Chris Magyar Dot Com

By now, I’ve heard just about every possible reason for why the Red Sox will destroy the Rockies in the World Series (last night’s game not exactly helping the purple cause), but one of the more irksome is that, somehow, the American League is just a better league. This is based on the head-to-head interleague records and the streak of AL wins in the All-Star Game. (Such commentators usually excuse teams like the Rockies, who had a positive record against AL teams during the regular season, by saying they play “AL” ball with a beefy lineup.) Now, personally I like to call the National League “baseball” and the American League “Disney on Ice” because of the DH, which destroys the integrity of the game’s strategy. But more than hampering the in-game strategy, I think what we’ve seen since the last expansion rounds — which added 3 teams to the NL and only 1 to the AL — is the more sinister effect of the DH, the one that occurs in the off-season.

The media has been bemoaning the lack of parity in the league since the last expansion, that in baseball your wallet size trumps everything else. What they’re missing, because of the incessant focus on the New York/Boston rivalry, is that this is only true in the American League.

First of all, you need to accept that pitchers are risky free agent signings. Not just marginally more risky than position players. Massively more risky. The Hardball Times does nice analysis combining Win Shares and salary figures to determine just how much more dollars at risk on the mound than at the plate, and here are this year’s figures. Even if stats aren’t your cup of tea, the notion makes observational sense: hitters have a fairly smooth performance trajectory, and rarely become teh suxor all of a sudden. Exceptions are usually linked fairly clearly to an injury or represent a fluke bad/good year. Pitchers, on the other hand, have a shelf life of three years of greatness before it’s all a great unknown. A pitcher who remains consistently good through the years is a Hall of Fame pitcher. Everyone else is a flavor of the month. For every Smoltz and Clemens, there are dozens of Zitos and Dontrelles. The problem is even more pronounced with relievers: Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman aside, has there been any dominant reliever who’s strung together more than two seasons of greatness since 1993?

So, when it comes to free agency time, this puts the NL behind the ball. I’m talking of starters here, not bench or role players, because that’s obviously where most of the dollars are allocated. In the AL, the general manager has 9 positions to fill, while his NL counterpart only has 8. At first, you might think this would benefit the NL, as the GM could spend more dollars on one given position, but that’s not how it realistically works, because — and this is the key point — that 9th position doesn’t have to play defense. This allows the AL general manager to set aside a higher budget for older, more expensive, accomplished bats, because that 9th slot is free. This doesn’t just effect the signing of DH-only type players like Barry Bonds. When you think top-tier hitters, the AL will always be able to say, “Let’s throw $20 million at that 3B, and we can shift our current veteran 3B to the DH slot.” The expensive hitters being pulled off the table by AL clubs, that leaves the NL with … pitchers.

Now, I’m not saying this is how every transaction occurs. Obviously, there are plenty of huge free agent pitcher signings in the AL, and NL teams regularly wrap up big name hitters on the open market as well. But this is the general trend, and over the course of a few decades, it has definitely shaped the characteristics of each league. Most significantly, it has led to a general decrease in risk for rich AL ballclubs, while NL clubs, even if they choose to spend freely, still have to navigate risk to succeed. You know what you get with A-Rod. You don’t know what you get with Jason Schmidt.

We’ve all seen tables of the payroll versus wins. Those tables never break down by league. Let’s try it now.

American League

2001

Payroll: 1. New York 2. Boston 3. Cleveland 4. Texas 5. Toronto
Wins: 1. Seattle 2. Oakland 3. New York 4. Cleveland 5. Minnesota

2002

Payroll: 1. New York 2. Boston 3. Texas 4. Seattle 5. Cleveland

Wins: 1. New York 2. Oakland 3. Anaheim 4. Minnesota 5. Seattle/Boston

2003

Payroll: 1. New York 2. Texas 3. Boston 4. Seattle 5. Anaheim

Wins: 1. New York 2. Oakland 3. Boston 4. Seattle 5. Minnesota

2004

Payroll: 1. New York 2. Boston 3. Anaheim 4. Seattle 5. Chicago

Wins: 1. New York 2. Boston 3. Anaheim 4. Minnesota 5. Oakland

2005

Payroll: 1. New York 2. Boston 3. Anaheim 4. Seattle 5. Chicago

Wins: 1. Chicago 2. New York 3. Boston 4. Anaheim 5. Cleveland

2006

Payroll: 1. New York 2. Boston 3. Anaheim 4. Chicago 5. Seattle

Wins: 1. New York 2. Minnesota 3. Detroit 4. Oakland 5. Chicago

2007

Payroll: 1. New York 2. Boston 3. Anaheim 4. Chicago 5. Seattle

Wins: 1. Boston 2. Cleveland 3. New York 4. Anaheim 5. Seattle/Detroit

So, this decade, being in the top 5 of payroll gave you a 60% chance of being in the top 5 of wins. The exceptions were ‘01 (and Seattle was 6th in payroll) and ‘06 (when Detroit was 6th in payroll), although those exceptions are mitigated by ‘05 and this year, when the two lists matched up at an 80% clip. That leaves room for 2 “contenders” among the other 11 AL teams. (And this is a good a time as any to once again heap praise on the GMs for Oakland and Minnesota. They grabbed those slots much more often than not, and when they were beat, it was usually by the 6th-highest payroll.)

This is a familiar story. Now what about the NL?

2001

Payroll:    1. LA    2. New York    3. Atlanta    4. Arizona    5. St. Louis

Wins:        1. Houston    2. St. Louis    3. Arizona    4. San Francisco    5. Atlanta/Chicago

2002

Payroll:    1. Arizona    2. LA    3. New York    4. Atlanta    5. San Francisco

Wins:        1. Atlanta    2. Arizona    3. St. Louis    4. San Francisco    5. LA

2003

Payroll:    1. New York    2. Atlanta    3. LA    4. St. Louis    5. San Francisco

Wins:        1. Atlanta    2. San Francisco    3. Florida    4. Chicago    5. Houston

2004

Payroll:    1. New York    2. Philadelphia    3. Chicago    4. LA    5. Atlanta

Wins:        1. St. Louis    2. Atlanta    3. LA    4. Houston    5. San Francisco

2005

Payroll:    1. New York    2. Philadelphia    3. St. Louis    4. San Francisco    5. Chicago

Wins:        1. St. Louis    2. Atlanta    3. Houston    4. Philadelphia    5. Florida/New York

2006

Payroll:    1. New York    2. LA    3. Houston    4. Atlanta    5. San Francisco

Wins:        1. New York    2. San Diego    3. LA    4. Philadelphia    5. St. Louis

2007

Payroll:    1. New York    2. LA    3. Chicago    4. St. Louis    5. San Francisco

Wins:        1. Arizona    2. Colorado    3. San Diego    4. Philadelphia    5. New York

Wow. The pattern is very similar for the first two years, and then something odd happens: it appears that a team’s success in one year is a better predictor of where it will land in the payroll standings the following year — the cause-effect is backwards! (I’m not arguing actual causality here, but it does make some sense, as the NL teams generally build cheaper talent within and reward them with stick-around contracts after successful seasons.) This year was particularly wacky, and I’m not going to argue that it will always be that topsy-turvy, but, in general, since 2003 a top 5 NL payroll team only has a 40% chance of making the top 5 win list. The only exception is when the Mets snuck into the 2005 list with 83 wins to tie the 5th place Marlins. Furthermore, while the big spenders in the AL (New York, Boston, and Anaheim) have virtually locked themselves up a playoff spot, it’s a different pair of fat cats eating up that 40% of “purchased” contention real estate. Atlanta is the closest thing the NL has had to a dominant rich team, and they haven’t exactly outspent the rest of the league year-in and year-out the way Boston and New York do.

Another facet of this that points to the NL spending on riskier free agents than the AL due to having one less everyday batter is the number of “flop” seasons, where a team spent in the top 5 and didn’t sniff the playoffs. The poster child for this in the AL is Texas, which everybody associates with the monster A-Rod contract, though I seem to remember a retarded check being written to Chan Ho Park, too. Anyway, the AL has its poster child. How about the NL? The New York Mets couldn’t buy a .500 record, much less a playoff spot, despite attempting to accomplish Yankee dominance of the NL with their wallets. The Dodgers, unlike their Angelic counterparts, have had mixed results from their spending. Chicago only seems to get in when they’re NOT spending like crazy (with this exception of this year, when it didn’t take a top 5 finish to win the NL Central).

It’s not that payroll doesn’t matter in the NL at all. You don’t see Pittsburgh or Montreal/Washington making any of these lists. It’s just that free agent spending is a much smaller component of winning in the National League than in the American League. Far from being a coincidence, I propose it’s because having one less roster spot to spend on sure-fire, expensive batters, the NL must allocate its big contracts to pitching. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t. Arizona and Florida (’97 flavor) became poster children for “buying” a playoff spot early in their franchise histories, but it must be said that Arizona got lucky that Johnson and Schilling turned out to be a pair of “real deals” and that Florida was buying hitting, for the most part, and lucked out with Kevin Brown. Pitching wins championships, but hitting can get you to the playoffs, and it’s much easier to buy reliable hitting than pitching. That’s why parity has fallen apart in the AL, while it’s still a somewhat active force in the NL.

So, not only can we blame the DH for sapping the roster management strategy out of the AL game, not only can we sneer at it for destroying the traditions of the game by eliminating the two-way ability that made Babe Ruth such a star, not only can we gag everytime an aging hitter with bad knees gets to limp through a home run trot because he’ll be riding pine in the other half inning … now we can assess that the DH is at least partially responsible for the way low-payroll teams have been shut out of contention in that league.

Sure, the Red Sox might come across as the better team in this World Series, and might even win it handily, but I’m more impressed by the NL-Champ Rockies for winning a “baseball” season than I am by Boston’s “Disney on Ice” win.

I’ve been enamored with Nike’s United Countries of Baseball map. Here’s my take on the football map. Compare contrast, and somebody please tell me if I’m even close to what’s going on in Arkansas.

This matchup has been brewing into rivalry status for quite some time now (remember when Arizona was caught spying on the Rockies during spring training in their inaugural year?), with only the Rox ineptitude dampening the enthusiasm necessary for a blood feud. (Even Yankees/Red Sox goes pretty calm when the teams are sucky — you didn’t hear much about that rivalry in the late ’80s and early ’90s.)

After the Diamondbacks celebrated on the pitching mound of Coors Field a full day before they clinched a playoff berth (What were they celebrating? Being the only team to beat the Rockies in two weeks?) and subsequently getting their tar kicked by the steely-eyed Men of Purple, this matchup was inevitable. I predict Rockies in 5, because even though they’ve handled Webb better than any other team in the NL, his late-season form is probably good enough to take Game 1. After that, it’s four more wins and a World Series. How do I know this? Same way I knew the Rox would sweep the Phillies. I looked at the players, and ours were better.

Catcher

Chris Snyder vs. Yorvit Torrealba
Snyder is the superior hitter, since he’s league average and Yorvit … isn’t. He also has more power, though Yorvit seems to hit the big ones just when the cameras are turned on. Both are known for handling pitchers well. Neither one is Pudge Rodriguez, but Benji Molina could steal a base on Yorvit. In this case, I give the advantage to Arizona. (-1)
1st Base

Conor Jackson/Tony Clark vs. Todd Helton

It says something that Melvin has been using the Old Man much more in the postseason than he did throughout the year, and Clark became something of a Rockies specialist as the season rivalry wore on. Still, we have two adequate defenders with OPS+ numbers a shade above average in the red-and-black, while the man wearing purple put up an OPS+ of 133, a fielding percentage of .999 (the Dickbacks played 3x more people at the position this year than Helton had errors at it), and is to the Rockies what Ray Borque was to the 2001 Avalanche. (+2)

2nd Base

Mostly Augie Ojeda vs. Kaz Matsui

This was a more interesting matchup when Orlando Cabrera was healthy, since he and Byrnes were the ‘engine’ in the ‘little engine that could’ of D-backs offense this season. Ojeda has proven he’s not a complete slouch, but he’s exactly the slightly-below-average player you’d expect from a 32-year-old AAA reclamation project from the Cubs. Kaz, meanwhile, has been on fire. His season stats aren’t eye-popping, but his veteran savvy in the leadoff role has kept the Rox offense from sputtering, and it’s never bad to have a former SS fielding the right side when you’ve got two SPs (Fogg and Cook) who specialize in grounders and one (Francis) who throws southpaw. (+1)

3rd Base

Mark Reynolds vs. Garrett Atkins

A closer comparison than you’d expect, as Reynolds is having a fine season. The OPS+ numbers are close (109 to 113), but there’s a qualitative difference under the blanket number. Reynolds strikes out more frequently, hits fewer longballs, and walks half as often. When it comes to counting outs, Atkins is the clear winner. Both players have pretty good backups with better defensive skills (Alberto Callaspo and Jamey Carroll respectively) who figure to see late-inning time. In coming years, Ian Stewart will make this a silly matchup, but for now, I only give us the slight advantage. (+1)

Shortstop

Stephen Drew vs. Troy Tulowitzki

This reminds me of the Jeter vs. Garciaparra debates in the late ’90s. Drew plays the role of Jeter, getting oohed and aahed for his relatively mediocre defense while playing it safe (and mediocre) at the plate. Tulo, despite wearing #2, plays Nomah, hitting the ball with a free and easy swing and playing defense as if he expects any minute to have a career-threatening injury. The Drew pedigree will endear Stephen to announcers, and he will get the big hit or two when it’s time, but Tulo is a legit ROY, a fan favorite, and just a helluva player. (+2)

Left Field

Eric Byrnes vs. Matt Holliday

Hustle vs. power. Yes, Byrnes is a fun player to watch at the heart of the D-backs clubhouse (OPS+ 103), while Holliday has that Lex Luthor demeanor (OPS+ 151), and Matt’s probably the “easier” out because he’ll swing for the fences instead of looking to get on base and cause trouble like Byrnes, but one of these players is worth a whole lot more runs than the other. (+2)

Center Field

Chris Young vs. Ryan Spilborghs/Cory Sullivan

Young is probably the best .237 hitter the Diamondbacks have ever had. Spilborghs and Sullivan are both capable backups, with the former playing well enough to be a starter for a handful of other NL teams. Even though the offensive metrics point to a Colorado advantage on this one, Young has caught a bit of fire in the late going, and if there’s a big boom coming from this lineup, it’s coming from him. (EVEN)

Right Field

Justin Upton (OPS+ 65)/Scott Hairston (OPS+ 62)/Babe Ruth’s Bones (OPS+ 88) vs. Bradley Hawpe (OPS+ 130)
Case closed. (+2)

Starters

Brandon Webb/Doug Davis/Livan Hernandez/Micah Owings vs. Jeff Francis/Josh Fogg/Ubaldo Jimenez/Aaron Cook

Francis is having an extremely good season, and deserves to be called “ace” on the Rockies staff. But he’s no Brandon Webb, and Webb’s sinker has been sharp as tacks in the last month. The Rockies were fortunate to catch Webb during his downtimes, while avoiding him during the scoreless streak. Since it’s Scoreless Streak Webb pitching now, I think the D-backs have a tremendous advantage there. If I were building a team today, I’d take Jimenez over Hernandez anyday, but in terms of playoff experience, the latter gets a nod. Both Fogg and Davis are pretending to be good pitchers. One or both might turn back into bad pitchers any day of the year. The lone Rox advantage is Cook, who hasn’t pitched in months, against Owings, who still wets the bed when he remembers what the Rockies lineup has done to him in the past. Still, this is the reason the D-backs are here. (-2)

Bullpen

Brandon Lyon/Jose Valverde vs. Brian Fuentes/Manny Corpas

They say pitching wins in the playoffs, but they’re usually talking about starters. One constant I’ve noticed about the winners of the past few years: they all have shut-down bullpens. These two are no exceptions. The Rox ‘pen is maybe one arm deeper, but that will only come into play if back-to-back starters have a meltdown. (EVEN)

Managers

Clint Hurdle is a whiz at handling the bench players, while Melvin seems to have a Midas touch with pitchers. I have my doubts about Hurdle’s ability to handle the pressure, though he’s been remarkably steady during this stretch run. I give a tentative D-backs advantage here, hoping to be proven wrong. (-1)

Total: Rockies +6. If it weren’t for the pitching disparity, I’d predict a clean sweep.