Box Score Bytes - Game 2

Mt Elbert:  Fowler (0.143) and de la Rosa (0.298)
Arikaree River:  Tulo (-0.156)

1.  Hard to believe that into the second game of the year pitchers were pitching around CarGo to get to Tulo.  From my second deck perch Tulo is getting pounded down and inside.  Adjustments will have to be made...

2.  Closers - Players You Hate!  By the way, I like Huston.  He is a gutsy closer but I will be honest with you.  At the start of the ninth tonight I left because I can't stand watching him pitch.  In case you are wondering Huston has pitched in 110 games for the Rox and has 56 saves.  He pitches about every two days usually going about an inning.  Tends to give up a hit an appearance but also strikes out a batter.  He tends to face an average of 4 batters and throws about 15 pitches with 10 of them for strikes.  As much as we moan he has only 5 blown saves.

3.  Maybe baseball is all about pitching an defense.  I had four "!" on plays made by Stewart, Tulo, Smith, and CarGo (or call him superman for his flying spread out catch)

4.  Team needs to work on bunting.  Second game in a row that Rox couldn't lay down a bunt to get a player into scoring position, thankfully this time around Fowler smashed a double and scored Iannetta from first.

5.  6 more K's to add to the season, on pace for fro 1,377 or almost 100 more than last year...come on Coach Lansford.

6.  Pardon the scorecard but I was teaching my 8 year old how to score but wow what a series of defensive plays!



Box Score Bytes - Game 1

1.  First off who was the high and low point for Colorado yesterday?

Mt Elbert (highest point in Colorado):  Jose Lopez (0.128 WPA) and Huston Street (0.146)
Arikaree River (lowest point in Colorado):  Tulo (-0.325) and U-Ball (-0.372)


2.  Only the 7th time in Rox history to actually open the new season at home (94, 95, 01, 05, 06, 07, and 11).  Rox are now 4-3 in these games.


3.  Rox played in their 204th extra inning game and have a record of 99 - 105.  45 - 67 all time at home!  7 - 12 against the D-Backs...


4.  D-Backs manager, Kirk Gibson and former Dodger, continues to make Rox suffer at the hands of anything related to LA.  Rox lose fourth straight to D-Backs going back to last year.


5.  So much for Spring Training and attention to details...Rox lose another one run game after going 28 - 30 last year...of course over the long haul Rox are 384 - 385 all time in one run games.


6.  Rox ball started out well yesterday with Fowler getting a walk, moving to second on a wild pitch, and then scoring on a double by Smith but then as the game progressed old habits creeped in.  Eleven strikeouts for the day.  Inability to get the key hit showed up again in 4th (Iannetta on third with one out, no runs) and 5th (CarGo on second with no outs, no runs).  Team started pressing at the end of the game looking for that walk off homer rather than manufacturing a run...


7.  Base running gaffs galore...Rogers (running as a pinch runner? where is EY Jr?) getting thrown out at second with a groundball to short when trying to advance to third.  And maybe Smith not trying to score from first on a line drive single to deep Center in the 8th.


8.  Did the umpires steal a game from the Rox?  Fan interference in the 5th creating the second out in the inning with CarGo on second...and a miss call on a catch by Smith...probably not


9.  And from the uh oh file...should we be concerned that U-Ball only averaged 93 on his fastball yesterday?  Reports indicated he didn't have his normal "bite"


10.  Tracy's Epic Fail for the Day:  Putting Rogers in has a pinch runner...

Rox Talk - Player X

The "X"-Factor

In this past weekend's NY Times Keeping Score, there was an article on the intangibles.  It is well known that stat heads claim there is no "X"-Factor.  But everyone has tales that Player X took that extra base, worked the count, stole a base, framed a pitch, or just had that "umpf" - that presence that leads a team to victory.  Data below shows last year's team record when Player "X" starts.  Throw out those rare starts and I was a bit surprised to see Smith and Fowler at the top. 

For the Rox to succeed in 2011, the intangibles need to work.  Players like Smith, Iannetta, Fowler, and Stewart are going to have to do the little things.  If the Rox think they can only win with "Os" it is going to be a long year. 

So let's us have a great fun Summer!  Go Rox

Rox Talk - Errors

Errors and Winning Percentage

In defense (ah get it?) of Troy, I was curious about the same thing that he wrote in his column yesterday. What part does defense play in successful teams?  Pretty easy to see that not giving up extra outs allows your pitcher to be more comfortable.  But is it that black and white?  I didn't look at any exotic defensive statistics, just simply looked at errors and winning percentage.  Graph below shows the results from 2006 - 2010.  X-axis is winning percentage and Y-axis is errors.  Correlation of this data (R^2) is around 0.2 indicating that while it makes sense that fewer errors would lead to more wins, the data over the last 5 years indicates that this isn't exactly true.  

Look at the graph and one point kind of jumps out at you and that is the team with a winning percentage below 0.400 and less than 80 errors...that would be the 2009 Pirates who won 62 games.  Now of course the year the Rox went to the World Series they committed only 68 errors.  The average errors committed over the 5 year period is 99.  Teams having more errors then the average won an average of 78 games while the teams committing less than this average won on average 84 games.  So regardless of the scatter plot below, generally, committing less errors does help a team out.  Over those 5 years the teams in the top 10 won on average 86 games and if you throw out the Pirates and Jays, then that average number of wins jumps to 90 which is probably a playoff team.

And what about the Rox specifically.  See the data below.  No real correlation between defensive prowness and wins.

Links
- Ah the continuing battle between seamheads and old school stat lovers...as always Joe says it best...original article here...and I resent the quote about my mother's basement, because I didn't have one!
- Chris Quick's article is an eyesore for Rox fans and of course makes a pretty good argument that defense does matter...maybe my analysis of errors above is an error?
- Just because I love Ichiro...

- And finally in a tweet by Mike Axisa, he gives us this little gem:

"Greg Maddux faced 20,421 batters in his career. Just 310 of them saw a 3-0 count. That's roughly one every three starts."  Wow!

Rox Talk - Relief Game Score Part II

Relief Game Score - Part II
In Part I of my treatise on a relievers game score, I noticed some possible modifications that could then be integrated with the starters game score to produce a total game score for the pitching staff of that game. The basis of the starters game score is to represent an average start to be around 50 points. Any exceptional start would be in the 80s and an extraordinary start would be in the 90s.

Basing a relief game score on the same 50 point basis would suggest a similar trend. An average relief outting would score around 50 and go up from there. To extrapolate from this it would suggest that an average start and relief appearance would end up to be around 100 points. For instance in 2010, the average relief game score for the Rox was 58 and the average starter game score was 50. But what if we scaled the relief score, so that instead of an average effort of 108 points, you would get around 75 points when you add the relief game score to the starters game score (you know a nice C effort?). So instead of starting the relief game score calculation with 50 points let's start with 15 points. Now the average relief game score for the Rox is 24 for the 2010 season and to go along with the average starter game score of 50 we now have a total game average of 74 points for 162 games.

How does this hold up in the wins and losses? Well the average total game score in wins is 85 and in losses it is 63. Not too shabby. Table below shows the top to bottom total game scores for the 2010 season.

Top Scores:

Game 82: 15 inning 4-3 win over the Giants (Hammel goes 7 innings)

Game 93: 10-0 win over Florida (Francis goes 7 inning, bullpen strikes out 5)

Game 4: 7-0 win over San Diego (de la Rosa goes 7 innings, bullpen strikes out 3)

Game 52: 11 inning 2-1 win over the Giants (Hammel goes 6 2/3, bullpen strikes out 6 and no hits)

Game 113: 6-2 win over Mets (Francis goes 6, bullpen strikes out 6 and no hits)

Worst Score:
Game 133: 11-12 loss to Phillies (bullpen gives up 9 earned runs in 3 2/3 innings)

Conclusion

Game Scores isn't a real statistical tool. It was mostly just a back of the envelope calculation to rate a starting pitcher's effort and to especially look beyond the "quality start". In much the same way the relief game score is just taking some benchmarks that you'd like to see out of your relief corp and assigning some point values. Manipulating these numbers to get a realistic number so that they can be favorably compared. Based on one season of input, the numbers would seem to indicate that you can assign a value to the relief effort much like the starters. While you can similarly rank the relief corp on a similar point scale it would seem to be more of a value to be able to take both the relief and starters score and produce a total game score and have this be on a 0 - 100 point scale.

Rox Talk - Relief Game Score

Reliever's Game Score
If you know my work then you know I have an interest in Bill James' Game Score (Part I, II, and III). I have a belief that it favors the strike out kings and tends to ignore those finasse pitchers. I even came up with an alternative. Well years ago I wrote myself a note and said what about a relief game score? Sure over the years they have gotten the save and the hold but what about scoring the relief just like the starter? Rate the bullpen for that game much like you do for a starter? So let's start with the game score for starters premise:

1.Start with 50 points.
2.Add 1 point for each out recorded, so 3 points for every complete inning pitched.
3.Add 2 points for each inning completed after the 4th.
4.Add 1 point for each strikeout.
5.Subtract 2 points for each hit allowed.
6.Subtract 4 points for each earned run allowed.
7.Subtract 2 points for each unearned run allowed.
8.Subtract 1 point for each walk.

So if the above works for a starter how might it work for a bullpen? Well to me what is important? Strikeouts! Yeah lots of those. Keeping opponents of base? Yeah amazing how that walk in the 8th inning of tight game can really bite you in the...

So here it goes
1.Start with 50 points (I will get back to this later...)
2.Add 1 point for each out recorded.
3.Add 3 points for each strikeout (how relief should be...short, sweet and to the point)
4.Add 3 points for each inning completed allowing zero runs (include partial innings)
5.Subtract 2 points for each baserunner (baserunners bad...)
6.Subtract 6 points for each earned run allowed or inherited runner to score
7.Subtract 2 points for each unearned run allowed (hey defense gotta help too)

So what does it mean? Well using the 2010 rox bullpen I ran the numbers and for the most part I am pretty pleased. I obviously played around with numbers a bit to make an average bullpen outting approximately 50 - 60 points (the blank game scores indicate a complete game from the starter).

Graphically how does it compare to the Starters? Well below graphs the 2010 Rox starting pitcher's game scores (in red) versus the reliever's game scores (in blue). The distribution looks good although maybe the numbers are a bit high. The average starter game score comes in at 51 while the average relief game score comes in at 59. I could probably manipulate the numbers a bit more to get the average closer to 50 but then maybe our relief squad was pretty good last year. I will track the numbers this year and give it a whirl. Maybe next year I will make some adjustments. Next week I will look at starter and relieve game scores as a component score and see if maybe we should adjust the relief game score a bit more...

Rox Talk - April Showers?

Quick Start?

Last week in passing, I mentioned the Rox hope in getting a quicker start this year versus past Aprils. One reason for these slow starts was possibly due to the fact that our veterans never traveled to the Phoenix area and veterans from other teams rarely traveled to Tuscon so in essence our team was rarely ready for MLB pitching. Another possible reason is that in years past the Rox have been saddled with more difficult teams out of the gate and that our late season surges were more due to the fact that we got the weaker teams down the stretch. All valid points but what do the numbers say?

First off how does one grade your upcoming schedule? Before the season you can look at last year's records and determine a predicted strength of schedule. Then of course you can look after the season is complete and determine how weak or strong your actual schedule was.

For instance in 2011, the Rox will play Arizona (3), LA (2), at Pittsburgh (4), at NY (4), Chicago (3), Giants (3), at Florida (3), at Chicago (3), and Pittsburgh (2). 27 games in all with 13 at home and 14 on the road. In 2010 these teams wins were 65, 80, 57, 79, 75, 92, and 80. So if these teams neither improved or got worse in 2011 the Rox would have one series in April against a winning team. If you multiply number games we have against each opponent and take a weighted average then the composite win total of our April opponents is 73.3 in 2011. In 2010 the preseason composite win was 72.0, 2009 82.8 wins, and 2008 82.8 wins. As mentioned above the preseason composite was based on the previous year's win totals, what about composite wins based on final wins for that year? In 2010 78.9 wins, 2009 83.0 wins, and 2008 80.7 wins.

April Opponents - 2011 - 2010 - 2009 - 2008
Preseason 73.3 - 72.0 - 82.8 - 82.8
Postseason - 78.9 - 83.0 - 80.7

What does it really mean? Well in 2008 Rox went 11-17, 2009 8-12, and 2010 11-12. Historically they are 178-209 in April 94-97 at home and 84-112 on the road. In 2008 and 2009, Rox seemed to play a tougher April and in 2010 when the schedule looked easier ended up being more difficult after the season was played out. So if the 73.3 number holds up I would expect the Rox to have a winning April, but if Pittsburgh, under new management from a familiar face, decides to fire his team up early against his old team then 6 of those games won't be so easy. Throw in the fact that Rox always play awful in NY (22-51) and Florida (28-47). And three games in Chicago in April are never easy, remember last year's freeze game in the Windy City? Mix all of this together and suddenly I am not liking the look of our April opponents. But then again that is why we play the games...anyone looking forward to seeing the Giants? I am!

Rox Talk - Better to Score or Prevent?

More Important to Score Runs or Prevent Runs?

In this article and the linked one internal to the article indicates that limiting your opponent's runs is more conducive to winning. They scored an anemic 697 runs (4.3 a game) but when you only allow 583 runs to be scored well that is one way to win 92 games!

So what does the data from 2000 - 2010 show. Graph below shows number of wins versus runs allowed (against). Somewhat linear although not a true correlation at a R2 of 0.47. Compare this to the second graph below which is wins versus runs scored and you can see that there is a bit more correlation with pitching then hitting (R2 of 0.47 versus 0.38). So nothing definitive but seemingly holding your opponent to less runs is more significant then beating your opponent with your stick.

Outliers Dodgers only allowed 556 (85 wins, 2003), Atlanta 565 (101 wins, 2002), San Diego 581 (90 wins, 2010), San Francisco 583 (92 wins, 2010), and Houston 609 (89 wins, 2005). Hard to believe that two of these was last year all in the NL West. Anyone want to debate the merits of pitching in the NL West? Of those five teams three made the playoffs, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Houston. Outliers White Sox 978 runs (95 wins, 2000), Yankees 968 runs (94 wins, 2007), Rox 968 runs (82 wins, 2000), Boston 961 runs (95 wins, 2003), and Indians 950 runs (90 wins, 2000). Of these only the White Sox, Yankees, and Boston made the playoffs.

The graph below shows the 330 teams from 2000 to 2010 runs scored versus runs against. The red are the playoff teams. Appears there is a line of demarcation...

Rox Spring Training Thoughts
Will the Rox be better in April since veterans will be seeing pitching versus previous years when teams didn't travel to Tuscon? Hope so...

Early 2011 over/unders have Rox at 87.5 (Giants at 88.5). I like 88.

Walk is a hit... and Helton would have...3014 hits (instead of 2236).

It's the Ballpark stupid....

Rox Talk - Pujols

Pujols Effect

Perhaps it is difficult to enjoy greatness when it is right there. Perhaps only when a player moves beyond the game does the appreciation set in? When the complete body of work is there for the dissection? Baseball has such a stat consciousness about it that when a player starts to put up eye popping numbers we have trouble relating because up to this point the greater players were baseball cards and black and white video shots.

Ten years into his career Pujols is with some of the greatest. Perhaps we don't want to be fooled or led on so we hold our breath and wait. This week it appears the Cardinal management is prepared to wait. There are a lot of factors involved and I don't begrudge a player for wanting the most $. The most talented should get the biggest deal unfortunately the club who has the right to negogiate has chosen to lowball the offer. Should we be offended by this?

I say no. Where will the crazy end? Can you look anyone in the eye and say "yeah at 38 - 42 year's old your still going to be worth $120 million!" and not get a laugh? Why do the Cardinals need to pay for past performance? Yeah so he was a bargain for the first couple of years but the Cards made a gamble and it paid off, and how much money has the Cardinals and any other team for that matter thrown away on players who were can't miss? So the Cardinals got lucky, do they know have to be stupid and pay a player so much that they prevent themselves from putting any players around him? Last time I checked it took 25 decent players to win...

And finally what can be said about Pujols numbers over the last 10 years? The NL Central hasn't exactly had dominating teams over the last couple of years. With perennial cellar dweller Pittsburgh, the rebuilding of Reds, Brewers, and Astros, and then of course the Cubs, one can't say that Pujols was facing the best of the best. Throw in the fact that St Louis gets to face Royals every year as their natural rival and Pujols gets a good dose of AAA/AAAA pitching.

Also he has played majority of games against the worse fifteen teams over the last decade (based on record) and he also gets to play in some hitter friendly parks (based on ESPN's ballpark analysis). Sure you can split hairs but even this back of the envelope analysis indicates that Pujols has been a monster! Worth $30 million a year? Maybe for the next five years but after that...NO (see Jeter...see Helton...you can't turn the clock back, your age will get you!)

Rox Talk - 2011 Projections

2011 Season Projections

With Spring Training around the corner, most of the projections have been released. Using projections from James, RotoBall, Marcel, USA Today Fantasy Magazine, and ZiPS I came up with an average runs scored and then standard deviation for these five sources. I also have compared this with the fans projections from FanGraphs (which has most of these projections, unfortunately PECOTA is tucked behind a pay site which is too bad!). First off let's look at the pitchers.

Probably the harder to project because of injury and inconsistency from year in and year out. In the graph below the blue is last year, the red is the fans guess, and yellow is the average of the projections with standard deviation bar. I have included Daley although it would seem that Morales has the inside the track, assuming he has regained his ability to pitch! Looks like Hammel and Cook both should bounce back years. Chacin looks to be comparable although as hitters start to see him more often some adjustments will have to made. De la Rosa can remain healthy and consistent I will be happy. He simply needs to keep the team in games and throw some innings. U-Ball is the wild card to me. He his coming off a high pitch season. He is young and while pitchers aren't being coddled like they used to be I am keeping my fingers crossed that he doesn't get hurt. It would be devastating for the team to lose their number one. Any of the other four I think we could patch things together with Paulino and Rogers but there is no replacing the Chief.

Taking the estimates from the five projections and normalizing them to a season (from 2002 - 2010, the rox have averaged 1438 innings pitched) we have a range of runs allowed between 540 and 711. The last two years Rox have allowed 715 and 717 runs to score. I can live with 711.

Now what about the offense. Experts would seem to agree that this is Fowler's and Stewart's year. Which I think is vital if the Rox expect to contend. Fans seem to think a lot about the Rox offense. Key I think is finding a productive number 2 and 5 hitters. I think the two spot might be a great spot for Helton (perhaps even Herrera). He takes a lot pitches, he can wear pitchers down, and he generally has had a decent OBP. With Fowler and Helton on the basepaths we can then let CarGo and Tulo bring them home. Ultimately we will need someone behind Tulo, so Tulo gets something hit and that is why Stewart having a break out year is key (this could also be Lopez's role if he can find his stroke from 2009). Ultimately Tracy has a lot in the dug out and I think it will be challenging to find a lineup that is consistent and works.

As with the pitchers the range of best case to worst case is 881 to 613. During the World Series run the Rox had scored 860 during the regular season. If things click I think the 800s are logical.

So in the end if the Rox can score 800 and only give up 711 then we are looking at a 90 win season. For most of the year last year they were on pace for 88 wins and would have gotten there had they not tanked in the last 15 games. Now of course some other experts would have us believe the Rox are on pace to win anothe 83-84 games and scoring only 758 runs, about 12 runs less than last year. Being an optimist and assuming break out years from Fowler, Stewart, and a basic no thrills season from Iannetta, I think the Rox are better than that. Data is below.

Rox Talk - Optimal Lineup

Woody Paige writes a thoughtful article on the upcoming season. The Rox brain trust has certainly shaken things up this Winter. As a fan, I can't really find anything at fault with the moves they have made. Problem is, all this is for nothing if the team can't win when it counts. Tracy now has a lot of pieces and parts. How is he going to mix and match and put out a winning team each day. Paige indicates a left and right pitching lineup. Using Baseball Musings lineup analysis this is what we got for right handed pitchers:

The numbers above are based on ZiPS projections. See next week on projections but a lineup above would average about 4.7 - 4.8 runs per game or about 778 runs (they had 770 last year).

What about left handed pitchers? Not a huge difference and it should be noted that the Rox faced 100 righties last year (and thus 62 lefties).
I don't envy Tracy and his matching up. My guess is he will find the hot lineup and go with it. Day games will have Helton taking the day and my guess is if Helton gets off to a rough start he will find himself riding the bench because this team is built for the now. They can't afford to be kind to the old guard...they have too much riding on the now!

Rox Talk - WARing Rox

World According to WAR

WAR is all the rage and I'm sure something else will take its place but for now the baseball world is WAR. So now that FanGraphs (fWAR) and BaseballReference (rWAR) both have their dueling data, I thought I would look at the Rox over the years. First plot is fWAR versus rWAR. This includes all Rox batters from 1993 - 2010 who had at least 60 plate appearances (342 players).

Pretty consistent as you would expect as the really only basic difference between the two WAR is the fielding.

Fielding (!) what difference can that make well look at the second graph. This one plots the fielding component of fWAR with fWAR. And what about those two outliers way out to the left? That would be the stellar fielding seasons of Brad Hawpe (2008) and Dante Bichette (1999). It should be noted that all starting pitchers have a fielding component of 0 and by the way only three pitchers have a positive batting WAR (Hampton (2) and Jennings (1)).

So what about some other basic things about WAR. Well for one thing there is pretty good correlation between scoring runs and having a good WAR. No brainer there but it I think it shows that ultimately what wins ball games is scoring runs and those that score mean more to a team. Highest runs scorer of all time? That would be 1997's Larry Walker with 143 runs, followed by 1996 Ellis Burks (142) and Todd Helton rounds out the next 3 spots with his 2000, 2003, and 2001 season campaigns (138, 135, 132). And what about those outliers...that would be Neifi Perez in 1999 who scored 108 runs but had a fWAR of -0.9 and of course Dante again with his 104 runs and whooping -1.8 fWAR.

OK so high fWAR trends fairly well with runs scored. Guess what, another no brainer, would suggest the more plate appearances lead to more runs (!) Possibly a "Duh" but think about it...the underlying key of helping your team is getting to the plate...it could be that easy! Of course if you look at the Rox top ten list in plate appearances of all time and you find one Neifi Perez who has 3 of the top 5 spots and his combined WAR those years was -0.5 so maybe there is something more than just getting to the plate ; ) Of course the other seven have an average WAR of 6.1. Average fWAR for 600 plate appearances or more is 3.4 with a standard deviation of 2.7. Of course this is fairly rare as only 50 players have achieved this many plate appearances in a season. And by the way, Rox most successful season? - 2007 they had 5 players with 600 plate appearances...also probably shows how injuries can kill a season and steal plate appearances...

Rox Talk - Projections

Predictions

With pitchers and catchers scheduled to report on February 14, 2011 (that is only 28 days!), the statistical projections have started to appear. Fangraphs usually include these predictions on their player pages. Last year I analyzed James, Marcels, ZiPs, Chone, as well as the Fans. I then averaged the Big Four (excluded the Fans) and came up with an average runs scored or runs allowed for the expected Rox lineup.

In addition I tracked each quarter of the season to determine how these projections held true. The graph below is for the hitters. The white bar is the average projection, the red line is the first 40 games final projection, followed by the blue line which indicates projection through 81 games, followed by the green line indicating projections through 120 games, and then finally the black bar which is the final season total for that hitter. The graph below is the same setup but for pitchers.

Points of Interest:
- CarGo had a massive season and just kept going. His preseason projection had him scoring a measly 68 run
- Dex had a slow down in the second quarter due to his demotion to the Minors. He came back with a vengeance
- Rox can't afford to have another sub par year from their first baseman
- Please Tulo stay uninjured...what a season it could have been!
- Hawpe got injured and was never the same...eventually traded. Rox missed those runs
- Smith and Stewart need to excel, they certainly underperformed in 2010
- Iannetta needs to get out of the doghouse and make some noise, what is it with Rox catchers in waiting...they never breakout
- Thank god for Olivo
- Barmes and Spilly...meh
- Mora and Giambi show that projections for bench guys and off day players just don't work.
- Cook started slow, as usual, and sort of found his way...I hate seeing players age
- U-Ball nothing to say but man he was awesome especially early on
- Francis was hurt out of Spring Training
- De la Rosa hurt early in the season
- Hammel has shown such brilliance followed by crap...break out year in 2011 would be welcomed
- Boy they can project relievers of course the small sample size probably is the reason

Overall hard to put much weight in projections...sure it might make you sleep better in March but come October it really doesn't mean much!

Rox Talk - Just the Links Ma'am

Hall of Fame Vote
Congrats to the newly elected players and to Larry Walker who received 20.3% of the vote. Due to total, he will remain on the ballot for 15 years. Unfortunately based on this chart and article, it is a long shot for him to make it. Although in the article it would suggest based on the players coming up it is unlikely Walker will be able to get the required votes. I might disagree with this assumption because a lot of the up and coming players are seemingly tied to steroid use and thus it might work in Walker's favor? Hard to say but next year Vinny gets on the ballot...Blake Street Bomber reunion...too bad the Big Cat got knocked off last year.

Link Dump

Some 2010 in review...

The two headed monster that was the Rox bullpen...here

Early Rox 2011 prediction...82-87 wins...a fringe contender

At least they made the most of their one at bat!

Rox never were in the race but they made it interesting...

Rox Talk - Larry Walker

Larry Walker - A Mighty Rox
Another former Rox will get a chance for the Hall of Fame on Wednesday. Last year the Big Cat didn't get enough votes to stay on the ballot for another year. This year I think Walker will get a little more love and stick around. Next few years are going to be interesting as far as what the voters decide to do with big number guys that peaked during the Steroid Era. Any Rox candidate will therefore have a double whammy because of the pre-humidor Coors Field Effect. Will voters simply dismiss the numbers any Rox player created?

Having watched Walker play I don't think I truly understood how awesome he was. The things he could do with his bat. And he had a rocket for an arm in Right Field. I recently took a tour of Coors Field and while standing on the field the tour guide reminded me that the longest homer hit by a lefty was by Walker which landed in the walkway in the upper deck. Standing on the field that is a massive home run! In retrospect a player's daily grind can become common place especially when the game seems so easy for someone. His year in 1997 when he won the MVP he had a WAR of 9.0 with 143 runs, 208 hits, 46 doubles, 49 home runs, 130 RBIs, 33 stolen bases, and on base percentage of 0.452. That is just insane and finally in today's world of great athletes taking themselves too serious who could forget Walker's bat against Randy Johnson in the 1997 All Star Game when Walker showed up to the plate with his batting helmet backwards? Finally I will remember Walker for one of the few Cardinals to show up in the 2004 World Series. His one and only World Series and he was awesome.

Unfortunately, I think it is a long shot for the Canuck which is too bad because he was a heck of ball player. The great columnist Joe Posnanski says it best in this column and I think this sums it up, "Then he went to Coors, and in 1997 he hit .366 with 46 doubles and 49 homers. You know how many other players in baseball history have hit .350 or better with 45 doubles AND 45 homers in the same season? One. Lou Gehrig in 1927. It was pure lunacy" Ahhh Nintendo Ball at its greatest. In addition to Joe's account here are some pretty graphs (here and here). In the last couple of years the voters have been pretty stingy letting in a candidate here and there. With a lot of what I consider shoo ins coming to the ballot in the next few years a lot of candidates need to make it this year or be left out. Will this year be a water shed?