cardsfanboy

The second in an ongoing series. I'll probably revisit this one to work out the kinks in the argument. Again I would appreciate any feed back or counter arguments.

I'm not going to lie, I don't see any argument for Jack Morris for the Hall of Fame, he would be a mistake of monumental proportions, so it's tough for me to create an argument for him.

Jack Morris traditional stats 254-186 w/l record, .577 winning percentage, 3.90 era, 105 era+, 527 games started, 175 complete games, 28 shutouts, 3824 innings pitched, 2478 strikeouts, 1.296 whip. Pitchers go into the hof by either a high peak(Koufax, Dean etc) or a high quality long career, Morris doesn't have either of those going for him.

Let's look at a few things in detail. Morris 254 wins is 32nd all time, that is a nice point in his favor. Players not in the hall of fame, and probably never will be, ahead of him Jamie Moyer with 267, Jim Kaat 283, Tommy John 288. Obvioualy 254 isn't a magic number for wins. It's a nice point in his favor, but of course wins are a team stat. It helps being on a good team. Among pitchers with over 200 wins, a list of 87 people, Morris is 76 in era+, 81st in ERA. Among hall of fame pitchers, his 105 era+ would tie for 58th(out of 60) and his 3.90 would be 60th. You can't bring an argument for Morris for the hall of fame based upon his career numbers relative to hall of famers, he would be the absolute worse starting pitcher in the hall(the guys who have similar career numbers have high peaks where they were among the best in the game, or at least perceived to be)

a weak argument for a player is to use the lowest common denominator argument, by arguing that the player you are arguing for is better than weak choices. The problem with that argument is that not only are you arguing for your candidate, you are tacitly arguing for a few dozen other players who probably don't belong. In Morris case, if you are arguing he's as good as Catfish Hunter or Rube Marquard, then you are asking to add Jim Kaat, Tommy John, Luis Tiant, Jack Quinn, Dennis Martinez, Frank Tanana, David Wells, Mel Harder, Jerry Koosman etc, and that is just a quick glance.

Pitcher go into the hof one of four ways, you have inner circle guys, you have career guys, you have peak guys and you have relievers. Morris isn't a career guy as pointed out, he just doesn't match up to the standard that is established for the hof. How about peak, does he stack up well there, In Morris's case it's best to take a 7 year peak that allows him to include a couple of 124/126 era+ seasons. Even best possible light his peak years gives him 117 era+. Among hof pitchers, that 7 year peak would be 34th out of 58, in comparison to the hof pitchers career totals. Heck his best season is a 133 era+, every single hof pitcher has at least one season better than that. Heck let's look at 21 wins and 133 era+, 46 hofers did that at least once.

Morris only semi-argument is the "winningest pitcher of the decade" it's an arbitrary distinction that is a fortuituous luck on his part. He wasn't the best pitcher in the decade, he wasn't the best pitcher for any 2 year stretch during the decade, but he got lucky that he pitched during a transition period. Some will argue that every pitcher that has the most wins in a decade is in the hof(or will be) but again we are dealing with a luck of the draw and an arbitrary cutoff number, if you go from 1984-1993 Frank Viola is the most winningest pitcher of the decade or 1977-1986 is Ron Guidry.

Morris simple expected record. pyth win percentage is based upon runs allowed and runs scored to come up with a winning percentage. Morris run support in games he started for his career is 4.9, his runs allowed is 4.27 per game, a simple rule about decisions is that for every 9 innings you have in your career as a starting pitcher, you will have roughly 1 decision. For Morris that equals out to about 424 career decisions(in reality he has 440) based upon applying his pyth(.568) to his career record and you expect him to have a record of 241-183, if you base it upon his actual number of decisions you have an expected record of 250-190. His actual won loss record was 254-186, any argument about him knowing how to win isn't reflected here, you are talking about a swing of 8 games, that is it. There is no reason to think that he is somehow better than the numbers indicate, and his numbers indicate that he is a solid workmanlike pitcher. He probably pitched/participated in one of the most memorable post season pitched games in history, but that isn't enough to put him in the hof.


The argument about Morris pitching to the score has been pretty much destroyed. link to one such study.http://www.baseballprospectus.com/ar...articleid=1815

Again I'm not a fan of WAR(wins above replacement) but it does have some uses, Jack Morris career rank in War among players not in the hall of fame is 41, behind such luminaries as Bob Welch, Kenny Rogers, Dutch Leonard, Bob Friend, Vida Blue, David Wells.

How about looking at his career line as an individual season, his 3.90 era, and 16 wins and 33 starts is reminiscent of
Chris Capuano for the Brewers in 2005, John Lieber of the Phillies in 2005, Woody Williams for the Cardinals(not his good year) in 2003, Bill Gullickson for the Tigers in 1991, Ervin Santan for the Angels in 2010. Did anyone think they were watching a potential hofer in those years? His best season was his first full season in the majors, and it's equivalent to Justin Verlander's year last year. Put it this way, Justin Verlander vs Jack Morris,

Verlander---Morris
era+ (wins)
132(19)--133(17)
126(17)--127(21)
125(18)--126(18)
124(18)--125(18)
---------124(14)
---------122(16)
---------117(20)
---------109(19)
---------102(21)
---------100(17)

Basically Verlander has already equaled Morris's best seasons. Two more years like his last two and then he can pitch like Suppan for the rest of his career to equal Morris's resume. Nobody thinks Verlander is already a hof pitcher, but in comparison to Morris, he already looks as good.


there is just no way to put Morris into the hof without opening the door to dozens of other better pitchers.

MLB and Fox seem to be a little upset about their ratings and seem to be genuinely surprised when people claim it’s about the quality of their production. I think that MLB has done a lot of things right in making their product more accessible to the mainstream audience, but their broadcast leaves a lot to be desired. Ratings are down, and they don’t seem to really want to fix it. Here is a few things that I think will improve the quality of their broadcast and may even help their ratings.


1. Have an edict saying No more close-ups, I have no idea when this became trendy, and in other sports it’s not an issue, but for some reason baseball broadcasts seem to have an unusual number of close-ups. In football you don’t get a close-up of the quarterback as he is hiking the ball, nor in hockey or basketball, but somewhere along the way the television directors came to a conclusion that the game is slow and close-ups is how you fix the problem. Baseball has the largest field in all of the major sports yet it’s the one that is being told to narrow the camera field.


2. Hire directors that actually like the sport. As I said about close-ups it seems that the powers in charge just don’t like the sport. Football has a reputation for putting on a great production, and I genuinely think that the people in charge care, the guys for baseball just seem to be going through the motions.

3. Baseball production has stagnated because it’s a pretty easy sport to film, but where innovation can really take place is not during the pitch, but the setup for the pitch. How many of you reading this has seen television crews accent the defensive alignment before the pitch? Again in football the camera angle is panned out enough that you see most of the defense and offensive alignment, baseball instead does a close up of the guy walking to the batter’s box. Instead how about having a camera angle that shows the defensive lineup, train the commentator to mention the type of defense being used (in, double play, guarding the lines, normal etc.) and even comment on how it different from normal using the telestrator and even going into some depth about the strategy behind the decision.


4. Madden is famous for using the telestrator but baseball seems to ignore its ability to help break down the game. In between plays show replays of how the defense reacted to a play, use the telestrator to show where they made a mistake or even the old Madden way, to show what is going to happen. Baseball has a reputation as being a sport that nothing is happening outside of the batter and the pitcher, which the rest of the defense is sitting in the outfield waiting, that the infielders are doing nothing etc. Which is of course not the truth, but considering that most people have been conditioned through broadcasts that the pitcher and the batter are the only ones working, it is something that is seriously wrong with TV broadcasts.


5. Don’t be afraid of trying to be innovated. Bring in people to talk about advance stats (I would vet them first to see if they are truly capable of talking at a level that the average fan would appreciate) Get your announcers to sign on, on a few of the advanced stats. Run trivia contest to text into during the broadcast(giving out a random prize like tickets to a movie, or whatever is reasonable) get camera angles that can show the true location of a pitch to digitize into a three dimensional showing of the actual pitch (they have this technology already they just don’t use it often)


6. Regionalize your broadcast more, until the major networks realize that nobody west of Cincinnati cares at all about a Red Sox vs Yankees matchup(in fact they are quite sick of it to be honest) There is no reason that California should be getting one of those matchups. The rules for regionalizing should be local team first, primary rival second, any team in the same division third, any other regional alliances due to minor league affiliate or history, same league as most local team, then you might consider the bigger market teams. But if they are broadcasting in San Diego, they are going to want to see SD, LAD, SFG, LAA, Col, Ari, Oak---before anything resembling a Yankee-Red Sox game. And it wouldn’t shock me to see them on average preferring to see any NL game before a game featuring Yankee-Red Sox.


7. Market your talent, Basketball is famous for doing this, and it does a good job for making a casual fan want to watch a non-local team. And don’t stick to the usual, be aggressive, the casual fan should have known all about the Rays last year and their young cast. Roy Halladay should be a household name, along with about a dozen others outside of Jeter, Manny and Arod. Every team should have at least one player that the casual fan would identify that team with.


8. Heck spice up your pregame shows, similar to football. Have the experts pick who is going to win the game and keep track, just like you do in football. Have rotating guest to explain new stuff or talk about impending record or streak or whatever. Hype the players still in the minors, if it’s a hyped prospects first game, put a countdown until the game time is supposed to start saying “15 minutes until Wieters first game”.


This is just some points I would argue that needs to be done, I mostly just want to see more concentration on the defensive aspect of the game, and of course less close-ups of some random celebrity. Baseball is a sophisticated game, and yet the broadcasts have attempted to turn it into some mindless game of checkers instead of the chess game that it really is. I understand that they want to make it more accessible to the average fan, but the game is hugely popular and doesn’t need to be dumbed down as much as they have. I don’t know what a nickel defense is, but they have no problems mentioning it during an NFL broadcast, it doesn’t take away from my enjoyment of the game even if I don’t understand everything going on, but for some reason they feel that baseball needs to be treated as if everyone that is watching it would have problems keeping up with a Barney episode.

As many people know, Manny Ramirez was suspended for violating MLB substance abuse policy, and this raised up the continuing question of how to handle
suspected PED users in the HOF. I know that the writers have their own definition of what is acceptable or not for their vote and it's different for every
voter.

My argument is that on the whole we already do era adjustments, we know that minorities didn't play until the 50's, that the homerun era didn't start
until Babe Ruth, that the pitcher had some dominance in the 60's, different rules prior to 1890 etc. So when someone says that Ty Cobb only has 117
homeruns, it doesn't detract from how good he was as a player. We know that pitchers pitch fewer innings today than in the past, that bullpens get more
appearances etc. It is part of the era that an individual player played.

If the writers do a good job of chronicling the debates and question the
questionable, then the era should be known for what it was, which is now being commonly referred to as the steroid era. MLB has in place a system now to
reduce users, but at the same time, the league, fans, writers and players union didn't care about the taint of roids, and to go back and to try and
retroactively make a judgement penalty is disingenious in my opinion. And in Mannys case it's even worse since he is already being penalized by MLB. As you
can probably tell, my viewpoint is that it's too late to make a judgement on situations that are completed. MLB, the writers, fans and players need to focus
on getting rid of the problem, and acknowledge that it was just a different era. As a rough rule, there have been about 20 hofers playing in every season of
baseball, and trying to ignore an entire era you are going to miss out on a lot of players who probably deserve to be in the hof, even if they did cheat. I
mean Gaylord Perry is celebrated for his cheating, to the point he gets a book deal and nobody kept him out of the hall.

I understand having different points
of view on how to vote on a suspected PED user, but for the voter to automatically not consider an eligible candidate due to some misplaced sense of outrage,
overrates the importance of the voter on the election process. As a voter, you get to vote on the eligible players, it's not your job to determine who is
eligible. The Hof changed the rules to keep out Pete Rose and retroactively changed the rules on Joe Jackson to maintain their level of integrity, another
level shouldn't be decided by the writers.


Of course this doesn't mean that you ignore it, there is a character traits as part of the ballot, and that should be a factor in your voting, but a voter
should not base their entire case on just one criteria, especially when there is no conclusive evidence. And in case of Manny and others who have served
suspensions, the suspension(lost of games, and potentially loss of money) is already MLB applying what they felt is an appropriate penalty, so even though
it's not a court of law, double jeopardy should still apply.

For the record, I didn't go to the trouble of figuring exact years on my era comments, and I do realize that Babe Ruth isn't the only reason that offense
increased after 1920 (Ray Chapman anyone)

Just to start this year I'm going to go with the NL Central predictions.

Cardinals 97 wins
Cubs 94 wins
Brewers 88 wins
Reds 78 wins
Astros 72 wins
Pirates 66 wins.

Of course I'm going to pick the Cardinals first, but it isn't blind homerism, I honestly think that the Cubs, Cardinals, Phillies and Mets are the most talented team in the national league, I just think that the Cardinals pitching is going to suprise a lot of people who are picking a Carpenter injury, a Wainwright fall and a failure of one of the three remaining, my pick says that the Cardinals fifth best starter will end up being the best fifth best starter in the NL. (my guess is that it will end up being Pineiro who is going to post an ERA+ of 98.)

The bullpen will be better, for two reasons, one it can't be worse, and two without Isringhausen (established veteran) as a closer TLR will be more inclined to pull a pitcher who clearly doesn't have his stuff. In the past Issy would come in and TLR would basically keep him in there until he blew it, even though it was apparent to almost everyone that he didn't have his best stuff. With Motte, Perez, Kinney and even Franklin closing out games, TLR has the chance to do what he likes best and that is rely on matchups. Eventually I feel that Motte will end up with the majority of the saves, but while he is struggling early on TLR can experiment more. If Franklin gets the closer role for the second half of the season, it will be an indication that we aren't in the post season.


OPS+ predictions for the lineup
Molina (105)
Pujols (185)
Schumaker (110)
Greene (105)
Freese (95)
Glaus (125)
Ludwick (145)
Ankiel (135)
Duncan (130)
Rasmus (110)

Ok, new season is upon us, I'm going to try to write on here a minimum of three times a week, even if it's just random gibberish about the previous series or something.
This off season the Cardinals didn't do much, to be perfectly honest, but to be honest not much was needed to be done. For the record the Cardinals effectively lost one outfielder in Larry Walker/ Reggie Sanders. Encarnacion is the replacement there, no one expects him to perform to the level that Larry Sanders played at, or even the level that Encarnacion himself played at last year. (OPS+ for Larry Sanders was approximately 130) Encarnacion posted 113 last year, that is probably better than reasonably expected, I would settle for around 105-110 ops+. On the opposite side, we are expecting a slight performance upgrade with the other outfield spot. Last year we had an effective platoon of Taguchi, Mabry and Jrod patrolling the outfield, Jrod probably performed better than expected, but Mabry wasn't that good Bigbie probably will outperform him, and even playing at a lower level than last year, Jrod will still be an improvement offensively over taguchi last year. On the whole I imagine that when it's all said and done our outfield offense will net out to be as good as it was last season.

The infield should also be a net wash, even if Spivey never figures out how to hit again, the addition of Rolen for a full season should offset any offensive loss and even defensive loss we get from having Spivey play a full season. Personally I think offensively Spivey will end up being better than Grudz, but defensively should be worse so at second base alone it should be a wash, Rolen of course will be a tremendous upgrade, I mean going from roughly 84 ops+ which is what we got from third base last year to a minimum of 120 from him this year. Cub fans are all giddy about dumping patterson for Pierre, yet the swing difference between those two is actually about the same, yet somehow the addition of Pierre for Patterson is a big coup for the cubs, addition of Rolen for Nunez is a net even? and then the funnier thing is that Pierre is a horrible defender, while Corey is a very good defender so that makes up some of the difference, Nunez was an adequate defender while Rolen is elite....Oh well Cub fans, and typical experts are funny when they look at these things.
as it stands offensively the Cardinals should have a small overall offensive improvement(I've estimated about 30 runs-being conservative to be honest, rolen alone should be about 35 run improvement)

Pitching wise we lost Matt Morris, who was effectively an average pitcher last season, I would estimate that Ponson will start off well, eventually the league will catch up to him by that time Wainwright or Reyes should have proven they can pitch at this level (my money is on Wainwright) and TLR will flip them into the rotation. Carpenter should have some decline, and so should Suppan. Marquis should respond better than he has done lately as I feel that it's his free agent year and hate to go with the cliche but players do perform better in their free agent seasons. Mulder should be a wash with a slight potential of a great season.(not likely)
Bullpen wise it's a lot tougher to judge, we got some real good performances out of unexpected sources last year, true that is the hallmark of a duncan/tlr team, but we lost a few of those guys, most notably Al Reyes, but even Tavarez. I fully expect Looper to at least equal out to Tavarez. Beyond that though our bullpen is going to be hard press to match what we got last year out of them. Even trusting TLR and Duncan to do the best job possible, it is going to take some luck for our bullpen to match their great season last year, I would expect almost half of the runs that we should gain offensively to be lost by the pen. I'll probably go into greater detail on this later, but basically when it's all said and done the cardinals should perform about the same as they did last year, with a weaker division 95 games isn't out of the question.

Ok, the season is over, we lost again in pitiful fashion in the post season, with a team that just didn't bother to show up the last series of the season. Now it's time for the obligatory season ending grades to the team, and notice the word season ending grades, not post season that is a different story.

Starting pitching, a lot was made about how the cardinals didn't have that great of pitching both going into the season and then in the post season, well here is (with creative editing) how our top three pitchers did this year.

Pitcher a 21-5, 2.83 ERA,
Pitcher b 16-5, 2.95 ERA(morris 1st half, mulder 2nd half)
Pitcher c 15-9, 3.40 ERA (Marquis 1st half, Suppan 2nd half)

we had basically two aces all season long, just that they changed names around the half, and we had a solid number two(similar argument) so basically our rotation consisted of two aces, a number two...and not such great guys

pitcher d 14-15, 4.30 ERA(Marquis 2nd, Suppan 1st)
pitcher E 14-13, 4.76 ERA(Morris 2nd, Mulder 1st)

still, league average era was 4.22 which makes pitcher D at worse a number three while pitcher E is a borderline 4. Overall our rotation was very good, although not as good as having the best ERA in baseball would indicate, because our pitching coach intimidated the official scorers this year and they started ruling anything and everything an error. Leading the team to the best ERA in the Majors even though as a team, with a very good defense, being second in runs allowed.