No One Gets Elected to the Hall of Fame
The BBWAA elected no one to the Hall of Fame today despite a rather deep ballot in light of steroid era concerns. You can read my views on electing suspected users from last year, here.
If I had a vote for the Hall of Fame and was limited, like the voters, to ten votes per ballot, my list would look like this:
Bagwell
Raines
Martinez
Bonds
Clemens
Piazza
Schilling
Biggio
McGwire
Sosa
2012 Season in Review: Los Angeles Dodgers
86-76, 2nd in the NL West
It was a big year for the Dodgers. They had a strong first half and were in contention for a wild card birth deep into September, but the big stuff happened off the field. They were sold by the McCourts to Stan Kasten, Magic Johnson, and co for $2 billion. They’re finalizing a deal with FOX for TV rights worth around $6 billion. And they also took on every bad contract they could find. This was a year of changes for the Dodgers.
Looking at WAR for position players won’t tell much of the story here because only two of them played more than 130 games, and one of those was a catcher! Injuries and trades limited playing time so the accumulative nature of WAR won’t tell the whole story. Kemp, Either, the Ellises, and Cruz led the way, but Adrian Gonzalez, Shane Victorino, and Hanley Ramirez were among those who contributed over a couple of months.
Clayton Kershaw had another phenomenal season (5.5 WAR) in front of Chad Billingsly (2.7) and Chris Capuano (2.1). Aaron Harang (1.5) did nicely for a fifth starter, but if you’ve been counting, we’re only at four. The rest of the starts were scattered around. The bullpen had some nice pieces, but nothing otherworldly.
The big story of the season was the changing of the guard. Kemp and Either have new deals and a ton of other players have come on board. Carl Crawford, Adrian Gonzalez, Hanley Ramierard. Kemp and Either have new deals and a ton of other players have come on board. Carl Crawford, Adrian Gonzalez, Hanlrez, Josh Beckett, and Zach Greinke are among the new faces who will be with the Dodgers in 2013 who weren’t there on Opening Day of 2012.
Certainly the Dodgers ability to spend lots of money instead of no money will make them better, but there is some debate about how much better they’ve really gotten as a result of these moves. I’m of the opinion that they’re still not a lock for the playoffs because they have a lot of question marks.
They won 86 games in 2012, but some of that was good fortune in the early days of the season. Their true ability was probably closer to 81-81 in my book. They’ll add five wins from Greinke and three or four from Gonzalez and Ramirez over what they got in 2012, but I think most of the other moves are probably a wash. They’ll be better in 2013, but I don’t think their massive payroll will guarantee them anything.
2012 Grade: C
Early 2013 Projection: 89-73
2012 Season in Review: Arizona Diamondbacks
81-81, 3rd in the NL West
After a somewhat surprising and excellent 2011, the Diamondbacks took a step back in 2012 due to some regression to the mean and regression to the disabled list. The club won half its games, so it wasn’t a disaster, but expectations were moderately high, so it feels like a step back.
Four Dbacks outfielders played 100 games or more and posted starter or better WARs. Chris Young (2.8), Justin Upton (2.5), Gerado Parra (2.0), and Jason Kubel (1.8 so almost) made up a good outfielder, but it looks disappointing because Upton played so far below his ability. Second basemen Aaron Hill (6.2) had a monster year and hit two cycles, so you can’t complain about that. Paul Goldschmidt (3.7) played a good first base and Miguel Montero (5.0) had another great year behind the dish. Really, the left side of the infield is the only really area in need of upgrade on offense.
The starting pitching wasn’t bad either, even if Ian Kennedy (3.1) wasn’t a top line guy again and Daniel Hudson got hurt. Wade Miley (4.6) stepped in nicely and Trevor Cahill (3.4) fit in well. The other two spots in the rotation were trouble as the Snakes mixed and matched with some veterans and youngsters. The bullpen did well enough to keep them relevant.
A .500 team isn’t a great team, but this one has the makings of one. They traded Chris Young and signed Cody Ross. They have Adam Eaton waiting for an outfield spot too. They added some middle infield depth and bullpen reclamation projects this offseason. They dealt top prospect Trevor Bauer in the process, but added fragile yet very good Brandon McCarthy to fill the void not to mention a lot of good starting pitching working its way up the farm system.
The Dbacks didn’t turn heads in 2012, but with some retooling and a couple bounce back seasons, they have a shot to improve in 2013. Unfortunately, there are a number of NL teams on the rise, so that might not be so easy.
2012 Grade: C
Early 2013 Projection: 80-82
2012 Season in Review: San Diego Padres
76-86, 4th in the NL West
You might not believe this, but the Padres had a pretty respectable season in 2012. 76 wins isn’t something to pop bubbly over, but the team was far from the pushover farce that they have been in years past and were quite formidable down the stretch.
Chase Headley led the way with an MVP caliber season (7.5 WAR) and he had help from his friends, Cameron Maybin (2.7), Will Venable (2.7), Yasmani Grandal (2.6), Carlos Quentin (2.0), and Yonder Alonso (2.0). A couple other players posted near 2.0 win seasons, so when you look at the Padres offense as a whole; it’s actually not that bad. If you don’t like homeruns (which no one can hit at PETCO), the Padres were a downright…good offense.
The bullpen was pretty good, but the starters struggled to stay on the field. Only two made a full season of starts. Lots of the typical rate statistics put the Padres in the middle of the pack as a pitching staff, but WAR hates them because they get such a boost from their home ballpark.
Your view of their staff depends on how much you want to remove context from the equation, but you can’t call them good by any standard.
The farm is deep in San Diego and with new ownership and TV money, the franchise should be on the way up. They have a nice core of young players to build around and a few impact upgrades could put them right in the thick of contention.
I doubt 2013 will be a playoff year for the Padres, but they could push .500 and take a step toward being a legitimate contender in the near future.
2012 Grade: D
Early 2013 Projection: 77-85
2012 Season in Review: Colorado Rockies
64-98, 5th in the NL West
The Rockies were really bad in 2012. Usually I make an attempt at wit in the opening lines of a recap, but that’s all there is to be said. The Rockies were bad.
Their best hitter, Dexter Fowler, posted a 2.9 WAR and Carlos Gonzalez (2.7) and Tyler Colvin (2.7) are the only others above the 2.0 threshold. Granted their best player, Troy Tulowitzki, only played 47 games, so he likely would have made a run at something like a good season. The Rockies get help at home to make their traditional offensive numbers look good, but their batting average dropped from first in baseball at home to 26th in baseball when they went on the road.
Their staff as a whole was 23rd in baseball by WAR, but they were first in embarrassing attempts to limit pitch counts and use an ill-advised four man rotation! Let’s put it this way, their best pitcher by WAR in 2012 was a reliever. Matt Belisle, who was actually good, made 80 relief appearances on his way to a 2.1 WAR. None of their starters topped 1.8.
Yes, it was that bad. They went with a 75 pitch limit for starters no matter what and down to four starters to adjust for how bad they were and of course that made it worse.
Health will improve the Rockies going forward but the team isn’t built very well. With full seasons from their stars, I think the offense is good enough to contend in the NL West, but the pitching is simply too terrible for it to even matter.
It is very hard to get free agent pitchers to go to Colorado and drafting pitching is difficult as well. It only takes a few good luck seasons to get back into contention, but right now, this is easily the worst team in a division that includes the Padres.
It was a dark 2012 for the Rockies and 2013 doesn’t look a lot better. Tulo should be back and I don’t imagine the pitching can get worse, but their also up against some teams on the rise out west who will counteract those gains.
2012 Grade: F
Early 2013 Projection: 64-98
Lineup Protection: Fact or Fiction?
Among members of the traditional baseball community, lineup protection is a well-accepted truth. Among many members of the sabermetric community, lineup protection is a myth. Both can’t be right, but I’m sure not sure we know which side is.
First off, let’s define the term. Lineup protection is the idea that the hitter who hits behind you impacts how you perform based on a pitcher’s willingness to attack the zone against you versus pitching around you to face the next hitter. Let’s go a little further.
1) Protection assumes that it is better for Hitter 1 to see pitches in the strikezone because those pitches are easier to hit, therefore, protection increases your offensive numbers that do not include walks.
2) Protection assumes that a pitcher has some ability to control whether or not they throw you strikes versus balls in an at bat.
3) If you are “protected” you will see fewer pitches outside the strikezone, thus giving you a better chance to produce offensive numbers.
Now the sabermetric community points to evidence that says protection is myth because it hasn’t been shown to matter in any of the cases in which it could be tested. But a reasonable person would point out that to conduct a valid test, we would have to control for factors that we cannot control for in real life. We can’t randomly assign pitchers. We can’t hold the quality of the Hitter 1 constant. Even if you try to do that in a statistical sense, the sample size gets too small to have findings of any real significance.
The sabr crowd will tell you that the absence of evidence for protection means the burden of proof is place on those supporting it, and that’s a fine request in the abstract, but my aim isn’t to litigate an argument, it’s to see if protection is a thing or not.
More specifically, I want to see if protection should exist. In other words, should the hitter behind you impact how you get pitched?
I argue that it should and I’ll lay out my reasoning here. I can’t present an argument that protection does happen because it would be impossible to show that it does while maintaining a valid design, but I can present the argument that protection should exist using the 2012 Detroit Tigers.
Our Hitter 1 in this design is Miguel Cabrera. In 2012, Prince Fielder hit behind him and “protected” him. I will use their 2012 stats to craft their abilities, but these numbers could be adjusted if you prefer to track likelihoods by career numbers, monthly numbers, etc. Does Fielder’s presence behind Cabrera change the way a pitcher should attack Cabrera? I argue that it should.
Let’s look at this in the simplest terms possible. No one on, no one out. Cabrera leads off the inning, Fielder due up second.
In this scenario, Miguel Cabrera will get a base hit 33% of the time if the pitcher does not walk him (assuming Cabrera doesn’t know the pitcher will choose not to walk him). Fielder will get a base hit 31.3% of the time under the same conditions.
But not all base hits are the same. A walk and a single in this scenario have the same outcome for Cabrera, but doubles, triples, and homeruns are more damaging. Here, the pitcher would choose to walk Cabrera in all cases in which he would get a hit that wasn’t a single.
.33(batting average)*.41(% of hits that are for extra bases) = .1353
Regardless of who hits behind Cabrera, 13.5% of the time it is a better choice to walk Cabrera instead of pitching to him. If you don’t walk Cabrera, he will get an extra base hit 13.5% of the time, so you should walk him in those cases, but the other 86.5% of the time he will make an out (better) or single (equal).
So now let’s introduce his protector. Fielder gets a hit 31.3% of the time and 35% of his hits are for extra bases. This is important here because if Fielder gets an extra base hit, it is irrelevant what Cabrera did. If Cabrera gets a hit and then Fielder doubles, triples, or homers, Cabrera will score regardless of what base he occupied.
What we care about is how often Cabrera will get an extra base hit minus how often Fielder gets an extra base hit. We want to know how often we should walk Cabrera, so we need to see how often a Cabrera extra base hit will be followed by a Fielder single or out because a Fielder extra base hit would score a Cabrera walk.
Piece this all together and we discover that with none on and none out with Cabrera leading off and inning with Prince protecting him, walking Cabrera is the preferred choice 2.5% of the time.
This tells us that when Cabrera leads off an inning, 97.5% of the time, pitching to Cabrera will be the same or better than walking him with Fielder behind him. Obviously you can’t predict which 2.5% it will be, so you play the odds and always pitch to him when he leads off an inning.
How does this help us solve the problem? Should lineup protection matter?
It helps because if we insert the 2012 version of Delmon Young into this methodology, we should walk Cabrera 5.5% of the time. This still doesn’t tell us to walk Cabrera when he leads off an inning, but it tells us that we should walk him more to lead off an inning with Young behind him than if Fielder is.
This tells us that protection should matter. The hitter who bats behind you should impact the pitches you see. In practice, the likelihood of a walk being a smarter play with Young behind Cabrera means a pitcher should be more willing to pitch around Cabrera than if Fielder was behind him.
This becomes more evident when you add in baserunners and outs. I’m not going to walk through all the math in each of the 24 possible arrangements except to say that the more baserunners there are, the more valuable a walk can be over a hit. If a runner is on 2nd base, a walk is better than a single in the pitcher’s eyes, so the percentages slide in favor of a walk. However, you’re making a trade off because you are saying you like a 31.3% chance of a hit to a 33% of a hit when it comes to scoring the runner from second, but you are risking the chance that Fielder drives in Cabrera too.
The point of this entire piece is that the hitter behind Cabrera should matter. A pitcher should be more willing to pitch around Cabrera based on who hits behind him. That is hard to ignore, even if the percentages favor pitching to him in all scenarios. The important take away, however, is that it should also be a matter of degree.
Fielder and Young are dramatically different hitters. A very good hitter like Fielder matters over someone like Young, but would Fielder matter of Victor Martinez? Glad you asked.
Victor behind Cabrera means you should walk Cabrera 3.9% of the time in our scenario. So Prince is a better protector because he hits for extra bases more than Martinez does. But the difference is smaller than when Young is involved.
So, protection should matter, it’s a question of how much. A better hitter should protect you more than a lesser one and one who hits for more power should protect you more than one who hits more singles. It’s a sliding scale, so an overall difference would not be that evident unless the two potential protectors are significantly different both in reality and in the minds of the pitchers.
So while I cannot prove that protection exists, it absolutely should exists and should favor hitters with higher averages who get a lot of extra base hits. Additionally, since most baseball people believe it exists, that should reinforce its effect.
It should have a larger effect when pitchers and managers believe it exists. If they change their approach based on who hits behind someone because they believe it matters, then it will matter. Since it also should matter in a formal, logical sense as shown above, there is no other belief except to posit that lineup protection is a real thing, even if we can’t prove it.
The sabermetric response to this finding would likely be that even if it varies based on who hits behind you, the percentages always favor pitching to Cabrera over walking him. In other words, we never break 50.0%. This is true, but it misses something important. If 95% of the time you should pitch to Cabrera (and this is the extreme end), 1 out of 20 times, you should have walked him. This should impact you approach as a pitcher or you are being irrational. You should be more willing to walk Cabrera with Young behind him than Fielder even if your preference is to never walk him.
Protection should and probably does exist, even if the results are relatively small. Cabrera will not have a dramatically different season with Fielder or Young behind him, but we should observe differences, which means protection is likely a real phenomenon.
Alan Trammell and What We Want the Hall of Fame to Look Like
I was six when Alan Trammell played his final game. I can’t say I remember seeing much of him with my own eyes. But I come from a family of Tigers fans, so much so that my parents had a dog before I was born named, you guessed it, Trammell.
So the issue of Alan Trammell’s Hall of Fame candidacy is of some importance to me, my family, and the majority of the state of Michigan. Trammell is a beloved figure from the ’84 World Series team and a less beloved figure from a less than perfect managerial stint prior to Jim Leyland’s (he’s found a better home as Kirk Gibson’s bench coach in Arizona).
But is he a Hall of Famer? He’s a great Tiger, but does he make the cut for baseball’s highest honor?
First, I guess I should make clear that the Hall of Fame voting and the BBWAA in general are a joke. Stubborn, self-righteous writers won’t vote for suspected steroid users despite no proof and some refuse to vote for anyone on the first ballot simply because Babe Ruth didn’t make it in unanimously on the first ballot, so no one should. Lots of things about the voting are silly, but let’s leave that aside and ask if Trammell should be in the Hall of Fame assuming the Hall of Fame is actually a good measure of real baseball value.
For a long time, I thought no. And so have most of the voters. 36.8% of the 2012 voters put Trammell on their ballots, which is a far cry from the necessary 75% needed for induction. But in recent years I’ve become a more sophisticated fan, especially in the area of comparing eras and positions.
Trammell doesn’t have any universally accepted counting stat thresholds like 3000 hits or 500 homeruns to rest his candidacy upon, but those marks aren’t necessary for induction, they are merely sufficient. Let’s examine Trammell’s candidacy.
Over 20 big league seasons, he played 2293 games, hit 185 homeruns, drove in 1003, scored 1231, and stole 236 bases. He hit .285/.352/.415, good for a .343 wOBA and 111 wRC+. With good defense, Fangraphs puts his WAR at a healthy 69.5 (Baseball Reference says 67.1).
I’m not going to go through the arguments for or against Trammell made by others, but rather I’m going to construct a case based solely on the evidence.
Let’s start my putting Trammell in the context of major league shortstops. In the simplest terms, Trammell in 16th in career WAR for a shortstop. Every retired player on the list ahead of him is in the Hall. Some behind him are in. Based on the players already in the Hall at short, it seems like Trammell has a strong case. But past decisions aren’t necessarily right, so we can’t just say Trammell should make it because other undeserving players have made it.
By all of the main counting stats, Trammell is somewhere between 14th and 21st all time for shortstops with no controls for era. He’s outside the top 30 in all of the rate stats, however. Again, we’re not controlling for era here. This is the crux of the problem with Trammell’s candidacy. If you look at his numbers, it looks like he played for 20 years and accumulated a lot of counting stats without ever rising to the to the rate levels of the other past greats.
But like I said, this ignores context. Offense shot up right as Trammell’s career was ending and only in the last few years has it headed back down. Let’s look at Trammell’s contemporaries. Shortstops who played from 1970 to 2000 (adding five years on each end). These are arbitrary end points, but during that 30 year span, only Cal Ripkin, Ozzie Smith, and Robin Yount have higher WARs.
Trammell’s case rests on being a very good shortstop at a time of lower offense. He wasn’t the best of his era and he isn’t the best at anything. He played well over a long career and had a peak that looked like a Hall of Fame peak. Trammell’s best seasons are Hall of Fame worthy, but some of his worst seasons drag down the overall resume. Trammell is a good study in what you think the Hall of Fame should be.
I’ve always been a “story of the game” guy. The Hall of Fame to me is a museum to the game’s history and it should include the players who are vital to understanding the game. For this reason, I’m for admitting the suspected steroid users. But where does that leave Trammell?
By counting stats, he should be in. By rate stats, he’s probably not good enough. But that’s before you factor in the context of his position and his era. If the threshold for induction is that you have to be better than the worst player who is in, Trammell makes the cut. If there is a more ideal definition I think his case is less clear.
Trammell is vital to the story of the Tigers, but I don’t know how much he matters to the game as a whole. The fourth best shortstop of his era and a top 20 or 30 shortstop all time. If you like a big Hall of Fame, there is room for him. If you’re an exclusivity fan, he’s probably on the outside looking in.
Despite the quirks of voting, the Hall is still sacred ground. It does matter who gets in and who doesn’t. I’m left wavering on Trammell because I’m a story of the game guy and an exclusivity hawk. I want to induct players who were great and players that mattered. Greg Maddux is going in the Hall soon because he was great (and mattered), but I’m also more favorable toward Jack Morris because of his role in one of the great pitching classics of all time (Game 7, 1991 World Series) even if his raw numbers don’t warrant an inclusion in my book.
By my own standards, if I was redrawing the Hall of Fame, I think I would leave Trammell out. He doesn’t meet my own internal standards for the Hall, but he does mean the standards of the Hall as it currently stands.
Like I said, the Hall is a quirky place. Tim Raines isn’t in, but Jim Rice is. That doesn’t really add up. Hell, Pete Rose isn’t in the Hall. Voters have a lot of weird traditions and unwritten rules that don’t make sense. Certain voters see themselves as privileged gatekeepers to the point of ridiculousness. Bonds won’t make it because maybe he used steroids, but racists and wife beaters are just fine with them. The voters are the morality police without the moral compass.
As a Tigers fan, I want Trammell to get in. If I was designing my own Hall of Fame, I’d probably leave him out. But he belongs in this one. He has four years left of eligibility and he might get lost in the other battles raging over the Hall.
Given the criteria and the boundaries drawn by voters past and present, Alan Trammell belongs in the Hall of Fame.
Jhonny Peralta and a Lesson in Context
A decent number of Detroit sports personalities hate Jhonny Peralta. They think he’s a bad defender and unimpressive hitter. But they’re wrong and they’re wrong for an important reason. Position matters.
Peralta has been as durable as they come and hasn’t been on the DL in his entire career. He’s a lock for 145+ games and he’ll hit .250, walk a little less than average, and hit for average power. He’s not rangey, but he’s reliable on defense. He’s consistent. He’s shown the ability to hit .300 with a lot of power, but even if you don’t buy that ceiling, the floor is pretty stable and safe.
So if you look at a .264/.327/.422 hitter, you’re not thinking about a great player. But that actually depends. If that guy is hitting third and playing first base for you, you’re in trouble. But if he hits eighth and plays shortstop, you’re thrilled. This is a lesson in context.
In 2012, by WAR, Peralta was the 14th best shortstop in baseball with 2.6 (probably 13th if we don’t count Ben Zobrist who wasn’t a full time shortstop). Fourteenth is dead on average. In order to improve at shortstop, the Tigers would need to find a way to get a player who’s ahead of him on this list:
Alcides Escobar, Zack Cozart, J.J. Hardy, Asdrubal Cabrera, Hanley Ramirez, Derek Jeter, Starlin Castro, Erick Aybar, Elvis Adrus, Jose Reyes, Jimmy Rollins, Ian Desmond, and Ben Zobrist.
Those are the shortstops who were more valuable in 2012 than Peralta. Those are all big league starters and their teams aren’t giving them away. Those guys were better than Peralta in a down year for Peralta. In 2011, Peralta was third among MLB shortstops in WAR with 5.2, trailing only Reyes and Troy Tulowitzki.
From 2006-2012, Peralta was the 12th best shortstop in baseball. This, remember, is a lesson in context.
The context is the position you play. Peralta is not a great hitter. His .324 wOBA since 2006 is very average. But shortstops are lesser hitters as a group. Peralta’s average-ness is actually quite valuable from the shortstop position. You can’t compare him to everyone, just the players who play his position, and against them, he stacks up well.
He’s an average to slightly above average shortstop. You can’t replace him with Danny Worth or Ramon Santiago and get better. 15-20 teams would be very happy to take Jhonny Peralta from the Tigers and improve their middle infield.
You might think Peralta is lackluster on offense, but you have to realize the bar is lower for shortstops than it is for players on the corners.
His defense is also hotly debated. A lot of people think he’s terrible. The advanced metrics actually seem to love him. He’s posted a 9.9 UZR each of the last two seasons (meaning he’s been a win better than average at short each year). A lot of his critics read these numbers and scoff and say he benefits from good positioning by the coaching staff.
But you can’t deny what UZR is telling you. It might not mean Peralta is great on defense, but it does mean that he is getting to enough balls to be worth a win a season on defense. He might be getting aid from his coaches, but it is happening. Brendan Ryan would outperform him in the same context, but Peralta is performing well, even if someone else could take the Tigers’ coaches and use them even better.
I’ve read other metrics and watched with my own eyes and I think it’s fair to say Peralta is good going to his left and a little less rangey going to his right. He has good hands and generally makes accurate throws. With the help of good positioning, he’s helped the Tigers win on defense. He might not be miraculous himself, but remember, this is a lesson in context. In the situation he plays in, he is doing well.
So while a lot of people complain about Peralta, he’s clearly an average or better shortstop and is very durable. He’s also cheap at $6.5 million a season. Excellent shortstops are rare and expensive. Peralta is cheap, durable, and pretty good. I don’t see anything wrong with that.
The Tigers are a good team with a lot of star power. Peralta is a good compliment. He’s a good, cheap player at a position with few true stars. The people who want to get rid of Peralta need to take a long hard look at the rest of the league.
The league average production at shortstop in 2012 was .256/.310/.375. That looks an awful lot like the Peralta floor. You can’t compare him to Prince Fielder. Fielder plays first base and the league average first baseman in 2012 hit .257/.330/436. Way more walks, way more power. It’s a different position, so it’s a different set of expectations.
Jhonny Peralta is a guy you want to hang on to if you’re the Tigers, not a guy you need to replace.
Indians Get Swisher, Laugh Like Mr. Burns
Nick Swisher is underrated and Nick Swisher is now a Cleveland Indian. He’ll likely replace Shin Shoo Choo in right field, but can play left, first base, or DH over the course of his four year, $56 million deal (vesting option could take it to 5/70).
Most people figured Josh Hamilton would get more than Swisher on the free agent market, and we now know they are right. Hamilton got 5/125, which is more than 4/56. But that’s because Hamilton is overvalued and Swisher is undervalued. This is a great deal for the Indians. A great one.
Swisher is a young 32 and this deal will cover his age 32-35. Those are past his peak years, but not way into Alex Rodriguez territory. Swisher played his first full season in 2005 and was a full time player from 2006-2012. Over the last seven seasons, Swisher has never played fewer than 148 games. He’s never hit fewer than 22 homeruns. He’s had a walk rate under 12.3% once. He’s had an OBP under .355 once. He’s been an above average hitter and an average or better defender.
He’s been worth less than 3.0 WAR once in that span. All of these “onces” came during his worst season in 2008 where he was still an okay player.
Even if you figure he’ll decline into this thirties, he’s been a model player. Consistent power and patience mixed with solid defense. You can write him down for a 3 win season. He’s getting paid to be worth 2-3 wins over the next four season each, so if there is no salary inflation, he should be worth it. But there will be inflation, so he’s a steal.
Also, at $14 million a season, the risk isn’t so high that he’ll fall off the table and drag the team with him because he doesn’t have that $25 million price tag of Hamilton.
Swisher is essentially provides consistent, reliable production at the level that Hamilton averages out to. He’s a 3-4 win player with power. That’s what Hamilton is, but Hamilton has the amazing ceiling and flashes of brilliance mixed with the terrible lows.
With no inflation, Swisher needs to accumulate 11-12 wins to earn his deal. Hamilton needs to accumulate 25 wins. I’d much rather take the Swisher contract with a lower ceiling than the Hamilton contract with the bottomless-pit-like floor.
The Indians are a small market club and have a lot of work to do to build a winner. But in the weak AL Central, contention is probably not too far off. They have a solid young infield and catcher and an outfield that is serviceable. One more good bat and some rotation upgrades could get the Tribe near the top. Swisher is a good step in the right direction.
It will take some luck for the Indians to play with the Tigers in 2013, but anything can happen. Nick Swisher is a reliable player at a good price and he’s a fun loving guy who went to school at Ohio State. He seems like a natural fit for the Indians. He’d have a been a great fit for a lot of teams. It’s a little surprising a bigger market club didn’t offer more money, but fans in northeast Ohio will be glad they didn’t.
Grade: A
Does Bonderman Have Something Left?
Jeremy Bonderman hasn’t thrown a pitch in professional baseball since 2010 and it looked like he was hanging up his cleats for good. He saved his money wisely and seemed ready for a backwoods retirement in obscurity.
But he couldn’t quite close off that part of his life. The former Tiger hurler who spent eight seasons in the major leagues is trying to make a comeback, and yesterday, his hometown Mariners made that comeback a possibility by signing him to a minor league contract. Jeremy Bonderman might not be done after all.
Bonderman went 67-77 with a 4.89 ERA in 207 games with the Tigers from 2003-2010, including some durable and effective seasons from 2003-2007. In 2006, he posted a 3.29 FIP and 6.1 WAR, which were both career bests. He was by no means a great starting pitcher in the mold of Johan Santana or Roy Halladay, but he was the Tigers workhouse until Verlander took over that role.
The whole of his career is respectable and unimpressive. He made it to the big leagues early because the Tigers were terrible and needed pitchers and because he left high school a year early and got his GED so he could enter the draft at 17. He’s also famous for causing Billy Beane to throw a chair through a wall. Yes, that’s a real thing.
But that 2006 campaign was great. Only Johan Santana and Brandon Webb had better FIPs and WARs. Aren’t those a couple of names from a time long since passed?
The potential was always there for Bonderman, who had a solid fastball and an excellent slider. He worked year after year on a changeup, but it never materialized and injuries soon caught up with him. He had four above average major league seasons, one of them great, before his 26th birthday. Most pitches don’t hit their peak until ages 26-30. Bonderman’s came long before.
Bonderman will spend the entire 2013 being 30 years old. He’s missed two years being semi-retired, and he’s still thirty.
If the arm speed is still there and the fastball and slider can still work, he could be a good piece out of the bullpen. I always thought he could thrive in the pen. When the injuries came, I thought they should have moved him to the back end of the ‘pen, but alas, it never happened and he walked away from the game.
Until now. Now, Jeremy Bonderman is making a comeback. I’m not sure if there’s a more romantic quest in sports than the grizzly veteran seeing if he has something left. Think The Rookie or Bull Durham. Think about the awesome Sports Night episode, “The Sword of Orion,” in which part of the story centers around Dan’s desire to watch a washed up starting pitcher start a comeback in an exhibition game with the Baltimore Orioles.
Something about a comeback speaks to us at a very emotional level. The idea of thinking something is over, only to find out that there is still time, is a powerful feeling. So we love when athletes try to conquer father time and mother nature and play beyond when we thought they could.
I’m dying to see Bonderman make this comeback. I’ll be waiting up for West Coast games, just hoping he’ll get the call. I want to see what he has left. The look in a man’s eye when he realizes there’s a little bit left in the tank that no one thought he had, that’s the look we live for.
The idea of a peak is everywhere in life. Some people peak in high school when they’re named prom king. Some in college. Baseball players in their late 20s. Others in their 40s. Whatever and whoever it is, we all peak. But what comes after the peak is still meaningful. There’s still something there. The party isn’t over.
The best days of Bonderman’s career may be over, but there may yet be days ahead. He might have another pitch, another game, another season, or another five seasons. He might have nothing left. But Bonderman was a big piece of some of my earliest baseball memories and I’ll be cheering like crazy for him. I love comebacks and I’m dying to see what Bondo has left, even if it’s just one more pitch.
New English D 