ALCS and NLCS

Well, I went four for four with my AL and NL division series picks. I was a little nervous about picking the Rangers over the Rays and the Giants over the Braves, but in the end, everything ended how I expected.

On my twitter account (@TheOLIB) I tweeted that I expected the Giants to take the World Series entering the first day of the post season. I made this decision based on the pitching of the Giants and while Roy Halladay is getting all the press after his no-hitter, with people going as far as ranking him among the best right handers of all time (something I disagree with and will write about at a later date) I still feel as though the Giants 1-2-3 of Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, and Jonathan Sanchez are superior to the Phils 1-2-3, not to mention I prefer the Giants bullpen.

Where the Phillies have some fortune is going up against a lot of right handed pitchers, only four of the Giants active pitchers pitch from the wrong side with essentially nothing in the end game. That being said, I would anticipate seeing a lot of Jeremy Affeldt and Javier Lopez during this series and a little less Santiago "what's my name" Casilla - even though Casilla has looked incredible this season.

I still have the Giants taking this series in what should go the distance. Hopefully this series has Lincecum winning a couple of games head-to-head against Halladay which will remind people that while Doc has been a phenomenal pitcher for his career, his timing is what truly makes his career stand out (pre-Schilling, post-Hernandez/Lincecum dominance).

Over in the American League I'm going with the Yankees taking the Rangers. I'm taking this one based on strategy, not so much the strategy of having Cliff Lee heading to the bump for game three, but for sending CJ Wilson out there for game one. I would have conceded game one and wend for back to back W's without CC Sabathia on the hill. That is, Wilson is essentially going to have to outpitch Sabathia to win game one, not an easy task facing any group of hitters, but against the Yanks, that much more difficult.

Additionally, this is a possible seven game series where a shaky bullpen is that much more vulnerable, especially against experienced hitters that are solid at putting the ball in play. With all the Yankees hitters up to full speed, it's doubtful the Rangers will have an easy inning towards the end of the game. That said, I see this one ending in five, maybe six with experts blaming it on Washington for the wrong reason (Lee) rather then the rotation configuration as a whole.


So again, Yankees over the Rangers in the ALCS and Giants over the Phillies in the NLCS with the Giants taking home the World Series.

Curiosity Kills Something

Right, it's playoff time and I'm making a quick post about a single-A catcher, deal with it. I made my Division Series picks at the final hour over on my twitter page (yea, I "tweet") and also promised for a post that evening - best unemployed writer, ever!

Anyways, there has been a fair amount of negative things written about Nationals catching prospect Derek Norris. Here are comments by two of the industries most well-known prospect authors.

• Kevin Goldstein stated, "[Norris] became an on-base machine with little power" while giving him a mulligan due to injuries (I'll touch on these later).
• Jason Gray wrote, "Norris will look to rebound from a subpar season in the Carolina League, where he hit .235 and slugged just .419."

Truth be told, I actually thought there was more negative press about the 21 year old. However, we still have two authors who walked away unimpressed with the power that Norris displayed in 2010.

Quick explanation. Keith Law wrote in a recent chat transcript that it isn't uncommon for hitters to take a year to a year and a half to recover their power stroke after a hamate injury. I have read that similar power sapping can occur to wrist injuries. The hamate bone is, from my non-medical opinion, a part of the wrist, and as such, Derek Norris' power sapping should not have been too much of a surprise.

Norris also suffered a minor concussion when he was hit in the head by a "96mph fastball". Which Norris admitted took him a fair amount of plate appearances to bounce back from, something his month-by-month statistics show as this was the only full month where Norris posted an OPS under .830 (keep this number in mind for later). Even his playoff-shortened month of September had Norris posting an OPS of .865 (if my math is correct).

Of course we don't want to altogether eliminate Norris' month of June, but we can see that something might not have been right that month, and it's not out of the realm of possibility that it had to do with having just taken a fastball off the head.

Neither of which is the point. The point here is that Norris didn't really have that bad of a season. In fact, his power numbers as is would suffice in the big leagues.

Consider where he would stand with those numbers at the show. These numbers I am speaking of are the end of season line of an .838 OPS and an ISO of .184.

Among catchers with 390 plate appearances (Norris had 387) there are 20 qualified catchers, five of whom posted an OPS higher then Norris' .838, while six put up an ISO over Norris' .184.

In other words, if Norris' numbers translated cleanly to major league baseball, he suffered a serious hand injury, and a concussion, we're looking at a top 5 or 6 hitting catcher in baseball. Keep in mind Norris is also putting in a conscious effort to being a better defensive catcher, something we all know a guy like Jorge Posada could care less about.


Derek Norris is one of my favorite prospects and should be one of yours as well. Keep his name in mind over the next 20 months or so, because he'll be making a splash in Washington while Stephen Strasberg is making a push for his first Cy Young award.


Quick question, is the catcher position getting "deep"? There are a fair amount of highly regarded youngsters that are already in the majors, and we should see another handful or so in the next year.

All About the Playoffs

Dave Cameron of FanGraphs keeps the playoff story alive in proposing yet another idea for "improving" baseball down the stretch. Honestly, it's not a terrible idea, although I'm not sure it will solve any current "problems" while not annoying certain fan bases.

To me, the bigger issue is that we are rewarding teams for winning their division under any circumstance. Take the Texas Rangers, for example. Here's a team that if divisional winners weren't given the golden ticket (a mistake in my opinion) would have JUST made it into the playoffs. They finished one game above the Red Sox and two ahead of the ChiSox, two teams that were eliminated with more then a week left.

One has to wonder what kind of "extra effort" those teams put in if they knew it was about win #90 (a foreseeable goal with the Red Sox needing 15 and the Chi Sox needing 17 as of September 1st) instead of win #95 (based on the Yankees and Rays pace as of September 1st).

Likewise, authors have made a stink about a lack of drama in the American League East, but what about the lack of drama in the American League West?

Sadly the 2010 season didn't offer a lot of last week entertainment. Most teams were more concerned about setting up their rotations for the playoffs and wondering where they would play their first round of golf rather then digging deep and making a run of things. But keep in mind that the 2009 season had a division winner crowned on day #163.

Wait, let's look at 2009 again...

Wow, if teams weren't put into the playoffs based on geographical boundaries, we could have has a VERY exciting end to the season. While the Yankees, Angels, and Red Sox were all locks to make the playoffs and had things all but wrapped up a week in advanced, look at all the teams that come into contention if they are shooting for the 86 wins that both the Tigers and Twins settled in with.

We'd have the Rays, who finished with 84 and had the two best teams in the American League in their division (can't blame a team for packing that in). We'd also have the Rangers, who with 87 wins would have been the class of the final playoff spot, possibly providing a little more oomph with leading a race rather then trailing by 10 games. And we'd also have the Mariners, who with 85 wins might have had a shot.

2009 offered a little bit of drama with the Tigers and Twins fighting it out and needing an extra game, but imagine if those imaginary geographic lines didn't exist? There would have been 5 teams fighting the last days of the season for one playoff spot.

Maybe 2009 was a special case, how about 2008? Same thing, the American League Central went down to game #163 while two nearly equal teams, the Yankees and Jays were out with plenty of time left in the season.

What about 2007? Not too much excitement. Although having 88 wins and chasing two 94 win teams has got to look a lot nicer then chasing a single 94 and another with 96 as the Mariners and Tigers had to do respectively.

Then there is 2006, where a 90 win team didn't make the playoffs, while in the National League, an 83 win team made the playoffs with an 85 win team dusting off their fairway woods.


All of this is to say that the wild card isn't the issue. The wild card is predominantly rewarding one of the top teams in the league for being a top team. Is it taking some drama out? Certainly! But think how ridiculous the old system was where a team like the 2009 Red Sox, the team with the third most wins in the American League, would have been sitting at home.

The system, as is, works. It's not perfect, but it works. I would get rid of the geographical lines altogether, as it isn't as if the players are riding buses or non-chartered airplanes.

The WhO's

During tonight's Jays-O's radio broadcast I heard a "record" that hasn't been getting any press and also one that drew me to an even more startling conclusion.

Baltimore Orioles right fielder Nick Markakis became the third (yes, the THIRD) major leaguer in history to have 4 straight seasons of 43 or more doubles. Wow, really? Ever? That's quite impressive, well done Nick!

However, what really stuck out to me as the Jays announcers were talking about Markakis was that Nick may have more extra base hits (55) then runs batted in (53) - which in fact is true. While Nick has been hitting in the two hole for a good chunk of the season, having as many runs batted in as extra base hits is disastrous!

Possibly that is somewhat of an overstatement. However, how disheartening does it have to be for Markakis to be hitting the ball so well, yet offering so little production for his club?

I suppose this simply highlights the fact that the Orioles have been terrible at creating runs this season. So bad, that they need to have one of their best hitters hitting 2nd as things rapidly go downhill after that point. The team has three hitters with an on base percentage above league average. Their first basemen have the second lowest combined OPS in the league and it can't be chalked up to Justin Smoak (who has played for both the worst and third worst teams in terms of team first base OPS).

With as much young pitching depth as the Orioles have, their lack of hitting both at the major league and minor league level make it increasingly less likely that this team turns around any time soon. We may not be looking at the Pirates, but I'm not sure we are too far off given the depth of the systems and pockets of the teams in this division.

"Illogic" - A Race for MVP

I will touch on this more in the coming days, but I simply could not pass up on the opportunity to call out one of the most stupid comments I have ever read. And let me tell you, that bar is quite low!

Cliff Corcoran of SI.com writes,

[Joe] Mauer might be the first player you'd eliminate from that list, if only because his performance this season (.331/.407/.473, 9 HR, 74 RBIs) falls so far short of his otherworldly MVP campaign of a year ago.

You can check out the list of obvious candidates for yourself. You can also ignore the fact that for some reason I keep going back to SI.com despite the continual abomination that is their baseball writing (although there is more to come).

Despite all of that I have to wonder where Corcoran gets off eliminating Mauer based on the fact that Mauer is failing to be Mauer. That is, Corcoran feels as though simply because Mauer's MVP season in 2009 was greater than his season in 2010 that he is undeserving of it this year. What he fails to mention is that there is a hippo standing on a banana in odd numbered months that make it impossible to vote for the Twins backstop.

What a joke!

Well thanks for eliminating Mauer out of the MVP race based on that logic, I was really scratching my head there!

But Corcoran goes on to oust his own logic time and time again.

First, he suggests that Troy Tulowitzki is undeserving of the NL MVP simply because he missed a month of the season (okay) and consequently his counting stats are down (okay, fault MVP voters). However, this "logic" only applies to Tulowitzki because...Well, because.

That is, Corcoran believes that despite not leading the league in any counting categories and missing a significant amount of time, Josh Hamilton is the favorite to win AL MVP. Sadly, Corcoran leaves out his rationale behind the pineapple taking home the Cy Young, but I can't imagine the logic would be much different then removing Tulo from the NL ballot for injuries and a lack of counting stats and adding Hamilton to the top of his despite the same inefficiencies.

Second, Corcoran uses his "Mauer defense" MINUS the counting stats argument to write why Albert Pujols deserves third instead of first in writing,

"The counting stats are there, but relative to his own absurd standard, Pujols' rate stats are down this season. In the course of winning the last two NL MVPs, he averaged 42 home runs and 125 RBIs, totals within his reach this year, but also hit .342/.452/.656, which is yet another level of awesomeness above what he has accomplished in 2010. Expect Pujols to be penalized a bit for failing to live up to his own past performance..."

Corcoran does mention that this may be "unfair" however is not willing to fully commit to the level of fairness in this discussion nor state if Pujols should be the winner.

Going against his own logic, Corcoran writes about the counting stats being there, but the failure of Pujols to be Pujols as his fault. There is an interesting comment about Coco the talking monkey and Afghanistan though, which certainly leads to a further understanding of who will win the NL MVP.


If I were a less serious baseball fan, or simply a casual observer of the sport. Maybe I'm from Minnesota and I'm bummed that the Vikings started off 0 and 2 and I'm looking for something to heal those wounds ending up at Corcoran's article. However, upon completion I'm not certain this person would have a better understanding of who the deserving MVP is in either league. Where an argument goes against one player, it supports another; where it disqualifies one, it inflates another. Simply put, the logic makes teaching flip cup to a class of 5 year olds seem like a great decision.

By the way, that's a decision I made while teaching in Korea, so thank you Mr. Corcoran.

(Take note that 3 of the students were one'n'done - I'm a great teacher!)