Having Fun At Jim Bowden's Expense

Jim Bowden does a chat every week with ESPN, and it is a time when I get to decide whether I'm smarter than a former MLB GM. In some cases, I really think I am, and many others as well. These are actual questions to Bowden in his chat, with his actual answers. I comment on why he's very, very wrong.

Jim, if the vote were held today, would you be voting for Justin Verlander for AL MVP?

Jim Bowden

(12:17 PM)

I'm not a big fan of giving the MVP to a pitcher. Pitchers's get the Cy Young and Position players should get the MVP Award. Jose Bautista, Curtis Granderson, Miguel Cabrera or A-Gone/Ellsbury...one of them should get it...while Verlander celebrates CY Young

This is dumb. Bowden wants to redefine an award that is already pretty clearly defined. Most Valuable Player means most valuable player, not most valuable hitter. Just because you disagree with how the award is defined doesn't mean you vote on something else. Pitchers should be considered, because, you know, they are baseball players. I don't think he has a vote, thankfully, because it would be a problem if people were voting on different criteria for the same award. And pitcher's should get consideration for the award, as some pitchers have already faced more hitters than a hitter will make plate appearances in a full season.

What is up with John Lackey lately? He looks like a viable post season roster guy. Can't say the same for A. J. Burnett though. Can we EVER have enough pitching and defense?

Jim Bowden

(12:20 PM)

All Lackey ever does is win....don't worry about the ERA....he'll figure out how to win the 6-5 game. He competes. I agree that Lackey has a much better chance of a post-season start than Burnett has with the Yankees

God damn it. Some guys might be more competitive than others, but the pitcher is finding a way to win the game 6-5 because he is a crappy pitcher with a great offense behind him, not because he wants it more. Question for you Jim. Why doesn't Felix Hernandez win? Is it because he doesn't want it? Or he doesn't know how? Or is because King Felix isn't a good enough hitting coach? I'll take the latter, thanks. You can have your 32 year old pitcher with a bad contract, declining ground ball rate, and declining K rate who gets wins because he's on a good team. I'll take pitcher wins for what they are worth, which is squadoosh.

Raphael (NJ)

Why is Bautista the clear MVP winner to some? Granderson has superior numbers across the board, save for batting average, and plays for a winning team.

Jim Bowden

(12:24 PM)

I would vote Granderson over Bautista right now because of the "team winning" ingredient

Jose Bautista:.312/.452/.640, 7.8 fWAR

Curtis Granderson: .278/.376/.595, 6.8 fWAR

First off, how dumb is this commenter asking the question? But look at the RBIs! Granderson has so many! Sheesh. Granderson makes an out almost 8% more times than Bautista. Bautista has a higher slugging percentage too. Jose Bautista can't help it that his teammates aren't nearly as good as Granderson's. As for Bowden, the team winning ingredient? What does that have to do with being the most valuable player? Apparently Bautista hasn't been good enough because he is supposed to carry 1000 lbs of deadweight and is only capable of carrying 800 lbs, while Granderson is expected to carry 500 lbs but is carrying 600 lbs. I hope that analogy made sense, and why should Bautista be punished for this. Isn't carrying 800 lbs more valuable than carrying 600?

Dan (Philly)

I know he doesnt have the power numbers to compete with the other MVP candidates but doesnt Victorino deserve a little love for MVP given that when all others have been injured he has been the most consistent player on what looks like a 110 win team? He is hitting .313, playing great D, has decent power numbers and has a very good slugging % for a guy with his frame.

Jim Bowden

(12:56 PM)

I think Ryan Howard is the Phillies MVP over Victorino

Baseball GMs and managers can be a dumb lot. Tony Reagins traded for 4 years and 80 million dollars of Vernon Wells' carcass, and wasn't tricked into doing so. I love making fun of Fredi Gonzalez. Tony LaRussa is the game's best at overmanaging. One GM even compared the players union to Al Qaeda. But this comment is just awesome. FanGraphs has Victorino at exactly 5 wins more valuable than in Howard this season, and Victorino has played 26 fewer games. Victorino is batting .309/.382/.539 while playing terrific defense at a premium position, while also adding value as a terrific baserunner. Howard is batting .251/.341/.481 while playing terrible defense at the easiest position on the diamond, in addition to being a bad baserunner. Bowden would argue that Howard has more power, which I would debunk by saying Victorino has the exact same ISO power as Howard. Bowden would then say he's driven in 99 runs, to which I would laugh in his face and walk away, after pointing out that Howard wouldn't have nearly as many RBIs if Victorino wasn't on base. RBIs are not a skill, they are completely circumstance. And Howard has 5 years and 125 million left on his contract. Jim, every resource at your disposal for you job as an analyst for ESPN would lend itself to you actually being informed and prepared for a question like this. Most get paid to do their job. You should approach your job that way too.

Ignorance like this is how you lose your job as GM for 2 different teams. Ignorance is also what allows you to compare the players union to Al-Qaeda. Yes, Jim Bowden was the one who said that. Bowden does a weekly chat with ESPN, which means I could be writing again next week.

Brandon Beachy and Mike Minor Showing They Belong

A lot has been made of the Braves' stable of young pitching, and rightfully so. It was easy to make an argument that it was baseball's best group of up and coming starters, with Julio Teheran, Arodys Vizcaino, and Randall Delgado getting most of the attention. However, what made the group really formidable is not only the quality of the pitching prospects, but also the quantity of them, which is being shown by Brandon Beachy and Mike Minor's performance in the big leagues this year.

The 24 year old Beachy has been in the starting rotation for the majority of this season, with his only set back being an oblique strain that kept him out for about a month in May and June. The least regarded out of the Braves' pitching prospects coming into the season, Beachy hit the ground running with an outstanding opening outing against the Milwaukee Brewers, when he pitched 6 strong innings with 1 ER, 1 BB, and 7 Ks. Beachy's biggest strength is outstanding command, and he his shown that at the big league level, sporting a 2.73 BB rate this season, which plays nicely with 9.94 K rate. Beachy is sneaky quick with his fastball, topping out at around 93, while also developing his slider nicely, which has rounded his arsenal into a quality 4 pitch array. All four pitches rate about average or better which allows for a guy like him to have success at the big league level despite not having "explosive stuff." His K rate shows that his stuff is plenty good enough, and combining it with good command makes him an above average starter. He has accumulated 1.5 fWAR in 18 starts, which would put him on a 3 WAR pace over a full season of starts. Not bad for an undrafted college player only 3 years ago.

Beachy's one concern in the future will be keeping the ball in the park, as he has been bit by the HR bug in recent starts. Beachy is a fly ball pitcher, sporting a ground ball rate of just 31.6%, so it will be key for him to continue to be a swing and miss pitcher with great command. He will give up some home runs just because of the sheer quantity of fly balls he allows, but the fewer extra baserunners allowed will help to offset that though. There is a lot to be encouraged about, but this will need monitoring in the future.

Also making his presence known this season has been Mike Minor, regarded by most as the 4th of the "Big 4" Braves' pitching prospects. Drafted in the top 10 out of Vanderbilt (go Dores) in 2009, Minor was regarded as a bit of a reach, as he had had a subpar season by his standards while also demonstrating a decline in velocity. However, the Braves made a minor (no pun intended) mechanical adjustment to his delivery, and he was topping out at 94 by the time he hit the farm system that summer. His development was so pleasing to Braves' brass that they refused to include him any deal this summer, despite all of the Braves pitching depth.

And that trust has paid off to a degree this summer. Despite making only 9 starts, FanGraphs has estimated his contribution at 1.6 WAR this season. That number is a little bit off because it incorporates FIP into it, and Minor's is extremely low because he hasn't allowed a home run this season. When setting his HR rate at league average, his FIP rates at 3.44, which is still an excellent number. Minor has pitched well, striking out over 8 per 9 innings while also sporting a 1.30 ground ball to fly ball ratio. His BB rate will have to improve, but he has been better with that recently after a rocky first outing in Milwaukee.

One of Minor's downfalls has been the fact that he has been extremely unlucky, sporting a .372 BABIP and a ghastly 29.9% line drive rate this season. Those are numbers that won't continue, as his 8+ K rate shows that he has good enough stuff to avoid more hard contact than he has to this point, which means I'll chalk it up to variance until I see a bigger sample. However, some of the fly balls will leave the yard at some point, which will suppress some of the positive regression that Minor will eventually have. Despite all this, his performance suggests he's a keeper, with 3 average or better offerings from the left side. His presence is key for the Braves, as it allows the Braves to be patient with Tommy Hanson and his shoulder problems. Shoulders are nothing to trifle with, and the Braves should wait as long as they need to before letting Hanson pitch again, especially because they have a capable fill in. The drop off from Hanson to Minor isn't huge, and with a comfortable wild card lead and all the value in future seasons a healthy Hanson could provide, its better to wait on him than rush him back.

Beachy and Minor have given the Braves even more reason to be excited about the future, as their performance is showing they are already capable big league starters. Considering their ages, there should be even more development. If these guys are in the back end of the Braves' rotation in 2 years while performing similarly to their output this year, there is reason to smile when thinking about the future. The fact that they are cost controlled only makes it better.

George Sherrill is Baseball's Best...

LOOGY. Unfortunately, I do wonder whether Fredi Gonzalez knows it. He's only pitched 4 times in August, which is odd for a guy who is death against left handed batters. Shouldn't he be pitching in more games, when all he should be called upon is to get 1 guy out? Those type of guys could probably throw 100 games a year if asked, as long as they are only used to get one or two guys out at a time. 100 games I suppose could be pushing it, but 90? I think he could handle it if used properly. However, it is tough for me to remember how many times Fredi has actually brought him into the game to get one left hander out. I have missed some games, and I know it has happened, but I also know that it should have happened far more frequently than it has this season.

However, I think I have an idea why Fredi hasn't gone to him more. My theory is that Fredi actually thinks Sherrill hasn't been very good against left handers. Here are Sherrill's triple slash lines vs. righties and lefties:

RH: .236/.348/.364
LH: .270/.280/.351

Numbers are clearly better vs. LHs. However, look at that batting average against. LH batters actually have a higher batting average against Sherrill than RH batters do. And knowing that Fredi is no sabermetrician, this is what I think he sees when he doesn't bring in George Sherrill to pitch to LH batters (like, say, Tyler Colvin yesterday in the 6th inning). It's too bad, because George Sherrill is having one of the best LOOGY seasons in recent memory when you delve deeper into the numbers.

Going back to 2002, which is all the data FanGraphs will give to me (and all the data I need to make my point), 2011 George Sherrill has the lowest FIP against LHBs of any pitcher who has thrown at least 10 innings pitched against lefties in one single season. Lowest of all of them, at .59. Yes that is .59, and it is supported by Sherrill's preposterous 31 to 1 K/BB ratio. So for those counting at home, he's walked 1 of 75 LHBs he's faced this year, while striking out 31 of 75 batters he's faced (40.8%). Only Aroldis Chapman and David Robertson have struck out a higher percentage of LHBs faced this year with more than 10 IP against lefties. And for comparison's sake, 31 to 1 strikeout to walk ratio blows those 2 out of the water. The only thing that doesn't support Sherrill's dominance of lefties is his mind numbing .442 BABIP, which makes no sense considering how good his stuff has been vs. lefties this season.

With Scott Proctor finally gone from the bullpen, 2 things I will be watching will be a) when and how Peter Moylan comes back from injury, and b) whether Fredi Gonzalez trusts George Sherrill in big spots against a LH batter. Because everything you could look at with the exception of batting average against and BABIP suggests that he absolutely should. A Braves bullpen filled with riches has a diamond in that I don't think he knows about.

Mitch Williams Shows His Ignorance in SI

"The fact that Ryan Howard has 75 RBIs right now is a testament to pitcher's ignorance. Pitchers continue to pitch to Howard because they think they can strike him out. If he stops striking out, they're going to stop pitching to him."

I wish they would have put this quote in "They Said It," but that spot was already taken, deservedly, by Derek Dooley's gem of a quote, "The best athletic director I ever worked for was at Louisiana Tech." I realize he is no longer employed by the university, but didn't Mike Hamilton hire Dooley for his current position? Ouch.

But anyway, I've listened to Mitch Williams one time on MLB on Fox, and was extremely amused about how incredulous he was after Homer Bailey threw a 2 strike "fastball" to Derek Lowe that led to a run scoring double, harping on how he needed to throw a slider for about an inning and half. Fact is, Bailey did throw a slider, and he hung it, which led to a run scoring double. The easiest way to tell what pitch was thrown is either look at the radar gun afterwards, or actually watch the replay on your monitor. As a former pitcher, it should be easy to spot for him, but I got to laugh at his expense for an inning and a half, which made me happy.

The point Williams is trying to make is that pitchers were really dumb (before acquiring Hunter Pence) to keep pitching to Howard because of there being a lot of weak hitters hitting behind him. The fact that Howard strikes out a lot is, according to Williams, dupes pitchers into pitching to him enabling him to use his elite RBI skills to drive in those runs that Philadelphia desperately needs.

RBI skills. Ryan Howard is really working hard over in that dugout making sure that Victorino (.384 OBP) and Utley (.379 OBP) are on base so he can drive them in with a hit, groundout, flyball, whatever. Jeff Francouer drove in 103 runs once when he made outs in over 70% of his plate appearances. A hitter that didn't make outs that often would have undoubtedly driven in even more than the 103 that Francouer did that season. Ryan Howard doesn't make outs as prodigiously as Francouer, but his .338 OBP this year represents that he indeed can be retired with runners on base, which is why pitchers pitch to him. From 2006-2009, Howard drove in at least 136 runs a season. Some of that has to do with his power. The majority of it has to do with on base machine Chase Utley hitting directly in front of him. A lot easier to drive in runs when somebody is always on base. But lets make sure that dullards like Mitch Williams continue to spew ignorance about how an elite hitter can be deduced by their RBI totals. Howard is a good hitter, mainly because of his plus plus power, but far from a great one.

Pitchers pitch to Ryan Howard because he has holes in his swing and he can be pitched to. Why walk or pitch around a guy that can be retired? Outs are too valuable to be putting extra baserunners on to avoid an elite RBI guy. Elite RBI guys are only made by the men hitting in front of them. There are times to walk Ryan Howard to pitch to a worse hitter. However, why continually avoid a hitter with a .350 wOBA and a .338 OBP? Outs are too valuable, and giving up an extra baserunners isn't worth it in order to avoid a slightly above average hitting first baseman.

Oh and one last thing. How much money is owed to a first baseman hitting .250/.338/.482, is 31 years old, a terrible fielder, below average base runner, and has produced 1.1 fWAR this year, after 1.3 fWAR all of last year? 5 years, 125 million dollars. Sorry Phillies, I couldn't resist.

Heyward Sitting For Jose Constanza?

It's stupid, moronic, idiocy, and whatever other adjective you want to put in there, unless Heyward has some underlying injury concern that Fredi and the Braves aren't letting us know about. Judging by the fact that Heyward took the field as a defensive replacement in the game today, I'd say he must be fine.

Heyward is struggling this year, and he we should expect more out of him. But baseball is a funny game where players can slump for months without a seeming end in sight. It is the nature of the beast. Even despite his obvious struggles, Jason Heyward has a wRC+ of exactly 100, which is a metric that is a linear weight that sets the league average at 100. So, by this metric, and most others out there, Jason Heyward has been a league average hitter this season. Some teams would kill to have a just turned 22 year old league average hitter in their lineup.

I agree with trying to do what it takes to get Heyward out of his slump, but the one thing that can't be done is sit him, which I'm afraid is going to start happening more and more. Can you imagine what would have happened if Fredi had sat Dan Uggla or backed off using Craig Kimbrel during their struggles? Do we see where they are right now? Heck, Freddie Freeman belongs in that group as well. Baseball players go through struggles, and sometimes a day off helps. However, sitting players down multiple days in a row, especially a franchise changing talent like Heyward, just can't happen. If Fredi or Wren thinks the team can get by with Constanza manning the outfield in an every day role for a bit (I'll explain why this isn't smart in a second), then send Heyward to AAA for 10 days to work on his swing against worse pitching and out of the spotlight. Judging by his batted ball numbers (only 13.3% line drives, and over 24% of his fly balls have been infield pop ups this season), he could probably use the work and a fresh take from some other coaching. But for goodness sakes, if he's healthy, he has got to be playing, because he is a franchise changing talent and because his track record indicates that he is a much better player than what he is showing. .393 OBPs don't just happen for a full season. See Uggla, Freeman, and Kimbrel. See Hanley Ramirez of the Marlins. Throwing the more talented player going through a slump to the bench isn't going to help matters much.

As for Constanza, if the Braves think he is capable of starting in the middle of a pennant race on a consistent basis, they are going to get bitten in the ass. His hot streak coming into today's game has consisted of 1 line drive out of 16 batted balls, 13 grounders, and 2 fly balls. He also has 1 bunt attempt, which we can call a grounder. 7 of his 14 ground balls have found holes, leading to his sterling .400 batting average. He also hasn't walked. It won't last. I promise. Yesterday's results don't mean much when the process to obtain those results is flawed. In about 7 days, its going to lead to Constanza slumping with Heyward still doing the same. Fat lot of good that does the Braves in the end. Constanza is a 7 year minor leaguer for a reason, and Heyward is regarded as one of the best young players in the game for a reason. Considering they both have track records, I'm confident the Braves know this too. But why am I still worried about it? Cause Fredi Gonzalez has a track record of being unpredictable this year. Damn it.

Fredi Making Me Insane Again

Has everyone seen the Braves lineup for tonight? Top four as follows:

Bourn
Prado
Freeman
Uggla

Looks good to me. Lefty-righty-lefty-righty. Two good table setters followed by your two best run producers currently available. But, I wouldn't write a blog post about that:

Gonzalez
Conrad
Ross
Constanza
Lowe

Oh boy. I can't wait to see Alex Gonzalez flailing at pitches with runners on base. I get it, he's 7 for 15 against Lannan in his career. It doesn't mean you move a guy up to 5th who has been struggling for 2 months. Fredi says 'But he's been saving us runs with his glove all season.' My response, 'he can't transfer those runs he saves into runs scored.' (Fredi didn't actually say that about his lineup, but would you be that surprised if he said it after the game tonight when asked about it?) Maybe Fredi did it because Gonzo was almost a league average hitter 2 different seasons in his 12 year career. I'll take my 12 year sample of Alex Gonzalez being a crappy hitter, while Fredi can have his 15 at bats against Lannan.

Next up is Brooks Conrad, who has never been a good hitter right handed and is a bit of a butcher with his glove. Good thing he is playing 3rd base tonight with a ground ball pitcher on the mound. He could do something with his bat, but I don't think this is the time to get him in the lineup. Ross should be starting and probably be hitting fifth given some of the turd that is starting tonight, despite not being a great hitter in his career against lefties. And Jose Constanza has stolen the heart of Fredi Gonzalez, as he doesn't belong in a major league lineup. I shouldn't be surprised by this, however, as Julio Lugo and Scott Proctor are still on the roster. Jason Heyward should not be left out of the lineup in favor 27 year old non prospect career minor leaguer who was allowed to become a minor league free agent by a bad team last year (Cleveland).

Against lefties, Fredi Gonzalez's options are pretty limited. Not a lot he can do about that. However, he can do better than this, and a lot of people know it. However, one game is a small sample, so perhaps the Braves can overcome Fredi's disservice to the organization to get themselves a victory tonight.