Catch the Ball

Apparently, the Mets have re-signed infielder Alex Cora and signed utility-catcher Chris Coste. Cora's job should be similar to what it was last year, backing up the middle infielders. Coste's is somewhat less clear.

Coste, who rookied with the Phillies at age 33 in 2006, will turn 37 before the start of the 2010 season. Defensively, he can catch and play first base. Though he hasn't thus far in his major league career, in his time in the minors Coste did spend significant time at third base. (He also played some games in the outfield, but that's probably irrelevant as he's a full eight years removed from his most recent outfield appearance.

In terms of his hitting, after a very fine rookie showing in 2006, Coste's offensive game has gone downhill. Never one to take a walk, Coste has shown a declining batting average and power as he moves into his later thirties. Which can hardly be a surprise.

Though he has shown proficiency against lefties and Omir Santos has against right-handers, it would be very surprising if the Mets make these two their catching tandem. His versatility does allow the possibility of him making the roster as a utility catcher - with the ability to backup the first and third basemen - but his decline in hitting over the last few years does not make that seem very likely.

More likely, Coste is being brought in with the expectation of landing
a job in AAA, where he would be just a phone call (and a flight) away
if a major league catcher went down.

On the other hand, he may be in the fray with Omir Santos for the
backup catcher job. I'm not really sure how the Mets brass feels about
Santos.

Either way, I think the pick-up is a good one. Coste is a versatile
player, and to be quite frank, the numbers he put up after being
traded to Houston last year, .204/.259/.252, while horrendous, are far
enough from his standard that I think he could bounce back.

How RIght You Are

I was talking to someone and he made some possibly accurate but totally ridiculous comparison. I forget what it was, but I told him that what he was saying was akin to explaining Rey Ordonez's inability to hit with the fact that he didn't hit as well as George--er--Babe Ruth.

That kind of comparison is like winning the battle but getting nowhere in the war. Ordonez didn't hit as well as Babe Ruth - not many people have - but that is not what proves that he was a terrible hitter. If you were to point out that he couldn't hit as well as Desi Relaford, well, that might be a bit more informative.

As you probably know, Albert Pujols was voted MVP of the National League. More importantly, I suppose, Pujols was MVP of the National League. It was his 3rd MVP. That means that Pujols now has more MVPs than all but 9 baseball players. Bonds, Berra, Campy, Dimag, Foxx, Mantle, Musial, A-Rod, Mike Schmidt. That's pretty good company, and I'm sure that Albert is happy to be mentioned in the same sentence as those great ballplayers.

Here's what Barry Bonds had to say about a young Albert in 2003 "[Albert Pujols] reminds me of Bobby Bonilla, but better."

Right on, Barry.

What Are You So Mad About?

Tim Lincecum was voted the National League's Cy Young Award winner last week (actually, that's when the results came out, but whatever). Lincecum had, by all accounts, a really good season, leading the NL in strikeouts, complete games, and shutouts and placing second in categories like ERA and hits/9 innings. He was fourth in WHIP.

As you may be aware, there was some considerable hoopla surrounding the voting process, as various people believed that either Chris Carpenter or Adam Wainwright, both of St. Louis, should have won the award.

On Monday, Joe Mauer was announced as the AL MVP. The vote was unanimous, excepting one voter who listed Miguel Cabrera first on his ballot.*

The hoopla around that award's voting, and there was some of it, was that Mauer should have been unanimous.

*Mauer did come as close to unanimous as possible. He was listed second on that one ballot.

The pro-Carpenter people expressed disdain at the fact that people are relying on new-fangled stats, like FIP, to rate players. And that may well have been done.

But here's what I don't get. The people who didn't vote for Carpenter were not relying on some new-alphabet-soup kind of statistic. I mean, they might have been, but the reason you don't vote for Carpenter is simple. It's called Innings Pitched. He may have been somewhat more effective than Lincecum, but he pitched 32.2 fewer innings. That's pretty significant. And it's a rather good reason not to vote for the man.

I would have been less surprised if traditional baseball writers been annoyed with Mauer's inclusion than Carpenter's exclusion. Mark Teixeira led the AL in home runs, RBI and total bases. If the push would have been for him to win it would have been understandable, if wrong.

But blasting people for not voting for a man with less than 200 IP against pretty comparable competition is not really something that I get.

3s in Our Society

Did you ever notice how certain numbers always seem to be creeping up on you all the time? Maybe you were reading Harry Potter and there were too many sevens. Maybe you noticed that 50% of the words you uttered were precisely two syllables. Maybe not.

Now that the award voting is in for the 2009 baseball season, I'd like to identify three significant 3s in baseball today. And more than significant, they're rather mind-boggling.

1. Ichiro Suzuki just concluded his ninth year in the major leagues. In only 3 of his seasons did he not lead the Major Leagues (or tie for the lead) in hits. In those three seasons he had (or had a tie for) second place in hits in the Major Leagues.

2. Albert Pujols has just concluded his ninth year in the major leagues. In only 3 of his seasons did he not come in first or second place in the MVP voting.*

3. In the history of the American League, a catcher has only won the batting title 3 times. Joe Mauer, Joe Mauer and Joe Mauer. (2006, 2008, 2009)

* Ichiro and Albert Pujols were both rookies in 2001. They won Rookie of the Year Awards in their respective leagues in 2001.**  2001 may well go down as the best ROY Class of all time. Ichiro and Albert Pujols, not bad. They do have some competition.

In 1947, Jackie Robinson was Rookie of the Year. They only gave out one award for both leagues back then, so it would be pretty hard to count that. In 1951, World Series foes Willie Mays and Gil McDougald won the two awards. Only one Hall of Famer there, but McDougald was a really good infielder, and between the two of them you've got 25 years of All-Star Game appearances.

1956 was the first time that two future Hall-of-Famers would win the award. Frank Robinson and his 38 home runs won the National League ROY, while Luis Aparicio and his league-leading 21 steals won the Junior Circuit's rookie crown.

In 1967, Tom Seaver and Rod Carew, both future first-ballot Hall-of-Famers, won their league's award.

10 year later, in 1977, Montreal's Andre Dawson and Baltimore's Eddie Murray were Rookies of the Year. Dawson is, as of right now, not a Hall-of-Famer (and he may never be), but I think (and I'm not sure here) that these two have more career home runs than any other ROYs.

WIth apologies to Jose Canseco (1986), the steroid class of ROYs was 1987, with Mark McGwire and Benito Santiago.

It's not really fair to try and rate the 2006 (Hanley Ramirez, Justin Verlander) and 2007 (Ryan Braun, Dustin Pedroia) as of yet.

I think that the winning class is....1967. Rod Carew and Tom Seaver are ahead of Pujols and Ichiro. And quite frankly, I don't know if they'll catch them. Ichiro is already 36. We don't know how much he has left (though it'd be hard to say that he's showing his age).

For the more complete answer, check back in ten years.

Parenthetically, that was some serious class of rookies in '01. Besides the winners, Ichiro and Pujols, there were Sabathia, Alfonso Soriano, David Eckstein, Roy Oswalt, Jimmy Rollins, Adam Dunn. Not too shabby.

** I was discussing the ROY with a friend of mine in 2001. He was, as I recall, trying to point out how good a rookie year Soriano had. Sorry, sir. Most irrelevant. Looking it up now, Soriano didn't just not get a first-place vote - he finished third, behind Ichiro and CC Sabathia.

The Best?

Joe Girardi finished second in the Manager of the Year Award voting this year. If Joe Girardi did not make the playoffs this year, I think there's a pretty good bet that he'd have been fired. In essence, making the playoffs was part of his job. (I suppose you could quibble on that, but it's what I believe, and I think most people would agree with that.)

If making the playoffs was part of his job, it would seem that he did so well in the balloting because of his postseason managing. Here's the problem: Everybody thought that his managing was bad in the postseason.

Do you get this?

Randomness

Over time, things have a habit of evening out. What I mean by this, I suppose, is that while something really peculiar may occur, you would expect things to eventually revert to normal (whatever that may be).

Sometimes, however, things that occur are so bizarre that they are noteworthy, even though they are just random fluctuations.

An example of this would involve Doc Ellis's having pitched a no-hitter while on LSD. Most of the time that people are on LSD, they don't pitch a game, but if you started a study on people under the influence of LSD on June 12, 1970, you might have assumed that it was a common occurrence.

That's all pretty intuitive and very useless.

My point is that sometimes things happen and they are interesting in their out-of-the-ordinary way. *

My point is that Honus Wagner, the greatest shortstop in baseball history (and it's not close) pitched 8.1 innings in his career and had an ERA of 0.00. **

*I think that this is what I am trying to say. The fact that Babe Ruth led the AL in home runs 12 times in his career is pretty amazing. But if had, say, turned a triple play once, it would have a distinctly different kind of interest to it.

** Which means, in case you were wondering, that he pitched so well that he didn't have an ERA+. And you thought Zack Greinke was good!

By the Way: There's a new poll up.

How About This?

How about this for your random and obscure fact of the day? In 1876, the Athletics, Reds, Louisville Grays and New York Mutuals all had more errors than runs scored.

With modern groundskeeping, better playing fields and better equipment, things are very different in today's game of baseball. In 2009, the only team that had more errors than runs scored was the New York Mets.

Oh, my mistake. Even the Mets managed to squeeze past the .500 mark with 674 more runs scored than errors committed.

What can I say? It's a different game!

Awesome

I don't know if you knew about this, but the spectacular website baseball-reference.com has this really awesome thing called Play Index. Play Index has a few really cool facets, one of which is a tool with which you can search for seasons with statistical criteria, like most home runs in a season by a switch-hitting second baseman (Ray Durham, 26, 2006), or highest batting average by a 29 year old who batted left-handed and threw right-handed (Ty Cobb, .371, 1916) or most hit-by-pitches by a National League right-fielder (Geoff Jenkins, 19, 2005). Basically, it's really, really cool.

Check it out. http://www.baseball-reference.com/play-index/

And for the next five days, it's free.

Awful October

Well, not really, but from a baseball perspective, what more is there to say?

What could be worse than the Yankees meeting the Phillies in the World Series? The Yankees beating the Phillies in the World Series.

Such is life as a Mets fan.

Pessimism abounds. You miss victory. As kind of an about-face to most Met fans mentalities, I'm going to try to recap what has gone right over the past five years in Mets-ville.

And the truth is, it's a heck of a lot.

2004 -2005

-- The Mets hire Willie Randolph and sign star free agents Carlos Beltran and Pedro Martinez, bringing respect back to a franchise just over a year removed from a 95-loss season.

-- Cliff Floyd has, perhaps the best season in his career, setting personal records with 34 home runs and having his second to best season in terms of walks, games played and RBIs.

-- Mike Piazza, in his last year with the club, spanks 19 home runs in declining playing time.

-- The Mets have one of the best fielding right fielders in baseball, with former Gold Glove winning Mike Cameron manning the post.

-- David Wright hits 27 home runs in his first full season and seems destined for stardom.

--Mike Jacobs makes mincemeat out of Major League pitching in his first exposure to it, swatting 11 home runs in only 100 at bats.

There was more. Check back for more 2005 highlights, and also coming up will be highlights from the 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 seasons.