Swinging wildly from one side of the spectrum to the other seems like too much to be a sample size issue, and there really hasn’t been much of a lineup change. You’d think a new ‘hitting philosophy’ being espoused by hitting instructor Dwayne Murphy would be the sort of soft, gooey, easily digestible tripe the real journalists would be all over, though…so wtf? Is nobody seeing the ball? Has Lawrie been giving the take sign from third so he try to steal home? Huh?

Edit: Yeah, the 2009 numbers are all deflated because pitch f/x was patchy for the first half of the season. I can fix that if anyone needs them particularly accurate — we DO go to nine decimal places around here…;)

2012

2011

hou 3.60401348
tor 3.618598997
cha 3.627298982
mil 3.631656587
sln 3.632190587
chn 3.644692046
ari 3.654232843
bal 3.654294479
nyn 3.659694407
sfn 3.662867704
det 3.671434702
cin 3.679265013
phi 3.680733411
atl 3.688132475
min 3.700808206
was 3.704242994
col 3.706270627
flo 3.706781714
tex 3.712530361
ana 3.717364532
kca 3.741837969
lan 3.751411567
cle 3.76778275
sea 3.786616162
oak 3.797732148
pit 3.801776531
sdn 3.81465854
tba 3.814903846
nya 3.828900709
bos 3.837490775

2010

bal 3.67488
cin 3.682215743
tex 3.692702051
tor 3.701233366
kca 3.712923224
sfn 3.734992224
hou 3.739265814
sln 3.742577385
nyn 3.744984754
cha 3.745307031
det 3.766945218
min 3.776538044
chn 3.78028124
was 3.791392324
oak 3.794179128
mil 3.797527773
ana 3.804442298
cle 3.810200537
pit 3.814631735
col 3.827946916
phi 3.840197439
sdn 3.844430114
sea 3.847683207
atl 3.862095413
nya 3.885468538
lan 3.896551724
flo 3.897419355
tba 3.901120835
ari 3.98109343
bos 3.9884375

2009

tor 2.840989399
sfn 2.846097202
sln 2.852409639
atl 2.889161698
hou 2.928028195
was 2.946647441
kca 2.96812603
ari 2.974649407
nyn 2.977830274
mil 2.983318545
cin 2.984632074
sea 2.984823246
pit 2.994969257
chn 2.997508897
tba 2.998527246
cle 2.999462173
bal 3.011976048
det 3.014337568
lan 3.020302013
tex 3.030823182
sdn 3.034909091
flo 3.0390681
cha 3.04996353
min 3.08246696
oak 3.085233442
bos 3.103776854
nya 3.104159896
ana 3.136378849
phi 3.137822111
col 3.202565004

They have an ace who is undeniably one of top pitchers in the league, in his prime, under control for a while. Behind him comes a fireballer with huge potential who is dominant at times and could be a Cy Young if he puts it all together. Their bullpen is anchored down by a high-strikeout closer. Really, it looks like all this team needs to make a decent run is some starting pitching depth and a slugging DH, and to do that, upper management is apparently willing to put the payroll up to 100 million (it now sits just above 70) at some point in the next few years.

The PR machine is pumping vaguely but incredibly optimistic, “our time is soon” propaganda and implying that they are willing to do what it takes to get to the top. The rest of the league is saying nice things about the team in the way that you do a former rival who is no longer living on the streets but hasn’t quite pulled it together enough to cause you any trouble. It is a time of less shame. Not pride, but less shame. Look out AL East, here we come!

But wait – I don’t mean now. I’m talking about 2006! Does this all seem a little familiar? Back then, all that was true too, and the Blue Jays had just finished with 87 wins (compared to 81 last year), ahead of the Red Sox for the first time in 1.4 million years, who had gone 9-21 in August (the Bosox went 7-20 in September last season, apparently the worst streak of all time that has ever happened in this game ever). And yet, the World Series was won by the Red Sox and the Yankees twice in the next three years, and the Jays continued to drone on slightly above .500. Not a single sniff of the playoffs, let alone a chance to collapse down the playoff run, and back into rebuilding and a new GM.

So let’s call a spade a spade — this offseason has been a massive disappointment. Patience? Ha. Anthopoulos pulling off more of his wheeling and dealing magic does not change the fact that he needs a lot more money to seriously compete with the Yankees and Red Sox, or even the potential second wildcard with, for one, the Nuclear Arms Race going on between the Angels and the Rangers in the American League West. I don’t care if you can make insane contracts go away or acquire former hot prospects for nothing, you can’t wheel and deal your way past teams with almost three times the payroll, even if you have had movies made about how smart you are (*cough* Beane *cough*). And the powers that be still don’t believe that this is the year, or next year might be the year, or that it is profitable in the long-term to invest in elite players at anything other than super bargain value in order to build a fanbase. As a fan, that SUCKS.

But hey, at least they didn’t go halfway too soon and then cut all new acquisitions off in a huff when it didn’t work out. At least AA didn’t believe his own hype and sign some brutal contracts in a desperation move when the reasonable deals he wanted didn’t work out. Really, AA is stalling, and that’s not so bad — there are a bunch of players who need to bust out or be bussed out (sorry), and with a young team, why would he not wait to take his one and only shot at playing with a real team? But as a fan, the only real question is when and for how much are the pockets going to be opened? Obviously they’re willing to go up in terms of payroll, but are we talking enough to have a chance at squeezing into the wildcard, or a serious attempt at re-creating a big-money profitable team that could compete for years in the AL East? Tune in next year…

But anyway…I’m all for the concept of a ticket liquidator (or to call a spade a spade, a scalper hub) when the powers that be won’t let you buy single tickets to spring training. What’s that? If I’m not sure yet if I’m going to be hauling my ass down to Florida and just want to lock down ONE game I know I want, I can’t — not for any price? What’s that? We get a one day window in December and then have to wait over another month so things have been picked clean? What a threat – I’d better panic, and buy large numbers of tickets I’m not sure I want! Umm….no. This is the internet/capitalist age, children. If you don’t want to take my money in a way that makes sense, someone else will be very happy to do it for you.

And how! The first game is “regular”, which the team’s site says would be $19 a piece (if you could buy them). Online, they range from $34-$58. A premium game such as March 7 against the Red Sox (despite it being a split squad day — how gross to charge another $7 for that kind of ‘premium’ quality) would be $26: online they start at $49 and go up to $92! It’s like the early days of the Dome, when scalpers sneered at you instead of crying and begging and showing you pictures of their children.

I’m just so tired of being jerked around by the latest Rogers marketing scheme to yank a little more money out of fans. Over the last few years it has been one damn squeeze after another – absurd “convenience” fees for buying your own ticket online; insulting “premium” games that flat-out admit they are not putting a product on the field that is worth paying full price for; random jerk moves like deciding that opening day is not part of the season for the sake of the Toronto Star SEASONS PASS; raising only the cheap seats in the middle of an economic disaster when your team is rebuilding, etc, etc, etc. Just raise the damn ticket prices instead of all this sleight-of-hand to hide the fact that’s what you’re doing and I would feel more like a valued fan and less like the target of an extended con.

Combined with the concession gouging, it’s sad that it has come to the point that despite being the best kind of fan there is (loyal/stupid), I have so much negative goodwill built up when it comes to Rogers pricing that being extorted by some fat sleazy parasite seems fun and new.

1) AAA is bunk.

Why do we even have all these stupid minor-league levels, anyway? Name me ONE hot Jays prospect not named Rios, Lind, or Snider that had any problems adapting to the majors after fast-tracking through AAA. Preparing for the major leagues via a carefully-planned and long-established series of steadily-increasing levels of difficulty is the worst idea Branch Rickey came up with other than the batting helmet.

2) 3B is easy.

From what I remember watching Scott Rolen, it’s the simplest position ever. The ball flies into your glove so fast you barely even have to move your feet. Lawrie should be able to adapt almost instantly as there’s no real difference between third and second other than the throw across the diamond, the speed of the ball, the angle off the bat, charging bunts, the hops, the dives, instincts and skills required. I flipped Lawrie across the diamond in my copy of MLB: The Show and in his first game he was laying out on shots ripped into the hot corner like he’d been doing it all his life. And that game isn’t just realistic — it’s ultra realistic.

3) The Jays are in contention.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH….ok, sorry. I’m really sorry. Tried to keep a straight face for that one, I really did. Alan Ashby is going to have to step in here for a second while I catch my breath and get rid of the giggles. Hee hee…in contention. Whoooooooo. Boy.

“Do you want to sit there and say, what if?” Ashby asks.

Ok, I’m good.

4) You can tell just about everything about a player’s level of readiness from 25 spring at-bats.

Some pitchers aren’t throwing anything but fastballs at this point of spring – and during the major-league season, there are more fastballs thrown than any other pitch. So it’s a truer test, really. Also, 25 at-bats is a small enough sample size that there’s not a lot of noise. I mean, has anyone ever had this Gross a spring training, only to have the hype fade almost instantly?

5) Scouts are stupid.

Raw talent? Needs some more time? Questionable hands? You morons. I have HIGH DEF on my TV, and I’m pretty sure I can tell when a swing is ready for the bigs. I haven’t actually seen him make any plays in the field yet, but they sounded all-star caliber over the radio. I don’t need some loser ex-player who has nothing better to do than follow baseball players around night and day, creeping around minor-league parks to see them first-hand so he can use his vast “experience” and extensive baseball “knowledge” to tell me what’s what.

6) Kid needs to be taken down a notch.

Lawrie comes with a certain cocky attitude, which is really the sort of thing you want to beat out of a player by putting them in over their head as soon as possible. There could be a long-term attitude benefit in crushing him mentally this year, and his kind of faux-bravado personality would almost certainly respond to failure and demotion well. An added bonus would be if Lawrie hit so poorly for the first month the team was forced to choose between “giving up” on him by sending him back to the minors, or platooning him with Encarnacion for a while. Part-time play is so frustrating and difficult that it teaches a player how much they want to avoid it at all costs. Which makes them try harder. Which makes them play better. Works every time.

7) Get that clock running!

Everyone knows that players typically have their best seasons in “contract” years, i.e. right before they hit the free agent market. The Jays need Lawrie at their best when they are ready to compete; can they really wait six whole years to get the best out of him? Best to get Lawrie’s clock running as soon as possible — he will be hitting his power years in 2016 and with a little financial motivation could slam the door hard on his way out of town.

8. The Jays don’t need contractual control anyway.

On the other hand, the Jays don’t have to let Lawrie walk when that time comes. Rogers has a gabillion dollars, and since they’re a publicly-traded company I’m pretty sure AA is free to spend as much of shareholder’s money as he wants (since most of them are from Toronto). Anyway…there’s no need to worry about being thrifty or careful in managing control of potential future stars, since the Jays can always keep them around. Again and again, management has shown a willingness to commit to signing home-grown players no matter the cost to long-term extensions in order to keep them in Toronto until it’s time to give them away to teams that can actually afford those contracts.

9) He’s done with the minors.

Players always know best when they’re ready. Especially super-young, comically-confident ones. Nobody knows better than Brett Lawrie if he’s ready for the majors. Except his coaches. And I’d give it to the professional evaluators, too. Ok, probably some other players with way more experience of what it’s really like. Maybe some really good stats guys. Ok, there are many, many, people who know better than Brett Lawrie if he’s ready for the majors. But that’s beyond the point. He’s a pure athlete.

10) Zero downside.

It’s not like there is anything to lose by rushing a young prospect. Offhand, I can’t think of a single third-base prospect who had his development completely retarded to the point of almost ruining his career by a team that threw him into the majors way too early, causing him to bounce around for years as a washout journeyman before finally getting the time and training he needed to break out long after his original team had given up on him and traded him for nothing. (Bautista came up as an outfielder, smartass).

And hey, if the Jays hurt his development by getting greedy in a meaningless season for a slight upgrade at a position we’re paying 2.5 million to fill already, who cares? They have plenty of other hot prospects, or can always just trade another front-line starter for one. Lawrie is expendable.

Today the Mockingbird brings you inside the latest inside scoop, with a word-for-word transcript of the inner workings of star reporter Mike Rutsey of the Toronto Sun as he gleans a major scoop on the Jays’ rotation from a seemingly innocuous series of quotes from Blue Jays’ manager, John Farrell.

Farrell: “To say who’s one, who’s two and three and so on, I don’t know where we’re at the point of designating those guys or are really ready to announce our opening day starter…”

Ok, so you really want to dodge making any kind of statement about the rotation, even who the opening day starter is going to be, despite the fact that everyone already knows. I get it. You hate us reporters. You want me to starve. Because two weeks of spring training just isn’t enough for you to make major decisions about the makeup of your first club, nooooooo…

“But at the same time you look to arrive at some kind of contrast of style, to split up the lefties that have effective changeups, yeah, you’d like to get some power (Brandon Morrow) in between those two…”

Yeah, yeah…standard manager boilerplate. If you have a choice, go lefty-righty-lefty, or soft-hard-soft. Any other revelations, like you’re thinking of putting a guy who steals 50 bases in the leadoff spot? Maybe you’re going to let someone else hit for the pitcher this year? I’m staying in a seedy motel 6 in Ft. Fucking Myers for this?

“We’d also like to get a power arm in the five spot preceding Ricky the next time through, or whoever that might be….”

Gaaaaaaaaaaa…..this is going nowhere. You won’t even trick yourself into referring to Ricky as the #1, you wily bastard. And while obviously Drabek’s power arm (although you could be thinking Zach Stewart) is eventually going to break into the rotation as a great #5, since he’s only pitched two innings this spring there’s not a chance you’re going to make a call on whether such a young kid is ready as that would have huge ramifications for him, as well as the rest of the guys duking it out for the last two spots. So you’re being vague and rambling about that fast-slow garbage again in the hopes that I’ll go away. Can I at least get a crowd-pleasing comment about opening up the running game this year? No???

You know what I’d wish you’d said? Something definitive along the lines of the opening day honour officially going to Romero and the hot prospect having made the team. People love scoops like that. Oh, what the hell. I’m a baseball Journalist, not a blogger! We don’t just relay news, we make it! Let’s have some fun with the ol’ interpretive brackets. Drabek confirmation, in. Romero set in stone, in. Twice. BAM!

“We’d also like to get a power arm in the five spot (Kyle Drabek) preceding Ricky (the No. 1 starter) the next time through, or whoever that might be (too late, the rabbit’s out of the hat).

Now that is a serious improvement right there. Way to go, Mikey! They give you shit to work with, and you manage to excrete pure gold. Now if only he had said (or not said) anything about the race I just decided just got a lot tighter for the last spot between that yo-yo guy, and Rzy…Rezpy…Rpez…oh fuck it, I’m pretty sure it’s going to be Litsch. I already wrote an article about how he says he’s “feeling strong“, so it’s basically a lock, anyway.

He will be followed by Morrow, then Cecil, then Litsch, or whomever, and then Drabek.

Wow. It all fits together so perfectly – almost as if it were some sort of fantastical preconceived notion. Now all we need a sign-off that sounds pithy and so ridiculously overconfident that this is what Farrell actually meant that if he calls me on it, I can bail and say I was just kind of joking and speculating wildly, and that it was a “tip”, i.e, my loosely-drawn opinion, and not the actual first-hand information with any kind of weight to it that people will no doubt take it for as it is redistributed widely across the internet.

So it is written, so it shall be.

Boo-yeah! That’ll teach you to dodge reporters’ questions for the sake of the team, you stupid manager! Exactly what you refused to come out and say is now splashed across the internet as fact! From now on when I come knocking, you’d better tell me what I want to write, and what people are clamoring to hear. Or else. Eat. My. Brackets.

“Just Enough” home runs – Means the ball cleared the fence by less than 10 vertical feet, OR that it landed less than one fence height past the fence. These are the ones that barely made it over the fence.

With 13. But of course, he also lead the league in the real ones by a considerable margin. So what percent of Bautista’s home runs were cheapies? Here he is compared to the top 10 in the AL:

Looking good, Jose! If Bautista was a fluke, it’s because he was running into balls, not because they were creeping over the fence.

And just for curiosity’s sake, here’s the same list with no-doubters, defined as

“No Doubt” home run – Means the ball cleared the fence by at least 20 vertical feet AND landed at least 50 feet past the fence. These are the really deep blasts.:

Also comforting…I still hate this contract!

I know it’s hard. You have to make some kind of bold prediction for every single player, with pretty much squat to go on other than what fans can already get from Fangraphs. You’re not a scout. You haven’t seen these players swing live lately, maybe never at all. And even if you had, you’re not a hitting coach. You wouldn’t be able to tell what has gone terribly wrong, or what a guy finally figured out last year that has changed everything. Most of the time your best bet is to take a page from Marcel the Monkey, and predict that a player’s numbers are going to be the same as his career averages, slightly adjusted for whether he’s on the still-learning or declining side of his career. But you got this job because of your reputation as a statistical whiz, and that’s just not going to cut it. Your boss wants some kind of numerological wizardry, for you to predict the future with your big brain and the lastest SABR science. I get it. I’ve been there.

But please stop using BABIP every time you get stuck. You’re hurting statistics, shredding whatever scraps of credibility have been won over the last decade, turning back the tide of superior metrics creeping onto scoreboards and into newspapers and even coming out of announcers mouths, reinforcing the stereotype of sabermetricians being pimple-faced teenages who know nothing about how the game is actually played, who don’t even watch it, preferring instead to read boxscores and crunch numbers long after the games are over from the safety of their parents basements, blah, blah, blah-dee-blah blah blah…

I know, I know…years ago Voros McCracken turned stats on their head with BABIP. He started a huge controversy and was eventually hired by the Red Sox after stumbling over the fact that, in a nutshell, pitchers don’t have much control over anything other than strikeouts and walks. Once contact has been made, batted balls fall in at the same rate no matter who is on the mound (after defense, park effect, etc, is taken into account). Therefore, pitching to contact is not what it’s cracked up to be, and if a pitcher has a really low or really high BABIP, you can say that over that period he has been “lucky” or “unlucky”, because nobody maintains a very high or very low BABIP; eventually every pitcher’s will end up the same. (Almost…for example, we now know that closers can have lower BABIP’s, but not by all that much). This makes for a great tool to gauge the amount of statistical fog when dealing with small sample sizes for pitchers, and an incredible tool for pumping out quick fantasy baseball comments.

But it just doesn’t work the same way for hitters — and nobody (even Voros!) has ever maintained that it does. It would be like saying that a spike or fall in batting average has to be luck, because for hitters, BABIP is just the same damn thing with K’s and HR’s removed from the equation (really two of the last things you want to exclude when trying to decode if a streak or slump or bad year is due to something tangible). While it is true that if a player has an extremely uncharacteristic BABIP over a period of time, those results should be taken with a grain of salt, you could just as easily say that about batting average because they’re practically the same damn stat. Obviously, nobody would call every .200 hitter a victim of luck — all that’s really going on here is that if you don’t hit somewhere in the realm of league average, you’re not going to get major league at-bats for long.

Still, BABIP is regularly used these days as a diagnostic when there is a suspicion of someone’s skills having deteriorated — and in that sense, it just doesn’t tell you anything at all. It is of zero value for making future predictions. It is nothing more than a huge misunderstanding, a misapplication of a SABR truth that has gone viral. I repeat, there is absolutely no universal number that all batter BABIP’s (or averages) bounce randomly around, as there is for pitchers.

Because a very low BABIP could mean player is simply making lousy contact, which unlike pitchers, batters are certainly capable of affecting.  Compare the BABIP of a great contact hitter like Joe Mauer (note: his exceedingly high BABIP is not because he’s beating out infield hits with his speed as per Fangraphs explanation of Ichiro’s consistently high numbers) over the last three years — .348, .373, .343 — to a noodler like John Mcdonald — 260, .269, .235. That’s some 100 points of consistent difference, and obviously not luck-based. So when a player’s BABIP plummets 100 points, it could be a fluke — or it could mean he used to make contact like Ichiro and now, for whatever reason, he’s making contact like John Mcdonald. You have to look deeper to have any idea what’s really going on.

Last year, BABIP was everywhere in the discussion about David Ortiz’s early struggles, which were obviously the result of mechanical difficulties and not luck. This year, batter BABIP is continuing to bloom — I’ve seen at least a dozen snippets like this one about Aaron Hill (Carlos Quentin is another good one).

Think you’re unlucky? Even though Hill hit 26 homers in 2010, his batting average plummeted to .205 thanks to a .196 batting average on balls in play. To put that in perspective, that was almost 100 points below his career mark and 30 points below the next-lowest mark in the majors. That’s unlucky. Also consider that Hill’s strikeout rate held steady and that his walk rate improved, and it jibes with the scouting that says Hill hit the ball hard right at a lot of people for much of the year.

I’d like a word or two with some of these scouts, because anyone who watched the Jays last year knows that Hill wasn’t getting unlucky in the slightest. His contact SUCKED. His whole season was one weak pop-up, head down, jog to first after the other. Hill looked like a completely different hitter, his beautiful compact line drive swing gone long and loopy – and a little deeper delving into the numbers agrees: his fly ball rate soared from his terrific 2009 (41.0), past his career average (41.4), to insane heights (54.2). His line drive rate also fell from 2009 (19.6) past his career average (18.5) to untold depths (10.6). His infield fly percentage (one of my favorites because it’s a 100% guaranteed out – like a hidden strikeout, but still included as a ball in play) rose from 11.6 to 12.9. Spraying balls like this will clearly and provably lead to a consistently much lower BABIP. And so the numbers actually overwhelmingly agree with what the old-timers would say: Hill’s swing went to hell last year.  Luck had nothing to do with it.

Now yes, players tend to return to their normal numbers. That’s usually a good thing to point out because it’s really rather amazing how even the most terrible results over extended periods of time can be due to random fluctuation. We can’t help but think we see what looks like conclusive results of a player’s skill level having changed that are in fact just baseball doing its crazy and unpredictable thing. (An example from the classic “The Book” is that even over 1000 batters faced, one in every 20 pitchers will have an ERA more than a run over their true skill level over that time). So it is still a very good bet that Hill (or any other major leaguer with a highly uncharacteristic BABIP) is going to bounce back.

But that is not because of any statistical techniques. It’s because nobody with that kind of pedigree and years of success hits under .200 in his prime for long unless something has gone terribly, terribly, wrong physically (it was his hamstring, FYI), something which he is likely to be able to recover from. But when you state authoritatively to the millions and millions of people who read your comments that a comeback is predicted by pure numbers with no need for a turnaround in his on-field performance or condition, an entire range of astute fans will begin to think that all stats are stupid and all analysis useless because they don’t jibe with most obvious truth they know and can see and hear about baseball: that a sweet swing and solid contact from a good hitter makes a ball jump off the bat, while a poor hack from a guy lost at the plate sends up a dying quail.