Derrek Lee, enjoy your last Gold Glove. James Loney is coming.

Before he read them, I knew Russell was our only chance for one this year, but I figured to hear some name like Brad Ausmus. But lo! The Golden God lives up to his name!!

So happy for the guy! And I agree with Eric: James and Russell should have a lock on the next 10 or 12 together.

When are the silver slugger awards announced? Russell is gonna need to purchase a (bigger?) house at this rate.

I have a friend that played at Field of Dreams quite a bit; I will ask him if he played with Jim Francisco.

The one thing I really liked about that park (despite the obvious "cool to have major league replicas") was that they had a display board near the entrance that listed the HR leaders for the current softball season.

I also liked that you could buy beer while watching a little league game! :)

Most errors by catchers are throwing errors. Every now and then, they drop a throw at the plate or a foul popup.

The extra special ones get called for catcher's interference or pick up pitches with their mask.

When I saw the last line of the article, I was suprised to see his average under the .290 mark, and sure enough, the stats page shows him at .293.

The gold glove is cool too though. =)

It is never time for that. Not unless Dante's Inferno has stopped burning.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/d/daviscr01.shtml

I don't know for sure, but my guess is he expected to go through life with a little less ostentatious moniker. Maynard, maybe, or Yardbird.

Anyway, by any name, he's great to have on our side.

I was looking at rosters yesterday to see how quickly certain players from the last golden era got into the lineup. I didn't make notes, but it seems like there was about four or five years of trial and error before "the infield" came together, and that the tinkering with the outfield and pitching staff never really stopped.

Just some perspective. Good as they are now, our most promising players are years away from their prime seasons. And the positions they play in the field now won't necessarily the positions they'll play when they hit their primes.

A lot rides on whether Schmidt comes back next season as a factor or not. Stepping back from the A-Rod frenzy, the biggest question Ned really has to resolve is whether we have enough starting pitching and, if not, what do we do about it? This is not just another opportunity for Ned to screw up. It's a genuine dilemma with risk on every side. If he gets third base wrong, that can be overcome. If he gets the starting rotation wrong, that will be decisive.

On a side note fwiw my favorite ESPN2 random world championship is The World Obstacle Course world championship. Its sorta like American Gladiators without all the roided up bad guys.

This guy's credibility fell, however, when he repeated the Plaschkeite line about the Angels needing to do something big "to counter Joe Torre."

http://tinyurl.com/2ol85t

Also: I did not know that Instant Replay is coming to baseball. So far, only to adjudicate home runs vs. foul balls, fan interference and painted lines. I wasn't following that story.

It seems very strange to see Rob Neyer and others say that anyone who signs Arod at his asking price is going to regret it like the Rangers. Weren't these the same guys who kept showing us study after study that the Arod/Ranger contract was not the problem with the Rangers?

I read about that too a few days ago, I kind of doubt anything will unfold in that department other than just talk.

Now, about the other "golden" nickname one sees now and then, I wouldn't saddle him with that at all. Great player. And ours.

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/7416086

It's great when our guy wins it, but I feel like if I celebrate this award for Martin I am than obligated to recognize Jeter as a great fielder.

Funny junk email story. One of my coworkers received a Viagra ad, and the email address was from Julio Lugo.

Per Josh Rawitch's ItD blog:

Joe Torre, "In My Own Words," will air tonight following Lakers Live postgame.

It will also air on FSN West on Thursday 11/8 at 10 p.m. and Saturday, 11/10 at 10:30 p.m. It will re-air on FSN Prime Ticket tomorrow, 11/7 at 10 p.m., Friday, 11/9 at 10:30 p.m., Sunday, 11/11 at 10 p.m., Monday, 11/12 at 4 p.m., Tuesday, 11/13 at 10 p.m. and Friday, 11/16 at 10:30 p.m.

...Charley Steiner and Joe sat for 30 minutes at the end of the press conference yesterday to allow you to get an idea of his thoughts on his first day as Dodger manager.

A-Rod or Miggy Cabrera;
Johan Santana;
Andruw or Torii.

"If they make those deals, they're going to the World Series."

How could the Mets have allowed this genius to get away???

What is it about one of "our guys" winning that makes it less arbitrary or more meaningful?

Was there some sort of job switch that I wasn't informed of?

March to his drum,
And drink his chowder,
And if you don't dig,
Your turn at bat, sir
He'll make you come alive
Russ, sir, number fifty-five!

No one! Bettah! Raaaaain! oooooon! Our!... Puh-huh-raaaaaaade!!

I am so tired of all this asterisk talk.

That said, Palmiero's 1999 GG (as noted in 7 ) is still inexplicable.

It's obviously tainted, and to suggest otherwise is silly. And I don't see how fining the Patriots is an appropriate punishment. Cheating hurt other teams at least as much as it hurt the league. Yet the other teams aren't compensated in any way. All that happened was the league got a little richer and the Patriots got a little poorer.

Where is the justice?

He's so likable otherwise. Oh well, I guess no one's perfect.

And there should not be asterisks on anything in sports. No more asterisks.

Is that like saying that the only reason Hank Aaron cares about steroids and Barry Bonds and the HR record is for his own selfish reasons?

Steal on Molina? Only his Gold Glove.

Martin beat out the Cardinals' Yadier Molina.
Views: This is incomprehensible.
This is one of the dumbest results in the history of Gold Glove voting, and it makes you wonder if managers and coaches actually pay attention to the games they're involved in.

"I was floored," said Joe Sheehan of The Baseball Prospectus, who was a guest Tuesday on our 1380-AM radio show. "We can nitpick some of the other Gold Glove choices, but this one isn't even a debate. Yadier Molina is the best defensive catcher in Major League Baseball."
Among NL catchers, Martin had the most errors (14). According to STATS LLC, Martin threw out only 28.7 percent of those who attempted to steal bases against him. That was only the fourth-best rate in the NL, and ninth-best rate in MLB among full-time catchers.
As for Molina: he led all MLB catchers in nailing base stealers, throwing out 23 of the 46 who challenged him (50 percent). He also led NL catchers in putouts per nine innings.
That only 46 steals were attempted on Molina tells us everything we need to know. Teams fear Molina's arm. They're very reluctant to run on him.
When Molina wasn't catching for the Cardinals in 2007, teams ripped off 30 steals in 35 attempts. That demonstrates, in a profound way, the difference that Molina makes defensively.
Fear of getting caught isn't in play with Martin. Teams tried to steal on him 115 times in 2007 – though I should point out that Martin caught 1,254 innings compared to Molina's 861. But Molina caught enough to qualify for all defensive ratings. And when teams succeed at stealing 71.3 percent of the time against a catcher, as they did versus Martin in 2007, shouldn't that count heavily against him?
Here's what's particularly crazy about this: if managers and coaches are afraid to run on Molina, then why don't they vote for him? If you respect a catcher so much that you shut down your running game because of him, then doesn't he deserve your vote? It makes no sense. Molina also got screwed out of the Gold Glove in 2006, when it went to Houston's Brad Ausmus – even though Ausmus threw out only 12 of 72 base stealers

I really should have been paying more attention today rather than working. I have to settle for Kevin Gross.

Or, I suppose it could be double Kirk Gibson!

But where's Congress? Don't they care about cheating in football too?

Why did no one care when Shawne Merriman tested positive for steroids? He is still on national television ad campaigns.

In other news, ESPN is trying to tell me that Kobe's "mileage" is really high for someone his age because he's been in the league so long. But it's not as if players who started their NBA careers later were just sitting around beforehand. Weren't they playing in college, and doesn't that mileage count as well?

That's what The Man wants.

"He also led NL catchers in putouts per nine innings." Big deal. Catchers get a putout for every stikeout where they don't drop the third strike and have to throw to first. I'll bet Ellie Rodriguez or someone of that ilk led the AL in the Ryan/Tanana heyday of the Angels.

When another NFL team goes undefeated, it is the '72 Dolphins who should get an asterisk for doing it in a shorter season.

94 Blame Ford Frick for opening the can of asterisk worms.

For all the talk about these more sophisticated metrics, I get the feeling that nobody (or at least, the people who cite them) understands what they mean. It seems like we should talk about the distributions of these stats, which would enable us to talk about confidence intervals, and hence allow for more informed interpretation.

Aren't confidence intervals only relevant if (1) you're estimating an effect in a sample that you want to (2) generalize to a population?

Most of the stats people talk about around here don't meet those criteria. We count stuff that happened, and sometimes compute averages and such. We generally have no need for confidence intervals.

Usually the Angels didn't have a catcher who led because the Angels catchers in the early 1970s were all awful.

The NBA has an 82 game season (about 2 1/2 times longer) and the games are 48 minutes, 20% longer. The playoffs can add a lot of games. Kobe, for example, has played 131 playoff games in 11 seasons, or an average of about 1/2 a season of college ball every year.

So, yes, a player accumulates a lot more mileage in the NBA if he plays, and Kobe did play.

Obviously, the difference between most players is such that you don't need fancy metrics to tell which is better.

Might is be hard to grip the bat after catching Ryan (and Tanana) fastballs day after day? ;)

From what I can tell, most of these fancy stats are just combinations of tried and true stats that people have thrown together and looked to see which do the best job of "predicting" important outcomes, such as scoring runs, preventing runs, etc.

Any stats majors who could give insight on this?

Come to think of it, adding OPS to Slugging seems a bit arbitrary as well.

I'm sure you know I'm biased towards our Golden Boy Russell that said I'm sure Yadier Molina makes a compelling if not down right great case for him self as the GG winner.

And yes, adding OBP to SLG doesn't really make sense because the two stats are not in the same units.

mmmm, Ding-Dongs!

I'm sure baseball people have looked at those things, but I guess my point is that the writers who use those stats don't give the impression that they understand the stats they use. At the very least, I don't understand those stats, so I have a hard time interpreting comparisons of players using "sophisticated" statistics.

For what little it's worth, Molina also had 7 PBs compared to Martin's 5.

Pujols dominates most of the defensive metrics at that position doesn't he?

Pujols: 1,325 innings, 124 assists, 8 errors, 132 double plays, .995 fielding %, 9.85 range factor, .912 zone rating
Lee: 1,274, 87 assists, 7 errors, 99 double plays, .994 fielding %, 8.84 range factor, .842 zone rating

Source: ESPN.com

Lee had 1 less error, but that's about it.

Comment by Kevin — November 6, 2007 @ 6:35 pm

----------------------------------------

What is LaRussa's standing with the other managers and coaches in the league? Is there an anti-LaRussa bias?

http://tinyurl.com/2pcd32

"Yes."

And thank you.

Data Source: STATS, Inc. Copyright 2007 STATS, Inc. Commercial distribution without the express written consent of STATS is prohibited.

I think he just got his stats wrong, for Molina as well.

As much as I love Russ, not giving the award to Yadier was pretty bad.

I suppose that since a CS nets a valuable out, it would be a heavy factor statistically, but I wonder what Greg Maddux would consider the most important thing. I'm guessing a catcher that "frames the ball" well and shifts his stance as late as possible? Are there things that catchers do for pitchers, defensively, that are important but hard to measure? If Russ Martin does something that helps pitchers every pitch that some other catchers don't - and we know pitching is a huge factor overall - could that possibly outweigh whether he threw out 40 or 60 baserunners (the approximate difference between 1/3 and 1/2 this season - for Martin that's about 1 extra out every 7 games) trying to steal?

Luckily Charlie was smart enough to have the first thing out of his mouth be, "Vin is the voice of the Dodgers, I am just a distant echo".

Another thing: Martin allowed 49 more steals than Molina but also threw out 15 more runners. That extra 49-for-63 equals a 77 percent SB rate. Given that the break-even rate (below which you are actually hurting your team by stealing) is 70 percent, the break-even amount in 63 attempts would be 45 steals. Anything fewer than 45 and you're doing your opponent a favor by attempting. So we're basically talking about 4 extra stolen bases -- that's the entire difference between Martin and Molina's value, throwing-wise. How many extra runs, exactly, does four stolen bases lead to? One run, at most?

>> The more Boras talks the more he sounds like he thinks he erred by orchestrating the opt-out clause with Rodriguez. <<

## Ned Colletti of the Dodgers said: "We'll have to wait and see. I haven't heard from Scott. I don't know if they have interest in being there or not. If they have interest we'll see where we go. It'll take a long time to play out, I'm sure." ##

http://tinyurl.com/29rk7o

>> The Florida Marlins are dangling Miguel Cabrera, who is expected to be awarded about $12 million in salary arbitration for 2008, and the Yankees' new manager, Joe Girardi, is a big fan of Cabrera. <<

## Executives from other teams say the Marlins would demand a center fielder and one or two premier young pitchers in return for Cabrera. ##

http://tinyurl.com/2grax2

The Dodgers could start their offer with Pierre and 25M.

If we can work that part out, I'm sure there's a couple of farm hands we can send them.

Tell me what to think!

A bidding war among the Angels, Dodgers and Giants? The Dodgers could steal him. I don't think either SF or LAA will go above $25 million, if they even got that serious.

Shorter version:
Getting A-Rod: $20-something million
Humiliating Boras: Priceless.

Even if his per-year dollars are lower (which I doubt), if he had stayed in his contract, and torn his labrum, he'd never see another long-term huge payday. No matter what, he's going to end up with more years, and more than 81 million dollars.

People can spin it however they like...A-Rod, and Boras, will be the winners. The margin of victory is the only question.

Q: The Pirates upper management has widely ignored OBP (on base percentage) in the past. How important will OBP be in player evaluation under your leadership?

A: We are going to utilize several objective measures of player performance to evaluate and develop players. We'll rely on the more traditional objective evaluations: OPS (on base percentage plus slugging percentage) , WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched), Runs Created, ERC (Component ERA), GB/FB (ground ball to fly ball ratio), K/9 (strikeouts per nine innings), K/BB (strikeouts to walks ratio), BB%, etc., but we'll also look to rely on some of the more recent variations: VORP (value over replacement player), Relative Performance, EqAve (equivalent average), EqOBP (equivalent on base percentage), EqSLG (equivalent slugging percentage), BIP% (balls put into play percentage), wOBA (weighted on base average), Range Factor, PMR (probabilistic model of range) and Zone Rating.

155 I like JP to the Marlins, but I note the Braves want a short term CF too.

1. Coco Crisp
2. Alex Cora
3. Tim Wakefield
4. Julian Tavarez

http://www.mrmedia.com/2007/09/michelle-borth-tell-me-you-love-me.html

http://tinyurl.com/2ttn33

165 A-rod may win on any extension, but if the annual figure doesn't get pushed up, Boras will see and feel it as a loss.

At which point he probably starts screaming "collusion"!

(runs)
(hides)

176 - SFW

Frank Gehry is becoming a cliche.

Like, a really, really bad one. Like a leisure-suit level cliche.

In 10 years, people will be desperate to knock most of his building down and replace them with something that doesn't look so dated.

Disney Hall is an exception.