Phillies Place Calls To A.J. Burnett & Derek Lowe

While contract negotiations continue between veteran pitcher Jamie Moyer and the Philadelphia Phillies, the Phillies have added an interesting twist to the situation.

Reportedly, Philadelphia has contacted the agents of Derek Lowe and A.J. Burnett.

Phillies analysts believe that the Phillies contacted Burnett  and Lowe to help speed up the process of working out a deal with Jamie Moyer.

However, other sources such as The Bleacher Report are reporting that Burnett has narrowed his list of potential teams down to six. Still on the list is Philadelphia!

Also, caught up in this bidding war are the Boston Red Sox who are continuing to pursue catcher Jason Varitek. The ‘Sox have been after Burnett also since the beginning of the off-season, but recently the Atlanta Braves seem to have the upper hand on Burnett.

How much will A.J. Burnett impact the decision surrounding the addition of Jason Varitek back to the Red Sox roster? Timing seems to be the key.

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

[poll id="3"]

The Red Sox May Offer Varitek Arbitration

The Red Sox are possibly still interested in bringing back All-Star catcher Jason Varitek. Varitek filed for free agency for the first time in 11 years at the end of the 2008 season.

According to MLBTradeRumors.com and other news sources, the Red Sox are expected to offer Jason Varitek arbitration.

In return, the ‘Sox would get two first round picks if the catcher was to sign with a different team. If the arbitration offer is accepted, Varitek would be wearing a Boston Red Sox jersey for at least one more season.

Scott Boras, Jason Varitek’s agent has expressed his concern with playing full-time. Varitek started 120 games for the Red Sox in 2008, his lowest number of starts recorded, except in 2006 when injuries played a role.

The Red Sox organization has not spoken a word to the Media or Varitek.

————————————————————————————————————————————————–

[poll id="2"]

Updated Friday, November 28, 2008 11:45 EST.

More Roger Clemens Malarky

According to various news sources including the TV Sports Daily and The Daily News, Brian McNamee, the personal trainer who accused Roger Clemens of using steroids and human growth hormones last year apparently submitted a DNA test to investigators back in August.

Cheek swabs were given to the FBI in an attempt to match DNA with the blood stained evidence McNamee turned over to investigators in January. The report does not clarify which set of cheeks were involved, but McNamee and his lawyers are confident that the submission will help his case.

Roger Clemens’ lawyer Rusty Hardin has declined any information about the FBI requesting for a swab as well. Hardin was also quick to say his client is always willing to cooperate with law enforcement and forensic investigators.

Both cheeks have turned and the Saga continues……

Tampa Bay Rays Raise Ticket Prices For 2009

The Rays were the team to beat all season long in 2008, winning 97 games total during the season, and advancing to the playoffs for the first time in their franchise history.

Now since the Rays crowning achievement this past season as AL Champions, the team has not only given fans a reason to celebrate, they have also given fans a higher price to pay at the ticket window.

Admission prices for Tropicana Field will rise up to 5 dollars for some seats according to the USA Today.

The Rays are not the first professional sports team from Tampa Bay to recently raise prices. The Bucs have also raised prices as much as 30 percent in a single season, six previous years in a row to be exact.

Despite the ticket increase, the Rays will continue to offer huge discounts (up to 35 percent) for those who purchase season ticket packages. Is that a deal or what?? It is great to be a Rays 2009 season ticket holder.

According to Tampa Bay Online, the reason for the increase is so the team can improve its financial standing.

Charges Dropped Against Koby Clemens

Charges against Roger Clemens’ son have been dropped three months after being involved in a so-called disturbance in a restaurant.  Also involved in the incident was Mark Ori, a minor league teammate of Kolby Clemens. Attorneys for both Ori and Clemens threw in the towel when they announced both parties would be willing to participate in community service activities.

Clemens and his culprit played for the Salem Avalanche, which is a Houston Astros affiliate. Charges against a third person involved also have been dropped.

Sabermetrics 101: VORP

For those of you who did not read my first post here on RBI Magazine, here is the textbook description of VORP thanks to Baseball Prospectus.com.

VORP stands for Value Over Replacement Player, which is broken down as the number of runs contributed beyond what a replacement-level player at the same position would contribute if given the same percentage of team plate appearances.

However, Wikipedia defines value over replacement player (or VORP) in a slightly different way.

In baseball, value over replacement player (or VORP) is a statistic invented by Keith Woolner that demonstrates how much a hitter contributes offensively or how much a pitcher contributes to his team in comparison to a fictitious “replacement player,” who is an average fielder at his position and a below average hitter.[1] [2] A replacement player performs at “replacement level,” which is the level of performance an average team can expect when trying to replace a player at minimal cost, also known as “freely available talent.”

Although VORP sounds funny, it can be a very useful tool for the Sabermetrician or the fantasy baseball player/owner. It can help you to decide if a player is just on a hot streak or if he’s the real deal. Compare his VORP to others at his position and make wiser decisions in your league. What VORP does not take into consideration is a player’s defensive ability. This is one of the flaws I see in this statistic.

Here’s what Wikipedia says about the usefulness of VORP.

VORP’s usefulness is in the fact that it measures contribution at the margin (as in marginal utility). Other statistics compare players to the league average, which is good for cross-era analysis (example: 90 runs created in 1915 are much better than 90 RC in 1996, because runs were more scarce in 1915). However, league-average comparisons break down when considering a player’s total, composite contribution to a team. Baseball is a zero-sum game; in other words, one team can only win if another loses. A team wins by scoring more runs than its opponent. It follows, then, that a contribution of any runs helps a team toward a win, no matter how small the contribution. However, the Major Leagues are highly competitive, and talent distribution in baseball does not resemble normal distribution’s traditional “bell curve”; rather, the majority of players fall within the category of “below-average” or worse. Therefore, the so-called “average player” does not have a value of zero, like in Pete Palmer’s Total Player Rating, but instead is a valued commodity. One alternative is to rank players using “counting stats” — simply their gross totals — but this is unacceptable as well, since it is likely that the contribution a marginal player makes, even if it does help a team win one game, is not enough to justify his presence in the Majors. This is where the concept of the replacement level enters the picture.

As far as fantasy value goes, I think that VORP is a good tool for evaluating offensive talent given the above matrixes, but for MLB in general, I’d prefer to see a statistic developed that combines VORP with one’s deffensive aptitude. What do you think?

Next time out we will discuss the Sabermetric stat by the name of Runs Created which was mentioned above.

Peter Schiller also writes monthly for Seamheads.com and almost daily at his personal baseball blog, Baseball Reflections.com. Please follow the hyperlinks to read his work at these two other sites.

Mike Mussina Announces His Retirement

Yankees fans knew it was coming and they knew the time had to be near. Today, on this 20th day of November the era of Mike Mussina pitching in Major League Baseball has come to an end.

According to Yankees.com, Mike Mussina has officially announced his retirement from the game of baseball.  Mussina 39, ended his 18-year career after becoming the first pitcher since Sandy Koufax to retire after winning 20 games in a previous season.

Mussina spent his professional career pitching for only two American League ball clubs, the Baltimore Orioles (1991-2000), and the New York Yankees (2001-2008).

While in Baltimore for his first ten seasons, Mussina played with baseball greats like Cal Ripken Jr., Jeff Conine, and pitcher Mike Timlin. In 2001, Mussina became a free agent and eventually signed a deal with the New York Yankees.

Mussina concluded the 2008 season with an impressive record of 20-9 and an overall ERA of 3.37. Mussina appeared in the post season 16 times but somehow could never win a World Series. He finishes his career with 270 total career wins and he is a seven-time Gold Glove Winner.

Mike hopes to spend his time with his family at his home in Pennsylvania.

A Few Interesting Facts About Mike Mussina

In 2000, he established the Mike Mussina Foundation that aims to benefit children and children’s charities.

Mike earned a degree in Economics from Stanford University in December of 1990. This was a four year program that he completed in 3.5 years.

He recorded 2,813 strike outs with a total of 3,562.2 innings pitched in his career.

He and his family live in Williamsport, PA, Home of the Little League World Series – One Hour North of RBI Magazine’s location.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————

[poll id="4"]

How To Fight Cancer One Baseball Card At A Time

I was recently contacted by The Bench in reference to helping out a great cause – Fighting cancer one card at a time! Many of us are familiar with family, friends, and neighbors who have been diagnosed or lost a courageous battle to cancer. In honor of these people RBI Magazine asks you to reach out in and donate a few baseball cards. This is a great way of combining the efforts to fight cancer using the game of baseball and the fans that love the sport.

As an online trading community ( www.thebenchtrading.com ) our goal is to collect the entire 6600+ base card 2008 Upper Deck Yankee Stadium Legacy set.  We will then auction the set on eBay and donate the proceeds to the “The V Foundation” (for cancer research).

Information about our benefiting charity:

www.jimmyv.org

How can I help?  I am glad you asked!  As we are collecting this to donate the proceeds to charity, we ask that any members who are interested in helping to donate any cards they pull to the cause.  As a site we hope to eventually be able to trade duplicate cards we receive for cards we need, however we will be unable to buy single cards form members.  The cards will be seeded 1 in every 4 packs of Upper Deck cards across all 8 UD brands this year.  Even if you personally do not open any UD product this year, you can still help.  As we all make trades with each other and across the internet, if you have a deal where your trade partner needs a little more in trade to make the deal even but they have nothing else of your wants, pick up one or two of these cards for The Bench!

I have already been in contact with Upper Deck, Beckett, Tuff Stuff, Major League Baseball, the New York Yankees, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and the V Foundation about cross promoting the project and hopefully gaining us some national exposure!  We also have a couple of card shops committed to donating any cards they pull as well!

Here is the MySpace page created for the project:
http://www.myspace.com/thebenchyankeestadiumset

Here is the link to the official project website.
http://www.thebenchtrading.com/thebench/yankeestadiumset.html

Again this is a huge 6600 card set and we need your help in completing it! If you have any questions or you would like to help beyond donating cards please contact me.  Lets show the world what baseball card collectors can do and help make a nice donation to a worthwhile charity.

Tim Danielson
taliasen@charter.net

Sabermetrics 101: An Introduction

Let start off with the Wikipedia definition of the term, Sabermetrics. Sabermetrics is the analysis of baseball through objective evidence, especially baseball statistics. The term is derived from the acronym SABR, which stands for the Society for American Baseball Research. It was coined by Bill James, who was among its first proponents and has long been its most prominent and public advocate.
In the next few posts that I do here in RBI Magazine, we will explore some traditional sabermetric tools of the trade. This methodology was made famous by Bill James, but it really didn’t get public notoriety until Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball hit bookstores. In his book, Lewis follows the change in methodology in evaluating talent in the Oakland A’s organization that was spearheaded by GM Billy Beane.

Beane changed his methodology in an attempt to find a creative way to compete with the big market teams such as the NY Yankees, Boston Red Sox, NY Mets, LA Dodgers and Angels (to name a few).

And it worked! The small market team from Oakland, CA became annual participants in October baseball by either beating out the Angels for the division title or via the Wild Card slot. This has worked for them until, as usual, the rest of baseball caught up with them, including the big market teams like Boston.

What does this mean for the average fan? You no longer have to rely only on offensive statistical categories such as batting average (BA), runs scored (R), runs batted in (RBI), home runs (HR), but now you have on base percentage (OBP), on base plus slugging (OPS), runs created (RC), value over replacement players (VORP) and a host of others.

These tools can make or break your fantasy team if you have the time to delve into it deeply enough. They are also to stat geek’s tools of the trade and the love of baseball economists everywhere.

If you love stats and don’t yet know much about Sabermetrics, you’re going to love this series and if love is too strong of a word for you, then we’ll say that you’re really going to enjoy the next few posts in this series.

If you’re a novice with Sabermetrics, feel free to ask me to cover a specific statistic and I’ll be happy to give it a go or point you in the right direction if it’s beyond the scope of this series. See you next time…

Peter also writes once a month for Seamheads.com and on a regular basis on his own site, Baseball Reflections.com.

Visit my Blog at:

http://www.baseballreflections.com