Scoring Patterns and Winning Percentage

First and foremost, I have some good news: I will be the video intern for the Everett Aquasox this summer! Thank you to all who have been so supportive over the years. I’m excited for this opportunity, and I’m very grateful for the encouragement I’ve had along the way. I wrote most of this post before I got the job, so it’s still written from a very Rangers-centric perspective, but I will start incorporating Mariners material very soon. Anyway, on to baseball things.

Deciding when to lay down a sacrifice bunt is typically very context-dependent. If the context is “Ron Washington is my manager,” then the answer is usually yes, sacrifice as much as possible. Sabermetrics people will tell you that one of the most scarce resources in a baseball game is outs, and to give one away for free is usually a bad idea unless you have a really good reason. That reason is usually when a) there are no outs, b) there are runners on first and second, c) the bunter is terrible, d) the guy(s) behind the bunter are awesome, AND e) a single run will almost certainly win the game.

Ron Washington has a much looser definition of “really good reason”. He has called for a sacrifice with the Rangers down by 4. He’s called for a sacrifice with the Rangers up by 7. He’s called for a sacrifice in every inning from the 1st to the 14th. He likes sacrificing in a box, he likes sacrificing with a fox. He likes sacrificing in the rain, he likes sacrificing on a train. Have I made my point? Ron Washington calls for sac bunts too much, and it’s annoying.

Recently, Washington called for Elvis Andrus to lay down a bunt in the top of the first against Felix Doubront and the Red Sox with no outs and a runner on first. This is one of the WORST times to call for a sacrifice bunt, because Elvis is good, the baserunner situation is less than ideal, and a single run in the top of the first will almost certainly NOT hold up against a team like Boston. The sacrifice was successful, but the run failed to score and, more importantly, any chance at a big inning was greatly reduced by giving away a full third of our outs that inning.

As they say, if you play for a single run, that’s the most you’re going to get. Thinking about this little quip made me think of the saying that pitchers should always try to avoid “crooked numbers”.* The idea is, you’re inevitably going to get scored on sometimes, but if you can limit the damage, the game will still be within reach. Both of these sayings seem to indicate that teams should try to score in bunches, and try not to let their opponents do the same. Groundbreaking stuff, I know, but I wanted to know just how true these truisms were.

I wanted to know more about scoring patterns and how they related to win probabilities, but mostly I wanted to prove once and for all that Washington’s strategy of taking a single run as often as possible was sub-optimal. To do this, I looked at the box scores from every game from 2013, and tallied the W-L record of the team that scored in the most innings, the team that had the single biggest inning, and the team that recorded the most innings with crooked numbers. For example, if a team won 5-4 by scoring 5 in one inning while their opponent scored 1 in each of four different innings, the “Most Innings” team would get a loss, the “Biggest Inning” team would get a win, and the “Most Crooked Numbers” team would get a win.

Before we start, I will offer up the caveat that this data will not be particularly useful for in-game strategy decisions, because the context of the specific game will almost always outweigh the overarching trend. This should be filed more under the category of “thought experiment” than “game-revolutionizer”. Okay. Without further ado…

As you would expect, the winning percentage in all three categories was quite high since, in a vacuum, winning any of those categories is decidedly better than losing it. There were also quite a few ties, but I just threw them out, because I think the wins and losses tell a complete story already, and it would only get muddled by trying to figure out the fairest way to allocate the ties. I only even bring it up because it explains the difference in the number of games in each category.

Surprisingly (to me at least), Wash’s strategy of playing to score at least one in as many innings as possible, at the expense of some big innings, seems to be more successful than the strategy of forgoing a single run to preserve a better shot at scoring four or five at once. However, the MOST effective strategy is to go for “Most Crooked Numbers”, which makes sense if you think about it. It’s really just a combination of the other two: you score often and in bunches, and that’s tough to beat.

It turns out it is good to score as often as possible, but it’s best if you can push across more than one at a time. So if Wash can at least MODIFY his bunting strategy to only do it in situations with multiple runners on base, then he’ll be playing to score two every inning, and he can shift from being a “Most Innings” guy to a “Most Crooked Numbers” guy. And I know, it’s only a 1.4% difference, but if you can be 1.4% better, you should do it. If the Rangers had been 1.4% better last year, they would have won two more games. That’s the difference between hosting the wild card game and hosting the play-in game for the right to visit Cleveland for the wild card game.

Baseball is a long season, and little things add up. The best teams are usually the ones who make the most of the opportunities they get.

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*Because the number 1 is a straight line. And 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. aren’t. Get it?**

**I want to meet the pitcher that gives up 11 in an inning and then brags about avoiding crooked numbers

A Second Note on Streaks

If you didn’t see my first post on this topic, you can find the full post here, but the gist was this: teams do not experience a statistically significant increase in winning percentage following wins, nor do they experience a lower winning percentage following a loss. However, a helpful reader pointed out quite correctly that one win or loss does not a streak make. 

His suggestion was to redo the study, only taking into account instances in which a team has won or lost at least three games in a row. So I did!

Team	Win %	W Streak %	L Streak %	W Diff	L Diff
Cleveland	0.420	0.300	0.290	-0.120	-0.130
Atlanta	0.580	0.583	0.500	0.003	-0.080
Kansas City	0.444	0.267	0.385	-0.177	-0.059
Arizona	0.500	0.444	0.444	-0.056	-0.056
CHC	0.377	0.375	0.326	-0.002	-0.051
LAD	0.531	0.500	0.500	-0.031	-0.031
Cincinnati	0.599	0.688	0.571	0.089	-0.028
Boston	0.426	0.533	0.400	0.107	-0.026
NYM	0.457	0.368	0.433	-0.089	-0.024
Houston	0.340	0.429	0.319	0.089	-0.021
Seattle	0.463	0.688	0.444	0.225	-0.019
Pittsburgh	0.488	0.438	0.476	-0.051	-0.012
San Francisco	0.580	0.400	0.571	-0.180	-0.009
Colorado	0.395	0.545	0.389	0.150	-0.006
Texas	0.574	0.583	0.571	0.009	-0.003
Miami	0.426	0.500	0.429	0.074	0.003
Washington	0.605	0.545	0.615	-0.060	0.010
Toronto	0.451	0.286	0.469	-0.165	0.018
Oakland	0.580	0.667	0.600	0.087	0.020
Milwaukee	0.512	0.389	0.563	-0.123	0.051
Minnesota	0.407	0.333	0.467	-0.074	0.060
CHW	0.525	0.613	0.611	0.088	0.086
Philadelphia	0.500	0.522	0.591	0.022	0.091
St Louis	0.543	0.429	0.667	-0.114	0.124
Baltimore	0.574	0.533	0.727	-0.041	0.153
Tampa Bay	0.556	0.625	0.714	0.069	0.158
LAA	0.549	0.600	0.727	0.051	0.178
San Diego	0.469	0.650	0.652	0.181	0.183
Detroit	0.543	0.480	0.727	-0.063	0.184
NYY	0.586	0.594	0.818	0.008	0.232
			Average	-0.003	0.033

I sorted this table based on the losing streaks instead of the winning streaks this time, because the results for losing streaks are much more interesting. Teams are actually statistically more likely to WIN after they’ve lost at least three straight.

There are a lot of reasons why this might be the case, and most of them are white noise. Maybe there is something to be said for the player-only meetings and “playing with pride” mantras that so frequently rise from the ashes of a losing streak. More likely, however, without actually investigating it, I would guess that many of the 3-game losing streaks feature the 3-4-5 starters, with the ace coming in to right the ship.

Also, by eliminating three losses at a time, the baseline record is skewed. If you take a team that went 81-81 and look at what they did after losing three games in a row, you’re actually looking at an 81-78 team, while still evaluating them against the 81-81 backdrop. This isn’t a huge swing, but we’re dealing with small enough shifts in probability that it actually does eat up much of the significance.

Finally, by only looking at the instances in which a team won or lost three games straight, we have eliminated the majority of our sample size, so I am hesitant to use this as conclusive proof of anything. If we were seeing more substantial trends, it would be worth verifying, but it appears that these streaks are the product of random variation, which makes sense based on what we have learned through the sabermetric movement over the years, and I’m content to leave it at that.

One final thing: when we split the season in half, streaks become much more significant in the second half. I attribute this to the fact that good teams trade to improve, bad teams trade to get worse, and good and bad teams are incentivized to be more extreme in their performance (via playoff hopes or draft order). That means the baseline record against which we measure is not reflective of the team that’s actually on the field. An 85-win team that adds a 5.0 WAR player will perform like a 90-win team. However, they’ve played most of the season as an 85-win team, so when we look at the data, it looks like they’re really “heating up” when they’re actually just a better team than their past record indicates. The converse is true for the 70-win team that gave up their only 5.0 WAR player to get prospects that won’t help at all this season. They look like they’ve gone catatonic, when they’re actually just objectively worse than their record.

Anyway, this has gotten longer than I intended it to, but the point is, winning and losing streaks, while interesting, are not predictive of future performance. Statistics!

Streaks

The Rangers have won 21 of their last 27 games.

The team is clicking. The players love to win. Everyone is focused on their goals. Before he left, Nelson Cruz handed out the phone number of his pharmacist. Or, it’s random, and regression to the mean is just around the corner.

How much credence should we give hot (or cold) stretches of the season?

The Rangers started the season very hot. Then they cooled off for over a month, and got as far as six games behind Oakland. Then they erased that deficit in only ten days, before building a 3.5 game lead. As of this writing, they’re clinging to a 2.5 game lead, and fans are just hoping the other foot doesn’t fall like it did last September. The Athletics obviously have played some part in this as well, going 18-3 for a while, followed by a 6-9 stretch, followed by a 19-9 run, followed by an 8-13 run. Arbitrary endpoints, admittedly, but this has been a key contributor to the AL West seesaw.

This sort of streakiness is something that gets a lot of press in baseball, even though the sabermetric part of my brain wants to write it off as random variation over a sample size of 162 games. The 2007 Rockies won 21 of 22 games in September to claim the wild card spot that year. They won their first seven playoff games, sweeping their way into the World Series, before promptly getting swept back out of it again by the Red Sox. Doesn’t get a whole lot streakier than that, and the Rockies were media darlings the whole time. They still come up whenever a team has a particularly strong September.

The English major part of my brain wants to embrace that narrative and give some credence to the intangible, “human” elements that may or may not be in play. I think I play sports better when I’m confident and in a good mood. Why wouldn’t pros react the same way? That being said, studies have confirmed that streakiness in hitters is a myth. Your results in a previous game or at-bat do not accurately predict your subsequent level of success or failure. But on a team level, there’s some degree of synergy and teamwork that has to have some tangible impact on the team’s fortunes, right? Otherwise we wouldn’t care whether someone was a good “clubhouse guy” when evaluating a free agent.

So does streakiness exist for baseball teams? To investigate, I decided to go through the 2012 season for each team, and look at whether each team’s winning percentage following a win exceeded their season-long winning percentage. This neutralizes the fact that good teams are just more likely to win games period. It’s not a perfect study, obviously, because of the huge roles that opposition and pitching rotations play. Also, a team like the Brewers losing a star player like Ryan Braun to injury or something* would likely have their subsequent results skewed. However, since this is merely a thought experiment, and no team will ever change the way they play because of this (I’d hope they would try to win every game regardless), I’m okay with my methodology not winning any Nobel prizes.

Here’s what I found:

Team	Season Win %	Win % After Win	Win % Differential
Blue Jays	0.451	0.528	0.077
Phillies	0.500	0.556	0.056
Braves	0.580	0.634	0.054
Padres	0.469	0.520	0.051
Dodgers	0.531	0.576	0.045
Red Sox	0.426	0.464	0.038
Athletics	0.580	0.617	0.037
Mets	0.457	0.493	0.036
Rays	0.556	0.584	0.028
Astros	0.340	0.364	0.024
White Sox	0.524	0.548	0.024
Marlins	0.426	0.449	0.023
Cubs	0.377	0.400	0.023
Diamondbacks	0.500	0.506	0.006
Twins	0.407	0.409	0.002
Orioles	0.574	0.576	0.002
Rockies	0.395	0.397	0.002
Royals	0.444	0.444	0.000
Cardinals	0.543	0.540	-0.003
Mariners	0.463	0.459	-0.004
Brewers	0.512	0.506	-0.006
Nationals	0.605	0.598	-0.007
Angels	0.549	0.539	-0.010
Yankees	0.586	0.574	-0.012
Giants	0.580	0.564	-0.016
Pirates	0.488	0.468	-0.020
Tigers	0.543	0.517	-0.026
Indians	0.420	0.382	-0.038
Reds	0.599	0.557	-0.042
Rangers	0.574	0.495	-0.079

The “Win % Differential” column is essentially how much each team was prone to streaks last season. The Blue Jays, Phillies, and Braves, for example, were extremely streaky. Toronto was a 73-win team last year, but if they only played games after wins, they…still would have finished fourth in the AL East. But it would have been a lot closer! Ironically, as streaky as the Rangers feel right now, last year they were at the very bottom of the list. They were great at bouncing back from losses, but not so great at sustaining any kind of momentum.

Mining this data was interesting, but ultimately fairly meaningless, I’m sorry to report. The average team sees a win percentage bump of only .009 following a win (and a corresponding dip of .009 following a loss). Given our mean, standard deviation, and sample size, there is about a 7% chance that the data is significant. Since 95% is the threshold for most significance tests, we fail that in a big way. Also, just eyeballing the numbers without doing any sort of regression, the results look fairly evenly distributed around a mean of zero, which would indicate a purely random set of data.

Anyway, now we know. Streakiness in baseball doesn’t exist in any meaningful capacity, contrary to what every broadcast will tell you. The 2007 Rockies flipped 22 coins, and had 21 of them come up heads.

It’s more fun with the narrative though.

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*Or losing him to cheating, getting caught, getting off on a technicality, lying about cheating, winning an MVP award, getting a guy fired by accusing him of anti-Semitism, cheating some more, getting caught again, and finally getting suspended. Or something. Hypothetically.

Gone to Carolina in My Mind (And in Real Life!)

This was a pretty terrible week for me, in a lot of respects.

I went to Charleston last Tuesday to watch Bubba Starling play for the Lexington Legends. He had the night off. Then, after I left Charleston, he went 3-6 with two triples, a run scored, and two RBIs in a double-header. Missed that.

Next, I went to Hickory to see David Dahl, Jorge Alfaro, and Joey Gallo.* Gallo went 2-3 with a homer and a walk, but Alfaro got tossed in his second at-bat for arguing a called third strike, and Dahl wasn’t back from his injury yet. I will say, Gallo has Chris Davis’s smooth, easy power already as a 19-year-old. He also has a lot of Chris Davis’s swing-and-miss potential, but if he can reign that in, he’ll be special very soon. Still, went 1-3 on getting a good look at those guys.

The next day, I was scheduled to go to Winston-Salem to watch Courtney Hawkins. However, I had some free time before a 7:00 start, and the drive wasn’t that long, so I met my girlfriend Sarah and one of her friends at an amusement park. On the very first ride we went on, everything fell out of my pockets. I lost my wallet and the keys to my rental car, and was lucky to salvage my phone. That meant I had no transportation, no money, and no ID. Looking critically at my life and my choices at this point.

I talked to guest “services” and, in addition to refusing to do anything until the park closed, they were very condescending, and made it abundantly clear that my problems were not their problems in any way whatsoever. They did a cursory search after the park closed, but it was dark by then, so they didn’t find anything. I didn’t even make it to Winston-Salem.

I called Enterprise, and they were actually really helpful. They called a tow truck for me, and brought me and the car back to the airport, where they exchanged it for a new rental (and, spoiler alert, the park did eventually find my keys, so I was able to turn those in at the end of my trip, sparing me the cost of replacing them). Everyone was understanding and sympathetic, even though I got there three minutes before they were going to close for the night, and I was finally able to get back on the road to meet my parents who had flown in to spend the weekend with me. I also managed to get in touch with them before they left Dallas, so they brought me my passport. Crisis mostly averted, just in time to spend the weekend golfing at Pinehurst. I arrived at the hotel around 3:15 am, and got about four hours of sleep before getting up early to hit the links.

We had tee times on courses 8, 4, and 2, which are apparently the three best courses they have, in ascending order of awesomeness. Pinehurst #2 has hosted several majors in its storied history, and will be the site of next year’s US Open.

It rained the entire time.

We got through about nine holes on our first round relatively dryly,** then it started coming down. At first I was grateful that the greens would be slowing down a bit, because I was struggling mightily with the speed and slope of professional-grade greenskeeping, but it quickly became apparent that my focus, my ability to grip the clubs, and my positive attitude were more important to my game than green speed. With all of those gone, I was playing terribly, and was having a hard time appreciating the beauty and the challenge that Pinehurst offered. I was apparently not doing a good job of hiding my frustration either, because over lunch my dad offered to just skip our remaining rounds. I realized that I was being a bad sport and hindering everyone’s enjoyment, and made a better effort to ignore the score and just enjoy the course, regardless of weather. Once I came to grips with that, while my score didn’t improve, my experience definitely did.

That night, we had an incredible dinner that was included in the hotel package. I had ravioli with onion confit over a bed of fava bean mash and truffle oil. As an appetizer. I also tried my mom’s fried green tomatoes. Then I had an excellent steak that came with a side of macaroni and cheese with chunks of lobster meat, and then finished it all off with a very tasty creme brulee.

The next morning, we awoke to promises of more rain, so we stopped by the pro shop and bought raincoats and gloves that are designed to be used in the rain. Naturally, as soon as we made our purchases, it barely rained at all. For Pinehurst #2, we had caddies with us, which was a first for me.

They were both pretty old, and had been at the course since before I was born. They were also extremely talkative, which I am NOT when I’m golfing. The first guy was not afraid to tell me that some of my shots were terrible,  and he also wasn’t above harping on how lucky I was that one of my shots stayed out of the sand. I say “the first guy” because after I told my dad that I didn’t think the negativity was helping, he offered to switch with me at the turn. The second caddie was the exact opposite, but to such an extreme that it was clearly fake. I would shank one into the woods, and he’d go “That’s good, that’s the side we want to be on,” or I’d hit it into the sand and he’d point out that I was better from trouble spots anyway. Every time I asked for a specific club, he’d say “Yeah, I like that, that’s what I was going to say,” but then the one time I asked him what club he thought I should hit, he gave me this blank look and said, “I don’t know, I like what you like.” It was very surreal having two guys who said they were too old to play golf anymore follow me around carrying my clubs, but their knowledge of the course was incredible. They read putts that I never would have figured out, and they were able to help me avoid bunkers that I couldn’t even see. It was a lot of fun, regardless of condition, and I can’t wait to watch the US Open next year and tell everyone that I got up and down for par from directly behind a tree on the 15th hole. I also can’t wait to tell everyone that I was even par after the 10th hole, while omitting the fact that it’s because we started on the back nine.***

Finally, after golf and spending the night with Sarah’s brother and his family, I headed back to Charlotte to see Jake Odorizzi pitch for Durham, just to find out that all the rain had messed up their schedule, and he wasn’t slated to pitch until Monday, when I was on my plane home. I got dinner with Sarah after the game, said goodbye to her as she drove home to Charleston, then spent the night in a motel, before heading home myself. Finally, just to cap everything off, I realized after I got home that I left my camera on the plane. I was fortunate that they found it, but I missed a tennis workout so that I could head back to the airport to get it.

So, let’s recap.

I spent a week on vacation in the Carolinas. I spent time with my long-distance girlfriend whom I rarely get to see, as well as one of her best friends, her brother, her sister-in-law, and her nephew. I spent five more hours at an amusement park than I planned to. I watched three baseball games. I played three of the best golf courses in America, while spending time with family at a beautiful resort. I made it home safe and sound, with everything that couldn’t be easily and cheaply replaced.

Yep. Pretty terrible week.

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*Dahl was the only player on my prospect list. The other two are just Rangers guys that I was excited to see for the first time, and will hopefully be making a couple lists of their own in the next year or two.

**Is that a word? That can’t be a word.

***Though at least one keen observer of my golf game already correctly reached that conclusion

General Admission

I’m back in Dallas for a little while, so I haven’t gotten to see any new prospects in the past few days. I have, however, spent a couple days working for Ticket Finders USA, a company in the secondary ticket market. It was a great educational experience, and it showed me just how much money teams leave on the table for big games, as well as giving me some insight into they psychology of the average fan. I feel like I learned a lot, and really appreciate being allowed to just hop into the office and follow people around asking questions. I tried to help too, but I know it was both a leap of faith and a commitment of time and energy to take me on for such a short time, and I’m very grateful for the opportunity. These are also the guys that got me a front row seat at the Futures Game less than a week before the event, so I definitely recommend them if you need help finding tickets to something. It doesn’t have to be sporting events, either. In my two days of work, some of my duties included sorting wristbands for Lollapalooza, and begging the Winspear Opera House for Book of Mormon tickets.*

Anyway, enough plugging, time to put my new knowledge to use. Tickets for most sporting events will vary in face value based on how good the ticket is, but will be constant from game-to-game, regardless of how good the game is. The Rangers have instituted the concept of “premier games,” but for the most part that just applies to games on the weekend, again regardless of opponent. Ticket brokers use this information to snatch up tickets that can fetch a premium that the Rangers haven’t tapped. This could be because a particular opponent is in town, or because a particular pitcher is starting (Yu Darvish and now Matt Garza both draw heightened interest). As for the opponent, simply looking at the standings won’t tell you which teams are the biggest draws.

People who follow the Rangers closely would undoubtedly say that the Athletics are our most significant opponent. The Rangers are chasing them within the division, and the few remaining series against Oakland will go a long way to deciding who will make the playoffs and bypass the wild card play-in game. From a competitive standpoint, there are no more important games on the schedule than these. However, if you ask the ticket brokers which games sell best, Oakland isn’t in the top three.

New York and Boston are, which makes sense since they have probably the most widespread national fan bases. And the top divisional rival is still the Angels, who haven’t won the west since 2009. Rangers fans will gladly pay a premium to get out there and boo the team that threw money at both Josh Hamilton and CJ Wilson after efforts were made to keep each of them in Arlington.

Rangers fans get a little bit manic about the Angels, and it doesn’t take a team of psychologists to understand what fuels that fire. First, for those with long memories, the Angels are the only team in the West to win a World Series in more than 20 years, despite the Rangers’ best efforts on two different occasions. There’s a little bit of an inferiority complex there.

This wasn’t helped in 2009 when, for the first time in a decade, the Rangers** were playing relevant baseball deep into the season, in a tight race with the Angels for the lead in the west, despite the Angels not taking the Rangers seriously at all. One day, the Rangers pinned six runs on John Lackey in an 8-5 win, and Rangers fans thought “Hah! Now they have to show us some respect!” Lackey responded by saying, “They’ve got a good lineup, they’re pitching better, and playing better defense, so that’s definitely going to keep them around a little longer.” Really?! Keep them around a little longer?! He could have just as easily said, “They’re adorable, we may only beat them by ten games this year.”***

Even more recently, however, Rangers fans have more personal reasons to be upset with specific members of the Angels. Fans feel betrayed by both CJ Wilson and Josh Hamilton. Wilson was a relief pitcher until the Rangers gave him a chance to start, and then he was an All-Star who pitched in two World Series. Hamilton was completely out of baseball, struggling with a variety of issues. The Rangers acquired him and gave him a second chance, and he became an MVP. Neither of those acts of magnanimity were enough to warrant any kind of loyalty at all, however, and both fled to greener wallets as soon as they could.

Okay, that was cathartic to write.**** Now to explain how that translates to revenue for these games. Let’s say fans will pay an extra $5 per ticket to see a marquee game. Maybe people in the upper decks would only pay $1 or $2 extra, but the people in the lower levels will often pay over $100 extra, so I’d say a $5 premium is a conservative average. Multiply that by the 40,000 people that come to big games. That’s $200,000 PER GAME that the Rangers just give away to the secondary ticket market. In a three-game series, that’s over half a million dollars, and over the course of a season, there are perhaps tens of millions of dollars that just get divvied up by the brokers.

Part of me wonders if the Rangers are just unwilling to do the research to determine the exact price points that they can set, and they’ll forego the extra profit in order to save the energy. Most of me thinks that’s stupid. So if the Rangers know there’s extra money on the table, and they’re consciously ignoring it, what’s going on? My prevailing theory is that they are afraid to confront the fans with the nature of the business. You definitely risk alienating some people when you say, “We know you’ll give us more money, so we’re going to take it.” You can’t hold your fans hostage, because there is no inherent value to a baseball game. If the fans revolt and refuse to watch, the business is gone.

It’s only a billion-dollar industry as long as the fans stay engaged, and it behooves the team to keep that in mind when they decide just how much money they want to extort. The teams know that if they let John Maynard Keynes run their ticket office, they would make a lot of money and make a lot of people mad, so they adopt uniform pricing structures, and then decry ticket brokers as evil parasites, even though they’d love to be able to do the same thing themselves. There is a big revenue boost for the team with a creative ticket office that finds a way to bridge the gaps between what the team can charge without upsetting people and what fans are willing to pay. As usual, the business of baseball comes down to finding market inefficiencies and thinking of ways to use them to your advantage.

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*They hate selling to brokers, I felt like a spy!

**Every time I say “the Rangers” in the next two paragraphs, know that I wrote “we” or “us” first and then had to go back and change it later.

***They did. But that’s not the point!

****That is, it would have been cathartic for a Rangers fan to write

Live from New York, It’s Thursday Afternoon!

Props to the Apple Motor Inn in Ardsley, New York. I’m back in the NYC area today, flying home out of LaGuardia this afternoon. As long as you don’t mind everything you own smelling like smoke, it was a nice little spot for the price. I drove about 45 minutes north of Manhattan, since I didn’t want to pay New York City hotel prices, and didn’t want to mess with trying to park overnight in the city. For a savings of $100 compared to what I paid at the Flushing Meadows Howard Johnson last week, I got a better internet connection, more space, a nicer TV, and free parking.

On the way to my Ardsley oasis, I did have more misadventures trying to drive through Manhattan. I left the parking garage after dinner, and pulled up to a stop light near Times Square. Then, as soon as the light turned green, the car on my left cut me off to make a right turn. That was fun, especially while they sat there for twenty seconds, perpendicularly in front of me, waiting for pedestrians. Almost immediately after that, a guy on the side of the road stepped out into the street in front of me, flicking his fingers at me like he was trying to sprinkle holy water on my car. I had so many questions! Does he think I’m a taxi? Does he think that’s a socially acceptable way to hail a taxi? I was very confused, but I just kept driving. Pretty soon, I got past the intense bright lights of Times Square, and it immediately became obvious that I had forgotten to turn my headlights on, and that’s why he was flashing his hand at me. Whoops. At least my questions were answered.

Anyway, let’s talk about Gerrit Cole, since I can talk about him without feeling dumb. He looked really good, but the huge strikeout totals he posted in the minors have not translated just yet to the majors. He’s got a fastball that he runs up to 97 (with very little movement), and good-not-great breaking stuff. He had 4 strikeouts in 7.0 innings, which is fine, but it doesn’t exactly line up with the prospect hype he had. I’ve heard several theories about this, and the one I buy based on the start I saw was that in the minors he could just throw a 97-mph fastball right past people, which doesn’t work against major leaguers. It’s still good enough that he induces pretty weak contact when he hits his spots (only 2 hits in those 7.0 innings), but it’s not a true out pitch. Once he develops a breaking ball that he feels comfortable going to in 2-strike counts, he’s going to be dominant. He did make a handful of mistakes over the course of the game that caught too much of the plate, and they got hit pretty hard (one homer, two warning track shots), but it’s nitpicking to ding a guy for that just two months into his major league career.

Anthony Rendon also played in this game, and didn’t really impress me. He’ll be a league average second baseman if he sticks there, but he screwed up two defensive plays in the same inning that cost the Nationals two runs. He played third at Rice, and if he has to move back to a corner, that will push his projection down, because his bat is solid but not spectacular.

That’s about all I’ve got today, time to head to the airport. In light of my posts about the Matt Garza trade earlier this week though, I will quickly add one thing on that subject: he looked awesome last night.* And the offense responded with a few runs, which was nice to see. I do wonder about the psychological value of trading for a big name like that. I sometimes think it really makes a difference for the management to tell the world, “This team is a contender, and we believe in them.” Kind of a reward to the players for fighting this hard for this long. I still don’t think that quite justifies the price, especially after the news came out that no other teams were actually serious about him at all, so the Rangers were just bidding against themselves, but it’s something.

After trips to the west coast, Florida, and northeast, I have now officially scouted 51 of Baseball America’s top 100 prospects! 49 to go…

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**Sounded awesome, anyway. I was listening to the radio broadcast.

Garza Trade Post 2: Judgement Day

Well, my post this morning came within a few hours of the Garza trade actually getting finalized, which was a happy coincidence. I thought I should go ahead and write a quick follow-up now that we know the actual players going to Chicago.

The Cubs get Justin Grimm, Mike Olt, and CJ Edwards, along with one or two players to be named later. The Rangers get fewer than fifteen starts out of Garza.

This morning I wrote that I thought the price of Edwards and Olt was already too steep for a rental in a season where the Rangers were a fringe World Series contender at best. Texas actually gave up more than that. And I’m pretty exited about it.

I’ll explain. I don’t disagree with Jon Daniels very often about how much most baseball assets are worth, so unless this time is a serious departure from that trend, I have to think he knows something I don’t. I think this could take one of two shapes: either Garza privately agreed to negotiate an extension with the Rangers, so it’s not really a rental, or Daniels is close to another trade that WILL push the Rangers into title consideration (ideally, an outfielder that crushes lefty pitching).

If either of those scenarios come to fruition in the coming weeks, this trade (and this team) will suddenly look a lot better. If not, then I think it’s a mistake. Period. Flags Fly Forever, and all that, but if the flag says “2013 AL Wild Card,” you can keep it.

Grimm and Olt were going to have a hard time playing in Texas next year with the roster constructed as it is. I get that. But to me it’s mostly about opportunity cost. The Rangers have been working on a proposal for a solid year now to pry Giancarlo Stanton away from the Marlins, and ditching multiple big-league ready prospects just pushed them a lot further from making that deal a reality.

So yeah. On paper, this deal makes the Rangers organization worse, and that intrigues me because of Jon Daniels. Most of me still gives JD the benefit of the doubt that he has a trick up his sleeve. This is the guy who traded Mark Teixeira, after all. But there’s a growing chunk of my brain that’s telling me “Yeah, but this is the guy who traded Adrian Gonzalez!”

For better or worse, Daniels has never shied away from making headlines, and Rangers fans love that about him. Usually. It remains to be seen whether there is cause for concern in this case, but I’m cautiously optimistic that there’s more than meets the eye here.

Garza Trade Rumors

I’ll get my scouting reports out of the way, because I mostly want to talk about some developments in the majors that concern me. First, Jameson Taillon didn’t throw a no-hitter, but was really good. He pitched deep into the game, maintained plus velocity and control, and flat out embarrassed one batter.

His first pitch of the at-bat got away from him a bit, and came up and in. The batter dodged it easily, but decided to take it personally, and just stared Taillon down the entire time between pitches without stepping out of the box. He must have thought he goaded Taillon into challenging him with a fastball over the plate on the next pitch. He didn’t. Changeup, 83, right down the middle. The batter swung out of his shoes, but was way too early and came up empty. 1-1. That wasn’t enough punishment for the batter’s affront, however, so the next pitch was a fastball even further inside than the first one. He jumped out of the way. 2-1. The next pitch was another changeup down the middle, and the batter at least waited on it enough to foul it off, but still looked pretty silly. 2-2. Finally, Taillon tired of playing mind games with an outmatched opponent, and froze him with a fastball on the outside corner to record the strikeout. Protip: when you’re facing the best pitcher in your entire league and you’re a non-prospect, maybe don’t try to show him up.

I don’t know what to think about Daniel Corcino. He’s a righty who occasionally touches 94 with his fastball, which isn’t impressive. He had no feel for his off-speed pitches, and missed all over the place with them, running counts deep, and recording multiple walks. So he doesn’t have good stuff, and he doesn’t have control, and yet I looked up and he had pitched 5.2 innings, giving up two hits and one run, comfortably in line for the win. I didn’t have the best vantage point to gauge movement on his pitches, but they must jump around a TON for him to be that successful with no other visible assets. The jury (of one) is out on him. It’s hard to like what I saw, but it’s hard to dislike the results.

Anyway, onto major league things. The Rangers have been very close to getting Matt Garza from the Cubs, and I’m not excited about it.

The most recent speculation is that CJ Edwards, Mike Olt, and perhaps more will be going to the Cubs for two months of Garza. Under the new CBA, we will get no compensation if he leaves via free agency at the end of the year, since he was not a Ranger for the entire season. Edwards was not expected to be a prospect that would headline any sort of trade when the Rangers drafted him in the 48th round in 2011, but he has quietly put up extremely good numbers in the South Atlantic League for the Hickory Crawdads (1.029 WHIP and 122 strikeouts in 93.1 innings as of this post). I realize that talent has to go both directions in a trade, and I don’t think it’s a particularly lopsided deal, per se. However, in my opinion, the difference between a 7-0 loss and a 1-0 loss is pretty small.

The question that Jon Daniels and company must ask themselves is not, “Does Matt Garza make this team better?” The question is, “Does Matt Garza make this team a World Series contender?”

The Rangers rotation at the moment is Yu Darvish, Alexi Ogando, Derek Holland, Martin Perez, and Ross Wolf,* in some order, depending on whether Holland meets his tremendous potential on any given day. Matt Garza would easily slot in there and be a substantial upgrade. I’d go so far as to call that a two or three win improvement over the last two months. But if rehabs go as expected, in about a month that rotation could be Darvish, Matt Harrison, Colby Lewis, Ogando, Holland. Garza still makes a difference, but I’d say that it’s only about a 1-win difference, and most of it comes from moving Ogando back to the bullpen to relieve some of the heavy burden they’ve had to shoulder this year.

The problem is, the Rangers are 20-24 since June 1. And yes, that’s an arbitrary endpoint, but it’s also more than a quarter of the season, so it’s hard to dismiss it as nothing. So what sort of impact trade will push them back onto the path to the World Series?**

The much-maligned pitching staff is 8th in the majors in ERA (and 2nd in the AL), and is slightly above-average in most of the advanced stats that we sabermetrics nerds love so much (WHIP, K/9, and so forth). However, they are 9th in the AL in runs scored, despite playing in one of the most offense-friendly parks in the majors. Their left fielders are 18th in the league in OPS, their center fielders are 16th, and the team as a whole is only 14th in OPS against lefties. The way to upgrade this team most efficiently is to find an outfield bat that hits lefties, not to get a pretty good arm that blends in with the rest of the pretty good arms we will already be adding once they get healthy again.

Obviously, it’s a lot to assume that all of the current rehab projects go perfectly smoothly, especially since Harrison and Lewis have each already had setbacks on their road back to the mound. And obviously the Rangers front office really likes Garza, as they have tried to get him multiple times from multiple teams. And who knows, maybe JD will pull off a Garza and Alex Rios cross-Chicago, three-team trade. Or maybe we’ll take Alfonso Soriano in a Garza deal, provided that the Cubs eat some (most) of the salary. Or maybe Harrison and/or Lewis is privately struggling with his rehab, and Daniels knows that the rotation will require an outside upgrade. Daniels has pleasantly surprised me before with his shrewdness. But a Garza-for-multiple-prospects deal in a vacuum would really disappoint me.

*Ross Wolf’s picture on his ESPN stats page still has him in an Astros uniform. He hasn’t pitched for Houston since 2010. That should give you some idea of what an impact performer he isn’t.

**Assuming we can’t trade 2013 Lance Berkman for 2002 Lance Berkman (or even 2011 Lance Berkman)

History

It was my fault, in retrospect.

I drove to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania yesterday to experience the site of one of the bloodiest battles ever fought in our country, and one of the most powerful speeches ever delivered in our country.

Cause and Effect

After a brief search on Yelp, I entered a building with an awning that read “Gettysburg Museum of History” expecting to see Civil War artifacts and to read stories about the individuals whose lives were touched by this intense conflict in our nation’s history. But the building didn’t say “Impressive and/or Powerful Gettysburg Museum of History” or even “Gettysburg Museum of Civil War History”.

The sign said Gettysburg Museum of History. The building was located in Gettysburg. Check. It had some old stuff in it. Check. Some of the stuff related, however loosely, to important people or events. Check. It was greedy to anticipate more than that, and I take full responsibility for my lofty expectations.* I think a list would do a better job than a narrative of capturing the awesomeness and the randomness that were side by side in what would be one of the best Hoarders episode of all time. The Gettysburg Museum of History features, in no particular order:

• Obama’s business card from when he was still just a state senator
• Lincoln’s opera glasses from the Ford Theater
• The American flag that was flying over Pearl Harbor
• Eva Braun’s lingerie
• Lee Harvey Oswald’s doorknob**
• The skull of a 3,000-year-old mummy
• Charlie Chaplin’s pajamas
• A lock of George (and Martha) Washington’s hair
• Blood-stained upholstery from JFK’s limo in Dallas
• Hitler’s pillowcase
• Marilyn Monroe’s prescription for sedatives
• A collection of random girls’ panties that had been thrown at Elvis on stage
• A shard of marble from the World Trade Center
• The signed contract for The Doors to record the Apocalypse Now soundtrack
• An alleged piece of the One True Cross

So there you have it. History. Cobbled together without much rhyme or reason, but a nonetheless fairly impressive document of events and characters that have resonated throughout time. Obviously that list was hand-picked for effect, and to tell the whole story, I must admit that they had a small-but-well-cared-for collection of Civil War-era weapons and ammunition in addition to the items I listed.

What struck me were the themes that were present. In a museum like that, if we are given no clear unifying idea that explains why these items coexist the way they do, our minds instinctively reach out to create one. The first theme I noticed was violence. From Pearl Harbor, to two assassinations, to 9/11, violence has been tremendously and tragically powerful in shaping American history (and human history in general). But that still missed a good number of items on the list. Ultimately, I arrived at “passion” as the one theme that could be applied to nearly every artifact in the museum. Passion for (or against) an idea, passion for another person. This is what ignites the actions that echo across history.

“History” can come on any scale, but passion is always the driving force behind it. There have been countless happy families built on their intense love and respect for each other, who have remained wholly anonymous to those that didn’t interact with them directly. But the moments that family remembers and recounts for years to come were moments when great passion was exhibited. When someone tells fond memories about his grandfather, he doesn’t talk about the grandfather sitting at his desk, balancing his checkbook. Or, if he does, he’s using it as an example of the passion he had for his family, and the effort he undertook to ensure that he always provided for them.

I’ve already talked about why I love baseball, and plenty of people have their own reasons for caring, but I think the link between baseball’s history and the passion people feel for it is both profound and important to the game’s success. This has gotten a decent amount of press lately, with Yasiel Puig not knowing who Luis Gonzalez was when they met last week. Gonzalez introduced himself as a fellow baseball player with Cuban ties, and Puig blew him off, and everyone flipped out about Puig’s lack of respect for the history of baseball, and how if he didn’t start showing a little more deference to his elders he was going to wash out. Then someone pointed out that while LuGo was winning the 2001 World Series with the Diamondbacks, Puig was a 10-year-old who didn’t speak English (still doesn’t), living in a foreign country under an oppressive dictator.

I have history on my mind, because I watched a little baseball history of my own the night before my visit to Gettysburg. For the first time in my life, after hundreds if not thousands of games, I was in attendance for a no-hitter! Check it out:

The mob at the mound was over by the time my camera stopped overheating and let me take more pictures

I was in Frederick, Maryland scouting Henry Owens of the Salem Red Sox. He only pitched six innings, which is typical for High-A ball, and then three relievers came on and each pitched a hitless inning of their own. Owens impressed me with his pitches, but more than anything he impressed me with his composure, working through a ton of adversity (admittedly, some of which was self-inflicted). He hit a guy in the helmet, and had to shake that off and keep going. He walked a couple guys, and watched multiple errors out of his defense. How many no-hitters involve seven baserunners? How many no-hitters involve runners on third with less than two outs in two different innings? The tall lefty responded to all of that by striking out ten batters, and inducing weak contact from everyone else, with a slow curve and pinpoint fastball that reminded me of Clayton Kershaw of the Dodgers. Owens was phenomenal whenever he needed to be, and his bullpen was up to the task of finishing it off. For them, this will likely be the highlight of their professional careers, and for the whole team, it was a story they will never forget. Some of the less passionate*** Frederick fans began leaving in the 8th inning with their team down by six, but most fans appreciated what they were witnessing, regardless of their personal affiliation, and applauded the achievement as the team dog-piled on the pitchers mound after the 27th out was recorded. On their scale, they created history. And it was just as cobbled-together as the Gettysburg Museum of History, but that doesn’t take away from the passion that created it, or how great it was to bear witness to it.

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*No I don’t. I blame Yelp.

**Not a euphemism

***Less historical?

Amish Paradise

It’s really weird to be in a tiny town just off the interstate where nobody speaks with a southern drawl. All of my experiences in the north up to this point have been restricted to major cities, and for some reason, my brain decided that once I got off the beaten path a little bit, people would act and sound like they do when you get off the beaten path in Texas. They don’t. Oh well.

Regardless of accent, Amish country is pretty cool. Everything is lush and green and hilly. There are dairy farms everywhere, serving delicious ice cream that is so rich that I was struggling to finish a small. People in modest attire bike down the side of the road.

Pop quiz time. Which of the following is true of my visit to the Reading Fightin’ Phils?

A. I was late because of a horse-drawn carriage.

B. The stadium is lit by lantern.

C. There were two live ostriches at the game.

Pictorial evidence of the answer is below.

The Reading game itself was fine, but a little annoying because A-Rod was rehabbing there. I saw Slade Heathcott, a center field prospect in the Yankees organization, and was hoping to see Tyler Austin, a corner outfield prospect for the Yankees. Unfortunately, he was injured, but wasn’t on the DL until midday yesterday, so I didn’t know in time to reroute. Heathcott looked okay, but didn’t exactly wow me. He singled and struck out twice in five chances. His plate discipline could stand to improve a bit. He expanded the zone on both of his strikeouts, and did well just to fight a few pitches off before finally succumbing. His season stats confirm that this was fairly representative, as he has a 25% strikeout rate, and only an 8.6% walk rate. Despite his power potential, speed, and contact ability, he’s probably not going to get above AA until he improves both of those discipline numbers.

The next morning, even though I thought Tyler Austin would still be playing this week, I knew A-Rod would be playing again too, and I don’t like dealing with big crowds who don’t care about the baseball, and are only there for the spectacle. So I went to Harrisburg. And unbeknownst to me, so did the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. Whoops.

It was the event of the millennium for Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. While Reading was slightly below their average attendance yesterday,* Harrisburg saw nearly a 2,000 person bump last night. That’s 50% above average! On a Tuesday! Fewer than 50,000 people live in Harrisburg, and 5,739 came to the game last night. More than 10% of the entire city was at that game. That would be like if 500,000 people from Dallas-Fort Worth showed up to a Rangers game. There was a big cheerleading clinic for young girls earlier in the day at the stadium, and then the Cowboys cheerleaders did a few routines in between innings, then hung around to take pictures and sign autographs. There were about as many people in line at any given time as there were in the stands. I usually take at least an inning or two to wander around the stadium and try to get the full experience, but I could barely move last night. It was not a good baseball experience.**

Brian Goodwin posted a nearly identical line as Heathcott the night before. He singled and struck out twice, but he did it in four appearances instead of five. He didn’t seem to try very hard in center field, but max effort wouldn’t have made a difference on any play, so maybe he was just assessing the situation and conserving energy. He didn’t display a very strong arm, but in center field that’s less important than range. His season-long plate discipline numbers are a little bit better than Heathcott’s overall (and I’m more optimistic about his chances of improving, since he’s only been a pro for two seasons), but he lacks the power potential Heathcott has. He’s got a quick, compact swing, and should be able to hit for a good average while playing plus defense.

Now to answer the pop quiz:

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*I’d like to think people were actively avoiding A-Rod like I was, but I’m guessing it was more due to the fact that it was a Tuesday night

**Also, it’s really creepy to see six-year-old girls in spandex short shorts who idolize a group of people who exist to be objectified, and it’s sad that their parents actually encourage this