The Fungibility of Relievers

By Blaidd Drwg

18FRANKLIN_t160 — Ryan Franklin - I will miss the chin hair and the roller coaster of bringing him into the game.

I saw on ESPN this morning that old friend, Ryan Franklin, was released by the Cardinals. Two years ago, Franklin saved 38 games, had a 1.92 ERA and was an All-Star. In 2010, Franklin saved 27 and had a 1.03 WHIP. This season? Franklin had 4 blown saves in 5 chances, a 1.84 WHIP and 8.46 ERA.

This got me thinking – unless you are talking about a guy like Mariano Rivera, most closers are pretty fungible. In most cases, you will see a closer go down or start to fail for a team and the team is able to find a replacement in house who is as good or even better than the guy who he is replacing. That fungibility is something that causes me to scratch my head when the Red Sox go out and sign Bobby Jenks for $6 million a year to be a setup guy or the Yankees paying $10 million to Rafael Soriano to do the same.

Here are the teams that currently have a different closer than it started with in 2011:

Team	Original Closer	Current Closer
A’s	Brian Fuentes	Andrew Bailey
Angels	Fernando Rodney	Josh Walden
Twins	Joe Nathan	Matt Capps
White Sox	Matt Thornton	Sergio Santos
Blue Jays	Jon Rauch	Frankie Francisco
Phillies	Jose Contreras	Antonio Bastardo
Nationals	Sean Burnett	Drew Storen
Cardinals	Ryan Franklin	Fernando Salas
Astros	Brandon Lyon	Mark Melancon

Half way through the season and that is 9 out of 30 teams that currently have a different closer than they started the season with and that doesn’t even count the Phillies again who actually had to replace their replacement closer, Ryan Madson, who got hurt, Kansas City who replaced Jokim Soria for a week when he couldn’t get anyone out (Soria is their closer once again), or the Phillies, Giants and Mariners who all had their projected opening day closer (Lidge, Wilson and Aardsma) go down with an injury in spring training. In just about every case on the list, the current closer is putting up comparable or better numbers than the guy he replaced.

Are you sensing a theme with the Phillies yet? They have managed to survive the loss of their closer and his replacement and still have the best record in MLB. Yes, their starters help that greatly, but they still need to protect those 8th and 9th inning leads. Generally, every team has a couple “closers in waiting” stashed either somewhere in their bullpen or in the minors that can be called up at a moment’s notice.

Frankly, the save is probably the most overrated stat in baseball. In most cases, a closer is coming in for 1 inning with no one on base and a couple run lead. You have to be pretty bad to blow that. For the 6-8 games a year where you need to “save” the game (i.e. coming in with the tying or winning run on base) with your closer, the difference in success rates between Mariano Rivera and Ryan Franklin is not as great as you might think.

To The Tune Of Cake

by A.J. Coltrane

Forwarded to me by my buddy D. It’s two members of the band Cake, Vince and Pete, in a cooking contest.

The judges may be the best part: Rick James (as in “I’m Rick James, b*tch!”), Phyllis Diller, and Jeff Smith (the Frugal Gourmet.)

To Trade or Not To Trade, That is the Question

By Blaidd Drwg

Dave Cameron recently suggested that the Mariners should consider trading Michael Pineda. While I don’t necessarily disagree with him, I do think that his expectations on the players in return are a little, how would you say it, generous. Cameron writes:

The Reds have an excess prospect at nearly every position the Mariners have a massive hole, and could offer something like a package built around a switch-hitting catcher with power (Yasmani Grandal), a line-drive hitting first baseman who might be able to play left field or could DH (Yonder Alonso), a third baseman with legitimate power (Todd Frazier), and throw in a decent back-end starter (Travis Wood) to help the M’s compensate for losing a member of their rotation.

Of the guys he lists, John Sickles ranks Alonso as the Reds #3 prospect, Grandal as their #5 prospect and Frazier as their #7 prospect. As much as I think this would be a windfall for the Mariners, I seriously doubt that the Reds would be insane enough to move 3 of their top 7 prospects for a guy who, while he has the makings of a great pitcher, has thrown just over 100 innings in the majors. I would think that the Mariners would have to move at least one prospect in addition to Pineda in a deal like that.

Something else that Cameron writes bothers me a little:

Alonso, Frazier, and Wood could step right onto the big league roster, and given who they’d be replacing, the M’s might actually be better this year even after trading Pineda away.

Lets look at these players individually:
Alonso – He has a 298/363/476 slash line with 1 1/2 seasons under his belt in AAA. He doesn’t hit for much power (despite being 6’ 2” and 240 lbs) and doesn’t have great command of the strike zone. He would replace the revolving door that is at DH for the Mariners, but I doubt that he would be significantly better than Cust/Carp/whoever else. The one red flag for me, he is from Cuba and his “listed” age is 24. He might really be 24 and have some room for improvement, but if history holds for Cuban defectors, we could be looking at him at his career peak right now.

Grandal – Another Cuban (the Reds sure do like them, there is a bit of irony in them constantly taking Cubans and that can be found here, just scroll down to the newspaper article) who has put up some impressive numbers in the minors (897 career OPS). I would temper my expectations about being able to plug him in the lineup right now (and Cameron admits that) – he has exactly 27 plate appearances at AA (and only 1 walk in those 27 appearances) and his MiLB stats last season came from playing in Arizona and Bakersfield – 2 places the ball travels a bit. I really doubt that a guy with 300 PA in the minors and very limited experience at AA would be able to out produce the hack Miguel Olivo they are putting out there most days (and I am not a great fan of Olivo). I would guess he is probably 2 years away from the majors at the earliest.

Frazier – He is 25, has some mid range power, has improved his walk rate dramatically so far this year, but looks like he might be a slightly above average MLB hitter based on his stats in AAA. There are some health concerns on Frazier, but the biggest concern to me would be his fielding – he is a bit of a butcher with the glove, sporting a .950 fielding percentage at 3B in his AAA career. I have a feeling he is probably destined for the OF if he makes it to the majors. That being said, his bat is probably better than Chone Figgins or Adam Kennedy at this point, but how much would defense suffer if he was plugged into 3B right now? Besides, the Mariners have Alex Liddi in AAA right now and he basically would be Frazier with more power and a slightly better glove, so why bother at this point.

Wood – He is a relatively young, power arm who is better than anyone the M’s currently have in AAA, so he probably would be roughly equivalent to Jason Vargas with more strikeouts.

I know this is just one suggestion for a deal that could be made, but if you were Z, would you make it?

I’ll Take Famous Camerons for $1000, Alex

By Blaidd Drwg

Candace-Cameron-full-house-581778_555_725 — Mike Cameron was hitting more like Candice Cameron at the time of his release.

A couple of seasons ago, the Red Sox made what I thought was a great move in signing Mike Cameron to a 2 year, $15 million dollar contract. At the time, Cameron was 36, but was still playing gold glove defense in CF and had posted an OPS+ of 110, 111, 104 and 121 in his previous 4 seasons while averaging around 140 games per season. The Sox were going to shift Jacoby Ellsbury to LF and have 3 potential gold glovers to cover the outfield expanse in Fenway.

A lot of people didn’t like this deal – Cameron was too old, he strikes out too much, he doesn’t hit for a high average, etc.

Well a season and a half into his contract, the Red Sox have designated him for assignment. They got 81 games of injury-plagued substandard baseball (and a whopping 71 OPS+). Cameron could not get it together in Boston when he was healthy and he wasn’t healthy for most of his stay there.

I doubt that anyone will rush out to sign a 38 year old hitter who looks done, but he probably wouldn’t be a bad pickup for a team trying to contend as a 4th OF/late inning defensive replacement/power bat off the bench. That is, once of course he clears waivers and becomes a free agent, meaning that any team that signs him would only be responsible for the pro-rated part of the MLB minimum salary, leaving the Red Sox on the hook for most of the roughly 4 million he is owed the rest of the season.

Updated 4:05 PM – This just in from boston.com:

Cameron, who was designated for assignment on June 30 by the Red Sox, has been sent to the Florida Marlins along with cash in exchange for a player to be named later or cash, the Red Sox announced moments ago.

My guess – the Sox are giving the Marlins the cash to pay Cameron’s remaining contract. If not, this move makes no sense for the Marlins.

Mariners All-Stars

By Blaidd Drwg

It is Felix and League. Ichiro not only failed to be voted as a starter for just the second time in his career, he failed to make the team at all (and isn’t in the “final player” vote) for the first time. Since Felix is scheduled to pitch in the Mariners game on the Sunday before the AS game, he would be ineligible to pitch in the AS game. I suspect that he will be replaced on the roster by Michael Pineda.

Two strange selections for the AL – Alex Avila managed to win the vote for starting catcher. This is not a bad thing – Avila is having a terrific season and it means people noticed. Aaron Crow was the lone KC selection. He is having a great season as a set up guy, but honestly, either Alex Gordon or Billy Butler would be better choices.

Can We Still ‘Vote For Adam’ ?

By Blaidd Drwg

June 27th was a sad day as this bit of information came across the wire:

The Indians designated infielder Adam Everett for assignment, reports MLB.com’s Jordan Bastian. Everett isn’t sure of his next step, and retirement is possible. As Everett’s career possibly comes to a close, the Lonnie Chisenhall era is about to begin in Cleveland, reports Bastian. Adding the top prospect would keep the Tribe’s 40-man roster full.

Adam Everett was having a truly awful career at the plate, posting a whopping 66 OPS+ over his 11 seasons with Houston, Minnesota, Detroit and Cleveland (spending a good chunk of his prime years in one of the best hitters parks in the league) and showing a tremendous aversion to taking a walk. Everett was, however, a fantastic defensive SS and that allowed him to put up a career WAR of 8.1 despite being completely inept at the plate. He has a wonderful comp list on baseball-reference of banjo hitting shortstops and backup catchers. One funny thing about the list, there are an exceptionally high number of guys who played for the Royals on this list:

1. Chico Fernandez (963)
2. Kevin Stocker (956)
3. Don Buddin (949)
4. Angel Berroa (947)
5. Pokey Reese (944)
6. U L Washington (944)
7. Jamie Quirk (944)
8. Kurt Stillwell (938)
9. Dale Berra (936)
10. John Wathan (936)

Annie will always have her spring training encounter with Adam and I will always remember Everett as the guy who brought the Sox Carl Everett.

Of course, there was also the memorable “Vote for Adam” campaign in 2007.

Chicken – a buying guide

By Iron Chef Leftovers

The other day, I happened to be shopping at the local megamart and I notices a sign for “buy one, get one free” whole free range chickens. I have long maintained that if you are buying poultry, the whole bird is a significantly better value than buying parts, so I decided that this is a good opportunity to put it to the test.

Braking down a bird is easy – with a minimum of knife skills, it shouldn’t take more than 10-15 minutes to break down a chicken. For this trial, I went slowly and it took me 8 minutes per bird. If I am just focusing on breaking them down, I can do it in about 5 minutes per bird. Someone who really knows what they are doing can break down the bird in less than a minute. It is really not hard – here’s a good demo on how to do it from Cheap Seat Eats favorite Ming Tsai:

http://www.graspr.com/html/flashplayer/swf/home_player.swf?dataID=http://www.graspr.com/html/flashplayer/data/data.php%3Fv=51ecca3abb51c77a924057626825f6a3&pid=108&gh=www&swid=20&lid=1

Either way, with breaking the birds down and packaging them up for the freezer, you will be investing no more than 30-45 minutes for 2 birds.

In breaking down the chicken, there are really 2 groups that the parts fall into:

• “Supermarket” cuts – boneless, skinless breast, hind quarters (skin on legs and thighs) and wings
• “Throwaway” cuts – skin, offal, oyster, carcass and neck

Supermarket cuts are the things that you will generally find in the butcher case in your local megamart. Throwaway (for lack of a better term) are things you would be able to get for free from most butchers (and some megamarts if they break down their own chickens for parts) or at a very nominal cost. People will generally toss these parts on a whole chicken – whatever you do, don’t do that. I will talk about what to do with these later.

The total weight of the 2 birds was 10.26 pounds at a cost of $11.78 ($1.19 per pound for you keeping track at home) and the regular price per pound is $2.29 for the whole bird. Here is how the supermarket cuts played out:

Part	Total Weight	% of Total Bird Weight
Breast	2.93 Lbs	28.5%
Legs and Thighs	2.76 Lbs	26.9%
Wings	0.98 Lbs	9.5%

Buying a whole bird has a good yield – about 65% of the bird’s total weight is supermarket cuts. Even if you used nothing else on the bird, you have just pulled nearly 6.5 pounds of meat from 10.25 pounds of starting weight. Yes, there is some bone and skin factored in on this, but you would pay for those if you bought the parts at the supermarket.

Here is the price per pound comparison. I adjusted the cost per part off the whole bird to assume that a person takes a whole bird and throws away everything but the supermarket cuts and assumed that the same price ratios as the packaged parts (i.e. if a breast is $6 per pound and thighs are $3 per pound, the breast absorbs 2 times the total cost as the thighs). I also calculated the total cost for both breaking down the whole bird vs. buying the parts using the weights on the birds I broke down. (On a side note – if you ever need to prove to anyone the useful application of algebra, this is it).

Part	Whole Price/Lb	Whole Total Cost	Parts Price/LB	Parts Total Cost	Savings
Breast	2.61	7.65	7.29	21.36	13.71
Leg & Thigh	1.14	3.15	3.19	8.80	5.65
Wings	.98	1.00	2.79	2.73	1.73

No markup there. I basically just saved $20 by buying the birds and breaking them down. Even at the regular price, there is about a $4.50 savings per bird. Heck, if I used nothing else besides the breasts, I still would have saved myself about $9. The way I look at it, I now have the bulk of the ingredients for stock (neck and carcass), chicken gravy (neck, offal and carcass), real “Chicken Nuggets” (oysters) and Fried Chicken Croutons (skin), but those recipes are for another post.

Of course, you can just keep the birds whole and roast them (which are a lot easier and quicker than you think). It is a truly lost item at the dinner table and should really make a comeback. (Once again, that is for another post)

You may say, but Iron Chef, I can go down to Costco or my local megamart and get chicken breast for $2.99 a pound and not have to do all the work you did. A couple things you want to consider:
• The stuff at your megamart is probably factory farmed and you really don’t want to know how factory farmed chicken is raised.
• There is a very good chance that you are paying for a bird that has been treated with a salt water solution (brined) to keep it from drying out in cooking. I usually say this on the label and that water can add up to 15% of the total weight that you are paying for.
• Frankly, Free Range and Organic Chicken just tastes better and is better for you and the environment.

If you really want to splurge, buy a heritage free range chicken from your local farmer. They are not cheap (around $6 per pound) but they are better than anything you will ever buy in a store

What a Difference Two Weeks Makes

By Blaidd Drwg

On June 16th, the AL West Standings looked like this:

Team	Win %	GB
Texas	.514	—-
Seattle	.507	0.5
LAA	.471	3.0
Oakland	.429	6.0

As of June 30th, they look like this:

Team	Win %	GB
Texas	.531	—-
LAA	.512	1.5
Seattle	.481	4.0
Oakland	.439	7.5

Thanks to a decent win streak by the Rangers and a 4 – 8 stretch by the Mariners, the Puget Sound Plunkers have slipped into 3rd, are below .500 and closer to last than they are first. How bad have the last 12 games been for the M’s? They have scored 30 runs and given up 35, It isn’t easy to win only 33% of your games averaging giving up 3 runs a game in the process. Well, unless you have the worst offense in baseball that is. I honestly think the M’s will be out of contention by late July, if not sooner, unless they get at least 2 bats in that lineup.

In the more interesting division in the AL, here is what it looked like on 6/16:

Team	Win %	GB
Boston	.603	—-
NYY	.582	1.5
TB	.522	5.5
Toronto	.493	7.5
Baltimore	.470	9.0

As of 6/30, we now have this:

Team	Win %	GB
NYY	.608	—-
Boston	.575	2.5
TB	.556	4.0
Toronto	.494	9.0
Baltimore	.455	12.0

We would like to thank the Jays and O’s for playing and we will see you next year. The Sox have dropped thanks to a less than stellar performance against the Pirates and Padres and you have to feel bad for the Rays. Third place in their division and the 3rd best record in the AL. Heck they would be leading either the Central or the West by at least 3 games if they played either place. Sadly, they probably won’t even win the wild card without the Yankees or Sox choking.

The Bedard Enigma

By Iron Chef Leftovers:

In today’s Seattle Times, Steve Kelley wrote about what the Mariners should do with Erik Bedard. He wrote this nugget:

Timing will be everything.

Bedard made his 15th start of the season Monday. In both 2008 and 2009, he broke down after 15 starts. Is he fixed, as healthy as he was when he made 33 starts for Baltimore in 2006? Or is he one nasty curveball away from grabbing his shoulder and walking off the mound and out of the season?

The irony of it all – Bedard was placed on the DL today albeit with a strained knee.

The Patrick Ianni

by A.J. Coltrane

The Sounders scored four goals last Thursday. This was a good thing for me, as 3 or more goals means everybody gets a free haircut, and I was due.

When my haircut was about done a woman came into the shop with two kids, about ages 8 and 9.

The 9 year-old asked her if could have his hair cut “Like Patrick Ianni on the posters!”

It’s another example of the revolution not being televised.