September 18, 2010

            At some point I am going to have to explain what is really going on behind the curtain here.  As today’s contests are perhaps a little bit lackluster, maybe today would be a good day to start that.

            Essentially, there are two metrics in play here—a dominant one and a recessive one.  The dominant metric is Win Shares and Loss Shares.  The recessive Metric is a series of category rankings of the players, one through 66, in things like Isolated Power, Speed Score, Walk Frequency, Career Games Played, etc.

            I am explaining the results of the games in terms of the recessive metric—but the outcomes are largely determined by the dominant one.   It is a kind of a sleight of hand; I am using a system that doesn’t really determine the winner to explain the wins and losses. 

            I am doing it this way to avoid telegraphing the next round of games.   A writer does not usually tell you, in the first chapter, how the story is going to end.   It’s bad for business.   If I told you that Player X had a Win Shares Value of 120 and that Player Y was only a tiny bit better than Player X, you would know that Player Y was DOA in the second round.   I don’t want you to know that.  I am explaining the results in terms that are sort-of relevant but sort-of irrelevant in order avoid revealing the plot.

            Of course, the two lines of analysis, in most cases, are almost the same.   If I had one set of outcomes based on the Win Shares Value and the other set based on the Category Rankings method, at least 80% of them would be the same.   When they are not the same, I tag that as an “overtime” game, even though this is awkward because it is not clear how a game can be “played” in eight categories with an overtime when there is no ninth category.   What up with that?

            But I figure. . .a basketball game has arbitrary elements.   Some guy goes up against an All-American point guard and humiliates him by hitting 8 threes, it doesn’t REALLY mean that he’s better than the All-American.   It just means that he had a good day.

            In our system, the better player has to win; the better candidate has to move on.   But whether he wins 87-86 or 91-40. . .maybe he’s just having a good day. There is a set of formulas that determines the score, but you can’t reverse-engineer it and figure out how the scores are actually being determined, because I’m not giving you enough facts to work with.  The score doesn’t necessarily reflect the real distance between the players, even though it often does or usually does.   I’ll explain more later.   Thanks.   Bill

Matt Williams 64, Melvin Mora 52

            Matt Williams, trailing 36-24 at halftime, won all four second-half events to claim a 64-52 victory over hometown favorite Melvin Mora, the #13 seed in the Baltimore regional.   Williams’ largest advantages were in defense and career length. 

            Williams’ career OPS was .806; Mora’s is .786, but it’s a case where the OPS is misleading because one point of slugging percentage really is not worth as much as one point of on base percentage.   Mora’s batting average is ten points higher than Williams’ (.278 to .268), and he also walked much more (not that he walked much, but Williams was a non-walker), giving Mora a 36-point advantage in on-base percentage (.353 to .317), which is the more important of the two.  But Mora, although a competent enough fielder—we have him with a defensive won-lost record of 29-24--was never in Williams’ class with the glove.

            Jimmy Collins will play Charlie Hayes tomorrow, and Matt Williams will face the winner of that contest on Friday, September 24.

Zimmerman Upsets Parrish

            Twelfth-seeded Heinie Zimmerman, a Ty Cobb era player banned from baseball for involvement with the fixing of games, has upset fifth-seeded Larry Parrish by a 68 to 61 score.   Befitting a contrast of players from different eras, none of the eight areas of the judging was close.   Parrish won four areas by lop-sided margins (Power, Plate Discipline, Career Length and Awards), and Zimmerman won four by lop-sided margins (Hitting for Average, Defense, Speed, and Team Success.)

            Zimmerman will face Bob Elliott on September 23^rd in his second-round matchup. 

            As an offensive player, Parrish was very much in the Brooks Robinson mold—slow, right-handed, .320 on base percentage, could drive in 100 runs in a good year.   As a third baseman, he was not Brooks Robinson. 

            Signed as a non-drafted free agent by the Expos in 1972, Parrish made the majors before his 21^st birthday.  Somebody asked me recently how it happened that Claudell Washington, a very talented player, went undrafted in 1972.   I had to tell him that I don’t know, but here’s a similar story:  both Washington and Parrish were signed as undrafted free agents in 1972, but both made the majors at a very young age in 1974, and both had long careers.  I’m not sure of this, so don’t quote me: I was in the Army at the time this happened.    I am speculating for the purpose of providing direction for research.  I think there was a glitch in the draft eligibility rules that surfaced at about this time, that a high school player could dodge the draft—thus making himself a free agent—by graduating from high school off-schedule at the last moment.

            In any case Parrish was a major league regular at age 21, and by 1979—aged 25—was a highly productive hitter.   By 1981, however, the Expos had come up with another player in the Brooks Robinson mold—Tim Wallach—who was much better defensively at third base than Parrish was.  Parrish became a free agent, and signed with Texas.

            Texas had another player in this class—Buddy Bell—who was also far better than Parrish at third base.   Parrish, who had a very strong arm, moved to right field.   His range in right field was limited—he was slow—but his arm was outstanding.  He played 1000 games in his career at third base, only 400 in the outfield, but he never really did get back to third base; by the time Bell left Texas Parrish was too old to go back to third full-time.  He was a decent player, with won-lost records of 23-7, 18-14 and 18-14, and he drove in 100 runs several times.

Larry Parrish—Career Wins and Losses

Show Me D. Money

            Don Money, seeded 6^th in the St. Louis regional, advanced to the second round with a hard-won 69-66 victory over Aramis Ramirez.    Money will face Todd Zeile in St. Louis on September 23.

            Money used steady, across-the-board performance to overcome Ramirez’ advantages in batting average (.282 to .261) and home runs (286 to 176).   Money was much faster than Ramirez, walked more, had a longer career, and played better defense.

            “Aramis is a really good player,” said legendary sports analyst Sigmund Roth.   “He’s the best third baseman the Cubs have had since Santo.   He was a .700 player for six years; that’s a very outstanding level of performance.   I think this was a case where, if Aramis had had another year, he would have caught and passed Money, certainly if he had had another good year.  Aramis has driven in 100 runs five times.   If he makes it six, he moves up.”

            One thing that I had not realized until now is that there was a “1998 crop” of these Brooks-Robinson type players—good ones.    Aramis Ramirez, Troy Glaus, Adrian Beltre and Mike Lowell all came to the majors late in the season in 1998.   There are others close to that, too—Melvin Mora in 1999—but that’s a pretty good cluster of players.

Aramis Ramirez—Career Wins and Losses

Adrian Beltre 87, Kevin Seitzer 84

            Adrian Beltre, battling even with Kevin Seitzer through the first seven categories, was given a 7-4 advantage in the “Success of Teams” category, and outlasted the hitting coach, 87-84.   Beltre took a 23-4 lead early on based on his power (and Seitzer’s lack of power), but Seitzer got even based on hitting for a higher average and taking a lot more walks, and Seitzer led 45-44 at halftime.   Beltre pulled ahead on career length and defense, and finally won the game in the closing moments based on the success of his teams (a .579 team success percentage, vs. .481 for Seitzer). 

            Beltre in the second round will face the winner of Tuesday’s contest between Tim Wallach and Bob Aspromonte.

            I saw Kevin Seitzer play for a good part of his career.   He was a smallish athlete with very narrow shoulders, who was kind of a “magic wand” type of hitter; he had the ability to sit back on a pitch, swing late, and bring the bat head into solid contact with pitches that appeared to be past him.  He flipped the bat as much as he swung it.   His best season with the bat was his rookie season, 1987, when he hit .323 with 207 hits, 15 homers, 33 doubles, 83 RBI, 105 runs scored and 80 walks.   He had a very high on base percentage that year (.399) and in the two following seasons—1988, when he hit .304, and 1989, when he hit just .281 but drew 102 walks.    The Royals at that time—and since—have never respected on-base percentage, and what happens to a skill that is not respected?   It withers.   Seitzer’s on-base skills atrophied as long as he was with the Royals, and came back when he moved on to other teams.  His on-base percentage, which had reached the .330s, came back to .395 in 1995,  and .416 in 1997.   This gave him a huge advantage over Beltre in the areas of hitting for average and plate discipline.

             Seitzer replaced George Brett at third base for the Royals.   His big numbers as a rookie in 1987 inspired Royals fans to dream that he would step into Brett’s shoes as one of the league’s best hitters.   On some level this was never going to happen.   He wasn’t the athlete that Brett was.   Adrian Beltre is a far, far better athlete than Seitzer was.  Brett took charge of the game and commanded it; Seitzer reacted to it.  When he met Brett’s standards, as a rookie, he was setting himself up to be perceived as a failure after that.

            I have suggested in the past that, as Rafael Palmeiro represents the steroid era, perhaps we should reflect upon Will Clark as the other side of that, the player who elected not to become a steroid monster just to stay in the game, even though this cost him money and may ultimately cost him his place in Cooperstown.   Another way to look at that is Mark McGwire versus Kevin Seitzer.   Kevin Seitzer had one of the greatest rookie seasons of all time—but did not win the Rookie of the Year Award, because that was the year that Mark McGwire hit 49 homers, eleven more than the previous rookie record set way back in 1930.

            After 1987 both Seitzer and McGwire began to drift backward, fighting injuries, not hitting as well as they had when they were battling for the Rookie of the Year Award.   McGwire came out of that tailspin with the aid of androstenedione and other substances.  Seitzer—even more clearly than Clark—was a player who opted not to join in the chemical wonders parade, but to accept being pushed back in the line behind the players who did.   From 1989 to 1997, when Seitzer was being passed up by other players, that was happening in substantial measure because they were using steroids and he wasn’t.

            Another player in this tournament, Steve Buechele, has a son who is the third baseman on the Oklahoma Sooners baseball team.   Cameron Seitzer is his classmate and teammate; he hit .305 last year with 16 homers and 53 RBI.   Seitzer plays first because Buechele is a better third baseman, and Buechele also had even better hitting numbers last year.  However, I think that most people will tell you that Seitzer in the long run is going to be a better hitter than Buechele—as his father was.

Kevin Seitzer—Wins and Losses Summary

            In tomorrow’s matchups, Charlie Hayes (seeded 12^th) will have the pleasure of taking on Hall of Famer Jimmy Collins, Travis Fryman will meet Frank Malzone (6 vs. 11, Fryman being the 6), Harry Steinfeldt will be face another Hall of Famer, in Freddy Lindstrom (7-10), and Hubie Brooks will take on Mike Lowell (8-9).

            On Monday Harlond Clift (6) will face Doug Rader (11), Willie Jones (7) will oppose Bill Bradley (10), Pinky Whitney (8) will go up against Edgardo Alfonzo (9), and Buddy Bell will be heavily favored over Tom Brookens in the 1 vs. 16 event. 

            Eighteen players have now been eliminated from the tournament.   This is how those 18 players rate as defensive players; not overall, but based just on their defense: