Cup of jO's: The Ball is Juiced (1961 style)

An article from 1961 that focuses on how the ball has changed throughout the years and whether it was a time of 'Rabbitball.'  This is just another in a long line of articles since the dawn of baseball trying to explain why certain remarkable performances occur.  I find perusing the magazine and the history intertwined in the pieces.

What I think the take home message here is that sometimes athletic achievements are the result of three general factors: the natural (e.g. a player's own genetic makeup and environmental history, changes in regional and national weather), the 'unnatural' (e.g. cheating, changes in ballpark dimensions, characteristics of the baseball, fluxes in competition level due to schedules/teammates/expansion/racism/etc), and general luck (e.g. sample sizes, improbable sequences).  In general, the sporting world often focuses on the first two.  People like accomplishment that are earned and love to despise those that are perceived not to be earned.  I think few actually rail on about luck except those of us who study the numbers and recognize how much we need of a sample to say something somewhat meaningful.

Adam Jones: the second best defensive outfielder in the AL or the second worst?

Each year Baseball America polls every manager in the Majors and asks them who they think has the best tools.  The Orioles were able to notch two mentions in the lists with Matt Wieters being named the best defensive catcher and Adam Jones noted as the second best defensive outfielder in the American League.  The former should not be surprising if you read this blog, check the numbers, or listen to scouts.  Matt Wieters had some questions and his future was thought to be a catcher with a heavy emphasis on the bat with an average glove.  Instead, the bat has been relatively average while his defensive work has been incredibly impressive.  Jones' mention, however, should be a surprise as we often refer to him as ideally a left fielder.

Even though Adam Jones was ranked the second best defensive outfielder by skilled professionals, the probably are not the best professionals to ask.  I would like to say first that I very much respect and value what managers do.  Truthfully, few of us could actually competently manage a ball club for an entire season.  I think many would be capable of telling someone skilled at managing how a ball club should be run day-to-day and inning-by-inning, but a lot of running a club has to do with working with players and being able to communicate well with them.  Skills that make a good manager are not always exactly the skills you need to scout and evaluate players.  You will find managers who are good scouts, but the two are not interchangeable. 

In light of that, I wonder why Baseball America does not do something perhaps a bit more interesting.  Compare the tools rankings when different groups assess the players.  What do General Managers think?  How does that compare to Major League scouts?  Ditto for managers.  All three of these professions have skills that overlap to some degree, but their jobs do not require the skills needed for each.  General managers need the ability to negotiate value, recognize good evaluation, and have vision.  Scouts need to be able to recognize skill sets, potential, and to some extent put that on a monetary scale.  Managers need to be able to reason with and motivate players.  A few can do all three, but many cannot.  So, if I was interested in knowing who had the best tools . . . I'd ask the scouts.

I certainly do not discuss much with professional scouts, but the general take I seem to hear is that Adam Jones very good speed and an above average arm for centerfield.  He has the potential in sheer ability to be a great center fielder, but that he does not position himself well and does not immediately recognize the trajectory of a ball in flight.  This is not a consensus opinion.  I get the feeling a minority think that Jones is a center fielder, but that most think his defensive skills are fully baked and suggest a better fit in left field.  Again, this is not a consensus opinion.  Sometimes the minority is correct.

As more of a numbers guy, I am interested in defensive metrics.  Defensive metrics are notorious for there inability to competently measure defense on a season by season basis.  The metrics require more data points than that to be dependable.  It is fairly obvious that dividing a career by seasons makes intuitive sense, but is actually somewhat arbitrary.  I think two years is typically what people suggest, but I prefer three.  The difference is better repeatability.  The idea being if a statistic repeats its value it is more likely representative for the value of a skill.

Anyway, Adam Jones right now ranks second to last in UZR/150 (-11.1 runs), fifth to last in RZR (.912), and second to last in DRS (-7).  Over two seasons, Jones is third to last in UZR/150, middle of the pack for RZR, and fourth to last in DRS.  Over three seasons, fourth to last in UZR/150, a shade below middle of the pack for RZR, and average for DRS.  The statistics generally show that Jones is likely to be average or below average as a center fielder.  These stats alone, though, should not be something that completely convinces you one way or another to decisively declare a player inept or stellar in the field.

I think the key here is looking at the balance of the evidence at hand.  You have managers clamoring for Jones to be considered one of the best defensive center fielders in baseball.  You have many scouts thinking he might fit better in left field.  You also have defensive metrics that rate him anywhere from very poor to average.  To me, logically and ignoring my own evaluation, he appears to be somewhere around a second or third tier outfielder in terms of defense.  This begs the question: how are the managers so wrong?  Jones makes flashy plays and it may be that managers do not exactly view players the way a scout would.  As such, you remember what Jones does as opposed to what he does not do.  I may be wrong.  Statistics, particularly defensive ones, sometimes measure the wrong things.  Statistics are surrogates for measuring skill, they are not skills.

Life After Andy MacPhail: Experienced Hands Outside of the Organization

Gerry Hunsicker

In the previous two posts, we considered potential General Manager candidates within the organization and those without GM experience, outside of the organization.  Our feeling is that Buck will have a great deal of say in who the next GM is as well as MacPhail having some infuence as well.  Ultimately, the final choice will need to be someone willing to let Buck dictate the organizational direction while being able to hand the day to day duties of a General Manager that Buck would be unable to do if he remained in the dugout.  There are several candidates that have GM experience and who might be interested in such an arrangement.

John Hart
Senior Adviser, Texas Rangers

Hart has accomplished a great deal in his time in Major League Baseball.  He moved up through the ranks with the Orioles in the 1980s as a minor league manager and a season as a third base coach.  He then flipped over to the Indians where he served as a scout and, for 19 games, the interim manager before being promoted to Director of Baseball Operations.  In the 1990s, he oversaw the Cleveland powerhouse teams that won 6 division titles and appeared twice in the World Series.  He was known at that time for the unusual approach of signing young players long term in order to keep their costs down while buying out free agent years at an assumed lower cost to the franchise.  In 2001, he flipped over to the Rangers and had an uneven record of success with them.  Him and Buck seem to get along together quite well and they may have a decent enough partnership to lead the team together.  I do think though that Hart would not want to be Buck's fixer and adhering to Buck's plan.  Hart's experience would also make him a good Angelos candidate as well.  My only hesitation comes from when he said during the 2010 draft that he would not think twice about drafting Machado ahead of Harper.  I thought that Harper at C, 3B, or RF was clearly a better prospect than Machadon and his ability to stick at shortstop.


Jerry DiPoto
Senior Vice President, Scouting and Player Personnel, Arizona Diamondbacks

You may remember Jerry DiPoto as a relief pitcher for the Indians, Mets, and Rockies back in the 90s.  In the past ten years he has made a quick charge from reliever to a scout in the Boston system to the Director of Scouting and Player Personnel with a short foray as an interim GM for the Diamondbacks.  He is known as a true baseball man and even though his GM tenure was quite short . . . it is anticipated he will returned to that level of management.  His biggest deal as an interim GM was getting Daniel Hudson along with a few other in exchange for Edwin Jackson.  That is pretty good.  With Buck remaining, DiPoto might be a good mix of being willing to listen to someone else's direction due to be being hungry to be a GM.

Wayne Krivsky
Special Assistant to the GM, New York Mets

I assume Krivsky is Sandy Alderson's details man...a sort of GM by function, but not by name.  Orioles fans may remember him best as Andy MacPhail's Special Assistant for the 2009 season.  They may also remember him for his love of Justin Turner.  Wherever Krivsky goes, Turner winds up there via trades or waiver acquisitions.  If MacPhail is part of the process, Krivsky makes the most sense as the two of them share a good relationship with each other.  Krivsky is also known for making smart trades such as acquiring Brandon Phillips for nothing and Bronson Arroyo for Wily Mo Pena.  He is also known for trading somewhat valuable commodities in Austin Kearns and Felipe Lopez to the Nationals* for a few overworked bullpen arms in a misguided attempt to make the playoffs.  Hopefully, he learned from that mistake.  All things said, he is a very smart guy and is probably itching to get back to being a GM.  I think he would be willing to take on a role similar to MacPhail and would not bristle too much with Buck giving him organizational direction.

Gerry Hunsicker
Senior Vice President, Baseball Operations, Tampa Bay Rays

To be honest, I think Hunsicker is the next General Manager of the Rays.  I think the incredibly talented Andrew Friedman is going to be offered a great deal to take over the Houston Astros.  Friedman will then proceed to win there.  In the resulting void, the Rays will likely try to keep the current framework in place to remain successful.  I could also see them going after someone like A.J. Preller.  However, if Hunsicker is not valued as a GM, I think he would be excited to find opportunities elsewhere.  The reason I think highly of Hunsicker is that he truly appreciates the value of international talent acquisition.  As a GM of the Astros, he helped bring along their Venezuelan program which provided the team with a steady stream of talent (that they would then ship off for valuable veterans).  After being fired and joining the Rays, he scrabbled together some of his old hands in the Astros system and built the Rays Venezuelan effort as well as worked on starting up a Brazilian academy with Andres Reiner.  I think Hunsicker would make do with paying service to Buck while broadening out the Orioles acquisition of talent.  He would be a solid hire.

Allard Baird
Vice President, Player Personnel and Professional Scouting, Boston Red Sox

Some people think Baird was given a raw deal with the Kansas City Royals.  The David Glass ownership was incredibly tight fisted and certainly inhibited the way a team could be run.  However, Drayton "The Process" Moore has been able to develop the Royals farm system into the best in baseball.  Moore's MLB moves are just as confounding as Baird's was, but Moore's group does seem to value scouting appropriately.  That said, Baird is a smart guy and he interviews well.  He is highly experienced, can operate the team in a day-to-day fashion and is likely to put up with Buck calling the shots.  He is in the Red Sox system, so he must know something.  As an organizational type, he might be pleasing to Angelos.

How Would I Rank Them?

Gerry Hunsicker
John Hart
Jerry DiPoto
Wayne Krivsky
Allard Baird

The Orioles' weakness is development and getting enough talent into the system.  Hunsicker's experience will devoting resources to international talent pools is a known commodity.  It is also an area that Buck would have little insight in, giving Hunsicker a free hand.  The Orioles are also known to have issues with organizational personnel in the Dominican, but Hunsicker would likely have free reign in other countries that suit his strength.  Hart is appealing because a unified organization tends to be more successfully then several groups acting separately from one another.  DiPoto is at the break even point for me.  He has been a hard charger and hopefully the Peter Principle would not be in play for him.  Krivsky is interesting, but that reliever trade is the typical misevaluation.  Baird has shown me nothing from his tenure in Kansas City to suggest he is capable of building a winner under restrictions.

I think Hart and Krivsky are the two likely ones from this group to have consideration to replace MacPhail.  The one selected would be based on whoever had more power: Buck or MacPhail.  In future articles, I will go over the choice we see most likely one by one.


* In the original article, I accidentally named the Indians as opposed to the Nationals as the other team in the deal mentioned.

Dempsey's Army Presents: Last Week in Chats (August 1 - August 8, 2011)

Mondays Heath from Dempsey's Army will recount all things Baltimore Orioles from the previous week's chats.  It is a convenient way to learn what national writers think about specific issues that relate to the Orioles.


Where we distill all the week's chats down to their Oriole essence...

Jonah Keri, FanGraphs.com

2:03 Comment From Boog Powell
Thoughts on the O's Uehara deal and failure to trade Lee and/or Kevin Gregg?

2:04 Jonah Keri: Um, they did trade Lee. but yeah, Gregg, Guthrie, there were other guys. Suspect there were fewer buyers willing to shell out real talent for fill-ins this year.


Jerry Crasnick, ESPN

Sam (Baltimore)
What did you think of the Os deal with Texas? Seems like we got two pretty good potentially good players for a flash in the pan middle reliever.

Jerry Crasnick (1:21 PM)
Sam, I can certainly live with it. Chris Davis has a lot of holes, but he's a pretty athletic kid and certainly has power. And Tommy Hunter, to me, is a decent back end of the rotation guy. I thought Andy MacPhail did just fine with that trade.


Dave Cameron, FanGraphs.com

12:00 Comment From daniel
Does Chris Davis' high strikeout rate, poor walk rate, and insane BABIP at .500 prevent him from being worth a waiver claim (only two claims left for me in my league) despite having the 1B job and 3B eligibility?

12:01 Dave Cameron:
I'd say that Davis is not likely to do particularly well in the majors, yes.

12:02 Comment From The Oriole Bird
Glad to see you here, Dave! Is there any data to back up the common knowledge that, other things constant, a team shouldn't have too many high-K players? Chris Davis and Mark Reynolds sure swing and miss a lot.

12:02 Dave Cameron:
The mid-90s Mariners struck out a lot too, but they scored a lot of runs anyway. Strikeouts aren't a problem in and of themselves. They are a problem if they cause your hitters to suck.


Dan Szymborski, FanGraphs.com

12:02 Comment From Zach Britton
there's no way I throw 40 pitches in the 1st inning and get pulled tonight v. the Royals, right?

12:02 Dan Szymborski:
The O's have reached that inevitable point of the season in which the wheels have come off and ALL things are possible. The Royals could probably sign Andy Abad, and he could no-hit the O's as a non-pitcher and I wouldn't be too surprised.

12:04 Comment From Stan the Caddy
What's your background Dan? What team are you a fan of?

12:04 Dan Szymborski:
Econ major, O's fan.

12:08 Comment From Paul D
I'm starting to think that the Blue Jays might have a chance... but the Orioles? Is there any help?

12:09 Dan Szymborski: Not with the ownership they have. A team in Baltimore's position can't be as confusedly conservative and risk-averse as they are. They just don't seem to relish high-upside plays.

12:14 Comment From Chris Davis
So exactly how long is my new orange and black leash? What happens in the offseason if I can't start making a little more contact?

12:15 Dan Szymborski:
The team kept playing Mark Reynolds, with crazy no-contact early and playing defense about as well as I would in the majors, so they'll probably give Davis every chance. It's not like the O's are overflowing with guys like Davis organizationally (is that a word?)

12:20 Comment From Louis
How do you continue to justify being an O's fan? There is nothing good about the organization (besides the Unis) and I don't see it changing for at least another decade. Every consider becoming a baseball agnostic?

12:21 Dan Szymborski:
Good pit beef. I'm not really the rah-rah sort anyway, I hope that someone reading my work wouldn't know what team I root for unless they already knew what team I rooted for.

12:28 Comment From Myles
I'm not a die-hard O's fan, but I see the trend of disappointing home-grown SP's, despite the fact that no one really raised a brow when they were drafted. What do you see as the biggest problem within their development process?

12:29 Dan Szymborski:
I can't exactly say why the O's particular pitchers have failed, but there's a pattern in the O's organization in which they seem to make decisions based on what they *want* a player to be rather than *what* the player is.

12:35 Comment From Matt Wieters
Will I ever be a truly worthwhile fantasy catcher? Where did my power go?

12:36 Dan Szymborski:
Well, he's *still* going to end up with 15 home runs or so. I know it's disappointing for Wieters to be merely an average catcher, but catchers have weird developmental curves.

12:48 Comment From Jimmy
I'll tell you what's wrong with the O's: Zach Britton has contributed more offensively than Vladimir Guerrero. True story.

12:48 Dan Szymborski:
I think I mentioned that on Twitter last week. At the time, Britton had more offensive WAR than Vlad *and* Lee combined.

12:55 Comment From steve
Thoughts on the Uehara trade?

12:56 Dan Szymborski:
I really liked it from the O's perspective - they don't really have a lot of great prospect depth and could use guys like that (if you still call them prospects). The Rangers are giving up a lot ofr their relief help, but they did at least get actual good relievers and they're in a competitive position where you *can* trade away future value without worrying to much.


Keith Law, ESPN

Luke (Baltimore)
Hearing anything on Nick Delmonico's signability for the O's as we approach Aug. 15?

Klaw (1:30 PM)
My take on him predraft is that he was headed for school.

dc (dc)
Chris Davis and Mark Reynolds on the same team. Thoughts?

Klaw (1:35 PM)
Is there a window open? I feel a breeze here.

Bill (CT)
Keith, it has been speculated that teams with GMs on the hot seat such as in Baltimore (McPhail) and Chicago (Hendry) that the reason such highly sought after pitchers such as Guthrie and Garza were not dealt at the deadline was so these teams could win a few more games down the stretch so that these GMs could some how save their jobs. Isn't this the reason why these teams haven't won in the first place? Short term veiw vs long term in terms of getting good prospects for these guys?

Klaw (1:57 PM)
Hendry, yes, although I've also heard that Ricketts promised him the 2012 season to turn things around (which would be so Cub-like if true). I keep hearing that MacPhail will step down after the year, so I don't see why he'd be motivated to win a few more games this year. He's not the type of guy to deliberately do something against the franchise's long-term interests just to let himself leave on a higher note.

Klaw (1:58 PM)
I should clarify what I'm hearing on MacPhail is not from him or from Baltimore sources, but from other FO guys around the game.