Odd Thoughts

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Please read the notice below, taken from a West Monroe grocery store bulletin board. If there's anything you know, or anything you can do to help, call the number on the notice right away. (The area code is 318.)

Quick Thoughts on Ichiro

Reports have been swirling for a week or so that Ichiro is unhappy with the Mariners and wants to be traded. The second part of his aledged desires seems to be more wishful-thinking on the part of most of the baseball media, but the first part appears to be true. The Seattle P/I ran a translated version of an interview from Ichiro that ran in a Tokyo paper (you can read it here and a commentary on it here). I am in essential agreement with the commentary, and I find Jeff Nelson's words in one of the two articles to be very problematic.

The summary of the matter, as I see it, is that Ichiro is sick of loosing, and he's not so sure the majority of his teammates care whether or not the win. He picked card-playing as an example of things that go on in the clubhouse, rather than game prep. A number of the Mariners seem to have taken offense on the matter, but Ichiro is right. If the team isn't winning, the players probably should be playing cards or goofing of before game time. We know that players are friends with each other. Play cards elsewhere. On a quick side, I believe the card-playing is just an example of distracting, non-baseball related activity of which there could be many different forms. It seems to me and to Ichiro, that when a team is on their way to another 90+ loss season, every player on the team needs to be far more worried about the season than which player is the current chips leader.

Here's what Jeff Nelson said that bothered me:

"Put it this way," Nelson said, "in a rough season, when you have so many young guys, they're just happy to be in the big leagues. They're out of the minors. They're going to different cities. They're making big-league money. Who cares if they win or lose?

"With guys like (Yuniesky) Betancourt or (Jose) Lopez, it's hard to tell them, 'Hey, it's time to win.' It's overwhelming. Give them some time to shine. Maybe next year you tell them that it's time to buckle down."

What a bunch of lies. If the rookies are just happy to be there, and aren't concerned about winning, they won't be there very long. In a post-season commentary concerning the Oakland A's, Eric Chavez was applauded (and rightly so) for saying the exact opposite of Nelson. Chavez called a team meeting for the express purpose of letting the numerous rookies on the team know that a "We're just happy to be here" attitude was unacceptable, and that this was about winning.

Cheers for Ichiro.

Comments on Defensive Catchers

Overall, I can’t object. Only one post season award has really offended me this off-season, and that is the selection of Jason Varitek as the AL Gold Glove Winner for catchers. If you’ve read much of what I’ve written about Gold Gloves and the problems with defensive statistics, you know that I don’t consider the Gold Glove to be great award, partially because understanding the numbers is hard to do, and the people that vote on the awards don’t even try to look at the numbers anyway.

In order to better understand it for myself, I’ve done a little research on 2005 defense at catcher for all the players that caught 75 or more games. I looked at from a per league stand point, and then from an overall standpoint. I understand that a lot of a catchers numbers have to do with the team, and particularly the pitching staff, that he plays with, I have not attempted to make an adjustment to compensate for this, nor have I considered the teams ERA, at least as an attribute for the catcher, as I cannot come up with a logical way of assessing that. What I have done is look at some of the statistics that are traditionally considered to be relevant, and in some cases I’ve looked at them in different ways.

The final rating number is simply the sum of each players rank in each of the six categories. That is, if a player were to rank first in all six categories, his final score would be 6. No one scored a 6 or even stayed in single digits. This is just a method of coming to a ranking position. A player that scores a 30 is not necessarily twice as good as a player that scores 60.

Anyway, the six categories I considered are fielding percentage, caught stealing percentage, range factor, passed balls per inning caught, double plays, and non-caught stealing assists. I don’t have the time to put the whole table on the blog here, but I do want to highlight some of the interesting findings.

First of all, Mike Matheny was the best. He scored a 32 in the overall, which tied with Brad Ausmus, and a 22 in the NL-only list, which was 1 point better than Ausmus. The best AL Catcher was Victor Martinez, with an AL-only score of 23 and an overall score 50. NL Catchers appear to have an advantage in the overall rankings as Martinez only comes in 7th on the overall list.

Matheny, Ausmus, and A.J Pierzynski all had fielding percentages of .999, while Jason Phillips (.992), Jason Varitek (.990), and Rod Barajas (.988) were the worst in that category.

Yadier Molina had the best caught stealing percentage at .641 with Ivan Rodriguez (.515) and Joe Mauer (.426) at second and third. I suppose it’s no surprise that Mike Piazza was the worst in baseball at catching runners (.137); Jason Phillips (.196) and Lieberthal (.213) join Piazza at the bottom.

In range factor, Michael Barrett, Ausmus, and Mike Lieberthal led the way, while Barajas, Joe Buck, and Jorge Posada brought up the rear.

Johnny Estrada, Joe Buck, and Victor Martinez and the fewest passed palls per inning caught. Oddly enough, Bengie and Yadier Molina were the most likely to let the ball get away.

Mike Matheny was involved in an astonishing 13 double plays. Brian Schneider had 11, and Damian Miller had 10. Greg Zaun turned only 3, Jason LaRue turned only 2, and in 915 innings caught, Chris Snyder of the Diamondbacks turned none.

In the non-caught stealing assist category, Ausmus led the way with 47, followed by 41 from Yadier Molina, and 38 from Matheny. Posada had the most in the AL with 37. Javy Lopez had the fewest overall with 11, but he was innings-caught challenged. Jason Varitek was the second worst with only 11, and that in the 5th most innings caught overall.

As for Jason Varitek in the rankings, he came in dead last in the overall, with 89 points, and tied for last with Rod Barajas in the AL-only list at 46. Don’t get me wrong, I like Varitek. If this were a study based on offense, Varitek would be among the top group. But I feel like I’m taking crazy pills here. The reigning AL Gold Glove catcher has to be removed from a game when Tim Wakefield comes in or starts. I know that the knuckler is tough to catch, but I’m sure Ausmus and Matheny would stay in the game, or even be the guys the manager would want to catch a knuckleballer. Varitek as a Gold Glover has got to be the single greatest MLB award error ever.