MLB Power Rankings: The Top 5 Candidates for NL Cy Young in 2011

The 2011 MLB season is more than halfway over, and while we still haven’t quite reached the All-Star Game, it’s definitely not too early to start looking ahead to the postseason hardware.

Last week, I took a look at the five best choices for AL Cy Young to date. Today, we turn our attention to the top pitchers in the National League.

The Cy Young is always one of the most contentious end-of-season awards because of the intense controversy surrounding pitching statistics.

Many voters are still stuck on the idea that pitchers’ wins and losses are accurate reflections of talent instead of measuring the strength of his team’s bullpen and the opponent’s lineup and that luck in ERA always evens out over the course of a full season. Meanwhile, there are plenty of sabermetrics fans who quote esoteric acronyms without fully understanding what they mean.

Here’s how my NL Cy Young ballot would look if the season ended today.

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MLB Power Rankings: B/R Columnists Rank All 30 Teams for the 2011 Season

Most baseball predictions are relatively straightforward. Sure, you can argue over whether Joey Votto will be better than Albert Pujols or who will win the AL East, but as long as the focus is on just one outcome, it’s at least easy to understand the train of thought.

That’s why, when one person decides to power rank all 30 MLB teams, things inevitably go awry.

There’s a general consensus about how the top and the bottom should look, but in between the two extremes, things can get pretty screwy. One man’s top-three team is in another man’s bottom five.

Luckily, Bleacher Report’s Featured Columnists have found a solution. Twenty-six of the site’s most knowledgeable writers, representing 18 teams, all wrote in with their lists, which we combined into this—our composite power rankings, in which the group consensus outweighs our individual biases.

For each team, you can see our average ranking, as well as the extreme highs and lows they reached on our ballots. The numbers are accompanied by commentary from 18 different writers, so you can read a whole range of different perspectives on how the 2011 season will shake out.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this survey—now let’s see how we do!

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2011 MLB Preview: Are Philadelphia Phillies a Playoff Team Without Chase Utley?

For the last few years, the Philadelphia Phillies have made their name as an offense-heavy team that occasionally pitched well.

That’s not to say they had no good pitching—they just didn’t have very much of it. Cole Hamels carried the team in both 2007 and 2008, and Cliff Lee was lights-out down the stretch in 2009, but beyond that, Philadelphia’s rotation didn’t scare anyone.

Even in 2010, manager Charlie Manuel sent Roy Halladay to the mound every fifth day (not “every fifth game”) because he didn’t trust anyone else to take the ball.

But by the end of last season, something had changed. The Phillies were the near-unanimous favorites to win the National League pennant not for their bats, but for their arms.

While assertions that the Phillies’ tremendous trio would be unbeatable in a playoff series were quickly proven false, this was a clear shift in the composition of their roster.

Philadelphia still had the offensive prowess to win in a slugfest, but opposing teams were more worried about scoring enough runs than allowing too many.

Now with Lee back in the fold, Philadelphia’s 2011 rotation is undoubtedly the best in the game, and may end up among the greatest of all-time. In the minds of baseball’s talking heads, the Phillies have already wrapped up the NL pennant.

But it’s too soon to crown them the champions. The Phillies have a problem that could end up costing them a playoff berth: the lineup.

The Phillies managed just 772 runs in 2010, down from 820 in 2009 and 890 in 2007. Part of that can be blamed on the league-wide drop in offense last season, but the team’s 99 wRC+ shows Philadelphia’s bats to have been slightly below average.

Surprised? Check the stat sheets. Jimmy Rollins battled injuries and continued his descent into mediocrity, tying or setting career lows in nearly every offensive category as his OPS dropped to .694.

Thirty-eight-year-old Raul Ibanez slumped through his worst offensive season in a decade, finishing with an OPS below .800 for the first time since 2005 and missing the 20-homer mark he had cleared the previous five years.

Even Shane Victorino’s game took a turn for the worse; he hit just .259 and posted the worst full-season OPS (.756) of his career.

Even the mighty Ryan Howard looks like he may be past his prime. After averaging 50 homers and 143 RBI from 2006-09 (never dropping below 45 and 136, respectively), he managed just 31 homers and plated only 108 runs last season. His .859 OPS was the worst he’s ever posted.

Throw in his abysmal defense and his premium offensive position, and he finished the 2010 campaign with 2.0 WAR. That’s right, folks—Ryan Howard was a league-average player.

The outlook is even worse for 2011. The Phillies already lost their second-best position player, Jayson Werth, to free agency, and his replacement, young right fielder Domonic Brown, is out for at least a month with a broken wrist.

But now Philadelphia faces an even bigger problem. Face-of-the-franchise Chase Utley’s knee problems are turning out to be worse than we’d thought.

They are understandably hesitant to let Utley undergo surgery for his tendinitis, but with the non-surgical treatments failing this far, things don’t look good for the five-time All-Star.

Utley is almost assuredly going to miss Opening Day, and while the front office doesn’t expect him to miss the whole season, there is no timetable for his return. If he ends up needing surgery, it could take him months to recover fully.

The salient question is: Are they still the favorites without their keystone man? Thanks to some sabermetric projection systems, we can get a good idea of the answer.

The easiest system to use for measuring players’ projected impacts on their teams is FanGraphs.com’s FAN Projections.

Here, the Phillies hold a five-game lead in the NL East over the second-place Florida Marlins; a six-win drop would put them in a four-way tie for the Wild Card.

The fans project 7.9 WAR per 162 games for Utley and -0.2 WAR/162 for his chief replacement last year, Wilson Valdez. In other words, for every 20 games Utley misses, the Phillies lose a win.

By that standard, if Utley misses a month or two, the Phillies are still the favorites in the NL East, but it’ll be closer than they’d like.

If he’s back at 100-percent capacity after the All-Star break, the Phillies will be in the thick of it, but a playoff berth is far from guaranteed.

And if he misses the whole season or comes back before he’s fully recovered and plays poorly, the Phillies will be lucky to win a Wild Card spot.

What of the more advanced projection systems? CAIRO’s latest projections have the Phillies 6.5 games ahead of the second-place Braves, while PECOTA has them ahead by four.

Using a 5-4-3 weighting system for the last three years, we get a projection of 7.9 WAR/162 games for Utley; making the generous assumption that whoever replaces him will be worth 1.0 WAR/162, the Phillies lose a little more than a win each month Utley is out.

By CAIRO’s standards, the Phillies still win the division as long Utley comes back by September, Meanwhile, PECOTA says the Phillies will fall to second unless he’s back by the trade deadline.

And that’s assuming the rotation stays healthy, Rollins and Howard don’t slip any further and Utley is feeling comfortable upon his return—far from a given with this kind of problem.

There’s no way to know how Philadelphia will fare in 2011 until we know more about how serious Utley’s injury is, how it can be fixed and how long he’ll be out.

Barring a complete disaster elsewhere on the roster, the Phillies should be serious contenders, but in spite of their amazing starting pitching, a less threatening offense and the loss of their best player mean they are far from clear favorites for the pennant.

 

For more of Lewie’s work, visit WahooBlues.com. Follow him on Twitter @LewsOnFirst or @WahooBlues.

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2010 NL Cy Young: Philadelphia Phillies’ Ace Roy Halladay Is B/R’s Choice

Today, the Baseball Writers Association of America will unveil its choice for the 2010 National League Cy Young Award, making this the first time in the more than three weeks since Bleacher Report’s featured columnists began to release the results of our end-of-season awards poll that Major League Baseball has had the decency to coordinate their announcement with ours.

Yesterday, we did the AL Cy Young, they did the Rookies of the Year. Last week, they announced the Silver Sluggers and Gold Gloves, a full fortnight after we did. And while we’ll be all done by Thursday, they’re going to drag their results out until just before Thanksgiving.

But I digress—here are the results of B/R’s NL Cy Young vote.

As always, the top five vote-getters are featured here, with commentary from the writers who chose them. The full list of results is at the end.

So read on, see how we did, and be sure to tell us what we got wrong!

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MLB’s Five Biggest Winners of the Trade Deadline

Every team had a different goal in mind as the calendar advanced to July 31.

Some teams approached the trade deadline hoping to make a big splash and shake up a playoff race.

Several contenders sought to add specific role players, while teams who had given up hope for the season tried to pawn off expensive veterans in exchange for prospects and salary relief.

Then there are the clubs who are content to stand pat, but they’re boring.

It’s way too early to definitively judge any given deal; we won’t know what impact an acquired player will have on the 2010 season until a new champion is crowned, and it may be more than five years before a traded prospect makes his former team regret sending him away.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t speculate.

In this slideshow are the five teams who did the best job of meeting their various goals in the run-up to the deadline. They are the buyers who helped their playoff chances without risking the farm and the sellers who have raised their hopes for the future, or somewhere in between—clubs who successfully identified and exploited inefficiencies in the trade market.

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The Worst Ballparks, Mascots, Logos, Uniforms and Team Names in Baseball

A “real fan” will tell you that when he watches a baseball game, all he notices is the ball. He doesn’t notice the architecture of the surrounding stadium, or the design on the players’ uniforms, or the guy in the colorful costume dancing on the dugout and throwing T-shirts to kids in the stands.

But, while these ultra-serious spectators might not have time to acknowledge an artful logo or a big scoreboard, you can bet they notice when something like that isn’t to their liking.

Yesterday, I released the first half of this week’s Bleacher Report Featured Columnist Poll results—the best stadiums, mascots, logos, uniforms, and team names in baseball.

But today is the fun part—our picks for the worst of these ballpark distractions.

In addition to the full vote totals, each slide includes three quick sound bites from the writers explaining the reasons behind their picks.

Thanks to everyone who participated!

Note: I sent this survey only to the Featured Columnists who have been active in previous polls. If you are a new FC or you have changed your mind about wanting to participate, send me a message and I’ll be sure to keep you in the loop for next time!

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MLB Trade Rumors: Rays Dealing Carl Crawford, Phillies Trading Jayson Werth?

Baseball’s hot stove is heating up. With two weeks left until the trade deadline and Cliff Lee already dealt, the two big names left on the rumor circuit are Carl Crawford and Jayson Werth.

The two have much in common: Both are outfielders who are among the best players on their respective teams. They both play for clubs that are fully in the thick of playoff contention—Crawford’s Rays are three games up in the AL Wild Card, while Werth’s Phillies sit just 1.5 games behind the Rockies and Dodgers in the NL.

But, perhaps more importantly, both stars are going to be free agents come winter, and both figure to price themselves far out of their current teams’ budgets when they hit the open market.

That’s why they’d be traded: GMs Andrew Friedman and Ruben Amaro Jr. might decide that the returns they could get for Crawford and Werth, respectively, would be worth more than a pair of compensation picks and two more months of their production (presumably, at least—there’s no official word on how seriously the teams are considering these deals, if at all).

Of course, such deals would be monumentally stupid for both the Rays and the Phillies—they’re not rebuilding teams playing for 2013, they’re contenders chugging towards October.

When teams send their big stars away for prospects, it’s usually because the production they provide is basically meaningless for a hopeless team. The Phillies and Rays, however, are in the midst of tight pennant races—is there any other time when having stars around could possibly be more important?

But, while both deals would be mistakes, the Phillies trading Werth would be exponentially more foolish than the Rays parting ways with Crawford for one simple reason: the Phils will have a much harder time finding a replacement.

The Rays’ roster is built around versatility. B.J. Upton and Ben Zobrist can man two of the three spots in the Tropicana big grass with ease. Matt Joyce would get first crack at filling the left field hole, and if he couldn’t cut it, chances are Sean Rodriguez or Gabe Kabler could.

Of course, there’s also über-prospect Desmond Jennings. The No. 6 pick on Baseball America’s preseason top prospects list fought off an early injury and is hitting .297 with 21 steals in 64 games at Triple-A Durham. Rays fans have been anxiously awaiting his call-up for months, and there seems to be little doubt that he’s ready to take the majors by storm.

But if the team decides none of those viable options are good enough, it wouldn’t be too hard to get a decent replacement via trade. At his current rate of production, Crawford is on pace to provide a full four additional wins to whatever team he plays for from now until the end of the season. To put that in perspective, consider that 18 of MLB’s 30 teams are within four games of a playoff spot.

The point is this: Crawford would command an enormous return in any deal. A ton of talent would change hands, and the Rays would certainly be able to demand a respectable, big-league-ready outfielder in addition to the expected plethora of promising prospects.

The Phillies’ depth chart is substantially more shallow. If Werth is shipped out of town, the only currently available replacements would be Ben Francisco (.659 OPS) and Ross Gload (.668).

There’s always Domonic Brown, the top prospect left in a depleted Phillies farm system. He’s mashed MiLB pitching in 2010, hitting .326/.391/.608 with 19 homers and 59 RBI in 80 games.

The problem? He’s played just 15 games above Double-A. His bat might be Major League-ready—there’s only one way to find out—but it seems like an awfully big risk for a team looking to make up ground in a close race.

The Phillies could trade for a replacement, but it wouldn’t be as easy as it would be for the Rays, because Amaro wouldn’t be able to get nearly as much in return for Werth as Friedman would for Crawford.

On May 11, Werth was on top of the world, hitting .348 with seven homers, 26 RBI, and a scintillating 1.112 OPS in just 32 games. Since then, he’s hit just .242 with only six homers, 23 RBI, and a meager .738 OPS in 52 contests. In his last 15 starts, he hit .214 with no homers, just two RBI, and a nauseating .547 OPS.

Crawford’s WAR to date is 4.8, best of any outfielder; Werth’s is 2.2, which ranks 30th. How much can the Phillies expect a trade to net them if the other 29 teams could be expected to have someone better?

A contending team selling low on one of its star players when there’s no obvious candidate to replace him? Unless there’s some strange set of circumstances that we fans can’t conceive of, any professional general manager that would even consider pulling the trigger on such a deal deserves to be fired immediately.

Given that Crawford is in the midst of a career year and there are a number of possible in-house replacements, you might consider the Phillies’ situation and decide that the Rays trading Crawford sounds reasonable by comparison, and it does. But that doesn’t make it the right thing to do.

It is imperative to remember that the Rays are a contending team. Sure, they’d be selling high on Crawford. But if his trade value is at its peak, doesn’t that also mean he matters to the Rays? Keep in mind that the Rays are rolling towards October, and would probably be among the teams trying to trade for Crawford were he playing for, say, the Indians.

That’s like dumping all your shares of a company right before an all-expense-paid stockholders’ retreat. If you wait to release your holdings, you might not earn quite as big of a profit, but doesn’t a free vacation outweigh the loss of a few bucks?

A year from now, Crawford and Werth will be suiting up in other teams’ uniforms and cashing exorbitant checks from fat-pocketed owners. But with dreams of the World Series trophy floating through both clubhouses, there’s no reason for either player to book an early ticket out of town.

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Echoes of ’03: Why Did Charlie Manuel Listen to Pedro Martinez?

 

Top of the eighth, Yankees lead 3-1. Jimmy Rollins at first, Shane Victorino at second, and one out. The legendary Mariano Rivera toes the rubber, then delivers the payoff pitch to Chase Utley.

In a move so bad that even the Fox broadcasters lampooned it, Charlie Manuel did not send the runners on the pitch. The Yankees turned an easy, inning-ending double play, and Ryan Howard was left hanging in the on-deck circle.

But that wasn’t the stupidest decision Manuel made last night.

When the commentators welcomed us back from the commercial break in the bottom of the seventh, they reported that Manuel had asked Pedro whether or not he wanted to stay in the game. Of course, Pedro had said yes.

My jaw dropped as the announcers nonchalantly changed the subject. Had I misheard? Or did they not understand the impact of what they had said?

Sure, it’s nice to let the pitcher have a say in when his night ends if he’s throwing well. But not in such an important game. Not in such a close game. Not with a pitcher who becomes dramatically worse after his 100th pitch. Not when you have a bullpen full of relievers who haven’t worked in more than a week.

And not when another manager made the exact mistake six years ago.

Doesn’t anyone remember that?

In case anyone reading this has had the good fortune to forget Game Seven of the 2003 ALCS, then-Red Sox manager Grady Little ignored all logic and asked Pedro if he wanted to stay in the game in the eighth inning. Three hits later, Boston’s three-run lead was reduced to two, and Little ran out to the mound. Pedro again declared that he should stay in the game, and Little acquiesced; by the time Pedro finally did leave, the score was tied. The Yankees went on to win in extra innings.

If you remember that game, I apologize for forcing you to relive the agony. But the story needs to be retold, because Charlie Manuel apparently hasn’t heard it.

I get that Pedro was pitching a good game. I understand that Manuel wants to leave his starters in the game as long as possible to decrease the chances of a bullpen implosion. And no one was more excited than I to see Pedro back on the mound in the Bronx. But you don’t win playoff games managing by emotion.

At least Manuel had the good sense to take Pedro out as the trouble was just starting, rather then let him pitch until the implosion was complete. The sole run the Yankees scored in the seventh didn’t change the outcome of the game (at least, without consulting chaos theory).

But how could he have known that? It wasn’t a blowout; it was a close game that (I assume) the Phillies still believed they could win. There’s a fine line between a nail-biter and an insurmountable lead, and against Mariano Rivera, the margin of error is pretty slim.

Perhaps Manuel had already made up his mind before consulting Pedro, though even without his personal history, I would question the decision to leave a tiring starter in a close game instead of going to the well-rested bullpen.

But it seems likely that the decision was largely influenced by Pedro’s personal desire to fight on.

There is no question that Pedro Martinez is one of the best pitchers in the history of baseball, but it’s also pretty clear that he does not know his own limits; his managers don’t seem to realize that. Every tragic hero’s downfall begins with hubris, and unfounded confidence in one’s abilities certainly falls under that category

In Watchmen, when one of the vigilantes asked his partner who they were protecting the people from, he simply replied, “from themselves.” The manager’s job is not to encourage his players’ desires to push themselves too far, but to control it.

Hindsight is 20/20, but even before the inning started it was hard not to question Manuel’s decision. No matter whose decision it was for Pedro to keep pitching, it was certainly bad managing.

One can only hope that, this winter, Martinez signs with a team whose manager remembers recent history and feels comfortable saying “no.” 

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Is a Good World Series Too Much to Ask?

Like many baseball fans, I spend the entire year waiting for playoff season.

To me, the stretch from July to November is a nonstop crescendo of euphoria. The flurry of rumors at the trade deadline gives way to the end-of-season dogfights for playoff spots, which in turn lead to four weeks of primetime match-ups between the best teams in the league.

Unfortunately, the baseball season doesn’t always end on a high note. After months of anticipation and excitement, the last few World Series have been incredibly anticlimactic.

We haven’t seen a World Series go more than five games since 2003. In eight of the last 11 years, you could count the number of World Series games on one hand.

During that span, there have been five four-game sweeps against just two seven-game dogfights.

Think back over the last decade. How many of the most memorable plays came in the World Series? Sure, the Angels’ Game Six rally in 2002 is certainly one for the history books, and it doesn’t get any better than the Diamondbacks’ comeback in Game Seven, 2001.

But, fair or not, Troy Glaus and Luis Gonzalez are not the first players most fans think of when describing a postseason legend.

Think Grady Little sticking with Pedro. Think Steve Bartman grabbing the ball and Alex S. Gonzalez missing it. Think Dave Roberts swiping second and David Ortiz swatting homers. Think of Jim Edmonds’ big fly in ‘04 and Albert Pujols’ in ’05.

Think Cleveland’s insectoid army descending on Joba Chamberlain. Think Evan Longoria’s wild throw as the Red Sox completed the biggest postseason comeback in 79 years.

None of those plays came in the World Series.

It’s incredible how a nerve-wracking set of first rounds can lead to a snoozefest of a Fall Classic. After an epic NLCS overshadowed by the Red Sox’ historic comeback, the Cardinals froze like deer in headlights in the 2004 World Series.

After the Astros got their revenge a year later, they faced the White Sox and also got swept.

The Rockies came into the 2007 Fall Classic with 21 wins in 22 games; they got steamrolled by Boston. And while they weren’t quite blown out, the Tampa Bay Rays’ Cinderella story last year ended with an abrupt turn for the worse in a series that will be remembered more for the abundance of mud than the skill of the players.

That’s not to say that blowouts can’t be fun to watch. But unless you’re a big fan of the team that’s making its opponents wonder how they even made it that far in the first place, you’ll probably finish the game feeling a little unsatisfied.

There’s been plenty of postseason excitement already. We’ve seen several extra-inning nail-biters, and you could almost fill a whole bullpen with all of the closers who have collapsed. But I don’t think much of what’s happened so far will be of interest to the next generation of fans.

The potential is certainly in place for this Fall Classic to be special. It’s been nine years and nearly two billion dollars since The Best Team Money Can Buy has won the championship, and expectations are high.

The power-hitting Phillies will feel right at home in the bandbox of Yankee Stadium, and the long ball is always a great way to add some excitement.

Former teammates Cliff Lee and CC Sabathia will have their reunion in perhaps the most important game of the season.  And of course, the media loves New York.

Please, baseball gods, grant us a good World Series. Keep the games close, the pitchers warm, and the excitement high. Make it a show we’ll want to watch, make it an experience we’ll want to remember.

Oh, and my answer is Phillies in six.

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