Crooked Pitch

Brad Ausmus is starting again in place of JR Towles today, specifically because Cooper doesn’t want to “overwhelm” JR with having to catch Houston’s one good pitcher. This despite the fact that JR homered the day before, and is a much better hitter today than Ausmus was when he broke into the bigs 48 years ago. Well the move is already starting to pay dividends for everyone else.

Ausmus had runners on the corners with none out in the 1^st, and a nice 3-1 count on Jason Marquis. And a drum roll please… Houston fans you’ve won another 1-4-3 double play! Brad the Impaler crushed it all the way back to the pitcher, who proceeded to turn two - even after initially hesitating towards 3^rd base.

Woah, but we’re not done yet. Top of the 8^th and the Astros have pulled to within 8-7. Two outs and the tying run on first. Time for Cecil to pinch-hit for Ausmus with JR, who can actually hit homers. What…ah… wait it looks like Cecil’s going to leave Brad in to hit against Carlos Marmol. 2 strikes… what’s it going to be… there it goes… it’s a screaming dribbler towards 3^rd! Ausmus is booking it down the line! So close… actually it looks like they got him by 4 steps. Rally over! Inning over! Game over!

Cecil Cooper, we hardly knew ya’
photo credit: AlphaTangoBravo / Adam Baker

If I see one more mainstream article about how Carols Gomez and Michael Bourn are going to steal 60 bases this year, I might just have to trade Chris Young or Justin Upton for one of them.

Or not.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t win most of the fantasy leagues I play in. But, if you’re playing with good competition, you shouldn’t win your leagues any more often than an MLB team wins the World Series or a poker pro like Dan Harrington wins the WSOP. Good competition breeds parity, but consistency still exists. I consider good fantasy owners to be more like the Harrington’s of the world, consistently finishing in the top 3rd of their leagues, sometimes winning and sometimes not. Always giving themselves a chance to win, but never bottoming out.

Carlos Gomez has a very real chance of bottoming out this year. Michael Bourn has an even greater chance. I say that not because I have this Karabell-esque 6th sense and just feel like its going to happen, but because the evidence just trends in that direction. Gomez had 8 walks in 139 at-bats last year with the Mets. Now that he’ll be facing guys like Justin Verlander, C.C. Sabiatha, Fausto Carmona and Jeremy Bonderman 3 times a month to say nothing of guys like Wang, Hughes, Kazmir, Beckett, Halladay and Bedard the chances of him increasing his short-term walk rate against elite MLB pitching is a tall order. It won’t be long before MLB teams get a book on him, and AL pitchers will eat him alive. He might do well against mediocre pitching and mediocre defenses, but he won’t see enough of either in the AL Central.

Bourn’s chances for success are even slimmer. He’s four year’s older than Gomez, doesn’t have the former’s pedigree, is 160 lbs soaking wet, and can’t slug a lick. His walk rates are decent, but because he can’t whack the little round orb with authority, don’t expect him to maintain that walk rate in the show. Why not?

Because MLB pitchers know that Bourn can’t hurt them with the bat, so there’s no reason not to throw him more strikes. They’ll start to challenge him more and more, knowing that he can’t do much damage when he takes his toothpick of his shoulder. He might get his 60 steals by virtue of getting 650 at bats as the leadoff hitter on a craptastic team destined for nowhere, but even if he does what has your team accomplished? An extra 5 points worth of steals and maybe +2 in runs? The only upside is that you might be able to flip him to another team who thinks they need steals. The downside is that he doesn’t get on base enough to get the steals, and you could spend half-a-season waiting for them.

These two guys are examples of very high risk, medium-reward type players. They could get to 60 steals if only because they’re almost guaranteed not to lose their jobs no matter how terrible their hitting gets. But why risk it? 60 steals for 600 at bats of a .250 AVG, .325 OBP, and maybe a .350 slugging? One category of good for three categories of awful. Just like a 2nd catcher, these guys will drag down your overall stats like an anchor.

You’re in a fantasy league that uses statistics to measure success. You should be using statistics to measure the potential of success as well. Whatever’s happening in the major leagues right now is too small a sample size to mean anything. It’s all a mirage, like Matt Holliday’s 1 for 14 start. If you want to see a real projection of what players have a chance of doing this year, you need to stop reading guys like Karabell and Olney and start reading guys like Sheehan and Silver. Actually, I take that back. Its not that you shouldn’t read mainstream media I read lots of it every day and I especially enjoy Olney’s stuff - it’s just that you shouldn’t put too much stock in predictions that aren’t based on statistical evidence or scouts evaluations.

Are you looking for an impact fantasy player? The one with the greatest immediate upside? Then go read something like Baseball Prospectus, read their analysis and study their projections. Go to Google News and type in a player you want to find out more about. See if you can find local articles on them, many of which don’t make the wire. And look high and low for what scouts are saying not GM’s, other players, or for God’s sake sportswriters and us bloggers. We can toss out names of future stars and breakout bandits like the rain and wish cast any numbers we want, but if you want to really find out what a player’s capable of for your fantasy team start with the mainstream to get an idea, and then seek out the experts before you drink any more of Karabell’s Kool-Aid..

People talk about the Juan Pierre signing being the worst in history (and its certainly worth consideration), but the Barry Zito signing just has to blow it out of the water.

I’m no Sabean, but you’d think he’d have a big ol’ document solely focused on “future rosters”, where he has his players under contract, when they’re rolling off, what free agents are available and in what years, what in-house prospects are expected to hit the bigs, etc. Those lists would change over time, but then at any given moment you’d be able to see what your current in-house roster would look like (roughly) and what FA targets would be available to fill in the gaps.

So, assuming Sabean has more than a one-year plan (he must, right?), then how could he not see this 100 loss team coming? How could he not see that when signed Zito, Molina, Roberts, Durham, et al in 2006, this would be most likely be his best lineup in 2008? I know you can’t predict rosters exactly, but I’m sure Sabean can get close since he has the time and resources.

I’d love to see an exercise where someone at a big site like Baseball Prospectus goes back to the day that Zito was signed and plays the game we all call *Sabeanomics*. That is, take the Giants roster on the day Zito was signed, and the $ you were going to spend on Zito, don’t use it on Zito, and see what kind of roster you could put together for two-years-hence, 2008. I’d almost have to believe that anybody…ANYBODY…could put together a roster that produces a lineup that’s just as good as the one the Giants played yesterday. Quick and dirty…

Ted Lilly for 4 years and 40 million.
Gil Meche for 5 years and 55 million.
Aubrey Huff for 3 years and 20 million.

(Boy 126 million just ain’t worth what it used to be)

Now granted, their lineup now would still be crap. And I only took a quick look at the 2006 FA list. But in Lilly and Meche, you’d have two tradeable assets at the 2008 deadline. And if Im Sabean, and I know that when Bonds leaves my team is going to suck, why not sign pitchers in 2006 that I know I can trade in 2008 when Bonds leaves and the Giants pretend to contend for 3 months. Hell who knows, with Cain, Lincecum, Lilly and Meche all pitching in SF, your team might not even be that bad?

I mean, the Giants don’t even have one single flippin’ player in their lineup who gets drafted in a standard 5×5 Yahoo or ESPN fantasy league. That’s gotta be a record. And no…Aaron Rowand’s mom doesn’t count…
photo credit: mbonocore