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

Futures Game

New York City and I have a love/hate relationship. I love how much awesome stuff goes on there, and I hate how difficult it is to feel a part of it. I love Broadway, and I love that I could walk through a relatively quiet neighborhood in Queens at midnight, and pass about fifteen restaurants that were still open. I love that celebrities roam the streets as though they were real people.*

I hate how selfish people are. I don’t think it’s rudeness. It’s not that they don’t care about you, or wish bad things on you; it’s just that their society is built on a one-to-one caring system. The idea is that if everyone makes sure that they take care of themselves, then everyone gets taken care of. No muss, no fuss. The southern hospitality mindset is that if everyone takes care of everyone else, then someone else will take care of you. Admittedly, it sounds unnecessarily complicated, but it creates people who are inherently generous and aren’t automatically suspicious of their surroundings, so I like it anyway. However, if you have the southern mindset in New York, you get eaten alive. You wind up getting stuck holding a door open for hours. Your turn signal is the equivalent of a limping antelope to a pride of lions. When I visit New York, my hospitality generally gets taken advantage of once or twice, then I get really angry, then I make a conscious effort to adopt the New York attitude, then I fit in just fine. The adjustment period always takes about a day.**

I also hate driving in New York, but not for the reason most people hate it. I don’t mind the traffic, and I don’t mind the aggression that much. I just hate missing stuff. When I was little, I used to hate naps and baths with a passion because they were wasted opportunities to do or see something interesting. Now that I’m an adult, I appreciate the value of rest and cleanliness a little bit more, but I still hate missing stuff. Driving in New York requires your full attention, but everywhere you drive there are famous people, movie sets, historic neighborhoods, and cool events that couldn’t happen anywhere else. I was in Manhattan for all of ten minutes last night, and I barely noticed Little Italy as I went by. Who knows what else was going on that I didn’t even realize I was missing.

The Futures Game was similarly overwhelming, which makes sense because it was being hosted by the Mets. As someone who has taken a crash course in prospect watching over the past month, I was blown away by the level of talent (and expectations) that converged yesterday. I added eleven prospects to my list in one game, which isn’t counting the people who I’d already seen, or the people who were on the roster, but didn’t actually get in the game. It was a scout’s dream, except for the fact that no pitcher threw more than an inning or so, and most position players only really played about half of the game. Still, I’m counting it, and I’m counting myself lucky to have been there. Some quick stand-outs for me:

• Archie Bradley looked WAY better than when I saw him in Jackson. The velocity was back, and the movement on his curveball was explosive. This could mean he just had an off night the last time I watched him, or it could mean that my theory about him taking it easy until his call-up doesn’t apply to one-inning showcase appearances.
• Kyle Crick is healthy again! Unfortunately, he’s not good again just yet. I missed him in San Jose because of an injury, but he’s back on the mound, and has not escaped my watchful eye. He had some issues with his control though, walking two of the three batters he faced, throwing mostly fastballs that missed the zone by several inches. That being said, he’s still just in High-A, and he was pitching against guys in AAA, so it should be no surprise that he’s a bit behind the rest of the Future People developmentally. He can definitely get there, he’s just not there right now.
• Xander Bogaerts, on the other hand, is ready. Like, now. The Red Sox shortstop prospect went 2-3 with a walk and a run scored, and looked really confident going against the best of his peers. He proved he was human by getting caught stealing second by Austin Hedges, but he’s neither the first nor last person who will suffer that fate (Hedges is widely considered the best defensive catcher in the minors), and it was a minor blip on an otherwise stellar performance.

I didn’t even get to play, and I was still very excited to be a part of the festivities, and I’m older than all but two of the players that were there. Hopefully they were able to savor every moment, and didn’t miss anything.*** The magnitude of their accomplishments to this point are necessarily overshadowed by the magnitude of the future expectations that derive from their success. That’s the nature of the minor league relationship to the major leagues. But it’s important to live in the moment and soak up the electric atmosphere, while still understanding that you’re on a journey to bigger and better things. Hopefully that short taste of the spotlight will only make them work harder to be on a stage like that every night. I’m going from Citi Field in New York City to First Energy Stadium in Reading, Pennsylvania tonight, and while I still don’t want to miss a thing in Reading, I know that the hours and miles I’m logging now are ultimately helping me get to an atmosphere more like New York’s.

41 prospects down, 59 to go.

__________________

*It’s like a free zoo, it’s great

**That’s not really enough time, is it? To become 100% comfortable treating everyone who isn’t me like garbage?

***Archie Bradley took full advantage of the opportunity. While they were transitioning from the Futures Game to the Celebrity Softball Game, he ran back out of the dugout to have his picture taken with George Lopez.

And You Thought I Was a Good Writer

Since I am on my couch in Dallas, and not out looking at players or teams this week, I don’t have a whole lot of new insights to pass along, but some people* have asked me what blogs I follow and enjoy, so I thought I’d share a few. Most of these articles peel back the curtain of what life in a front office is all about, and talks through the thought process that goes into some complicated decisions that must be made.

First, the millennial Milwaukee Brewers. Discussions of how the current Brewers acquired a lot of the talent they have, and how they have leveraged their assets in various trades and drafts over the last decade or so.

Since the next class of international signing opened on July 2nd, for the first time under the new CBA structure, teams have taken pretty diverse approaches to the new talent pool. Theo Epstein’s Cubs have been the biggest spenders, and this is an explanation of how and why they have spent as much as they have, despite very straightforward spending restrictions.

The Twins have the best farm system in baseball by many measures. But now how do they make sure all those prospects reach their ceilings? Baseball Prospectus investigates.

And, last but not least, age catches up with all of us. I’m only 25, and I feel like it’s already starting to hit me. Fangraphs uses historical data to explain when and how quickly pitchers’ skill sets decline as they get older.

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*My parents

Hindsight is 20/20 and So Am I!

I’m back in Dallas, and I have now seen 30 of the top 100 prospects in baseball. Right now I can’t see much of anything though, as I went to the eye doctor this afternoon and have pupils the size of grapefruits. My vision is still pretty much perfect; I’ve never had contacts or glasses, and didn’t need them today; just a routine checkup. But since vision has been on my mind today, and since I’ve seen 30 prospects now, here’s the first of three lists of ten things I’ve noticed that won’t show up in a box score.

1. Joakim Soria looks ready to join the Rangers for the first time since signing. He’s not a prospect, he was just rehabbing from an injury in Frisco when I saw him, but his movement is awesome. The box score will show that he retired all three batters he faced, but it won’t report the multiple bats he broke in the process. He’s ready to make an impact now.
2. I’m sorry I made my list of fun minor league promotionals so early, because the Florida trip gave me several new ones to choose from. My favorite was the Bobblehead Challenge. They attach pedometers to two kids’ heads, and the winner is whoever can record the most “steps” by shaking their heads furiously for thirty seconds.
3. Does 41-year-old Manny Ramirez qualify as a prospect? Doesn’t matter, I’m going to talk about him anyway. The Rangers are desperate for right-handed power, and I love the job the front office does of looking everywhere. I don’t think Manny is worth the headache of having on the roster, but I don’t think that’s the point because I don’t think he makes it that far. This is the perfect time to give him a minor league contract because they can keep him down there as they have their trade talks with the White Sox about Alex Rios and, to a lesser extent, with the Marlins about Giancarlo Stanton, and if it gives them even a bit more leverage in those talks, it’s worth it. I’ll be a little surprised if Manny wears a Rangers uniform this year (or ever), but I think it still helps the Rangers acquire the righty outfield bat they covet.

4. 

   The Marlins opt for an expressionist approach to crowd motivation

5. Kaleb Cowart is a really good defender. He didn’t have an opportunity to show off his range at all, but there were a couple balls smashed right at him that he made great acrobatic stabs on. His arm is also above average. He didn’t fare very well at the plate when I saw him, and he only has a .607 OPS for the season, but if nothing else, he may be able to be a defensive replacement at the ends of games when rosters expand this September.
6. Julio Dos just happened, a virtual national holiday in the Dominican Republic. July 2nd was the first day that international 16-year-old kids could sign contracts, and it was interesting to see which teams made big splashes. MLB.com published a list of their top 30 newly-eligible prospects, along with the organization that signed them, and only 12 teams have claimed 20 of the 30 prospects from this list, while 10 remain unsigned (as of this writing). The Yankees, Phillies, Angels, Tigers, Dodgers, Giants, and Cardinals are among the high-profile, high-budget teams that have been notably quiet in the international market this year. A front office’s biggest job is to accumulate talent, wherever and however they can, and it is borderline malpractice for teams like these to completely miss out on the upside that some of these teens have to offer.

7. 

   I can’t decide if I’m glad this thing is in the world or not

8. I tweeted this, but it bears repeating: when I went to the Tampa Yankees-Daytona Cubs game, there were 52 people there at first pitch. I know that because I counted them. It took about thirty seconds. 11 of them were scouts. Florida hates baseball. I don’t make the rules.
9. I tweeted this also: I think Archie Bradley gets called up to Arizona immediately after the All-Star Break. When I saw him pitch in Jackson, he was throwing all of his pitches about 3 mph slower than average, looked like he didn’t really care, and came out after the fourth inning. He was pitching exactly how I imagine someone would pitch if they had been told by Kevin Towers that they would get called up for sure if they avoided injury for two more starts.

10. 

    This chess board has been linked to Biogenesis

That’s it for now. I’ll see you later! Get it? “See”?

Sorry I’m not sorry.

Should You Swing on 3-0 Pitches (Part 2 of 2) (Or Maybe 3)

Okay, enough fluffy* stuff, back to the cold, hard data. My game tonight was cancelled due to God giving Florida a much-needed bath**, so I spent all day answering my own question about Andrew McCutchen and 3-0 pitches. Here goes.

Since runs are the fundamental unit of baseball success for a batter, several metrics have evolved that estimate how many runs a particular play is worth. We can either look how many runs McCutchen DID create last season (perfectly descriptive, but not necessarily predictive), or we can take an average of how many runs he could have been expected to create across all game states. We’re going to do that, but first I’ll try to explain how.

There are 24 “game states” that are possible in baseball, and these are the different possible combinations of the number of outs and the number and location of baserunners. “Bases loaded, 1 out” is a game state. “Runner on third, no outs” is a game state. Do you want me to list all 24?

People with more patience*** than I have taken box scores from many years of baseball games, and calculated the average number of runs scored until the end of an inning by a team in any given game state. So, looking at the chart below, if you have the bases loaded with nobody out, you can expect to score 2.262 runs in that inning, whereas if you have two outs and no one on, you should only manage to score 0.101 runs on average. A given play is worth whatever the difference is between the resultant game state and the initial game state, plus any runs that may score. So if you have no one on and no one out, and you hit a home run, that’s worth exactly one run, since you started with a 0.489 run expectancy, and you finished with a 0.489 run expectancy, but you scored a run in the process. A grand slam with no one out is actually worth only 2.227 runs (0.489 – 2.262 + 4) because you already expected 2.262 runs to score, so you don’t get to take credit for them. There are several versions of this chart floating around online, each with slightly different values because they were calculated using data from different years. Because I’m working with 2012 McCutchen, I have chosen the 2012 Run Expectancies chart published by The Hardball Times, but other estimates that incorportate multiple years of data may have slightly more long-term predictive value (or they may have enough white noise that the additional sample size is useless, I don’t know).

Run Expectancy Table

When McCutchen swings at ball four, he passes up an automatic walk. A walk can take the game state from none on to a runner on first, from a runner on first to runners on first and second, and so on, and it can happen in any out situation. Game states do not come up with uniform probability, however. The following chart shows how often each situation occurs. For simplicity’s sake (and because they haven’t changed that dramatically), I’ll use the figures from 1993-2010 only.

Game State Probabilities

Using the above probabilities as weights, and using the run expectancies from the previous table, I have constructed the following table of play values:

Event	Run Value
Single	0.449
Double	0.779
Triple	1.021
Home Run	1.442
Walk	0.326
Out	-0.275

For McCutchen to be gaining value by swinging on 3-0 fastballs out of the zone, he must create more than 0.326 runs with an average at-bat. Only 30.9% of said swings were put in play in 2012. In those, he created 2.532 runs in 91 at-bats that ended on him swinging at a fastball out of the strike zone, an average of only 0.028 runs per at-bat. However, in the other 69.1%, the ball just went for a strike, and the at-bat continued. To account for those instances, we will combine his results in 3-1 and 3-2 counts, then take a weighted average with the at-bats that ended on fastballs out of the zone. This gives us a total figure of 0.085 runs per at-bat, still dramatically lower than the 0.326 runs we give up by not swinging. The net difference is -0.241 per at-bat when he swings at a 3-0 pitch out of the zone.

For us to accept these swings, he needs to do really well on the fastballs in the zone that he puts in play. Not taking the 3-0 strike has the opportunity cost of forgoing his success rate on 3-1 and 3-2 counts, which is 0.110 runs per at-bat.**** This is over three times more likely than McCutchen swinging at a fastball out of the zone, so it is weighted accordingly, giving us a required run creation rate of 0.212 runs per at-bat.

Drumroll, please.

It turns out that in his fastball-dominating 2012 season, McCutchen created runs on fastballs in the strike zone at a rate of only 0.110 runs per at-bat, functionally identical to his rate in 3-1 and 3-2 counts.

If he swings at a 3-0 fastball in the strike zone or watches it sail by, he will create virtually the same number of runs. Because of this, the value he sacrifices by swinging at balls out of the zone is enough to make a 3-0 green light a negative proposition in the long run.

On average, the best fastball hitter in baseball costs his team runs every time he swings at a 3-0 fastball. I am very surprised by this result, to say the least. I fully expected to have to lower my standards to find the cutoff point for when a 3-0 green light was a perfectly neutral idea, but it appears I’ll have to raise them. If I do wind up doing a Part 3, I will try to remove some of my initial assumptions, namely the assumption that all strikes are created equal. If McCutchen isolates pitches that are middle-middle or middle-in, rather than swinging at all strikes indiscriminately, I expect his power numbers may then be enough to create additional value. Also, if we only take data from the game states where McCutchen has the most to gain from a hit or extra base hit, maybe we can isolate a set of situations where the balance shifts into the batter’s favor. That being said, my expectations for this little thought experiment were pretty soundly defeated, so there is a good chance that I’m completely wrong and 150 years of baseball experience is right.

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*Blubbery?

**I called it a shower at first, and then it started flooding, so now it’s a bath

***Read: “free time”

****This sentence isn’t not easy to misunderstand