Older Posts

Old photographs are great. They provide a grasp on history that fosters the telling and retelling of stories that should never die. We found this great piece of history on Tumblr, but it's from Dave at Shorpy. It is a 1913 photograph of three Washington Senators teammates, Germany Shaeffer flanked by a couple of young Cuban ballplayers, Jacinto Calvo and Merito Acosta.


Much how Chris Jaffe revived the old Bill James and Rob Neyer tracers for Hardball Times a few days ago, I'm sure we can dig up classic stories about Germany Shaefer alone. We don't know if any of this is true, but just the sponsor of his baseball-reference page has this to say:

A true vaudevillian showman. Sarcastic, witty, and a solid ballplayer. He stole first base (from second). Pulled off the hidden ball trick in the World Series. Got kicked out of a game for wearing a fake mustache to bat. What more do you need to know?

For what we have now, below is a reblog of Cesar Brioso's words on the Cuban Beisbol Tumblr... (I hope this works!)... enjoy...

cubabeisbol:

Cuban players Jacinto Calvo, left, and Merito Acosta, right, with Washington Senators teammate Germany Schaefer in this circa 1913 photo found on Shorpy.com.
Calvo and Acosta were among the first Cubans to play in the major leagues in the modern era.
Acosta played for the Senators from 1913-16 and split the 1918 season with Washington and the Philadelphia Athletics. Calvo played in 1913 and 1920 with Washington.
Acosta, who was elected to the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame in 1955, played for Habana, Red Sox, Almendares and Marianao during 12 Cuban League seasons between 1913-25. He also led Marianao to the Cuban League pennant as manager in 1922-23, according to Who’s Who in Cuban Baseball, 1878-1961.
Calvo was elected to the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame in 1948 after 14 winters in Cuba with Almendares, Habana, Orientals and Marianao from 1913-27.

And the hits keep coming from Aaron Crow. Last night, he pitched a scoreless eight inning in a tie game, striking out 1 and allowing 1 hit, keeping his season (and career) ERA at 0.00.

What I really wanted to share was what I thought was this impressive tidbit from Yahoo Sports:

RHP Aaron Crow, who struck out Orioles 3B Mark Reynolds to lead off the eighth inning Tuesday, has retired the first batter he has faced in all 13 of his appearances. Crow has not allowed a run in 15 1/3 innings to start his big-league career.

Crow should get used to the attention

If you play fantasy baseball and can use the value of a good relief pitcher in the Starting Pitcher spot of your lineup, you should go get Aaron Crow.

He is currently owned in 1% of ESPN leagues and 11% of Yahoo leagues. At least no-one can say we are perfidious towards SP/RP's, which is nice.

One of the things we've been trying to do a lot around here is differentiate this space by trying different things. Well, let the track record be darned as we try another renewable post topic.* Presumably, the best parts of this topic is that it'll be fun to write and potentially useful to fantasy players and reality fanatics.

*Please, no worries, "Player of the Fortnight" isn't going anywhere.

We unveil the curtain, and our idea is: Whom would we pickup if we were streaming hitters or pitchers?

Best FA pickup of my career? Jayson Werth 3 HR's 5/18/08

I've been in leagues where it is advantageous to play matchups, or ride a hot streak, and add/drop a player just about everyday instead of having your team's worst player in your lineup day in and day out. I may never forget the best free agent pickup that I've ever executed. It was May 18, 2008, and I picked up part-time player, but lefty masher, Jayson Werth, as his Phillies were at home facing the lefthanded David Purcey. Werth promptly exploded for 3 Homeruns and 8 RBI's.

It's more common to see this phenomenon with Starting Pitchers than hitters, but we will show an option for both. League circumstances vary, and we don't want to be forced to go too deep into the free agent ranks, thus ignoring better players who are available in your league. What's the right number? We'll leave it to the readers to decide. Comment below, tweet at me, or email baguilers *at* gmail what ownership percentage is best. For this inaugural post, and until we hear from y'all, let's say that we can only consider players available in over 76% of ESPN and Yahoo leagues. If they're available in more than 76% on one site, but nor the other, they're ineligible. In other words, they must be owned in less than 24% of leagues on both websites.

So, if we're looking at the Free Agent wire for tomorrow's game, and we need a batter and could use another pitcher, whom would we add?

Pitcher: Aaron Crow

Aaron Crow has been lights out in 2011.

If you need a pitcher for tomorrow's games, there isn't much to choose from in the under 25% ownership range. I may say roll the dice with Freddy Garcia @ Detroit, but that is playing with fire.

We've always touted electric arms from the SP/RP position; Aaron Crow is no different. So far this season, Crow has pitched 14.3 innings with 14 strikeouts, 2 wins, a 0.00 ERA, 2.06 FIP, and 0.84 WHIP. His pitch values are high, and his 0.4 fWAR reflects that his performance this season, to date, has already been worth $1.9 million on the free agent market. That's not bad, at all, for one months work from a set up relief pitcher. On the other hand, ZiPS projects a 6.64 ERA and 1.86 WHIP for the rest of the season. Clearly, it's my humble opinion that while ZiPS doesn't like Aaron Crow, ZiPS doesn't know Aaron Crow.

Batter: Seth Smith
We were going to say Brett Wallace of the Astros. We've mentioned him over and over, and his ownership has risen steadily. His tripe slash line, so far, this season is .382/.450/.517, and while his numbers will regress downwards, he is still learning on the job. Finally, fantasy players are starting to take notice as his ownership percentage has risen to 27% on both ESPN and Yahoo.

Cash in on a hot bat.

For almost two years, smart baseball guys like Dave Cameron have been yelling to "Free Seth Smith". I'm not sure that he is going to take an everyday job and run with it, but Dexter Fowler sure hasn't been getting it done. If you're reeling from the loss of Jose Tabata, outfielders like Smith, Josh Willingham, or even Corey Patterson may be your next contributor. Smith has a decent chance of starting tomorrow night, and it's a good matchup. Barry Enright has difficulty retiring Major League hitters, and the D'Backs ballpark inflates production from left-handed hitters.

Future blog post Spoiler Alert: I'm going to look for an old script of "Soap" because I would love to mimic their introduction and conclusion narration with gems like, "What will happen next? Will Benson discover that Billy is up to no good?" I don't know. Anyway, like I said, I need to find an old script. Yeesh.

Until we meet again, thank you for all the love.

An Eduardo Perez tweet yesterday asked "Who do you guys believe is the most underrated player in the majors?"

This discussion is overrated and needs a fresh take. Without showing any boring math, we feel the need to provide some framework to avoid the usual ambiguity. Of course, there is no statistic for, um, ratedness, but we can see fantasy baseball ownership percentages on multiple sites. We can check google news articles, twitter streams, and tumblrs. Most of all, we feel that our baseball obsession gives us a good feel of who's getting media attention, who isn't getting as much, and how each team's fan base generally feels about everyone.

Even better, we want to hear who you think is underrated. Please leave comments below or email me at baguilera [at] gmail. I'd absolutely love to hear who you think is underrated because you're probably right!

With that in mind, let's look at our statistically based and unavoidably biased opinions on underrated players by division and team:

NL East
Braves: Chipper Jones
Marlins: Logan Morrison
Mets: Ike Davis
Nationals: Wilson Ramos
Phillies: Placido Polanco

Unless Wilson Ramos continues to hit like a young Mike Piazza, Logan Morrison is our choice for most underrated player in the group.

NL Central
Astros: Brett Wallace
Brewers: Casey McGehee
Cardinals: Allen Craig
Cubs: Sean Marshall
Pirates: Garrett Jones
Reds: Jonny Gomes

Sean Marshall is one of the best left handed relief pitchers in all of baseball. It's boring to talk about, so we don't read much about middle relievers unless they have a complete meltdown. Marshall is getting ready for a free agent pay day in the neighborhood of 3yrs and 20 million dollars. Until then, he'll probably remain under the radar.

NL West
Diamondbacks: Joshua Collmenter
Dodgers: Jamey Carroll
Giants: Sergio Romo
Padres: Tim Stauffer
Rockies: Seth Smith

All five of these guys could have standout season this year. Josh Collmenter has numerous challenges to becoming a household name, but we have a feeling that we're on a Sergio Romo bandwagon that has way too many open seats.

AL East
Blue Jays: Ricky Romero
Orioles: Jeremy Guthrie
Rays: Joel Peralta
Red Sox: Jed Lowrie
Yankees: Eric Chavez

I had great seats in section 117B of Yankee Stadium last Tuesday night, and Eric Chavez made a couple of spectacular plays. If people recognize that Ricky Romero is a bonafide Ace, then perhaps I'm off base here. Joel Peralta is a good undervalued bet, gotta be better than Kyle Farnsworth. Nothing trumps the fact that Jed Lowrie looks like the best Shortstop in the American League, but he's in a time share with Marco Scutaro.

AL Central
Indians: Vinnie Pestano
Royals: Aaron Crow
Tigers: Al Alburquerque
Twins: Brian Duensing
White Sox: Gavin Floyd

A lot of fans have cried for Asdrubal Cabrera, making him immediately not underrated. Have you ever heard of Vinnie Pestano or Al Alburquerque? Their statistics and names are epic.

AL West
Angels: Peter Bourjos
Athletics: Brandon McCarthy
Mariners: Doug Fister
Rangers: Mitch Moreland

Take a look at Brandon McCarthy's Twitter image, and see if he's been overlooked at all this year. Peter Bourjos is also well worth evaluating if you're a rotisserie baseball manager.

So, who do you think is the most underrated player in baseball? Is it someone we didn't mention, yet? If forced to pick one player, I'd probably say the Cubs' Sean Marshall.

This is not new, but it's alarming how more and more discussion topics must be relevant to the moment, and the moment is constantly shortening. Years ago, we could discuss something that happened in the first week of the baseball season, and it would be fun just to be able to talk about baseball.

Now, with the advancement of the ESPNSportZone 24-hour news cycle, twitter, tumblr, blah, blah, blah, people more than ever want to know what is NOW.

Are you The Ted Williams?

Remember when the homeless guy from Cleveland got a great job doing Cavs games on the radio? When was the last time anyone on Access Hollywood even thought about that guy?

What else? Oh, I love the NFL! I love the NFL Draft! Cam Newton? Oh yeah, cool, let's talk about Cam Newton! Booring, the Royal Wedding is on! Cool!

The Royal Wedding took up much of the world's attention yesterday and in the days, weeks, and months leading up. Besides the lunatics who stayed up all night or got up in the middle of the night for the coverage, the US awoke to live coverage of some stage in the Royal Wedding. If you were near a TV, it was more than likely set to a channel covering the nuptials. Facebook and Twitter were basically taken over by Brit aficionados.

So that's Pippa's arse. Ok.

For a couple of hours, I decided to get into it; sure, why not? Who's this Pippa everyone is tweeting about? She's wearing white? Is that okay? What does "Pippa's arse" mean?

How long until the Royal Wedding is nothing more than a memory we keep, like so many others?

These moments are at the top of the news cycle for less and less time than they were years ago. Perhaps, it seems I'm a curmudgeon crying "I want things to be the way they used to be forever!" That's certainly not my intent. I even started my Tumblr today. (Look at what an early adopter I am!)

/pats self on back
//injures rotator cuff again

The attention span of individuals in the world is shrinking. Depending on media form and topic, it seems that some attention spans have literally been shrunken to under 5 seconds.

/hears cricket sounds

What? We lost you already?

One of the things I'm continuously learning, while blathering about baseball observations in this space is how statistically researched posts done during the season must be done quickly before games begin again the next day and your data set could be altered completely.

We are currently setting the stage for a pitch values post that promises to take way too long to write, compared with the intrinsic return gained from reading the summation. So is the life of an existential basement dweller.

Two weeks ago, we looked at "Which pitchers have had the largest difference in average velocity between their fastball and change-up?" As a reward for getting through the above, let's revisit that topic with almost twice as much of a sample size.

As Warren Spahn said, "Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing."

National League
Marco Estrada, Brewers 90.2 - 77.4 = 12.8
Tyler Clippard, Nationals 92.7 - 80.7 = 12.0
Travis Wood, Reds 90 - 78.1 = 11.9
Josh Collmenter, D'Backs 87.5 - 75.7 = 11.8
James McDonald, Pirates 91.9 - 80.8 = 11.1
Daniel Hudson, D'backs 93.4 - 82.6 = 10.8
Edinson Volquez, Reds 93.8 - 83.3 = 10.5
Ryan Madson, Phillies 93.9 - 83.6 = 10.3
Jake Westbrook, Cardinals 89.4 - 79.1 = 10.3
Tim Stauffer, Padres 90.1 - 80 = 10.1

American League
Brian Fuentes, A's 88.8 - 73.5 = 15.3
Dallas Braden, A's 87.2 - 72.2 = 15.0
Sean O'Sullivan, Royals 92 - 77.2 = 14.8
Erik Bedard, Mariners 90.4 - 77 = 13.4
David Price, Rays 94.5 - 81.7 = 12.8
Fernando Rodney, Angels 95.2 - 82.9 = 12.3
Clay Buchholz, Red Sox 92.1 - 80 = 12.1
Jeremy Hellickson, Rays 90.2 - 79.1 = 11.1
Tim Collins, Royals 92 - 81.1 = 10.9
Jered Weaver, Angels 90.4 - 79.5 = 10.9
Chris Tillman, Orioles 89 - 78.1 = 10.9
Max Sherzer, Tigers 92.1 - 81.2 = 10.9

Note: All stats are from Fangraphs. We're using a minimum of 10 IP, and they must throw their fastball and changeup more than 10% each.

Today's games just started, enjoy!

The invaluable baseball-reference.com has a little-known page that compares team attendance from 2011 and 2012 on a game-to-game basis.

As the B-R writers explain on the page:

"We take the number of home games through the current date for each team, then look at the same number of home games last year, and compare the attendance between those two sets of games. This means that the dates won't match up, but given the differing capacities of ballparks I believe this gives a more accurate view."

Casey Kelly is learning his craft with the San Antonio Missions.

The complete list is below.

We found it interesting that the Padres are doing so well after concern about trading fan favorite, Adrian Gonzalez. San Diego traded Gonzalez for Casey Kelly, Anthony Rizzo, Reymond Fuentes, and Eric Patterson. Fans aren't buying tickets to see any of these guys, yet, but their late season run last year really got the community jazzed about the Padres. The NL West is shaping up to be another fantastic race with the Giants, Rockies, and Padres vying for the playoffs.

The Cubs are down 4,300 per game and the Rays are down 5,600. If you think about it before scrolling down, I bet you can guess which team is down the most fans per game. Hint: Ownership.

The Lexington Legends of the South Atlantic League are one of the more exciting teams in all of minor league baseball and probably the most prospect rich club in the Houston Astros' organization. Notable prospects on the Lexington Legends include Delino DeShields Jr., Mike Foltynewicz, Jiovanni Mier, Tanner Bushue, Michael Kvasnicka, Telvin Nash, and Chris Wallace.

We blame Barret Loux for the facemask

Granted, it's just A ball so, it's not like these guys are on the doorstep of the Major Leagues. The Astros look like they'll have a bright future coming in just a few years.

There has been a lot of excitement lately over the hot start of Chris Wallace, and we would like to extend some of our humble spotlight his way.

In the past week, Wallace had a game where he went 5 for 6, with 3 Homeruns and 9 RBI, and another game where he went 4 for 5 and missed the cycle because he hit 2 triples instead of a double.

After 16 games, Wallace leads the South Atlantic League in Total Bases and Slugging, with 26 hits, 7 HR's, 22 RBI, a 1.389 OPS.

While this is simply a good start (and far too small a sample size to go overboard), Wallace's 2010 performance was also promising, especially for a first-year pro. Last season, Chris Wallace had 195 plate appearances in Rookie ball, triple-slashing .310/.390/.515 before a .250/.321/.368 line in 78 PA's for the low A team. His performance at the higher level left much to be desired, but some peripheral stats indicated progress. For example, according to firstinning.com, his strikeout percentage from Rookie ball to the low-A team actually lowered from 22.6% to 15.4%. Wallace's RC/27 across his three professional stops are 7.08, 4.08, and 16.62 so far this season.

Brett Wallace's production will get noticed soon

Okay, we're getting a bit too hard core on these small sample size stats. The point it, this catcher/DH looks like he will be a good power hitter in the major leagues. The Astros will either use him and Jason Castro in tandem at the Major League level or trade one of them for pitching or speed. Our good friend, Osh, asked for a post comparing Chris Wallace and Brett Wallace, to see who has more long-term value. In return, I asked him to write a guest post. Hopefully, we'll get something from him soon.

To spur a response, let's begin the discussion. Chris turns 23 in a few days, and Brett turns 25 in August. I guess they could both be considered late bloomers, since they're just about entering their prime. Brett has begun to blossom this year for the Astros. In this young season, he's hitting .324/.400/.451, with 8 walks to 14 strikeouts. By comparison, in his previous experience with the Astros last season, he also walked 8 times, but had 50 strikeouts. Anyway, more to the point, Brett Wallace's minor league numbers were always excellent. I suppose he will be a better Major League hitter than Chris Wallace, but they should both be very good teammates. The Astros of the '90s used to have the "Killer B's" with Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Lance Berkman, Derek Bell, and others. This decade's Astros will probably count on the Wallace Bros in the middle of their lineups.

We're sufficiently into the season now to aptly resume our favorite sporadicly recurring Player of the Fortnight series.

The background of the Player of the Fortnight Award is recapped in its inception post.

To recap the winners from last season:

July 9: Rafael Furcal, Josh Johnson, Ian Kinsler, and Jon Lester
July 31: Rickie Weeks, Brett Myers, Jose Bautista, and Cliff Lee
Aug 26: Omar Infante, Mat Latos, Miguel Cabrera, and C.J. Wilson
Sept 12: Carlos Gonzalez, Cole Hamels, Hideki Matsui, and Jon Lester

These shouldn't really be called "awards". It's more like a Player of the Fortnight Spotlight, or something. As with good homemade cooking, whatever we come up with will at least be fresh. This is an accurate pulse of who's at the top of their games.

NL Hitter of the Fortnight
Lance Berkman, Cardinals
When looking at wOBA on Fangraphs, no-one approaches Lance Berkman. Aided by his league-leading 6 homeruns, the difference in Slugging Percentage between Berkman and the rest of the National League is staggering:

"I still got it!"

Slugging % last 14 days
Lance Berkman: .923
Troy Tulowitzki: .750
Ryan Roberts: .727
Chris Denorfia: .696
Freddie Freeman: .694

Although Berkman's was on the Cubs' division rival Astros and has moved on to the dreaded Cardinals, we've always liked him and even wrote in this space that we wanted the Cubs to give him a 1-year deal, which would have also been less expensive than the alternative they chose. Perhaps, they could have kept Larry Rothschild with the difference. Sorry, only three sentences in, and we must digress.

Honorable mention: Matt Holliday, Joey Votto, Ryan Braun, and Matt Kemp

NL Pitcher of the Fortnight
Josh Johnson, Marlins

You're welcome, Josh

He won the first PofF spotlight last season and defends that crown again now.

In the past two weeks, Johnson went 2-0 in 2 starts, throwing 14.3 innings, giving up no runs on 3 hits, with 4 walks and 18 strikeouts. He lead the league with an 11.3 K/9.

Honorable mention: Cole Hamels, Jason Marquis, Aaron Harang, Kyle Lohse, and Randy Wolf - If we have more time in the future, I would LOVE to discuss the ridiculousness of the non-Hamels portion of our NL Pitcher Honorable Mention.

AL Hitter of the Fortnight
Alex Rodriguez, Yankees

Gimme an 'H', gimme a 'G', gimme an...

Well, look who we have here. What are we supposed to believe? Should we be asking this for every player in baseball, or just the busted cheaters who rise to prominence again? The discussion is beyond tired, at this point, but as a fan all we can hope is that the game is on the level. I suspect that Rodriguez is playing clean, including no HGH, and his true talent is showing. The Yankees look like a good team again. They need to add some pitching, but their lineup looks good again. Cashman and the appropriate scouts and coaches should receive more credit for bringing in Russell Martin and putting him in a position to succeed. Manager and former backstop, Joe Girardi, probably knows what Martin needs to succeed more than anyone.

Honorable mention: Jose Bautista, Miguel Cabrera, Carlos Quentin, Curtis Granderson, Jed Lowrie, and Sam Fuld

AL Pitcher of the Fortnight
Jered Weaver, Angels

"Yes, I won a BAseball Reality Tour Player of the Fortnight Award!"

The early season success of the Angels's 1-2 punch of Weaver and Haren, or is it Haren and Weaver, has been highlighted on numerous platforms over the past week. They were the first teammates to start the season 4-0 in a long time, I guess. Over the past two weeks, Weaver went 3-0 in 3 starts. He threw 123 pitches over 7 2/3 innings at home against Toronto on April 10th. Weaver struck out 15 Blue Jays and followed that performance with 7 victorious innings in Chicago and a Complete Game at Texas. He struck out 12 and walked 0 batters combined over the last two starts in those hitters' paradises.

Honorable mention: Josh Beckett, Dan Haren, Bruce Chen, and Michael Pineda

Speaking of pitching and stuff, over the past 2 weeks, Kyle Davies leads the American League with a 1.29 FIP, but he has a 5.73 ERA. I wish someone who knew how to talk to algorithms would explain that one to me.

We'll take another look at fortnight leaders in about 15 to 29 days.

In the meantime, enjoy the games and feel free to join the discussion in our comments section below, our facebook page, or my nonsequitorial twitter feed.