Myth Buster

Sorry I have been so absent lately. I decided to join the Dharma Initiative , but things got a little dicey when a plane crashed on our island and now I have returned.

Previously on this blog, I promised to explore the question of if aces consistently face other aces during a season. The idea for this test hit me while I was listening to a recent CBS Sportsline podcast where the guys insinuated that fantasy owners should care that a pitcher is the No. 1 hurler on his team because it would result in more matchups against aces from other squads. After watching baseball for about 20 years, I’ve noticed a thing or two, and my keen intuition has never picked up a noticeable trend of aces consistently facing other aces, at least not any more frequently than they face pitchers in other slots in the rotation.

Test: I chose to examine a sample size of 10 teams, which is one-third of the league. To ensure it was random I simply went down the list of teams alphabetically until I got five teams from each league. In this experiment, an “ace” is defined as the team’s Opening Day pitcher because he is the man on the top of the rotation at the start of the season.

While on many teams these pitchers will not end the year with the best statistics, the purpose of this test was not to see how often a team’s best statistical starter faced off with another team’s because that is not helpful to fantasy owners in the preseason as we prep for drafts. Obviously, it is impossible to know for certain who every team’s top pitcher in 2008 will be before the year begins. Instead, this experiment was to see how often a pitcher slotted at the top of his team’s rotation went up against another hurler in that same position.

Hypothesis: Aces will face other aces roughly 20 percent of the time because they have an equal opportunity to pitch against any of the five members of the opposing team’s rotation.

Data:

Team	Player	Starts	vs. Ace	Percent
ARI	Brandon Webb	34	5	14.7
ATL	John Smoltz	32	8	25
BAL	Erik Bedard	28	7	25
BOS	Curt Schiling	24	2	8.3
CWS	Jose Contreas	32	3	9.4
CHC	Carlos Zambrano	34	6	17.6
CIN	Aaron Harang	34	10	29.4
CLE	C.C. Sabathia	34	6	17.6
COL	Aaron Cook	24	7	29.2
DET	Jeremy Bonderman	28	6	21.4
TOTAL		304	60	19.7

Conclusion: Aces faced off with each other 19.7 percent of all starts, almost exactly one-fifth of the time. This confirms my hypothesis and makes sense since, statistically, every time they take the hill they have a one-in-five chance of battling the opposing team’s top starter. This is important to fantasy baseball players to know as we prepare for upcoming drafts because it proves that there is no reason to downgrade any starter because of his location in his team’s rotation. So while there are a variety of reasons (new ballpark, run support, ect…) to adjust your rankings for Erik Bedard, Dan Haren, and other hurlers who switched teams this winter, do not do so because he now occupies a different rotation slot than he did a year ago.

TUESDAY LINKS

It looks like the Erik
Bedard trade is almost complete. And kudos to the Baltimore Sun for using a timely reference for the title of the story.

Once the deal is complete I will be back with a breakdown of the players involved and compare what Baltimore received for Bedard with the package the Twins got in return for Johan Santana. Is it possible the Orioles actually got a better deal?

Speaking of the Santana deal, Fanball’s Christian Peterson takes a stab at defending the Twins in a blog entry.

If you are looking for a very good mock fantasy baseball draft, check out the latest one
from Mock Draft Central. You should recognize the man who is drafting out of the No. 5 because he is Chris Bracke, whose blog 108 Stitches is linked on my blogroll. You can also check out MDC’s Top 30 Prospects, also done by Mr. Bracke.

CBS Sportsline has posted another fantasy baseball podcast. There is nothing groundbreaking in this edition (unless you are privy to their inside jokes perhaps), but they say one thing that caught my attention enough to conduct an experiment. Do No. 1 pitchers really face other team’s aces on a consistent enough basis that it should worry fantasy owners? Check back to the Pooch Report on Thursday for my conclusion using mounds of data from the 2007 season.

When they construct a Hall of Shame for terrible announcers, there will be a wing dedicated to Emmitt Smith’s rookie season.

Scott Wright’s NFL Draft Countdown has a mock draft that was posted Friday and it looks like it takes all the right things into account. We’ll be all over the NFL Draft here like stink on a hobo.

The Santana Trade

The economic inequality in baseball was on display once again last week when the Twins were forced to deal ace Johan Santana , who was going to leave town after this season to sign a six- or seven-year contract from a team in a large market. Signing a hurler, even an elite one, to a six-year contract extension worth in excess of $20 million per season simply is not possible for a team like the Twins because pitchers are historically more fragile that hitters and that contract would likely represent over 20% of the Minnesota payroll for at least the next four years. However, instead of landing a gaggle of quality prospects like they had in previous deals for Chuck Knoblauch and A.J. Pierzynski, Minnesota learned the hard way that big-market teams are realizing the value of holding onto their youngsters.

The closest the Twins came to getting full value for Santana was when reports surfaced during the Winter Meetings that the Yankees were offering a package of Phil Hughes, Melky Cabrera and at least one other quality prospect, possibly Austin Jackson, who is the team’s No. 2 prospect according to Baseball America. That offer seems like a steal compared to what the Twins got from the Mets, even if the Yankees had ended up insisting the Twins take Jose Tabata or Brett Gardner in lieu of Jackson. The reason I feel this truth is self-evident is because there is less risk involved with Hughes, who has been a blue-chip prospect since being a first-round pick in 2004, and Cabrera, who already has 1,024 major league at-bats under his belt. Add in another high-end prospect and it becomes clear the package the Yankees offered was the best the Twins could have netted for Santana.

Boston was the other team to offer the Twins an attractive group of players in return for Johan. The Red Sox reportedly offered shortstop Jed Lowrie and pitcher Justin Masterson to Minnesota along with (a) Jacoby Ellsbury or (b) Jon Lester and Coco Crisp. I’m on record as saying the Lester/Ellsbury package didn’t offer enough long-term upside, but I really liked what was cooking with the Ellsbury deal. The Twins would get a blue-chipper in center field, as opposed to a blue-chip prospect on the mound in the Yankee deal, and prospect that could potentially fill needs in the rotation and at shortstop. Even if Masterson ends up in the bullpen as a major leaguer, he would have been a welcomed member of the Twins pitching staff. Lowrie’s glove needs some work and he may be a third baseman in the bigs, but it just so happens the Twins have a long-term spot to fill at the hot corner, as well.

Instead a deal was done with the Mets that brought no blue-chippers to Minnesota, which is inexcusable in a trade that saw the best pitcher in baseball leave town. Aaron Gleeman does a great job of covering the Twins in his blog, so I’ll like you to his analysis of the four Mets the Twins got in return. In my opinion, the four players the Mets sent to the Twins all should be major leaguers before everything is said and done. In fact, Carlos Gomez and Deolis Guerra have All-Star potential, although both figure to be years away from reaching it.

Reports are that both the Yankees and Red Sox pulled or lessened their offers for Santana after the Winter Meetings. If that is true, I actually have a harder time blaming Bill Smith for accepting this deal because it is the best of what is left. There really is no logical reason that a deal for Santana should be any less in January than it was in December. In fact, he had reason to believe those offers might have actually been improved when the Mets entered the picture as serious bidders. Then Smith had the rug pulled out from under him again when Johan forced the trade to be completed when it was by threatening to invoke his no-trade clause. The end result is the worst deal any of the three teams were offering.

If you think Mets fans aren’t wetting themselves with excitement over landing Santana, check out “The Johan Santana Song” that can be found on Mets Blog .