Antoinetti Takes ESPN to School
• Can you CC clearly now? Now that the Indians, incredibly, have reeled off nearly the same record since the CC Sabathia trade (30-20) as the Brewers (30-19), the most-asked question in baseball is: Where would the Indians be if they'd kept Sabathia instead of trading him?
So we posed that very question to their vice president for baseball operations, Chris Antonetti. And one of the first things he did was to head for the ESPN.com standings page. He then dialed up the date of that trade (July 7) and reported that our own site (via the geniuses at coolstandings.com) was projecting back then that the chances of the Indians making the playoffs was 0.7 percent. Apparently, they didn't think that was too good.
"I think it's human nature to go back and retroactively look at different decisions," Antonetti said. "But in life, you're left to make those decisions with the information you have at hand at the time. And the information we had at hand at the time was that our record wasn't good (37-51), and we had a number of key guys on the disabled list, and we just weren't getting enough performance from the vast majority of our players. So when we evaluated our chances of making the playoffs at the time, we just didn't think that was a very realistic possibility."
And it's tough to disagree. Even if Sabathia had gone 9-0 in Cleveland over these last eight weeks, remember, that doesn't mean the Indians would have picked up nine games in the standings. In fact, Anthony Reyes -- a pitcher they then turned around and traded for before the trading deadline -- has a 2.01 ERA as an Indian. We can't even be sure CC would have beaten that.
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More on Reyes:
Speaking of Reyes, we’re not sure how the Mets missed trading for him, since they now lead the league in Reyeses (Jose, Al and Argenis). But you might be shocked to learn that the Reyes they didn’t trade for — Anthony — has been the third-best deadline acquisition among all starting pitchers dealt before the deadline.
In fact, Reyes’ 2.01 ERA in August was the eighth-best in baseball, behind a group of guys it’s possible you’ve heard of: Sabathia (1.12), Francisco Liriano (1.23), Tim Lincecum (1.27), Brett Myers (1.65), Rich Harden (1.82), Cliff Lee (1.86) and Johan Santana (1.91).
Back in St. Louis, Reyes didn’t mesh with Cardinals pitching guru Dave Duncan’s two-seam sinker philosophy. But now that Reyes is back to riding his four-seam fastball up in the strike zone in Cleveland, he looks more like the prospect he was once purported to be as a Cardinal.
“He’s your classic four-seam pitcher,” said one scout. “He could command it a little better, probably. But he’s rounded into shape. He’s got that power-pitcher mentality. He has a good changeup. And I think he’ll get his breaking ball going eventually. I don’t know whether other people think they missed the boat on him. But I feel like we did.”
Travis Hafner is overrated. Clarity is underrated. David Dellucci is David Dellucci.
How did he take them to school by the way? I was pumped for some ownage and all I read was a GM saying we traded our soon to be free agent ace when we fell off in the standings. Not exactly earth shattering, no?
I’m happy about the Reyes acquisition. But I’d be happier if his fastball was averaging more than 90mph. 90mph doesn’t scream “successful power pitcher” to me.
by APV on Sep 4, 2008 7:18 PM EDT up reply actions
Hello APV,
I thought at one time Reyes regularly hit higher than 90 MPH – like 91-93, maybe 94. I don’t know why his velocity is down (maybe because Duncan insisted on having him throw more two-seamers, which could have affected the velocity on his four-seam fastball?)
I think by “successful power pitcher,” they’re talking more on how aggressive he is in going after them, much like guys with mid- to upper-90s fastballs go after hitters. My guess is that Reyes may be sort of “sneaky fast,” plus the fact that hitters have to respect his very good changeup enough where that 90 MPH fastball looks a little bit faster and is harder to hit than a 90-MPH fastball normally would be.
Of course, I’d like him to throw harder as well – if he doesn’t regain any velocity (I’m pretty sure he threw harder than 90 at one time), his commanding it well will be key to his having sustained success and looking more like the pitcher he was expected to become.
Just my 2 cents.
The "cream of the crop" doesn't always rise to the top.
According to PitchFX data, in Reyes’ last start (in which I remember them remarking how much harder he was throwing), he threw 70 fastballs at an average speed of 92 and peaked at 95.
Steel Nick
If the scouts saying that I’m guessing it’s based on projection because the peripherals are certainly ugly.
yeah, immediately thought of this from yesterday:
Will (St. Louis): Does sending a pitcher down for 2 starts (i.e. Marcum) really accomplish anything? Any thoughts on Anthony Reyes looking better in Cleveland?
SportsNation Keith Law: I don’t think it accomplished much. I haven’t seen Reyes, but that ERA looks awfully lucky.
You know Selig? Ombudsman.
Not exactly a brilliant observation. Just about any example of a 2.01 ERA is lucky outside the dead ball era, the question is how lucky, and how good can he be when the luck is neutral?
Just a small quibble here. ERAs of less than 2.00 occurred with some frequency after the DB ERA and all but disappeared after 1970. For example, the Indians team ERA in ‘68 was 2.66 when two guys with over 250 IP had ERAs less than 1.85 and a reliever with an ERA of 1.62. Pretty sure that Sam McDowell and Luis Tiant weren’t just lucky for that many innings.
Resident LGT beer kinda sewer
League average in 1968 was 2.98 (jumping to 3.62 in 1969), which leads to the real explanation, as you can precisely pinpoint the end of the sub-2.00 ERA era: December 3, 1968.
As well as being the day that the Rules Committee lowered the mound by 5 inches and restored the smaller, pre-1963 strike zone, that was also the day Brendan Fraser was born – and he played the pitching phenom Steve Nebraska in The Scout.
Coincidence, I think not.
"It's hard to win when you don't score." Cliff Lee, 9/28/05.
by Harry Doyle on Sep 5, 2008 11:40 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
Again, I ask: can I anti-rec something?
by JulioBernazard on Sep 5, 2008 10:37 PM EDT up reply actions
You’re right, it obviously wasn’t as unusual in the 60’s, and FredOx is right that we’re mainly talking about the lowering of the mound.
That said, here are those three pitchers’ respective BA-allowed-BIP for the 1968 season and careers:
Tiant — .218, .264
McDowell — .253, .275
Romo — .169, .264
Now, we can’t say that the pitchers deserve no credit for suppressing all those extra hits in that one particular season, but Tiant and Romo in particular look like they enjoyed quite a bit of luck. McDowell, though, looks to have enjoyed only a dash of luck, as his BABIP was almost as low in 1966 and even lower in 1971, and 1968 also featured one of his best K/BB rates. He also allowed only two sac-flys all season, which strikes me as pretty damned low.
by Jay on Sep 6, 2008 4:32 PM EDT up reply actions
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