Now what?

Nice offense from the Phillies last night. Took a Mets fan to the game. He had his first cheese steak and said it was a nice ballpark. He was also glad that we stayed until the end so he could see a couple of Met homers off the absolutely-must-be-sent-to-the-minors-immediately David Herndon (why is he still here? Last year they had to keep him up because he was a Rule 5 pick, but why now?).

One of the reasons I really took to this Phillies team a few years ago is their resilience. They seem capable of overcoming whatever obstacle might come in their way. I think that many of their long-term fans feel similarly, which is the only reason I can think of that people aren't panicking at this point. That and being tied for the best record in baseball.

You have to be impressed that this team that came into the season with maybe even unreasonable expectations can lose their closer, replacement closer, top bullpen lefty, #5 starter, all-star second baseman, catcher and top prospect outfielder to injuries. Plus have their regular number 6, 7 and 8 batters combine for 7 for their last 92 (yes, Raul is not alone- Wilson Valdez is 2/32 while Ibanez is a more robust 2/31).

So it seems to me like this can go one of 3 ways. They can continue to go like this, winning 2 out of every 3 with good pitching and inconsistent offense. They could go in the tank and fall back closer to a .500 record, or (and I think this is most likely), they play .500 ball or slightly better (don't forget, they've played primarily crappy teams so far) until everyone gets back and then go on some kind of tear.

If he keeps up this pace...

We're 21 games into the season, slightly more than 1/8 of the way. This means it's time to see how teams and players will do if they keep up their current rate of performance.

Although everyone goes on about how pathetic the San Diego Padres and Seattle Mariners are offensively, they both have more home runs than the defending division champ Minnesota Twins who have amassed 9. If the Fraternals keep up this pace they will finish the year with 67 home runs. Last year their players complained about how hard it was to hit home runs in their home park, but they've been home for only 8 out of 23 games this year and their opponents have 23 homers, so now what's your excuse?

The Phillies have held opponents to a total of 73 runs so far, or 3.32 per game, but the Oakland Athletics have given up the same number in one more game, and so lead the majors with 3.17. At this rate they will give up 517 runs total for the year, as opposed to the Houston Astros, who are on a pace to give up 911. An appropriate number for their pitching staff.

The proving-he-is-not-a-fluke Jose Bautista is on a pace to hit 59 homers and walk 155 times with an OPS of 1.305, and he's doing it with a head only 72% the size of Barry Bonds' head. Where in the world did this guy come from? Before his 54 dingers last year, the most he'd managed in a season was 16. In 2006. For the Pittsburgh Pirates. Well, he did hit 23 in the minors in 2005.

Similarly head volume challenged Ryan Braun is also on a 59 homer pace and could have 148 RBI in the process.

Checking in with 0 home runs are former 30+ types Carlos Pena, Jimmy Rollins and Magglio Ordonez.

We've lost our Internet at home, so I'm going to check out now. More tomorrow, hopefully.

To follow up, I present to you a letter:

Dear Hip Hip Jorge,
You are not going for some majestic milestone like Jeet and Mo are. They have something to play for, and you honestly do not. Jeet is still the starting shortstop (surprisingly), Mo is still the closer (not surprisingly), and you have finally been kicked out of catching and relegated to DH. And no, you are not the kind of veteran DH who still goes out and kills it like Thome or Vlad or Big Papi. Despite your longevity, you are not a hall-of-famer, and I am guessing you know that.
Sincerely,
Take a page out of Andy Pettitte's book and retire to go spend some time with your family

Some oddities and not so oddities

Jorge Posada already has six homers this season. I had written something about him defying the laws of nature with his hitting abilities so far into what should be his decline, but I was then informed that those six home runs account for 2/3 of his hits. As in he has nine hits. As in really, he is sliding down the slippery slope of what is definitely a decline, and he is probably not coming back. Given that, my outlook has changed.

Miguel Cabrera is batting .429 right now. To me, this is an oddity because the man should be falling apart. He should have gone to 60-day rehab but didn't end up doing any because the Tigers are so desperate, so he got no help. He is also verging on obese. How is he having another MVP season? Again, April baseball, but at this point we know Cabrera hitting for average is not a fluke.

On the other hand, the previously hotshot pair of Florida Marlins Dan Uggla and Jorge Cantu are both batting significantly under .200. These guys used to be monsters at the plate.

Not so oddity (and kind of humorous) fact that I just found out: Phil Hughes' absence is due to "arm fatigue". For lack of a better phrase, DUH. The Yankees ruin their pitchers, 'nuff said.

Checking in from Ivy League Baseball

Quick break from the Majors, folks (although not really because I can't get Halladay off the mind). I spent my entire day at Princeton University, watching the Columbia-Princeton doubleheader. It was unpleasantly muggy, but one of the perks of being press even in the Ivy League is press box privlidges (I apparently don't know how to spell this word...someone help me out here). I interesting found out that three Princeton grads are now in the majors: San Diego's Will Venable, Mets Chris Young, and Pittsburgh's Ross Oldendorf. Who knew, right? Not like any of these guys are spectacular, but for the Ivies I'd say that's still impressive. Lou Gehrig, who will always hold a place deep in my heart despite me sadly never being able to see him play, still takes the cake for Ivy player in the majors. Where does he hold the all-time home run record? Yep, Columbia.

I didn't get internet service in the press box unfortunately, but my faint reception on my phone showed me Halladay's insanely spectacular outing. 12 Ks in 7 innings? He proves time and time again that he is only part man, and part machine. Granted, he was pitching against the Padres, who have a sad excuse for a lineup at this point with the giant hole left by Gonzalez, but still.

I know this isn't much of a post, but I want to make sure I don't get outdone by my dad. In two weeks I will be out of school and will have infinitely more time to write on here with much more intelligent and coherent thoughts.

Finals thoughts: Still don't quite know how Mike Napoli and Melky Cabrera with Ryan Raburn closer behind are leading our rotisserie team in batting. April baseball, gotta love it.

This one goes to 11

It's very odd to look at the current standings because in the National League, 9 out of 16 teams have 10 or 11 losses (look at the top 5 teams in the Central Division)  and in the AL East 4 out of 5 teams have lost exactly 11. That's one big steaming pile of mediocrity any way you want to look at it.

Given that, you really have to give credit to the Phillies, Rockies and yes, the Yankees for separating themselves from the pack. I know even those teams' fans are fretting over this and that, but I don't think they're going to get a large segment of the public to sympathize.

Unusual play

I was at this game and actually looked away for a moment and was confused about what had happened.

MLB video

Early season sense and nonsense

Part of the fun of early season baseball is trying to figure out which among the hot teams and players are for real and which ones are flukes.

The most interesting early season standings are in both leagues' Central Divisions, where in the NL, the top 4 teams are essentially tied and in the AL where the Cleveland Indians, picked by many to finish last, are in first place, looking impressive, and accumulating a bandwagon among the pundits, if not their fans (though it may be 35 degree damp weather that lacks fans rather than the team itself). Hot in pursuit of the Indians are the surprising Kansas City Royals, followed not so closely by perennial contenders Chicago, Detroit and Minnesota.

So when I look at coolstandings.com, a site that updates playoff odds on a daily basis, why do they show clear favorites in both divisions? It's not because of the records, it's because of the runs. If you look closely at the NL Central, you can see that St. Louis has outscored its opponents 108-78. Feed this into what Bill James calls the Pythagorean Theorem (runs scored squared divided by sum of runs scored squared plus runs allowed squared equals winning percentage) of baseball and you get a .650 winning percentage, far above the team's actual .550. This implies that the Cardinals are underperforming and are likely to do better as the season progresses. Cincinnati and Milwaukee, on the other hand are only slightly underperforming and should do better, but not as well as St. Louis. The Cubbies have scored few runs than they've allowed and are projected to a .380 winning percentage, which translates to 61 wins for the season.

In most of the other divisions, teams are performing about how you'd expect. Atlanta is a clear underperformer. It's hard to be 9-12 when you've outscored your opponents overall. In the AL Central, the Indians have the highest run differential in baseball, 99 scored vs. 66 allowed. This suggests that their fast start is not a fluke, while the Royals have only a 104-94 differential, having won a great many close games. That's still good, but projects to a more .500 kind of record. The defending division champ Twins have the worst run differential in baseball, 57-89. You don't want to know what that projects to.

Obviously, this is not the only measure one uses in projecting team performance, but combine it with strength of schedule and how closely players' performance relates to their actual skills, and you can get a decent picture of how it lays out. Coolstandings includes a strength of schedule component, which is why their projected wins are not just their Pythagorean projection.

Pessimism pisses people off but it makes for an amusing dynamic

I am really awful sometimes when it comes to baseball. I realize this. I complain and exaggerate. But what fan doesn't? Fine, Cliff Lee didn't "SUCK" this week. I'm just saying, Roy Halladay should never be lit up and Lee should never pitch just six innings with just two strikeouts. Is that so much to ask?

In other news, Angel Pagan is about to be put on the DL. Happy days.
Fun fact: Derek Jeter is currently leading the league in groundouts.
Not so fun fact: Brett Gardner is probably going to the minors.
Funny: Carl Crawford has an OPS below .400. That's what you get when you make a deal with the devil.

Commanding

The 5 Phillies starters have a collectively struck out 98 batters and walked 21. That's a 4.7 to 1 ratio. Anything over 2:1 is considered very good. I scanned the top major league pitchers and could only find a few individual pitchers in that neighborhood (Dan Haren 27 K, 2 BB!). For the most part, pitchers have limited control over what happens once balls are in play, so keeping balls out of play (AKA strikeouts) and not allowing extra baserunners with walks is one of the most accurate predictors of pitchers' success. On that measure at least, things are looking promising for this group of starters.

I credit my dad for my initial interest in baseball, but now this love is all mine

I can definitely credit my dad for my initial interest in baseball. I think before it was even determined if he was having a girl or boy, he had decided to make sure that at least one of his children would be as obsessed with the game as he is.

Enter daughter. I have been raised on baseball from the very beginning. I learned how to score a game when I was six. My dad bought me a children's scorekeeping book that had cute little outlined spaces for ticket stubs and headings for the team matchups. I had the luxury of experiencing my first baseball games at the now sadly deceased (hah!) Veteran's stadium. The Phillies were okay at that point, obviously nothing like they are now. In those days they were kind of just expected to finish second to the Braves every year. It's funny thinking about it now, because our starting rotation now is consistently compared to that power staff--Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz. Speaking of Maddux, he was my first baseball card.

Most weekends growing up, I played Strat-o-matic baseball with my dad. This was probably the catalyst in increasing my interest and knowledge in baseball. I usually played with the Yankees, and my dad would pick another American League team (Phillies aside, NL teams aren't really quite as fun...). Did I mention my first obsession was the Yankees? We all go through phases, no judging, please. Anyway, as I grew up I really only knew the Yankees, kind of the Phillies, but not much else. Don't worry, I am a fully converted fan now and will never go back to the dark side. Anyway, at some point in my high school years, my interest in baseball skyrocked. And this wasn't just about the Phillies, it was everything about the game. I immersed myself in baseball. I wrote my college Common Application essay about baseball. I watched MLB.tv instead of doing homework (this is still true even now that I'm in college). I listen to MLB on XM like it is my job. Oh, and I now write a baseball beat for the Columbia Spectator...pretty sweet gig, right?

I may have not seen those amazing Yankees teams that my dad got to watch in nosebleed seats in the 70s, but I have gotten to witness some pretty cool stuff myself. The 2008 World Series win, for one thing. Cliff Lee's return to Philly. Pat Burrell "running". Wilson Valdez's killer arm (if you don't know who this is, shame on you). Beckett's domination of the Yankees to win the 2003 World Series for the Marlins at Yankees stadium. Ryan Madson's scarily accurate pie-ing-in-the-face of any Phillies players of the game. You get the idea.

I promise not to stop writing either. Being a baseball fan stuck in an all-girls school combined with being a Phillies fan in the heart of Yankees/Mets territory is not an easy life. I need an outlet somewhere.

Just for the record

I checked and the Phillie Phanatic seems to have a different birthday every year. They shouldn't be deceiving little kids like that.

Introduction

This being my first baseball blog, I'll start off with a short history of my baseball life.

I started watching baseball in 1962, when I was 7. It was the year of the Amazin' Mets, losers of historical proportion. Maybe it was because the Mets had no history like the Dodgers and Giants, but at that time it didn't seem to be a problem to root for both the Mets and the Yankees, and so I did. By the time I was 13, I was taking the subway to games every day it was possible, which added up to around 30 games a summer. I sat in the upper deck, $1.50 at Yankee Stadium and $1.30 at Shea. It's a perspective on the game I still value.

I have been lucky enough in the course of my life to attend 10 World Series. The Mets-Orioles in 1969, Yankees-Dodgers in 1977 and 1978, Orioles-Pirates in 1979, Phillies-Toronto in 1993, Yankees-Atlanta in 1996, Yankees-Mets in 2000, Yankees-Florida in 2003, and the Phillies in 2008 and 2009. I saw the final game of 6 of them. I've been a partial season ticket holder for the Phillies since the late 1990's and have averaged 25-30 games a year since the Phils moved into Citizens Bank Park. I estimate I've seen somewhere north of 1000 games in about a dozen different ballparks.

I saw Sandy Koufax pitch once. I saw Reggie Jackson hit home runs on 3 consecutive swings in the 1977 World Series. I saw Frank Tanana set the record for strikeouts by a lefty in 1975 and saw Ron Guidry break it in 1978. I finally saw my first no-hitter when Roy Halladay did it in the playoffs last year.

I have also been playing Strat-O-Matic Baseball since 1967 and Rotisserie League Baseball, the original fantasy sports game, since 1984, the year the original book and official rules were published.

Do I know everything about baseball? Absolutely not, what would be the fun of that? But I've seen enough to appreciate and love it and to want to write about it, along with my daughter. There's a lot baseball writing out there, so we will do our utmost to provide some kind of unique insight and have some fun doing it. And we promise not to write 10 things in the next few weeks and then flame out.