's just the way it goes.

After two awful seasons that made everybody think he was just about done, Lopez hit .328/.378/.687 (1.065) this year. He did only play in 129 games, but he had 29 doubles, 3 triples, 43 homers, 89 runs, 109 RBI, 33 walks and 90 strikeouts. He had a .337 EqA, 101.2 EqR and 64.4 RARP.

He didn't have enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title, but he finished fifth in EqA, RARP and homers and eighth in RBI.

His home/road splits are very strange. Atlanta is a good place for a pitcher to play, but Lopez somehow posted a 1.252 OPS at home and a .912 OPS on the road. I don't know how to explain it, but that's what he did.

He did have a slow start to the season, post an OPS of just .745 in April. That may actually help him, however, as the voters seem to think that the games get more important as the season goes along. Here's a hint: they don't. A win in April is worth just as much as a win in September.

3. Gary Sheffield, RF, ATL

I haven't done any research on this at all, but Sheffield may have just had the best performance in history by a player that nobody is really even talking about as an MVP candidate. The fact that he hit as well as he did and is clearly third on the list is simply a testament to how good the top two players were this season.

Sheffield hit .330/.419/.604 (1.023) in 155 games this season. He had 37 doubles, 2 triples, 39 homers, 126 runs, 132 RBI, 86 walks, 55 strikeouts and 18 steals in 22 attempts (81.8-percent success rate). He also had a .341 EqA, 132.5 EqR and 73.9 RARP.

He was second in the league in RBI and third in EqR and RARP. He was fourth in OPS and EqA, fifth in SLG and batting average, sixth in OBP and seventh in homers.

He also played for Atlanta, but his splits were normal. He had a 1.013 OPS at home and a 1.034 OPS on the road. He was also very consistent, as his worst OPS was .957 in September.

Like I said, most years that would be a good enough performance to at least get you considered for the award, if not enough to make you the MVP. This year, it's enough to get you third place, without a thought of being placed higher.

2. Barry Bonds, LF, SF

1. Albert Pujols, LF, STL

Because these two are the only two really under consideration, I'm going to talk about them together. The funny thing is that I've argued many times that Bonds should win an MVP award instead of somebody else who had better RBI numbers, and this year I'm arguing for the player who had better RBI numbers. But I'm not doing it because of the RBI numbers.

Bonds was clearly the better hitter here. He hit .341/.529/.749 (1.278) while Pujols hit .359/.439/.667 (1.106). He had a ridiculous .420 EqA whil Pujols had a .362 EqA. He led the league in OPS, OBP, SLG, EqA, RARP and walks while Pujols led the league in less important categories like EqR, batting average and runs.

The numbers that concern me the most, however, are 27 and 135. Pujols played 27 more games than Bonds did and had 135 more plate appearances this season than Bonds did. To put it in percentages, Pujols had 24.5-percent more plate appearances than Bonds and played in 20.7-percent more games than Bonds.

That's an awful lot more time that Pujols spent on the field than Bonds did. You want a comparison? Pedro Martinez was unbelievably good this season, but Esteban Loaiza was also very good and he pitched 21-percent more innings than Martinez did. Loaiza finished second in Cy Young voting and Martinez finished third.

Also, Pujols performance this season is closer to being Bonds' equal than Loaiza's is to being Martinez's equal.

Bonds and Pujols are basically very similar. They both play left field and neither one is known for his defense, at least not anymore. They both played in pitcher's parks, but both hit better at home. And they both had an OPS of at least 1.000 in every month.

The differences are that Bonds was the better hitter and Pujols played a lot more frequently. In my mind, that makes Pujols the MVP, but I can see how you could disagree with me. Heck, I debated it myself an awful lot, and I would have given it to Bonds had Pujols had a season that even just a little bit less impressive.

It will be interesting to see what the voters do today. We've already seen that they don't really mind voting for good hitters from non-playoff teams because Alex Rodriguez and Carlos Delgado finished first and second, respectively, in the AL voting. However, we've also already seen that they don't mind voting for players who don't play every day because Shannon Stewart finished third after playing just 136 games as a slightly above-average left fielder and David Ortiz finished fourth after playing just 128 games as a designated hitter.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that if Pujols does win, they voters will be giving it to him for the wrong reasons. But they've already handed out the AL award to the right person for the wrong reasons, so I'm prepared to accept the same thing in the NL. And I certainly wouldn't be upset if Bonds won either. He is pretty damn good, after all.

Al MVP

Time for my top five choices for the AL MVP award. This is the award I am most eagerly anticipating because it's so completely up in the air. The person who should win the award isn't as much of a slam dunk as he has been in years past --when he didn't win -- and there are at least half a dozen players for whom legitimate arguments could actually be made. Of course, there are also at least three or four players for whom the writers are making arguments, even though those arguments are the worst kind of absurd. It will be interesting to see who actually wins.

5. Bret Boone, 2B, SEA

When Boone hit .331/.372/.578 (.950) with 37 homers and 140 RBI in 2001, everybody thought it was a fluke. And with good reason, as his best batting average over the previous six years was .267, his best OBP was .326 and his best SLG was .458. However, Boone followed that up with a decent .801 OPS last year and this year he was almost as good as he was in 2001, so he has firmly put himself among the best second basemen in baseball.

Boone hit .294/.366/.535 (.902) this season, with 111 runs scored and 117 RBI. He played in 159 games and hit 35 doubles, 5 triples and 35 homers while drawing 68 walks and striking out 125 times and stealing 16 bases in 19 attempts (84.2-percent success rate). He also won a Gold Glove at second base.

Boone's EqA this season was .313, but his other Baseball Prospectus numbers are even more impressive. He ranked fourth in the AL with 121.5 EqR and 66.0 RARP. He also finished in the top 10 in the AL in RBI (3rd), runs (7th) and homers (8th).

Boone also played in a park that is favorable to pitchers and he posted a somewhat higher OPS on the road (.914) than at home (.889).

Who knows, if Boone hadn't posted a .727 OPS in August, Seattle might have made the playoffs and Boone might be the front-runner for the award. Instead, he gets my pick for fifth and he might not even finish that high in the real voting.

4. Manny Ramirez, LF, BOS

Forget all the talk about David Ortiz for AL MVP because he wasn't even close to the MVP of his own team. Ramirez was not only the Red Sox MVP, he was the best hitter in the AL this year, on a per-game basis.

Ramirez hit .325/.427/.587 (1.014) with 36 doubles and 37 homers, 97 walks and 94 strikeouts, 117 runs and 104 RBI in 154 games. He also had a .341 EqA, 130.9 EqR and 70.7 RARP.

He led the AL in OBP and EqA and ranked second in batting average, EqR, RARP and OPS. He also finished fourth in SLG, tied for fourth in runs, fifth in walks and seventh in homers.

The strikes against Ramirez are that he missed eight games (particularly five games during the most important part of the season with what some people thought wasn't a real illness), he played left field in a park where left field is particularly unimportant and the writers don't like him all that much. He's also perceived as lazy, but he's really more quirky. He forgets to do things that most people can't understand him forgetting, but he spends a lot of time honing his skills as a hitter. It's just that all of that time is spent away from view, so he doesn't really get credit for it.

Ramirez does also play in a park that helps hitters, and his OPS at home (1.028) was a bit higher than his OPS on the road (1.000).

3. Carlos Delgado, 1B, TOR

Delgado was just a touch behind Ramirez as the best hitter on a per-game basis this year and just a touch ahead of hmi as the best offensive contributor overall. He hit .302/.426/.593 (1.019), which is very similar to what Ramirez did, but Delgado only missed one game all season.

In his 161 games, Delgado had 38 doubles, 42 homers, 109 walks, 137 strikeouts, 117 runs and 145 RBI. He also had a .338 EqA, 131.8 EqR and 70.1 RARP.

He led the league in OPS, EqR and RBI and finished second in OBP, SLG, EqA, homers and walks. He also finished third in RARP and tied for fourth in runs.

The best thing about Delgado is that he was very consistent throughout the season. Yes, he only had 48 RBI after the All-Star break, but he also had an OPS of at least .945 in every month. Delgado's worst month was September, when he hit .278/.374/.578 (.952). That's pretty darn good for his worst month of the season.

The worst thing about Delgado is his home/road splits. He played in a park that favored hitters, but it doesn't favor hitters to the extent that his splits would indicate. Delgado had a 1.138 OPS at home and an .899 OPS on the road. I don't know what the explanation is, but it is a bit troublesome that his road OPS was below .900.

2. Jorge Posada, C, NYY

I don't know if Posada will actually win the award, but his case probably got a big boost from what he did in the second-to-last game he played this year. In that game, he hit a home run and drove in three runs, giving him 30 homers and 101 RBI on the season. It doesn't make a bit of difference to me, but 30 homers and 101 RBI looks a lot better to the voters than 29 homers and 98 RBI.

Posada hit .281/.405/.518 (.922) while playing 142 games. A .922 OPS for a catcher is excellent, but that .405 OBP is the best part. Posada had a .313 EqA, 99.7 EqR and 58.4 RARP. Not only was he the best offensive catcher in the league, he also led the league in games played by a catcher (tied with Jason Varitek, although Ramon Hernandez did start more games at catcher, 133-131).

Posada finished fifth in the AL in OBP, sixth in RARP and walks and 10th in OPS and EqA. Also, like Boone, Posada played in a home park that is favorable to pitchers. Posada's home OPS (.918) was a little bit lower than his road OPS (.926).

Posada was also fairly consistent, as his worst month was May, when he posted an .839 OPS.

1. Alex Rodriguez, SS, TEX

It's funny that after so obviously deserving the MVP award on more than one occassion in the past, Rodriguez may finally win it this year with what's probably the fifth-best season of his career. The reason I think Rodriguez might win is the same reason a lot of other people do. Writers will hand out first place votes to a lot of different players this year, but Rodriguez will be the only player who consistently appears in the top two or three. At least, I hope that's how it will work, because he deserves to win.

Rodriguez hit .298/.396/.600 (.995) with 30 doubles, 6 triples, 47 homers, 87 walks, 126 strikeouts, 124 runs, 118 RBI and 17 steals in 20 attempts (85-percent success rate). He had a .326 EqA, 130.5 EqR and 79.1 RARP while winning a Gold Glove at shortstop.

He led the league in RARP, SLG, homers and runs and finished second in RBI. He was third in OPS, EqA and EqR and eighth in walks and OBP. Basically, there are only three strikes against him.

The first is that he played for a last place team, which I don't care about. If he had been hurt before the season and had to miss the whole year, the Rangers may have taken a run at losing 100 games for the first time since 1973. Just because his value didn't translate into a winning record for the team, doesn't mean he didn't have value to the team.

The second strike is that Texas is a nice place for a hitter to play and his OPS at home (1.028) was significantly higher than his OPS on the road (.961). However, even if he had posted that road OPS as his season OPS, I still think he would deserve the MVP award, so I don't think this strike holds much weight either.

The final strike is that he wasn't the most consistent hitter, as he posted just a .778 OPS in May, during which time the Rangers went just 12-15. So, he may not have helped his team much then, but he certainly helped the Rangers a lot in August when he had a 1.303 OPS and Texas went 17-12.

All in all, I think Rodriguez added the most value to his team, and I hope he finally gets the award that he has deserved for awhile now.

Tomorrow, I'll have my NL MVP choices and later this week (hopefully Wednesdsay, but maybe not til Thursday) I'll have a fun post looking back on the season.

Another good interview

Richard Lederer has his second interview of the off-season posted right now. This one is with Alex Belth, who himself is probably best-known for his excellent interviews with baseball writers. Go see what Alex has to say when he's the one answering the questions, it's a very good read.

Bad news for Rochester

As you may or may not know, I live in Rochester, NY. Just two days after Rochester hosted a major sporting event for the first time since 1971 (a 2-2 tie between the Buffalo Sabres and New Jersey Devils), it seems the city has gotten some bad news. Apparently, the Minnesota Twins have traded catcher A.J. Pierzynski to the San Francisco Giants.

How is that bad news for Rochester? Well, if you didn't know already, Rochester is home to the AAA affiliate of the Twins. The Twins have a catcher in their minor league system you may have heard of named Joe Mauer.

Mauer tore apart A and AA last year, and many people were expecting him to do the same thing in Rochester next year, at least for the first half of the season. I am one of the people who was very excited about the prospect of watching this prospect play. I've only been to about 10 Red Wings (that's the name of the Rochester team) games in the five years I've lived here, but I likely would have gone to at least that many next year if Mauer was on the team (especially if fellow prospect Justin Morneau was on the team as well).

Now, however, it appears that Mauer may very well start the season in the majors with the Twins. Minnesota does have other options, but neither are as exciting (or likely to be as good) as Mauer. Matthew LeCroy hit .287/.342/.490 (.832) for the Twins last year, and he did play 22 games as the catcher (his most since catching 49 games in 2000). I don't think LeCroy could catch every day, but he could catch half the time with Rob Bowen, who was in the unenviable situation of being stuck between Pierzynski and Mauer, catching the rest of the time.

Like I said, though, that's not a really appealing option. It will especially tough to keep Mauer in Rochester if he goes to spring training and starts tearing the cover off the ball, which he's certainly capable of doing.

Only one thing seems certain to me today, the city of Rochester will not get to see Mauer as long as we would have liked. If the Twins had kept Pierzynski, Mauer almost certainly would have started the season in Rochester and there's a chance that he might have stayed here until the rosters expanded in September. With Pierzynski gone, however, the longest I could envision Mauer playing for the Red Wings is about a month.

It's a shame, because the city was hoping that Mauer would be the next great player to pass through Rochester, following the likes of Stan Musial, Eddie Murray, Cal Ripken Jr., Curt Schilling, Mike Mussina and others. Now, it's much less likely to happen.

Fantasy Football

Here's the link to my fantasy football column for this week:

Fantasy football: Trade Lewis for value

I'll try to have my AL MVP choices up at some point today.

NL Cy Young award

Here are my top five choices for the NL Cy Young award. Once again, there are three players who I would be fine with winning the award, so the BBWAA shouldn't be able to screw this up too bad. If Russ Ortiz ends up in the top five, I'll be disappointed, but I can't say it would surprise me.

5. Brandon Webb, SP, ARI

If you've been reading this blog for the past week, then you know how I feel about Webb. He had a 2.84 ERA, 1.15 WHIP, 8.57 K/9IP, 3.39 BB/9IP and 0.60 HR/9IP in 180.2 innings, all while pitching in a park that is tremendous for hitters. Webb's road ERA of 2.27 was the third-best for any NL starter.

As much as I think he deserves to finish fifth in the Cy Young voting, he has absolutely no chance of actually doing so. Thanks to the anemic Arizona offense, which scored two runs or fewer in 13 of his 28 starts, Webb's record this season was just 10-9. And just as 10-9 pitchers apparently can't win Rookie of the Year awards, 10-9 pitchers can't finish in the top five in Cy Young balloting.

4. Kevin Brown, SP, LA

Brown was a wonderful story this year, rebounding from two injury-plagued seasons to post a 2.39 ERA and 1.14 WHIP in 211 innings. He finished with 7.89 K/9IP, 2.39 BB/9IP and 0.47 HR/9IP while making 25 quality starts in his 32 appearances.

There are, however, a couple of things working against Brown. One is the fact that he only won 14 games. Pedro Martinez could only finish third in the AL voting with 14 wins despite having just four losses, a 2.22 ERA and a home park that isn't notorious for being kind to pitchers. Brown had nine losses, a 2.39 ERA and a home park that is notorious for being kind to pitchers, so he might not even finish as high as fourth.

Speaking of Brown's home park, it did deflate offense by about 13-percent, but it didn't seem to help Brown, who had a 2.40 home ERA and a 2.38 road ERA. Not that that's anything in Brown's favor. If you can't take advantage of your favorable surroundings, then that's a bad thing for you, not a good thing.

There is one thing about pitching for the Dodgers that should help Brown's case, but which most people probably won't even think of. While he was helped (or should have been helped) by pitching in a great pitcher's park, he was also hurt by not getting the chance to pitch against the woeful Dodgers offense. Brown only made two starts this season against teams that scored fewer than 4 runs per game (one against Detroit and one against the Mets). Ortiz, on the other hand, made six starts against such low-powered teams and Webb had five such starts.

3. Eric Gagne, RP, LA

He'll probably win the award, but I just can't see how he's better than the two guys I have ahead of him, both of whom pitched over 200 innings with ERA's below 2.50. Gagne had a ridiculous 1.20 ERA and an even more riduclous 0.69 WHIP in 82.1 innings, which is rather a lot for a closer.

Gagne certainly put up some amazing numbers. He had 14.98 K/9IP and just 0.22 HR/9IP. He had a microscopic 0.76 ERA on the road (even though his home park favors pitchers a lot) and he held opposing hitters to a .196 OBP and a .176 SLG. I guess if a closer was ever going to do enough to be considered the best pitcher in his league, this would be the year. However, I've got to go with the starting pitchers who both pitched 2.5 times more innings than Gagne while putting up some very impressive numbers themselves.

2. Jason Schmidt, SP, SF

Schmidt led the NL with a 2.34 ERA and a 0.95 WHIP in 207.2 innings. He also had nice ratios of 9.01 K/9IP, 1.99 BB/9IP and 0.61 HR/9IP. He made 20 quality starts in 29 appearances and pitched 7.16 innings per start. In short, he did just about everything you would want the ace of your pitching staff to do.

People have been taking some credit away from him because PacBell Park is supposed to be a great place for pitchers. This year, however, it was a very interesting park. Overall, about the same number of runs were scored in Giants home games as were scored in Giants road games. The interesting part is that the Giants themselves scored about 9-percent more runs in their home games while the Giants opponents scored about 15-percent fewer runs in Giants home games. I guess that's why the Giants went 54-27 at home.

At any rate, it doesn't look like PacBell helped Schmidt tremendously. He had a 2.24 ERA at home and a 2.44 ERA on the road. Both numbers are excellent.

One thing that I'm discounting Schmidt for is the quality of his opponents. He pitched in the NL West, which featured his own team, an above average offensive team, two below average offensive teams and the worst offensive team in the majors. Schmidt made six starts this year against teams that scored fewer than 4 runs per game and 13 starts against teams that scored between 4.0 and 4.5 runs per game. That means he made 17 of his 29 starts against teams that could be considered have offenses that are well below average (the average NL team scored 4.61 runs per game this season).

1. Mark Prior, SP, CHC

Prior had a 2.34 ERA and 1.10 WHIP in 211.1 innings. He finished with 10.43 K/9IP, 2.13 BB/9IP and 0.64 HR/9IP. He made 22 quality starts in his 30 appearances and averaged 7.04 innings per start.

He was not helped tremendously by his defense or his luck, as opposing batters hit .309 off of him when they put the ball in play.

He was not helped tremendously by his home park (which overall seemed to favor pitchers just slightly this year) as he had a 2.85 ERA at home and a 2.08 ERA on the road.
And he was not helped tremendously by his schedule, as he made four starts against teams that scored fewer than 4 runs per game and 10 starts against teams that scored between 4.0 and 4.5 runs per game.

Quite simply, he did everything you could ask of a pitcher. He had a low ERA (3rd in the NL), he struck out a lot of hitters (2nd in the NL), he pitched a lot of innings (10th in the NL) and he won 18 games for a team that averaged just 4.47 runs per game (the Cubs scored 4.67 runs per game in the games he started).

Like I said, Gagne will probably win, but I think Prior should win. And I'm certain that he will win one before too long.

Management by Baseball

I just noticed an interesting new blog on blogger's home page called, you guessed it, Management by Baseball. It is sort of the opposite of Moneyball in that it talks about how to use baseball to improve your management skills. Anyway, the reason I'm bringing this up now is that I found site author Jim Gilliam's post from Monday interesting. In it, he takes Joe Morgan to task for the column he wrote awhile ago on how MLB talent is too diluted.

Jim says that, based on the populations from which MLB teams are able to draw now as opposed to 30 or 60 years ago, it's not possible that the best rosters are weaker than they were. I would agree that MLB's talent pool is not diluted to the point when there aren't enough good players to go around, but I wouldn't necessarily say that Morgan is definitely wrong about the idea that the best teams in baseball aren't necessarily as good as they used to be.

However, I would say that the reason isn't because there aren't enough talented players around now. Maybe there weren't enough talented players to go around then either (although, it's more likely the amount of talent is fine and certain people's expectations are just too high). The difference is that the talent is distributed more evenly now than it was then.

I haven't really done any research to prove this, but I would guess that free agency and the amateur draft have served to make it so that talent is much more evenly dispersed throughout the 30 teams than it was in the 1960s (among the 24 teams) or the 1940s (among the 16 teams) or the 1920s. Back then, the rich teams could sign as many young players as they wanted to and not worry about losing them because of the reserve clause, and the poor teams frequently sold their best players to the rich teams for cash (and sometimes lesser players in return). The end result is that a lot of good players ended up on the rich teams and not so many good players ended up on the poor teams. Obviously, the rich teams would then have few weaknesses and the poor teams would, of necessity, have few strengths.

So, if the amount of talent available to go around isn't smaller, then Joe must be disappointed that the talent is distributed so well. If that's the case, then he must be advocating a return to the days of the reserve clause, when baseball players had almost no rights at all. Kind of an odd thing for a former baseball player to be saying, isn't it?

All bent out of shape

By now, you've probably realized the humor in all of the hubbub surrounding the Rookie of the Year voting. People are outraged, outraged I tell ya, that Hideki Matsui was left off two ballots because those voters decided that he shouldn't qualify as a rookie. Most people don't seem to care that Angel Berroa was also left off two ballots and probably should have won anyway. I think Mike Greenberg put it best when he essentially wrote that it's okay to be stupid, but it's not okay to make up your own rules.

I wholeheartedly agree that every writer should have voted for Matsui somewhere on their ballot, or at least considered him as a rookie. But I don't really care because I don't think he was the best rookie anyway. What I'm really annoyed by is the fact that Brandon Webb not only lost in the NL voting, he was completely left off seven ballots. Unfortunately, nobody I've seen in the mainstream media is at all disturbed by this. This kid puts up numbers that are just a notch below Pedro Martinez and nobody outside the blogging world cares that he didn't win the Rookie of the Year award?

As Aaron Gleeman said, it's all one big joke. You know what else is a joke?

That George Steinbrenner is calling the AL Rookie of the Year voting a great injustice. Does anybody think that Steinbrenner would have said a single thing about the voting if Matsui was wearing the uniform of another team? Of course not. I certainly don't remember Steinbrenner calling it a great injustice when two voters in 1999 decided to leave Pedro off their MVP ballots because they didn't think pitchers should be eligible to win the award.

How are the two scenarios different? Well, one scenario involves a member of the New York Yankees and one involves a member of the Boston Red Sox and Steinbrenner only gets indignant over the former. The latter he probably thought was funny. Hey Goerge, if you're going to tell us all how we should do things, be consistent about it or shut your big trap.

AL Cy Young Award

Here are my top five picks for the AL Cy Young Award. The BBWAA is lucky in that there are three players they could give the award to without making me angry. Knowing them, however, they'll find a way to piss me off anyway. Is it a bad thing that I have such negative feelings toward an organization that I eventually would like to be a part of? Anyway, on to my choices. All five of the pitchers I'm going to mention had between 20 and 23 win shares this season, and since I don't know enough about win shares to know how much I like the system, I'm not going to use that to differentiate between them, especially since the differences are so small.

5. Keith Foulke, RP, OAK

Toward the end of the baseball season, I watched ESPN's less-than-stellar Around the Horn show a few times. Every time I watched the show, Jay Mariotti went off on how Foulke should win the AL Cy Young award and, every time, I starting yelling at the TV that somebody should knock Mariotti out. Well, I'm not sure I was wrong about somebody needing to knock Mariotti out, but when I looked at the numbers, I was surprised to find that I think Foulke is a top-five Cy Young award candidate. Under no circumstances do I think he should win the award, but he is number five on my list.

Foulke made Billy Beane look like a genius yet again by posting a 2.08 ERA and a 0.89 WHIP while Billy Koch struggled to keep his WHIP below Foulke's ERA. Foulke also posted 9.14 K/9IP, 2.08 BB/9IP and 1.04 HR/9IP.

Even more important than all of those numbers, however, is this number -- 86.2. That's how many innings Foulke pitched, seventh-most in the majors among pitchers who did not make any starts this season. Everybody was raving about how Mariano Rivera could shut a team down for two innings in the playoffs, but Foulke was doing that in the regular season too. Of his 72 appearances, 11 of them were for two innings or more. Foulke had a 2.38 ERA in those 2+ inning performances and 10 of his 43 saves saw him pitch more than one inning.

The one red flag about Foulke's qualifications as a Cy Young candidate is that he was probably helped significantly by his home ballpark and his defense. Almost 15-percent more runs were scored in Oakland's road games than in Oakland's home games, and that probably helped Foulke's ERA and WHIP at least a little. Also, Oakland's defense was very good, which probably helps explain why Foulke allowed just a .221 batting average on balls put in play. That number is ridiculously low and much better than what Foulke did in Chicago (generally in the .250s), which suggests he got lucky and/or had help from his defense.

Still, Foulke was the fifth-best pitcher in the AL this season, and whatever team signs him this off-season will probably get a bargain compared to what the other top-notch relievers are currently making.

4. Esteban Loaiza, SP, CWS

If I hadn't just looked at his player page, I would have had virtually no chance of telling you that Loaiza went 21-9 this season. You know why? Because I don't care. He could have gone 30-0 and I wouldn't really have felt any differently about him than I do right now.

He had a terrific season, much better than anybody could have ever expected, and he should be very proud of what he did. But he doesn't belong in the top three of anybody's Cy Young ballot. He posted a 2.90 ERA and a 1.11 WHIP in 226.1 innings. He also had 8.23 K/9IP, 2.23 BB/9IP and 0.68 HR/9IP. All of those numbers are very nice, but they're not good enough.

The biggest problem I have with Loaiza is the competition he faced. He got to make six starts against Detroit and one against the Dodgers, but he only had to make one start against each of Boston and Toronto. So, he made seven starts against teams that scored fewer than 4 runs per game (there were three such teams) and just two starts against teams that scored more than 5.5 runs per game (there were three of these teams as well).

So, that's one problem with putting Loaiza in the top three. The other problem is the next three pitchers on my list. One of them pitched significantly more innings at almost the same level of quality, one of them pitched slightly more innings at a slightly higher quality and one of them pitched significantly fewer innings at a significantly higher quality. And all three of them are better choices than Loaiza in my opinion.

3. Roy Halladay, SP, TOR

I was going to put Halladay second. I had already written the third-place comments for Pedro Martinez and I was just about to start writing the second-place comments for Halladay. I was going to talk about how his 3.25 ERA and 1.07 WHIP and 6.90 K/9IP and 0.88 HR/9IP weren't as good as Martinez, but the fact that he pitched 266 innings (79.1 innings more than Martinez) is just to hard to ignore.

I was going to write about all of those things and then I realized that Martinez might have prevented more runs in his 186.2 innings than Halladay did in his 266 innings. I don't mean Martinez saved more runs per inning, I mean more runs overall. This is just a quick-and-dirty thing I did, but I think it's fairly accurate.

Basically, the average ERA in the AL for starting pitchers was 5.32 (all AL starters combined to pitch 13,401 innings while allowing 7,922 runs) and the average ERA in the AL for relief pitchers was 4.26 (all AL relievers combined to pitch 6,816 innings while allowing 3,230 runs). Now, if you're going to replace Martinez's innings, you can pretty much do it with just one starter. To replace Halladay's innings, you'll need a starter and then some relievers.

So, let's say we replace Martinez with 186.2 innings from an average starter and we replace Halladay with 186.2 innings from an average starter plus 79.1 innings from average relievers. Martinez allowed 46 earned runs this season and an average starter would have allowed 110 earned runs in the same number of innings. Halladay allowed 96 earned runs this season, while his average replacements would have allowed 148 earned runs.

So, if my calculations and assumptions are correct, Martinez saved 64 runs above what average pitchers would have allowed in 186.2 innings while Halladay saved 52 runs over what average pitchers would have allowed in 266 innings. Basically, the argument that I've seen several other people use is correct.

If you think Halladay was a better pitcher than Martinez, then you're basically doing something that doesn't make a lot of sense. Assume that two pitchers had both pitched 186.2 innings and allowed 46 earned runs. Then, the second pitcher goes on to pitch 79.1 more innings while allowing 50 more earned runs (5.67 ERA), but the first pitcher doesn't pitch anymore. Which scenario would you think is better?

That's the story of Martinez and Halladay. Halladay did pitch almost 50-percent more innings than Martinez (42.5-percent more, to be exact), but he also allowed more than twice as many runs (2.09 times as many, to be exact). When you look at it that way, I think it becomes pretty clear that Martinez was the better pitcher this season.

2. Pedro Martinez, SP, BOS

There is no doubt that Martinez is still the best pitcher in baseball on a per-inning basis as he posted a 2.22 ERA and a 1.04 WHIP. It was his seventh consecutive season with an ERA below 3.00 and his fifth straight season with an ERA below 2.40. Go back and read that again if you missed it. In an era in which offenses are averaging close to 5 runs per game, Martinez has turned in five seasons in a row with an ERA below 2.40. That's simply amazing.

The problem is that he's not very durable, making just 29 starts and pitching just 186.2 innings. It was the third year in a row he failed to reach 200 innings and the fifth straight season in which he could not make more than 30 starts. Martinez may have deserved to win the Cy Young award last year, when he fell just two-thirds of an inning short of 200 and Barry Zito pitched about 230 innings. This year, however, Martinez pitched 13 fewer innings at about the same quality and the A's best pitcher pitched 10 more innings at about the same quality.

Just for the heck of it, though, let's take a look at the rest of Martinez's stats. He had 9.93 K/9IP, 2.27 BB/9IP and just 0.34 HR/9IP. Batters hit .291 when they put the ball in play against him, but they still posted just a .271 OBP and a .314 SLG. He had a 1.76 ERA during the day, a 1.57 ERA on the road and a 0.82 ERA in September. He had an ERA below 1.50 against seven of the 14 teams he faced.

Still, even with all of those impressive numbers, he was just the second-best pitcher in the AL this season.

1. Tim Hudson, SP, OAK

Hudson had a 2.70 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, 6.08 K/9IP, 2.29 BB/9IP and 0.56 HR/9IP in 240 innings. He made 26 quality starts out of 34 starts and averaged 7.06 innings per start. He made 13 starts against teams that scored at least 5 runs per game and just six starts against teams that scored fewer than 4.5 runs per game.

He probably got helped by his park (he had a 3.30 ERA on the road) and he probably got helped by his defense (batters hit just .253 on balls in play), but he was still the best pitcher in the AL in my eyes.

He only had a 16-7 record, but the A's went 26-8 in the games he started. Since both stats rely heavily on what the team's offense and bullpen do, I don't see how either one if more valuable than the other. Halladay had a much more impressive 22-7 record, but the Blue Jays only went 26-10 when Halladay started.

When you compare Hudson to Martinez the same way I did with Halladay, it comes out a lot better for Hudson than it did for Halladay. Hudson pitched 53.1 more innings than Martinez, while allowing 26 more runs (4.39 ERA). When you replace their innings with average pitcher innings, they both save about the same number of runs, although Martinez is able to save his runs in a much shorter span of time.

Basically, it comes down to this -- would you rather have the unreal pitcher who can't always take the mound every fifth day and who needs to turn things over to the bullpen early in most games or the very good pitcher who can take the mound every time it's his turn and who usually pitches deep into the game? I'd rather have the latter.

In the time that I've been writing this post, the actual winner was announced and it was Halladay. He was one of the three pitchers who I said I wouldn't be upset about winning, so I'm fine with this announcement. However, the fact that Halladay won and Loaiza came in second shows that the BBWAA still mostly cares about wins, which is a shame.

Change of plans

As you may have noticed, the Rookie of the Year awards have been announced. The BBWAA got the AL right, but probably for the wrong reasons, and completely screwed up the NL.

In case you haven't checked yet, Angel Berroa edged Hideki Matsui for the AL award in the closest vote ever. Both players were left off of two ballots (two writers from each of the 14 AL cities voted for three rookies each). My guess is that the two writers who left Matsui off did so because they thought players with as much experience as him should not be considered, while the two writers who left Berroa off probably did so because they really thought he was not one of the top three rookies.


In the NL, Dontrelle Willis won the award rather easily. In my post about the NL award, I said that Brandon Webb should be a unanimous winner, but probably won't be. However, while I'm not surprised that he didn't get even close to all 32 first-place votes, I am surprised that he wasn't on all 32 ballots. In fact, he was left entirely off seven ballots.

There were three NL rookies who were so far above the rest of the field as to render any discussion about the rest of the rookies in the league pretty meaningless. Those three were Webb, Scott Podsednik and Willis, in that order. Podsednik got the second-place finish that he deserved, but Webb got shafted.

I talked about Webb's qualifications for winning the award at length on Friday, so I won't belabor the point here. The BBWAA colossally screws up at least one award every year, and this is one of those cases. Hopefully, this is as colossal as their screw-ups get, but I wouldn't bet on it.

The order for the AL was Berroa, Matsui, Rocco Baldelli, Jody Gerut and Mark Teixeira. Since that's the exact order I would have put them in, I'm not going to make a post about the AL rookies like I originally planned.

The next award I'll discuss is the AL Cy Young. I'll try to have it up either late tonight, or tomorrow before the award is announced.

A good read

Over at Rich's Weekend Baseball BEAT, Richard Lederer has a very good interview with Lee Sinins, creater of the Sabremetric Baseball Encyclopedia and the Around The Majors reports. Head on over and give it a read if you haven't already.

I'll have my choices for the AL Rookie of the Year award up some time this afternoon, so stop by later to check that out.

NL Rookie of the Year

Okay, I'm finally getting around to my choices for the Rookie of the Year awards. I'll give my top five for the NL today and I hope to give my top five for the AL by the end of the weekend.

5. Jae Weong Seo, SP, NYM

Seo gets the fifth spot by being a little bit better in just about every category than Atlanta SP Horacio Ramirez. Seo had a 3.82 ERA and 1.27 WHIP in 188.1 innings while Ramirez had a 4.00 ERA and 1.39 WHIP in 182.1 innings.

Seo had 5.26 strikeouts per nine innings, 2.20 walks per nine innings and 0.86 home runs allowed per nine innings this year. Ramirez was worse in all three categories with 4.94 K/9IP, 3.55 BB/9IP and 1.04 HR/9IP.

Ramirez did pitch longer in the games he started, but I don't think it's a big enough difference to make up for the fact that Seo was a better when he was on the mound. Ramirez averaged 6.29 innings in his 29 starts, while Seo averaged 5.91 innings in his 31 starts. Each pitcher had 17 quality starts.

Neither pitcher was tremendous and there wasn't a whole lot of difference between the two of them (they both had around nine win shares), but I like Seo's body of work better than Ramirez's, so I'm giving him the fifth spot.

4. Marlon Byrd, CF, PHI

It looked like this might be a lost season for Byrd. He was hitting very poorly when he got hurt in mid-April and then he was even worse in May after he returned. However, he was excellent in June and July, not bad in August and pretty good in September.

He finished the year hitting .303 with a .366 OBP and a .418 SLG for a .784 OPS. He hit 28 doubles, four triples and seven home runs. He walked 44 times while striking out 94 times and he scored 86 runs while driving in 45. He also stole 11 bases in 12 attempts (91.7-percent success rate) and appears to have played a pretty good defensive center field.

His .284 EqA, 74.3 EqR and 26.9 RARP put him in the middle of the pack of NL center fielders. If he had just been average, instead of awful, in April and May he might have warranted a spot in the top three among NL rookies. Instead, he's just fourth, which is a lot better than it looked like he'd do after those first two months.

3. Dontrelle Willis, SP, FLA

Willis burst onto the scene with that amazing streak of great starts from late May through early July and most people gave him the NL Rookie of the Year award right there and then. However, he wore down as the season wore on and he's not only not the Rookie of the Year, he's not even the runner up.

Willis finished the season with a 3.30 ERA and 1.28 WHIP in 160.2 innings. That ERA's pretty nice, but the WHIP isn't all that impressive and he didn't pitch quite enough for my liking. He had 7.95 K/9IP, 3.25 BB/9IP and 0.73HR/9IP. All of those are pretty good marks, but they still don't get him into the top two.

Despite all of Willis' impressive starts, he only had 16 quality starts in the 27 games he started and he only averaged 5.95 innings per start. He has a World Series ring and a nice future, but he wasn't one of the two best rookies in the NL this season, charisma and funky delivery bedamned.

2. Scott Podsednik, CF, MIL

Podesdnik came completely out of nowhere this season to put up a season that would have drawn raves even if he wasn't a rookie. He hit for average (.314), showed good patience (.379 OBP) and had decent power (.443 SLG) for a nice .822 OPS.

He hit 29 doubles, eight triples and nine home runs. He scored 100 runs and drove in 58 from the leadoff spot while walking 56 times and striking out 91 times. He also stole 43 bases in 53 attempts (81.1-percent success rate).

Podsednik might not just have been the second-best rookie in the NL this season, he may have been the second-best center. He had a .292 EqA, 90.5 EqR and 35.6 RARP. That 35.6 number is lower than only Jim Edmonds among NL centerfielders. However, it's only barely ahead of Andruw Jones (35.3) and Jones probably makes up the difference with his defense.

Still, it's pretty impressive to be the third-best centerfielder in the league as a rookie, and most years it would be good enough to get you the Rookie of the Year award. This year, however, there was one player who was even more impressive.

1. Brandon Webb, SP, ARI

Webb was simply marvelous. He posted a 2.83 ERA and 1.15 WHIP in 180.2 innings. He had 8.57 K/9IP, 3.39 BB/9IP and 0.60 HR/9IP. He made 28 starts and 21 of them were quality starts. He also averaged 6.42 innings per start.

If it wasn't for his last two starts of the season (9 earned runs and 16 total runs in 8 innings), he probably would be deserving of a spot in the top five for the NL Cy Young Award. And if he was that good, then he was clearly the NL Rookie of the Year.

A lot of things I've seen referring to the Rookie of the Year talk about Webb and Willis, but it's not even remotely close. First of all, Webb has much better numbers across the board. Second of all, he put up those numbers in a good hitter's park while Willis was putting up his numbers in a good pitcher's park. Of all the runs scored in Arizona's baseball games this year, 54.9-percent of those runs were scored in their home games. Of all the runs scored in Florida's baseball games this year, 53.4-percent of those runs were scored in their road games.

So, Webb made half his starts in a park that severely inflated scoring while Willis made the majority of his starts in a park that severely deflated scoring, and Webb still finished with much better numbers. Willis had a 3.63 road ERA, while Webb had a 2.27 road ERA. Look at that last number again. Pitching in a neutral park, Webb's final numbers may have rivaled those of Pedro Martinez.

Not only should Webb win the NL Rookie of the Year award, it should be unanimous. It probably won't be, but it should be.

Some stuff

As he promised yesterday, Bryan Smith gave his own opinion today on what will happen in Boston this off-season. If you missed it, yesterday was the Wait 'Til Next Year organizational meeting on the Red Sox. Bryan asked me and Jeff Kuhn of The House That Dewey Built nine questions and we both gave our answers. If you haven't already, go see what we had to say (make sure you have time available though, because my answers are a bit long).

Also, here the link to my fantasy football column for this week:

Fantasy football: Top busts so far

Finally, I will have a Rookie of the Year post up at some point this afternoon, so come on back later and check it out.

Required reading

I hope you'll all forgive me for not writing anything here yesterday, because I was spending most of the day writing for another blog. As I've mentioned before, Wail 'Til Next Year is holding Organizational Meetings with other bloggers this off-season. Today's meeting is on the Boston Red Sox and he asked me to give my thoughts on a number of questions.

Please go give it a read because I spent a lot of time working on it. Unfortunately, I'm also going to have to take today off from blogging. I need to write my fantasy column and I haven't even started looking at things for this week, so I'm a little behind. I promise I'll make my post on the Rookie of the Year awards some time, hopefully tomorrow.

An important trade

As you've probably heard, the Astros traded Billy Wagner to the Phillies yesterday. In exchange, the Astros got starting pitcher Brandon Duckworth and minor leaguers Taylor Buchholz and Ezequeil Astacio. So, I'm going to delay my Rookie of the Year choices and talk about what this means for Philadelphia and Houston, and what it might mean for some other teams.

Obviously, Philadelphia is getting one hell of a relief pitcher. Over the last three years, he's posted a 2.29 ERA, 0.95 WHIP, 10.94 K/9IP, 2.62 BB/9IP and 0.80 HR/9IP in 223.2 innings. He also has 118 saves over those three seasons, but that's not nearly as important as the other numbers I just listed.

Basically, Wagner is one of the five best relievers in baseball right now. I don't think the "closer" role is a great thing the way it is used by most teams. However, if you are going to use a strict closer, as most teams do, it's much better to have one of the five best relievers in baseball doing that job than it is to have Jose Mesa or Mike Williams doing that job. Even with Mesa and Williams combining for a 6.35 ERA in 83.2 innings, Philadelphia's bullpen still had a very respectable 3.72 ERA this season. With Wagner now in the mix, the Phillies bullpen could be among the best in the majors.

Let me give you an example of how good Philedelphia's bullpen could be if every reliever who pitched for the Phillies besides Mesa and Williams is back and does about what they did this year. Wagner pitched 86 innings this season, Mesa and Williams pitched 83.2 for the Phillies. If you substitute Mesa and Williams' performance with the Phillies with Wagner's performance with the Astros, then the Phillies bullpen would have had a 2.91 ERA. Obviously you can't assume that everything else would have stayed the same with Wagner there instead of Mesa and Williams, but you can see the potential difference Wagner's presence makes.

It's a good thing that the Phillies have a potentially dominant bullpen, because they also have a very questionable starting rotation for next season so far. Five starting pitchers combined to start 150 of Philadelphia's 162 games this season and it looks like two of them will not be back.

Duckworth started 18 games and was not all that good, posting a 4.94 ERA and 1.53 WHIP in 93 innings. He will obviously be pitching for the Houston Astros in 2004. Kevin Millwood started 35 games and was not as good as the Phillies hoped he would be, posting a 4.01 ERA and 1.25 WHIP in 222 innings. He is a free agent and it does not sound like he'll be returning to Philedelphia in 2004.

That means Philadelphia's starting rotation will be Randy Wolf, Vicente Padilla and Brett Myers along with two players who are unknown at this time. Padilla, Wolf and Myers are all fine pitchers. They combined for a 4.08 ERA and a 1.32 WHIP in 601.2 innings last year, which isn't a bad way to fill three-fifths of your starting rotation. But none of them is going to be a staff ace.

Millwood was the staff ace in name, but he really didn't perform like a staff ace. Duckworth won't be around next year, but he was never going to turn into a staff ace either. The only reason this trade might have an adverse affect on next year's starting rotation is that Wagner makes $9-million in 2004, which is $9-million of the Phillies budget that now can't go toward signing an ace starting pitcher.

Phillies GM Ed Wade said tha Phillies still have flexibility to go get a starter, but there aren't many top-notch starters available and there are going to be other teams bidding for the services of those top-notch pitchers. I'm not saying Wagner won't help the Phillies, I'm just saying that the bullpen wasn't Philadelphia's most pressing need. The Phillies bullpen ERA of 3.72 was eighth in the NL and it would have been better if Philadelphia's worst relievers hadn't been allowed to pitch so many innings.

Wagner will help the team win games next year for sure, but if his arrival means that the Phillies are unable to sign a top-notch pitcher that they otherwise would have been able to sign, then this trade might not be a good thing for them.

The other team that is obviously directly effected by this trade is Houston. The Astros probably had the best bullpen in the National League this year. Technically, their bullpen ERA of 3.22 was second to LA's 2.46, but Houston plays half it's games in a park that's great for hitters and LA plays half its games in a park that's great for pitchers.

The Astros will miss Wagner next year, but they will not miss him as much as a team that doesn't have Octavio Dotel and Brad Lidge would miss its best reliever. Dotel had a 2.48 ERA and 0.97 WHIP in 87 innings this year and Lidge had a 3.60 ERA and 1.20 WHIP in 85 innings. Both of them are also flamethrowers, as Dotel struck out 10.03 batters per nine innings and Lidge bested him with 10.27 K/9IP. Lidge was a rookie and his 5.46 post All-Star break ERA suggests that he may have gotten tired toward the end of the season, so he may be even better next year.

The big question is whether Dotel will become Houston's new closer or whether the Astros will entrust that job to Lidge. If we were just working with names on a sheet of paper, it probably wouldn't matter because they're both good pitchers and they should both be able to succeed as either the closer or the main set-up man. Plus, we all know that closers are overrated because of the stupid saves statistic anyway. Right?

Well, kind of. The problem is that we're not just working with names on a sheet of paper. Dotel has been Wagner's excellent set-up man for three years in a row and he's probably been able to deal with the fact that he was not "the man" because Wagner was already established as a tremendous closer. However, if the Astros decide to bypass Dotel and install Lidge as the closer, I don't think Dotel would be very happy about it and it might -- I obviously can't say for sure -- hurt his performance. Just because that's even a remote possibility, I'd name Dotel the new closer right now. Lidge would have no problem with it because he's still a young player and Dotel would be happy that his performance has been rewarded with the job he's probably felt he could do all along.

The big question about this trade is what Houston's intentions were when making the trade. Was it just a salary dump because the Astros didn't want to spend as much money in 2004? Or, were the Astros freeing up money to go after a free agent?

If the latter is the case, then this trade may end up effecting the New York Yankees, which would have a domino effect on a lot of other teams. The reason being, of course, that Andy Pettitte can become a free agent this winter and he has let it be known that he might enjoy pitching in his home state of Texas. As you probably know, Houston is in Texas and could use another starting pitcher.

If Houston signs Pettitte several things will happen. First, Houston will be a very good team next year. The Astros would have a starting rotation that includes Pettitte, Roy Oswalt and Wade Miller, a bullpen that includes Lidge and Dotel and a lineup that includes Jeff Kent, Jeff Bagwell and Lance Berman.

Second, the Yankees would need to fill at least one spot in their starting rotation, and probably at least two. The only sure things for New York's starting rotation at the moment are Mike Mussina and Jose Contreras. Jeff Weaver might be given another shot and the team is hoping that Jon Lieber will turn out to be useful.

Third, the Yankees, now needing to fill at least one spot in the starting rotation, would go after at least one of Millwood, Bartolo Colon and Javier Vazquez. If the Yankees were already planning on trying to acquire one of those three pitchers, then they would probably try to acquire two of them if they lost Pettitte.

Fourth, those pitchers prices would go up as there would know be more teams interested in them, including the biggest spender of them all. Teams that might have had a shot at one of the top-notch pitchers might turn their attention to the second tier pitchers instead, which might raise those pitchers' prices as well.

It will be interesting to see how everything plays out and I, for one, hope it's not just a cost-cutting move by the Astros. I hope they give the Yankees a run for their money for Pettitte and turn the off-season all upside down. Why?

Because not all of the GMs in baseball are as smart as the rest. Some of them have some money set aside that they plan on spending on a certain player(s). If they miss out on that player (or players), they don't always sit back and re-evaluate how best to use that money. Sometimes, they just turn around and offer it to somebody else, even if that somebody else isn't as deserving as the previous somebody.

So, when unexpected things happen to the free agent pool, it benefits the teams that have very smart GMs (like Boston).

Managers of the Year

Time for my top three choices for Manager of the Year in each league. This isn't going to be terribly in-depth because there just aren't a lot of stats I can use to evaluate the managers. Anyway, I'll start with the AL.

3. Carlos Tosca, TOR

In his first full season as manager of the Blue Jays, Tosca proved that you can be successful as a major league manager even if you have never played professional baseball. The Blue Jays finished 86-76 this season -- eight games better than they did last year -- for their sixth straight third-place finish in the AL East.

Tosca also showed that he's receptive to trying new things as the Blue Jays very rarely bunted (with Bille Beane disciple J.P. Ricciardi in the GM's office) and ace pitcher Roy Halladay worked on three days rest three times with outstanding results (0.78 ERA, 0.43 WHIP, 16 strikeouts and no walks in 23 innings).

Toronto also did about what its run differential said it should, so there's no reason to think Tosca may have cost them wins with poor decisions in crucial situations.

2. Ron Gardenhire, MIN

Gardenhire made some very questionable decisions (like giving Christian Guzman and Luis Rivas a combined 568 plate appearances in the second spot in the lineup), but he did lead a team that was 44-49 at the All-Star break to the best post All-Star record in the majors and a division title.

Although it took some time, Gardenhire gave Bobby Kielty a good amount of playing time when he was hot and he eventually moved Johan Santana into the rotation, where he thrived.

Also, the Twins were five games better than their Pythagorean projection this season. That's probably more attributable to luck than to anything Gardenhire did, but it's definitely not a bad sign for a manager.

1. Tony Pena, KC

This is pretty simple. The Royals went 62-100 last year and improved to 83-79 this year. You turn a 100-loss team into a winning team, and you get the Manager of the Year award, it's that simple.

Pena's job is even more impressive when you consider that Carlos Beltran missed 21 games and Mike Sweeney missed 54 games. Also, Kansas City had to use 15 different starting pitchers and only two players on the entire team pitched more than 100 innings (and only one pitched more than 130 innings).

Rob Neyer said a few times that some of Pena's strange decisions late in the year may have cost the Royals a chance to really jump into the division race, but the fact that they were even in the race at all is a testament to Pena. Also, everybody expected the Royals to fall apart everytime they went on a bit of a losing skid and Pena kept them believing in themselves and always got them back on track.

Now, on to the NL.

3. Bobby Cox, ATL

It's easy to overlook the job that Bobby Cox does because he's now lead the Braves to six 100-win seasons in the 11 full seasons he's been there. After winning on great pitching and just enough hitting for all those seasons, Cox took the Braves to another division title with great hitting and just enough pitching this season.

Cox and Leo Mazzone once again cobbled together a relatively effective bullpen (3.98 ERA was sixth in the NL) and pushed enough correct buttons to once again win the NL East easily despite most people predicting that this was the year their run would end.

2. Dusty Baker, CHC

Any other year and Baker probably would deserve the NL Manager of the Year award. He took over a Cubs team that lost 95 games last year and led it to 88 wins and a division title this season. He guided the team through some injuries, the corked bat incident and a very close, three-team race.

His continued disdain for younger players (positionally, at least) is somewhat troubling, but the team improved by 21 games and you can't ask for much more than that.

1. Jack McKeon, FLA

McKeon took over a 16-22 team that was missing its ace pitcher and led it to a 75-49 record the rest of the way and the NL wild card. He didn't appear to make any really stupid decisions as far as playing time goes and he obviously did something right to get the Marlins to go on that amazing run (which was amazing even before they went on to win the World Series).

Well, that's all I have for the Manager of the Year awards. Sorry it's not more interesting. I'll do the Rookie of the Year awards next, which should be more fun.

It's not that we don't want you, it's just...

So, nobody claimed Manny Ramirez and he will remain with the Red Sox for the time being. Boston now has two options: keep him or trade him. Unlike some people, I don't think there will be any problems if the Red Sox decide to keep Ramirez.

He's still a great hitter, he's just not worth that much money for that many years. Also, it sounds like he and his agent initiated the idea of trying to get Ramirez out of Boston, so they shouldn't be offended that the Red Sox put him on waivers. Jeff Moorad even said that he was pleased that the Red Sox were trying to facilitate Manny's desire to play for the Yankees.

Plus, Manny has always been a headcase and he's often been reported to be unhappy and he's still always hit well. If he remains with Boston for next season, I won't expect him to perform any differently than he has during his first three years with the team.

That said, the Red Sox are still trying to gain more financial flexibility and they would probably still like to rid themselves of Manny's contract. That can now only be done via trade and only if the Red Sox pay part of Manny's contract. The quality of the player(s) the Red Sox get in return would depend on how much of the contract they're willing to eat.

I said several times during the World Series that I thought the Red Sox might undergo a massive overhaul this off-season and placing Ramirez on waivers has done nothing to convince me otherwise. I think they will try to trade him, but they're not going to take on somebody else's bloated contract.

This story isn't over yet and it will be interesting to see how it plays out over the next two or three months. I'll try to give my opinion this weekend on what trades we could potentially see.