Can I have Jose back? Please?

I feel like there would be more to write about if Jose Bautista was in the lineup yesterday, but maybe not.  The game yesterday was pretty uneventful from a Jays fan's perspective.  Bautista is the best player on this team, and the team can't really compete against good pitching if there isn't a big offensive threat.  Yes I realize how well Adam Lind has played over the last 2 weeks, but David Price is an elite lefty, and Lind isn't really all that able to carry an entire offense against a left handed pitcher.

Kyle Drabek was okay, and given that he was on short rest (after not getting out of the third inning in his last start, mind you), pitched about as well as we could have asked for.  He's still throwing a lot of pitches, and I'd expect (hope) that he be shut down at some point before the end of the season.  Having said that, he threw a lot of innings in AA last year, so he may not have an innings limit.  The thing about having an innings limit is that, similar to Brandon Morrow last year, if you go out and dominate, you're going to go deep in to ball games and tally up the innings quickly.  But throwing innings doesn't necessarily do the work on the arm, as opposed to the amount of pitches thrown per inning.  Drabek is averaging right around 18 pitches in an inning; it's slightly above average, but for a power pitcher who misses a lot of bats, it's nothing wild. But it's not like Drabek is going out there and throwing 18 every inning; his typical path is something like [12, 13, 30, 23, 16, 8] and get pulled in the 6th with a man on first and one out.  Throwing 30 in an inning is pretty bad for the arm, especially a young one.  (I asked Kyle from Driveline Baseball to try and explain that a little better than I did.  I'll post what he writes back if he has the time to get back to me today.)

Ah well.  David Price came in yesterday and fucked us.  At least Farrell let JP Arencibia play, despite Drabek pitching.  And look what Drabek did... the exact same thing he's done with Molina behind the plate.  Maybe this means that JP should catch 4 out of 5 now.  Gregg Zaun said it best yesterday, when he said that JP is the future catcher of this team, and that he should never ever get back to back days off.  Jose Molina isn't going to be around forever, and at some point, preferably soon, they're going to have to let JP take the reigns with this pitching staff and catch them all, at least every now and then.  And shit, what if Molina gets hurt?  It's not like he isn't 70 years old and fat.

And here's something else: with Bautista and Aaron Hill out of the lineup, there's kind of a need for a power bat in the lineup, even if he is going to bat 6th or 7th or whatever.  I mean it's not like Edwin is contributing, and the Juan Rivera party looks kind of over.  JP is the 2nd/3rd (Escobar) best hitter on this team if Bautista isn't in the lineup.  I'd bat JP 5th behind Lind to be completely honest.  Or better yet, put him third so Corey Patterson can go in the 8 hole/bench where he belongs and Escobar can be 1st or 2nd.

Thankfully, the Road trip is over, and they Jays head back home to the Skydome Rogers Centre to open a Friday-to-Monday series, or as I like to call it, a reacharound, with the Detroit Tigers.  Gingerballs gets the start tonight against Phil Coca-Cola Classic.

Tomorrow marks the day that both Jose Bautista and Aaron Hill return to the lineup.  Definitely woohoo on the Bautista thing.  Jury is still out on Aaron Hill, to be perfectly honest.

Around the league:

Harry Leroy Halladay III surprised absolutely nobody by continuing to be good at pitching, going 7 innings, allowing 2 runs and striking out 10 gentlemen.

Boston continued to be the greatest team ever assembled, losing to the Angels 11-0 at home yesterday.  LA put up 18 hits, and John Lackey continues to earn that contract.

Looks like Kansas City is giving up on Kila Kaiai'aiae'ah'ue or whatever the fuck his name is.  They sent him down and called up Eric Hosmer, forgoing any super-2 implications.  But hey, it's an upgrade, and Hosmer was skullfucking AAA (.439/.525/.582) over 118 plate appearances.  He makes his debut tonight.  KC whooped Baltimore last night 9-1, with former Jay Bruce Chen going 7 strong innings, and then Jeremy Jeffress, a product of the Zack Greinke trade, threw 2 perfect innings in relief.  I can't see KC keeping the string of good play up, not with this lineup anyway, but this is going to be a really fun team to watch as early as September, when the rest of their absurd farm system comes up.

Jake Peavy threw over 100 pitches in a rehab start yesterday.  Dude's been injured pretty much constantly over the last couple years and a lot of people thought that he might be finished, but it looks like he's on his way back.

And finally, Shin-soo Choo does no favors for asians and the stereotype that they are bad drivers with this video of his DUI arrest.

Lineups

Jays
Davis RF
Patterson CF
Escobar SS
Lind 1B
Rivera LF
Arencibia C
Encarnacion DH
McCoy 3B
McDonald 2B

P: Litsch

Tigers


Jackson CF
Sizemore 2B
Boesch LF
Cabrera 1B
Martinez DH
Ordonez RF
Peralta SS
Avila C
Inge 3B

P: Coke

That's a little better

"My balls feel this big right now."- Adam Lind, after hitting a 2-run HR in the first inning.*

Ok, so Adam Lind is good at baseball. Another Zaun-head for the boy.  14 for 31 on this road trip.  Someone remind me next time Adam has a good game that I don't know how to do the cross-wise tick mark for the 5th one, so he can't have another until I figure that out.

And that was actually a pretty good game yesterday for a change.  Brandon Morrow was pretty good, going 6.1, striking out 7, allowing 5 hits and walking 4.  I wouldn't mind seeing him walking fewer batters, or at least throwing fewer pitches, but the Rays are the kind of team that are going to foul off a lot of pitches and get deep in to counts, plus that was only his third start of the year.  But holy shit did he ever look like a beast.

And I think BJ Upton was hungover or tired or something, because he had a bad game, racking up 4 strikeouts.  Or maybe it was Chad Fairchild, whose strikezone was all over the place.  Morrow literally didn't get a low strike call all night.  Granted, he works up in the zone a lot, and most of the low pitches he throws are breaking balls that are designed to be swung over.  Jeff Niemann and Andy Sonnanstine combined to get 2 low strike calls, so yeah. And there's this at-bat to Upton late in the game:

which was followed by an outburst that probably won't be found on the internet for a while, thanks to MLB's video policy, not to mention the fact that it was a profanity-laced tirade against an umpire that makes the league look bad.  I assume he'll be suspended.  Rays homer R.J. Anderson has more about Fairchild's zone at Baseball Prospectus.

And speaking of suspensions, the league announced that they would not discipline all these guys who have been arrested with DUI's lately. Not yet anyway.  Shin-soo Choo is the most recent, blowing a .201 an hour after being arrested (.08 is the legal limit if I'm not mistaken), but there have been a bunch in the last year.  Miguel Cabrera is the current leader, with 2, but ringing up the rear is actually the makings of a pretty decent team full of underrated players, with Choo, Derek Lowe, Coco Crisp headlining.  Adam Kennedy and Austin Kearns are the bench.  Let's not forget that it's almost 2 years to the day that Angels' top prospect Nick Adenhart was killed by a drunk driver after making a start in LA.

The main problem is that, according to Yahoo's Jeff Passan there is nothing concerning alcohol-related arrests in the league's collective bargaining agreement, which expires this December.

What else is new?  Dustin Parkes at Getting Blanked makes fun of people who think that there is such thing as clutch hitting.  He also comes off less pretentious this time, vs. the last time he talked about this when he was on Stat Attack on The Score during spring training.

Fangraphs reviews the 2008 MLB Draft.  Just shows how volatile any given draft can be.  Two teams who, historically, have drafted really really well (Boston and Tampa) had, what can now be considered, pretty disappointing drafts.  Explains why the draft goes 45 fucking rounds.  Baseball is unlike any other sport, in a sense that guy who are drafted one year don't just become superstars the next year (for the most part).  The much more likely outcome is that guys take between two and four years.  Baseball prospects are typically much more raw than guys going in the first round of the NHL or NBA drafts, and take a few years of seasoning.

Around the league
Tim Lincecum had some fun last night, striking out 12 over 7 innings in the Giants' 2-0 win over the Mets.  Unfortunately for us, he threw 127 pitches and couldn't come back out for the 8th inning.  And that wasn't even the best performance by a Tim last night.

Tim Hudson threw a 1-hitter for the Braves, walking just 1 batter, as the Braves took both ends of a double-header against Milwaukee.  Zack Greinke made his debut for the Brewers in the second game last night, but sucked.  Shaun Marcum sucked in his first start for the Brewers, but has been lights out, as expected, since then.

In true Red Sox form, Boston and the Angels took about 7 and a half hours to finish their game last night.  There was a two hour and 35 minute rain delay and 4 extra innings, officially making this the most unwatchable game of all-time.  Daisuke Matsuzaka pitched the 13th inning in relief for Boston and allowed 3 hits and a walk, scattering 2 runs.  Good one.  Vernon Wells went 2 for 6, with a HR and 2 runs, by the way, boosting his average to .184.  They play again in half an hour.

It's an early game today for the Jays and Rays, with this one starting at 1:10 ET.  Ricky Romero was supposed to take the hill, but has been scratched with an oblique strain, after almost getting his head taken off by a Mark Teixeira liner last weekend.  Kyle Drabek will take Ricky's place, and Jesse Litsch will pitsch tomorrow, before Romero pitches Saturday in Toronto**.  The Rays counter with David Price.  He is really good.

*-: Not an actual quote.
**- Update- Richard Griffin (@RGriffinstar) of the Toronto Star just tweeted that Romero might not be ready to go Saturday.  Multiple tweets put together:

Romero is still iffy for Saturday with strained left oblique and body soreness from liner back to mound in NY. I would say 60-40 for start. If Romero no-go Saturday tough call. Reyes can't be moved up (4th day). Mills in LV pitched Wed. If RR can't go best idea may be 15-day DL.

John Lott tweets that Romero threw from flat ground and felt good, but Farrell still says that Saturday is a tentative date.

And check it out! Farrell moves away from the personal catchers!  JP has been freed.  Lindy gets half a day off, moving to DH instead of 1B, and Edwin Encarnacion gets a day off from throwing errors, moving to 1B.  David Cooper just straight up gets a day off.

Lineups:
Jays

Davis RF
Patterson CF
Escobar SS
Lind DH
Rivera LF
Arencibia C
Encarnacion 1B
Mccoy 3B
McDonald 2B

Drabek P

Rays

Fuld LF
Zobrist 2B
Damon DH
Longoria 3B
Joyce RF
Upton CF
Kotchmann 1B
Rodriguez SS
Jaso C

Price P

May 4- Jays vs. Rays

SPORTSNET 1!!!!!

No really, sportsnet 1 kind of sucks.  Of course, when I say "kind of" I mean that I don't really care, since I get the channel at home, and I'm getting even more baseball than I used to.  I assume that if I didn't get it here, then I'd be pissed, but whatever.  It comes free with the digital cable, along with all the other sportsnet channels, so to me, it's somewhere between a minor inconvenience and "Oh boy! Cricket is on!".  But for everyone else, fuck you Rogers!

They should have put last night's game on SN1, because that smelly fuck Jojo was starting, but nooooo, Morrow gets the SN1 treatment.  Aahhh well.  Seems like this guy only pitches against Tampa these days, but remember that time last year when he brought a no-hitter in to the 9th against TB, striking out 17?  Yeah, me too.

Here's some stuff that I'm not complaining about:   John Lott of The National Post says that Jose Bautista could play Sunday, after feeling much better this morning.  He's been given meds and ordered to rest following an MRI that determined no structural damage, so that's a fresh air breath.  Aaron Hill is also scheduled to be back Sunday, after he gets 3 rehab assignments Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  Bad news: David Price is probably pitching tomorrow.  He wasn't supposed to originally, but Joe Maddon tweaked the rotation to fuck us around.

Lineups-
Jays:
Davis RF
Patterson CF
Escobar SS
Lind 1B
Rivera LF
Encarnacion 3B
Cooper DH
Molina C
McDonald 2B

Pitching: Brandon "Ricky Ro" Morrow

Rays:


Fuld LF
Zobrist 2B
Damon DH
Longoria 3B
Joyce RF
Upton CF
Kotchman 1B
Brignac SS
Jaso C


Pitching: Neimann

Well that sucked

Fucks sakes, right?  Can't you win a game Jojo? God.

If you read yesterday's post, you'll see that I'm joking here.  Jojo actually worked his mojo last night, scattering 4 hits and 1 run over 6 innings, in a start that many, myself included, believed to be Jojo's last with this team if it wasn't a good one.  The way this team has worked so far, he probably gets cut tomorrow, but still.  I mean, I know I was kidding there, but let's be honest; this dude has gotten a lot of fucking chances to perform, and not just in this organization either.  Atlanta gave him plenty of chances without being at all effective, in the National league, no less.

I guess it's the occasional flash of not-suck that he shows every 4th appearance that makes AA want to keep this guy around without losing him for nothing.  The fact that he's the original David Purcey (Lefty, low-to-mid 90's fastball, some potential if he ever finds control) is what leads me to believe that in the (soon-to-be-not) hypothetical situation in which Reyes being removed from the big league club, exposing him to the league's other 29 teams (there's a dick-joke in there somewhere), would lead to his not clearing waivers.  And frankly, why should he?  He's actually effective against lefty batters.  I mean Oakland took Purcey.  And it's not like it would be a big risk to anybody, at a $440k price tag.  If he only had to face lefties then he probably wouldn't get the shit kicked out of him so often.

Come to think of it, you know what team could use another lefty in the bullpen?  THE TORONTO FUCKING BLUEJAYS.  If you're so worried about losing him for nothing, put him in a situation where he can actually succeed.  Put him in the bullpen, let someone else (Villanueva, Cecil*) start.  If Jojo continues to suck, then cut him; if he can't get lefties out then he's not worth a fuck and you know what you have.  If his only utility is to come in against 1 LHB so Octavio Dotel doesn't, I'm happy.

In any case, Jose Bautista is out for the series with neck spasms.  So he lied to us.  Probably could have used him last night.  I mean, yeah, the Jays led in to the bottom of the 9th, but 2 runs against Tampa isn't really going to win you many games.  Would have been cool to pick up the win last night, but again, in case anyone forgot, this team isn't going anywhere this year, so I'm not all that worried.  I'd rather Rauch wouldn't blow saves since that's just the kind of thing that is going to hurt his type-B free agency, but heh.  Long season.

If I had my way, assuming I knew the Jays were going to lose this game (which, to be fair, once I heard that Bautista was out of the lineup and that Reyes was starting...), Jojo would just give up 5 runs over 4 innings like he will next start and we can all just move along from this damn experiment, but I suppose this one is going to be extended.

And I thought BJ was the bad Upton?  What's up with the homerun man?  BJ Upton walked off against Toronto, AGAIN.  That's the third time he's done that against Toronto in his career, so naturally, they dumped a bunch of pudding on him in the clubhouse.

And Adam Lind stealing?  Ugh.  Stop it.  He's slow.  And if that was a hit and run and Juan Rivera missed the sign, so help me.

I'll be honest-- not only was that game boring the bejehovah out of me, Caddyshack was also on tv, making it pretty easy to switch between the two.  I dunno, maybe it was just some illogical hunch that made me not want to watch (note- I saw the end of the game), but it may have also been my very rational distaste for Jojo Reyes as a starting pitcher, combined with my also very rational distaste of having Jose Bautista not in the lineup, or some kind of combination of those three.

Whatever, I'm fucking over it.  Know why?  Brandon Morrow pitches tonight at 6:40ET for Toronto.  He's up against Jeff Niemann.  I like Brandon.  And I don't like Jojo.  Jojo was the best Jay last night, but fuck that guy.  So you know what I'm doing?  BAM, Brandon Morrow gets last night's Zaun Head.  Don't like it?  Complain.  It's my fucking blog, don't tell me what I can't do.

By the way: you know who would be good to have in the lineup?  Travis Snider. That way we wouldn't have to trudge out that waste of breath Juan Rivera in to the outfield, or that other waste of breath Corey Patterson.  Apparently Snider was 7 for his first 7 at bats in AAA, before cooling off and making an out.  Last night he went 0-for-2 with 3 walks.  Hey Travis!  You're supposed to be working on the swing.

Brett Cecil, also in the minors, tweeted the following last night:

When u work so hard to get something so right and ur on the edge of madness n it finally comes together in one instant...feels so damn good!

And then did not follow it up with anything.  Not sure if he was just stating a fact, or if that meant that he had a good outing last night.  Still searching, but I'll figure it out and update this later.

According to John Lott of the National Post, Aaron Hill is scheduled to resume pop-ups on Monday.  That's about it for that story.

Around the league:  Francisco Liriano walked 6 White Sox last night, striking out just 2...  and I guess he threw a no-hitter too.  Lirianono's no-no delayed his being jettisoned from the Twins rotation for at least another couple starts.  Nice offense Chicago.

Fangraphs wonders what is wrong with Vernon Wells.  Before reading this article, my prediction was that the answer would be "he sucks".  I wasn't completely wrong, but they like to use these fancy things like "evidence".

*drudge siren* Conspiracy theory *drudge siren*-- The Red Sox won last night, and have now beaten both of the Angel's aces.  Not a coincidence is that John Lester pretty much stopped throwing strikes after the 4th inning (according to someone on the internet who actually watched the game).  Pitch f/x!

This graph is from the catcher's perspective, so Lester pretty much got every marginally close call on pitches outside to RHB's/ inside to LHB's.  On the other hand, Dan Haren, who doesn't have the luxury of a mid-90's fastball, and thus, needs to focus on keeping the ball down in the zone, didn't really have the luxury of throwing to that really wide strike zone.  He got squeezed worse than Lester on low strikes.  Whatever, I just don't like Boston.

Ethier Watch!  Andre extended his hitstreak to 29 games last night in the Dodgers' loss.

Some sad news: Twins pitcher Paul Bargas has been diagnosed with a brain tumor.  Best of luck to him.

This coach has some serious potty mouth.  Obvious NSFW.

The dog got in to the garbage this morning.  He's gone 3 hours already without shitting on the floor, but it's gotta be coming soon.

Lineups when they're available, but I'll warn you now: it won't be pretty... there's going to be a Molina.

*- At this point, something I've got in my mind is that they were going to cut him when Morrow came back, until the Cecil demotion happened.  Maybe they're just waiting for Cecil to come back so they don't have to worry about filling the roster spot.

Tuesday Morning Musings

Alright, so it's been a big couple days around here.  From what I understand,the Taliban caught Obama, and The Conservative Party of Canada won an award for best erection.  This is a baseball blog.

The Jays open a 3-gamer in Tampa tonight.  Jojo Reyes will get the loss against Wade Davis, yet another young pitcher for Tampa who has been cheap and effective.  Evan Longoria chooses a great time to get un-injured, as he returns tonight.

There's nothing Jays-related to recap, so let's go around the league.

Lance Berkman continues to make me look silly.  He hit another bomb last night, his 9th.  That signing is looking real good so far; despite the fact that he shouldn't be playing an outfield position, he's actually been right around league average to this point.  The fact remains that he probably won't be anything special defensively from this point forward, not to mention the fact that he bumps Matt Holliday to RF (who is also shutting me up by being decent in RF so far), which sounds just ugly to me.  Either way, having those two hit as well as they have has done more than enough to make up for the (expected) defensive deficiency, defined by defunct and daft dudes determining D.

Ethier Watch!: Andre Ethier extended his hit streak to 28 games, half of Joe DiMaggio's record of 56.  People are going to start overreacting about this soon, updating their blogs daily about just this type of thing.

I don't fucking like him at all, but Dustin Pedroia had a cool at-bat last night, fouling off NINE pitches against Jered Weaver.  Boston finally solved Weaver, who had previously embarrassed every lineup he had faced.  Pedroia's single on the 13th pitch of the AB knocked in 2 runs, giving Boston a 3-2 lead that they would not give up, especially after they scored 6 more in the 7th.

Hideki Matsui hit a walk-off homer in the 10th inning for the A's.  Too bad nobody was there to see it.

Update-- Holy poop.  No Bautista tonight.  No.  Bautista.  But there's this:

Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Jose Bautista has been voted the Budweiser Presents American League Player of the Month for April. Bautista hit an American League-leading .366 (30-for-82) with five doubles, a triple, nine home runs and 15 RBI in 24 games in April.

Good boy.

Toronto'ed Blue Jays

Davis RF
Patterson CF
Escobar SS
Lind 1B
Rivera LF
Arencibia C
Cooper DH
Encarnacion 3B
McDonald 2B

P: Tampa Bay Reyes

Rays

Fuld LF
Damon DH
Longoria 3B
Zobrist RF
Upton CF
Rodriguez 2B
Shoppach C
Johnson 1B
Moar Johnson SS

P: Davis

Stats stuff

It's an offday today, so what I thought I'd do is go in to a bit of detail about what I want this blog to be.  First, I don't claim to be some baseball savant; I'm simply a big baseball fan and have been my entire life.  I've always had a bit of a love affair with stats and numbers and stuff.  The main thing that I want to keep in mind when writing is that some people don't like baseball or numbers as much as I do, and some people simply don't look at the same stats for their baseball info as I do.  As result, today's blog will explain some of the advanced stats that I like to use, and express my distaste for some stats that are way overused.  I'll likely bookmark this at the top of the page and continuously edit it as new things come to light, or if I have a writer's block some day, I can explain them better.

• "Slash-lines": this is probably the one I'll use the most.  It will be in the form of batting average/on base percentage/ slugging percentage.  
• Slash lines are closely related to OPS, which is "On-base plus Slugging percentage".  I find faults with it, but don't really know how to explain it all that well without finding extreme examples.  Basically, it overrates slugging percentage.  OPS doesn't really like a guy like Ichiro, but I think we can all agree that he's a pretty good hitter.
• Update, March 14/'12: Check this out!  Tango and Patriot at the book blog verbalize (in writing) the faults that I couldn't really explain myself, but then go another step beyond that.  Awesome stuff here.  
• OPS+ sets the league-average OPS to 100.  An OPS+ of 101 or more is above league average, 99 or less is below league average.  Using Bautista's '10 season as an example, his OPS+ was 165 last season, which was right around tops in baseball.  OPS+ is park-adjusted (that is, some parks are easier to hit in, and some are easier to pitch in. The ball flies out of Yankee Stadium, for example, due to typical wind direction, field size, dimensions, and so on.  Basically, not all fields are created equal). 
• wOBA: stands for "weighted on base average".  This is a fangraphs tool.  Basically, this was created to make up for the fact that a triple is worth 3x as many bases as a single, but is not 3x as valuable.  Similarily, a double with 0 outs and a triple with 0 outs give a really close expectation with regards to runs scoring.  wOBA also accounts for stolen bases, which OPS does not.  wOBA loves guys like Ichiro, despite the low slugging percentage, because they can steal bases and effectively turn a single in to a double.
• WAR: stands for "Wins above Replacement".  This attempts to measure any single player's contributions to his team.  It calculates both offensive and defensive contributions.  It's a system that is more complicated than I could ever explain, so here is the fangraphs explanation.  You don't really need to know how it's calculated to understand it though; simply put, Jose Bautista was worth about 7 wins last season (depending on which site's WAR you look at; fangraphs and baseball-reference use different defensive metrics and rank mostly everyone differently).  Adam Lind was worth 0.5 wins last year.  That should give you a pretty good idea of what a good and bad WAR season is.  A league average player is right around 2 WAR, while a replacement level player is worth 0 by definition.
• WAR is used to evaluate contracts and player value.  Let's say that two players are worth 2 WAR each, but one is making $2MM and the other $17MM.  There is one really good contract (i.e. the team is making a surplus over the value that they paid), and one pretty bad contract (i.e. the team is overpaying for a win).
• A single WAR has a different value each season as contracts grow.  This past offseason, a WAR was valued at approximately $4.7MM.  In other words, a 3 WAR player should get a contract in the $14MM range on the free agent market.  Adam Dunn is a good example of this.  He's only been worth about a win and a half in the last two seasons because he's such a liability in the field.  By moving him to DH, Chicago is effectively looking at his batting numbers over the last few years (very good) and completely ignoring the defence (dogshit), since it becomes irrelevant (though each position has a different value in calculating WAR.  A DH needs better offensive numbers than a SS to be a 2 WAR player, since the average SS hits much less effectively than the average DH).
• Marginal Wins: Not all WAR are created equal.  Teams who have been bad for the last few years (Pittsburgh, Kansas City) aren't going around every offseason signing expensive free agents, because all those free agents will do is help the team go from 72 wins to 75.  Instead, they build value with draft picks and deadline deals, keeping costs low until they are ready to contend.  Boston, on the other hand, went out this offseason and replaced their 1B (3B, technically) and LF with Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford.  They probably overpaid with the two longterm contracts that they handed out, especially in a few years when those two are 35 and making $20MM a season, but the wins that those two players provide now can be the difference between winning 87 games, possibly missing the playoffs, and winning 94 games, winning the division.
• Players who are still under team control (first 6 years of their career; 3 years of full control, 3 years of salary arbitration) are paid much less than free agents.  Full control years are typically around league minimum ($414K this season), and then arbitration years are performance and service time based, with players earning 40%, 60% and 80% of their market value in each respective year of arbitration.  This explains why Jose Bautista's contract is $8MM this season, and $14MM in the next four, since he was arbitration eligible this year.
• FIP and xFIP: stands for "Fielding Independent Pitching".  Basically speaking, it's what a pitcher's ERA should be, after fixing for any amazing or disappointing defense, intentional walks, and so on.  Both adjust for ballparks and league (NL offenses are worse than AL, mostly because of DH`s, but also the AL East), but xFIP also adjusts homerun rates to 12.5% of flyballs.  Most pitchers have little to no control over what ratio of flyballs leave the park; about 12.5% leave, the rest stay.  Any pitcher with a HR% that varies drastically from that 12.5% is probably due to experience a regression.
• BABIP: "batting average on balls in play": Briefly, about 30% of balls that are hit in to fair territory (excluding homeruns) fall in for hits, with the other 70% being outs.  Basically, if a pitcher has a .400 babip, he's either getting unlucky, or is just throwing a bunch of meatballs that are being hit for line drives.  Conversely, if a pitcher has a .200 babip, I'd expect his ERA to balloon sooner or later.  Babip is available for both pitchers and hitters.  For example, Aaron Hill had a famously low babip last year, coming in at something like .196.  As Jon Hale at The Mockingbird shows us, Hill just had a fucking brutal season last year, no matter the babip.  Hill`s pop-up rate was so damn high, and a pop-up may as well be a strikeout.  Power hitters typically have lower babip`s due to the higher flyball rates, which will turn in to outs (or HR`s, which aren`t measured in babip) more often than not.  A guy like Ichiro will have a higher babip because he hits a lot of line drives and grounders, and gets a whole bunch of infield singles.
• K/9, BB/9, H/9, WHIP, aka "rates": This is how I'll compare pitchers to one another.  The "9" obviously stand for "per 9 innings".  I still like FIP better, since it is better adjusted than the raw data, but rates are still useful. 

I'd like to point out that I'm not a big fan of babip, since it doesn't really show how solid the contact is, nor does it show (I think anyway) how effective a pitch is.  Mariano Rivera comes to mind, painting corners with unhittable pitches (.261 career babip).  This is actually something I want to research a little bit, so I might have something some day.  But as a short term change from the norm, it does help with analyzing slumps and such.

(Update- I guess I have a bit of a point with my Rivera thing, but he`s a freak, so it`s not something we should really look at seriously.  Babip is pretty much normalized, to the point that .295-.300 is going to be your standard mark each year.  Rivera`s low babip can be explained by what is still a relatively low sample despite 15 seasons (1100ish career innings, which most decent starting pitchers reach in 4-5 seasons), some downright nasty stuff, and a reputation for throwing all strikes painting every corner all the time, which gets him a lot of called strikes by way of a wider than normal strikezone, and thus, more 2 strike counts, more swings at bat pitches, and poor contact, broken bats, etc.)

Bad stats:

• Pitching record (wins and losses): let me use an extreme example.  I pitch for the Harlem Globetaters, who score an average of 105 runs per game.  I start 42 games a season and average a 10 ERA.  By all rights, I should be 42-0 by the end of the season, despite an ERA that might possibly make me the worst pitcher in history.  Yes, I realize that this assumes a lot, but it's a hypothetical.  Wins and losses (from a team perspective) have a lot to do with the entire pitching staff and the lineup, way too much so to give a pitcher a win or a loss, especially when it becomes a relief pitcher earning the decision.
• RBI's: see: Bautista, Jose.  If people don't get on base in front of you, you can not knock in runs.  There is no such thing as "an RBI guy" in baseball.  There might be a good hitter, or a high on-base/high slugging guy, but there is no way possible for someone to have a quality of being good at knocking in runs.  Bautista would be a great RBI guy if the bases were loaded every time he came to the plate.  I`m sure every major league batter would be as well, even if they were a below average hitter.
• Fielding percentage: sucks.  A 1B is going to have a really high fielding percentage due to the number of (easy) chances.  Don't look at anything like putouts or assists (for infielders at least-- outfield assists are not especially useful but guys like Shin-soo Choo, Ichiro, Bautista, etc. who have real good arms will get more outfield assists than floppy-armed dudes playing left field because they need a position) either.
• Win shares: One of the few advanced stats that are fairly useless.  They're relatively close to WAR, but don't account for someone being worse than replacement level; you can't get negative win shares.  Those were only kind of popular 2-3 years ago, and that popularity lasted briefly, but they're still around.

I'll still use HR's, RBI, and AVG to describe what happened in any given game, but if you ever want to argue with me about player X being good because he knocked in 121 runs last year, don't.  I won't reply.  If you say "so-and-so is underrated because of [...]" and then use a bunch of good, useful stats, I'm all for it.

May 1- Hungover recap and Jays vs. Yankees

Kind of early for a ballgame today, no?

Rough about yesterday.  Seemed like it was going to be another standard blue jay comeback, but meh.  Can't win 'em all I guess, or in this case, slightly more than half. 

But how about that bullpen?  Shawn Camp is quickly becoming my favorite guy on this team.  Just goes out there and nasties his way to outs.  Some of those pitches that he threw yesterday just looked like they moved so much, though the camera angle and the herp derp armslot that he throws from probably exaggerates that a bit.  It's a shame that he's finally pulled it together in the last 2 years instead of being awesome before the age of 33.  He was drafted in the 17th round of the 1997 draft and just kind of shitballed in the minors for a while before finding a job in Tampa, and then being yet another scrapheap guy in Toronto.

Mike Mccoy hit a dinger yesterday, and also made a real nice running overhead catch.  Close, Mike, but I think Camp gets the Zaun head on this one.  Naturally, Mccoy finds a seat on the bench today, because you don't want the egos to get too big.

AJ Burnett was pretty much AJ Burnett yesterday, minus the walks.  And really, if you're drawing 0 walks against AJ Burnett then you're probably being a little too aggressive. 

And speaking of drawing 0 walks, Jose Bautista took a break from destroying the Yankees pitching staff and opted to only get on base once yesterday, with a double in the 3rd or 4th or something.  I dunno, I'm kind of mad.  Maybe the party's over.

And speaking of aggressive... Mr. Farrell.  I have a bone to pick with you, sir.  Do you realize that you told Juan Rivera to steal third base with 1 out?  With Edwin at the plate? Against AJ Burnett?  JUAN RIVERA?    I don't understand how anybody could possibly think that sending your fat guy with no effort level is good baseball.  Typically I can think up some logic failure to go behind a silly coaching move (i.e. stay out of the double play, create a hole in the defensive alignment, etc.), but this one leaves me baffled.

Hit-and-run?  No, he's on 2nd base, against a pitcher who's had control problems his whole career and a batter who, to this point in the season, has done fuck all with the bat (and has been worse with his defense, by the way), and swings out of his shoes anyway.

Hope to score on a groundball to the outfield?  No, Gardner has a good arm, so he's getting a stop sign/being thrown out on anything right at him and probably scoring regardless on something not right at him, and he just straight up scores on a ball to CF or RF.

Straight steal?  No, if he's fast enough to steal third, then he should be fast enough to score on a dribbler to the outfield.  The advantages of having a runner on 3rd and 1 out vs. a runner on 2nd and 1 out just don't really make up the risk of having no runners on at all and 2 out (or in this case, end the inning after the strike him out-throw him out), during a rally, no less.

And if that was just an audible that Rivera called on his own then he had better be fucking benched for the rest of eternity (and he's in the lineup today, so...).  I do like how that fat fuck is starting to pull his weight around here with the slightest bit of offense that he's delivered over the last 10 games, getting the average over the Aaron Hill line, but as a DH and non-tender candidate, it's probably bad for your career to put up a negative WAR (fangraphs actually has him at 0.0WAR so far this season... 10 game hit streaks do wonders for that, apparently).

Gingerballs Litsch gets to pitsch for the jays today in NYC.  He's up against Ivan Nova, who, without doing any research and based solely on memory of a sample size of 1 or 2 games, hasn't pitched well against Toronto.  I dunno, I might be wrong, I can't be bothered to look that shit up.  I'm writing this on my girlfriend's computer and don't really have all my bookmarks and pictures and whatnot, so fuck you.

And finally, according to jays beat writer and fellow St. FX alum, Gregor Chisolm (@gregorMLB on twitter), Travis Snider went 4 for 4 with a double and walk.  Get him the fuck back up here.

So yeah, get better Juan, stay awesome Campy, you get a free pass for being mediocre for a day Bautista, and do well today Ginge.

Lineups-

Jays

Davis CF

Escobar SS

Bautista RF

Lind 1B

Rivera LF

Arencibia C

Cooper DH

Encarnacion 3B

Macdonald 2B 

Yankees

Jeter SS

Granderson CF

Teixeira 1B

Rodriguez 3B

Cano 2B

Swisher RF

Posada DH

Gardner LF

Cervelli C