Roy Halladay: GBOAT

Roy Halladay came full circle today. Almost 4 years after being traded to the Philadelphia Phillies, he signed with the Toronto Blue Jays and promptly retired.

I wrote about going to Roy Halladay's last home start as a Blue Jay when Halladay was traded in December 2009. What I glossed over was how great of a game he pitched that day. I'm positive part of the reason why I did not mention that is because that is the sort of game that was second nature for Halladay to have. Near the end of his time with the Jays, the fans just expected him to have a dominant start in a game that only goes 2 hours or so. So in that sense, it was the perfect last start in Toronto: a standard Halladay start, just Roy being the cyborg that we all grew to love.

Sitting behind home plate was an added treat for that game. You really got an idea as to how good Halladay was sitting there as you got to see the movement on his pitches, and his ability to pinpoint where they were going. He wanted to challenge hitters, and to force them to hit his less than ideal pitches, causing them to get out. What made him special was that he had a switch that he could flip when he sensed he needed to, and could get a strike out when he needed it. All of this made him the most dominant pitcher over his career (post delivery revamp that is.)

Of course, there was more to him than just being an amazing pitcher. While I joked above about him being a cyborg, it just seemed that way because he was not one to put himself out there. So we as fans could only take cues from his demeanor on the diamond, and that was one of stoicism, of cold professionalism and of expected excellence. It was a rare time when we got to see the more human side of Halladay, whether it was in this article by Cathal Kelly of Halladay spending a day at spring training with a child with cancer or a Richard Griffin article on Roy and Brandi Halladay's giving back to Toronto and the community. And these glimpses give us a glance at somebody who is grateful for what he has, knows that he is in a position to give back and wants to do that. He doesn't let his paycheque define him. And that came through in the press conference announcing his retirement as well.

Ultimately, this feels right. Roy Halladay knows his body would not be able to let him perform at the level that he wants to, so he walks away now rather than hang on and attempt an ill-fated comeback. Halladay is a Blue Jay through and through; he left because his career and the Blue Jays were diverging in their needs, not because of any desire to leave. He clearly loves the organization, and the organization is willing to embrace him as well. The fans have never forgotten him and still pined for him (indeed, there were fans that were advocating signing him to improve the Jays' starting staff.)

The only thing left to say is thank you Roy, for all of the memories and for being the best pitcher I have ever seen in person.

When you have to sell something...

Alan Hirsch has a piece on FrumForum about the accuracy of Moneyball. Since he's written a book that was critical of Moneyball (writing a critique of a book 10 years after it's focus to say it did not work in recent years - how does that teach us anything of what happened when it was applied?) In it he brings out all of the usual tired canards about how Moneyball failed - Jeremy Brown failed so Billy Beane couldn't draft, the A's success was driven by the top three starters Beane inherited, etc. But Hirsch took another usual line a bit too far:

One exception, the Minnesota Twins, has succeeded for the better part of two decades while explicitly disavowing the tactics trumpeted by Moneyball.

While I'm sure he chose the two decades time range to include the 1991 World Series champions, it doesn't help the argument too much. Here's the yearly record for the Twins from 1991 to 2000:

1991: 95-67 (win World Series)
1992: 90-72
1993: 71-91
1994: 53-60
1995: 56-88
1996: 78-84
1997: 68-94
1998: 70-92
1999: 63-97
2000: 69-93

What's also lost in this is that in 1991, the Twins signed Jack Morris as a free agent, acting decidely as not a small market team. Using the Twins as a proxy to show that the "old fashioned way" of constructing a team works is a normal reaction; pointing to the 90s as an example of this is just baffling.

(The Twins would not make the playoffs again until 2002, which is the focus of the Moneyball movie and book. That year the Athletics tied for the best record in the American League.)

Trying to make sense of it

As a follow up to yesterday's post, I ran the numbers for playoff, LCS and World Series teams against teams that miss that cut off for 1998-2010 (1998 chosen because it was the first year with full expansion.)

The pattern stayed the same - the playoff/non-playoff divide had playoff teams winning 56.53% of the time, while the LCS/non-LCS divide has LCS teams winning 56.00% of the time. After thinking about it, I'm a bit more comofortable with why this is happening.

It's going to seem like a simple explanation, but the reason this happened is because the non-LCS population of teams is better than the non-playoff population of teams. Playoff teams that lose in the divisional round have an overall win percentage of 54.93% in the following year, and have a winning percentage of 50.83% against LCS teams.

(I will note that if you compare LCS teams to non-playoff teams, LCS teams win 57.05% of the time, which is the phenomenom that I was expecting to see.)

I still have reservations about the testing method that Levitt used - baseball win percentages generally speaking range between 40% and 60%, so I don't know if a comparison of straight win percentages is the best method to show the comparison. But since there isn't really an equivalent win/loss for the random pairings that Levitt used, I don't know how to solve this. As well, there is a related argument to be made that MLB teams are already divided into varying ranges of elite talent teams, while the poker population tested contains talent levels that range from elite to poor. The argument basically is that if you put an MLB team up against, say, a beer league team, you would expect the MLB team to win 99% of the time, if not 100%. In the poker population, you already have the equivalent of MLB teams against beer league teams, so you would expect the random pairing win percentage to be higher.

I still wish to test the basketball playoffs, to see if there's something there. But I am glad to understand why cutting at a highter threshold ends up providing a lower win percentage. Sometimes it takes doing a bit more work and a second look to understand better what's going on.

Jumping ahead of the story

This was supposed to be a post about Steve Levitt's paper comparing poker and baseball. In a sense it still is, because I have a couple of reservations about the test Levitt did.

The reservation I have which I haven't tested is to compare the WSOP results to NBA results. I think that's an interesting test as teams tend to not change quality that much from year to year. I haven't found the information in an quick format to run calculations on. Once I do get them together, I will post the results.

The other reservation I had was with the population size that Levitt tested. For poker players, he identified 720 players as being high skill that participated in the 2010 WSOP. We know that the full population of WSOP players is at a minimum 7,319 players, because that is the number who played in the main event. So Levitt's test of poker players defines the population of high skill players as being < 10% of the population. But when he makes the same cut for baseball, he defines the equivalent high skill as making the playoffs. The problem with this is that he's defining high skill in baseball as being 26.67% of the population.

That difference is huge. I realize there are restraints given the number of teams in MLB, but it still strikes me as there has to be a better definition to be used. So I decided that a slightly more fair definition would be to only consider the four teams that made the LCS. This would set the cutoff at being 13.33%, which strikes me as being closer to equivalent for my liking.

So off I went to run the calculations. And to be honest, I was expecting to find that teams which made the LCS won 56% or 57% of games against teams that did not make the LCS, and I would write something pithy about cosnidering definitions when doing a test and Levitt might not have proven what he thought he did.

Then I saw the results - Teams that made the LCS won 54.46% of games against teams which did not make the LCS. Compare this to the playoff/non-playoff cutoff, which sees playoff teams win 55.72% of their games against non-playoff teams.

Quite honestly, I don't know what to make of this. There is something about teams that lose in the divisional round of the playoffs - LCS teams only win 44.07% of their games against teams that lost in the divisional round. But LCS teams fare better against teams that did not make the playoffs when compared to teams that lose in the divisional round.

I am definitely going to get more data on this - I want to know if this is just a three year blip on the radar, or if there's an actual trend in place. Also, I want to know exactly what is going on here - is there some sort of pattern that can be found regarding divisional round losers? Is using World Series competitors any different for determining skill vs. non skill? Is there something else I'm missing?

The bigger issue here is that I had this post practically written in my head, and then I went to get the numbers to back up my thoughts only to find that maybe assuming what was going to happen was a bad idea. So even if in getting into this data I find absolutely nothing conclusive, I will be able to take away something - it's always better to ask a question, gather your data, then answer the question than to ask a question, answer a question and then gather your data.

New blog to check out

Mookie Wilson's blog

It's still relatively new, but the posts are well written. With any luck, he will delve more into the detail of the 1986 season (his first post was more of an overview, with a bit of personal reflection as well).

(h/t to Parkes)

Sometimes the jokes write themselves

Tim Lincecum eats 3,150 calories at In-n-Out Burger

A more reasoned (but still giddy) reaction to the Vernon Wells trade

The Vernon Wells for Mike Napoli/Juan Rivera trade is a tough trade to grade from a baseball perspective. If the Vernon Wells from 2010 shows up and the Mike Napoli and Juan Rivera from 2009 shows up, the trade is a win for the Blue Jays. If only one of Napoli or Rivera shows up, then the deal is a wash. If the Rivera and Napoli from 2010 show up, then the Angels win the deal. With that said, if the Wells from 2009 shows up, then it doesn't matter - the Jays will win the trade.

Another factor in the evaluation is defense. After being a good centerfielder in his younger years, Wells is now a liability defensively. If he moves to leftfield, he'd likely turn into an average defensive fielder, putting most of his value in his offense. Napoli is considered to be a weak defensive catcher, though how much of that is due to the Angels' reluctance to play him (instead choosing to play offensive sink hole Jeff Mathis) is not know. Rivera is an average left fielder. From a Jays' perspective, Rajai Davis takes over as the centerfielder, improving their defense if simply by subtraction. From the Angels', it will depend on where they play Wells. If they play him in left or right field, defense should not be an issue.

Of course, the elephant in the room is Vernon Wells' contract. Wells is owed $84 million over the next 4 years, which is still a ridiculous overpayment for his contributions to a team, even assuming that he produces at his 2010 levels. His contract was such that most people assumed that it would be unmovable unless the Jays picked up a significant portion of it. Instead, the Angels seem to not only want Vernon Wells, but also think he's properly valued. How they can do this, I have no idea. But if you approach the trade from this point of view, it at least makes a bit of sense. Whether they're right to approach it like this will be proven this year.

A quick reaction to the Vernon Wells/Mike Napoli&Juan Rivera trade

WWWWHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

(More reasoned reaction to come once I've calmed down.)

The hidden downside of Adrian Beltre leaving the Red Sox

Adrian Beltre does not like having his head touched. Unfortunately, his Red Sox friends liked to touch his head.

Things I couldn't say better

Tao of Stieb waxes poetically about Roy Halladay's first postseason start...before this happened.

Your Sunday Gospel

National Post's John Lott has a discussion with Dirk Hayhurst about his childhod heroes. What we get is an iteresting insight into Hayhurst's childhood.

I've just received Hayhurst's book The Bullpen Gospels and it is next on my list of books to read. A review will come as soon as I am done.

So Long Roy

Roy Halladay getting interviewed after his last home start as a Blue Jay

I really owe James F. Ward a thank you. You see, on September 24th, he sent an email out to my group of friends saying that he had 2 tickets to the next night's Jays game. Since he isn't that big of a fan of baseball, he offered the tickets to us. Matty P was up for it, and I was too. As an added bonus, Roy Halladay was starting.

When we got to the game, we searched out dinner (Smoked Meat for me - a mistake as the cost/size ration was pretty poor.) Then we went to our seats. We were 25 rows up from home plate.



We were treated to what can only be called a classic Halladay start, the type of start Jays fans had come to expect from Roy. At the end of the game, the fans were chanting Roy's name, knowing that they might have witnessed Roy's last home start as a Jay.

Today, it looks like those suspicions are now reality.

I'm oddly calm about this. Maybe July's dances with trading Halladay has prepared me for this. The Yankees' victory in the World Series probably reinforced that the Jays need to both spend and reload on premium prospects. Become Boston north, in other words. And the best way to do this is to trade your best asset - Halladay.

Just don't talk to me come opening day. I'm pretty sure my calm will have turned to anger and sadness on what could have been.

Interesting POV

Watching Jeff Blair on Prime Time Sports and he just mentioned something I had never considered. He pointed out that he had been told in spring training that teams were putting a premium on their own prospects because they should know what they are getting, including whether they are on steroids or not. That puts a totally different spin on the desire to hold on to prospects.

Just read this

My good friend Gary Wise shows why he's a damn talented writer.

A die-hard Blue Jays fan says good-bye to Roy Halladay

Knowing When to Quit

My thoughts on a possible Roy Halladay trade are very jumbled right now; I'm not sure that I can properly put into words what I am thinking. Which means at least one, if not two, posts are to come on this. However, one thing is bugging me right now: Why is JP Ricciardi in charge of moving Roy Halladay?

I'm not exactly the first on this bandwagon; Keith Law was the first to ask this question. When he first started asking it, I was willing to shake it off, thinking that Ricciardi would be GM until the end of 2010, and it was in his best interests to get a great deal for Halladay. But as time has gone on, JP has basically shot himself in the foot.

The final straw happened today. Ricciardi let the media know that Halladay had indicated that he would test the free agent market after 2010. Not a big deal on it's own. But when added with Ricciardi's quote about Halladay providing a list of teams he would accept a trade to, the inference was obvious: Roy Halladay wanted to leave the Toronto Blue Jays.

Naturally, the press picked up on this. Also naturally, Ricciardi felt that he needed to set the record straight. This isn't the first time that Ricciardi has spouted off, and I'm afraid it won't be the last. Ricciardi seems to be lacking the internal filter that most people have, the one that allows them to consider their audience before speaking. And that lack of a filter could very well have hurt the Jays' return on any potential Halladay trade.

So why is Ricciardi still handling a trade that will shape the Jays for years to come?

Update: Jeff Blair and Tao of Stieb have opposing views.

Best Regards

John Brattain: 1965-2009

Baseball Think Factory thread
Memoriam by Maury Brown

Quick thought on the end of Boston/Los Angeles series

Mike Scioscia cost the Angels the game and thus the series. A suicide squeeze with 1 out in the 9th? How about you let Aybar try to repeat his magic?

(Oh, and go Phillies!)

Your fair where fair is due post

So, uh, how about those Blue Jays?

Okay, they looked pretty good against the Red Sox. If the Jays continue to get this sort of starting pitching through the season, they will make the playoffs.

Your snarky Toronto Blue Jays post of the day

Hey, do you remember when the Jays had an amazing defense, possibly the best in the league? Good times...

(Edited to add: Hey, do you remember when home plate was the same size for both teams?

Oh, and I've already remembered what makes Rod Black so "special" as a play-by-play guy.)

Blue Jays Opening Day thoughts

With a preview still to come, a couple of quick thoughts about today's disheartening loss:

• This was a great example of how baseball is a game of inches. Melky Cabrera's homerun clears the fence by 6 inches (don't listen to Yahoo's boxscore - that ball barely cleared the fence). Marco Scurtaro hits a line drive that would drive in the go-ahead run, if it wasn't in the upper limits of Jason Giambi's leap, or was a foot to the left or right of Giambi. Joba Chamberlain would have struck out Vernon Wells, if the pitch was 6 inches lower (wait, that was called a strike?) If those plays fall 6 inches in another direction, the Jays win the game.


• With that said, the Jays managed to once again revert to their non-converting ways, not capitalizing on men in scoring position when they had the opportunity. Hill was on second base with none out in the 7th, and nothing came of it. Rios works Chamberlain for the walk in the 8th, and then Wells and Thomas strike out. If the Jays are going to contend, they need to take advantage of every opportunity they have to score, because there aren't going to be that many. Right now, they don't seem to have improved on last year.