On his offensive dropoff: He broke his leg at the beginning of the season. Some players do come back from that injury. Even shortstops. On the other hand, the worst-case modern scenario for broken shortstop is probably Dale Sveum. Nobody could say that Sveum wasn’t ready for MLB competition. You could say that his injury wrecked him for it.

On his defensive dropoff: Nishioka was posted two seasons too late. Let me explain. Nishioka played 8 seasons for the Chiba Lotte Marines. The Marines’ home park, like most stadiums both indoor and outdoor in NPB, features artificial turf. I recall many Twins fans in the good old days of the Metrodome explaining that the Dome was special, because only Twins players had the experience of both playing inside and playing on turf. Chiba Marines Stadium isn’t indoors, but it’s definitely carpeted in Japan’s finest fake grass. In fact, of the six-team Pacific League in which the Marines play, four of the teams play in domes. All the teams in the PL play on turf. (Only the Hiroshima Carp and Hanshin Tigers of the Central League play on grass.) 2011 was obviously Nishioka’s first wide experience with grass fields since high school. There’s interleague competition in Japan, too, but it’s not enough to give a player a good experience with the real green stuff. He’s had to learn an entirely new way of fielding.

(Hint to all US teams looking for Japanese defensive players: Unless the player is coming from the Carp or Tigers, or if it’s Toronto or Tampa Bay looking for players, it probably shouldn’t be done.)

What he is good at, like a lot of other popular business-oriented nonfiction writers, is raising questions and thinking about the answers in nonstandard ways. (However, many someones of my Internet acquaintance mentioned that Bill James had already covered the issue of left-handed catchers in the Historical Baseball Abstract; the only thing added here is some documentation from George Lindsey’s 1960s research.) The problem is that his nonstandard answers are extremely nonstandard in the case of his formulas for player evaluation. From what I’ve seen online they’re great for starting arguments but not at all good for resolving them.

The best question asked in the book (but not resolved to my satisfaction:) How do pitching coaches affect pitchers? Is it measurable? He uses Leo Mazzone as his example. It’s a very interesting question but if economics can answer it, it will be as a study of systems. Pitching coaches don’t work in isolation.

The baseball economics book I’d love to see is a game theory book. (None of the intro game theory books I’ve found have been particularly readable….) I’d also like to see some studies of decision-making behavior. I hope that a more skilled author than Bradbury tackles them.

Jeff Samardzija will be in the Cubs bullpen if he makes the team. His minor league starts were apparently just to develop him further as a pitcher and weren’t his intended role.

Barry Enright is working on his changeup.

Yet another ST story about Loek van Mil…the Angels appear to be thinking a lot more highly of him than the Twins did, even with his original placement on the 40-man roster before the 2010 season.

Duke Snider’s arm injury is pretty much the ultimate story on why there shouldn’t be clowning during batting practice. Even though, as a fan, I enjoy it….

I don’t normally link to Deadspin, but these leaked AOL FanHouse emails give me a lot of respect for some of the guys who wrote at FanHouse. A policy not to gate off female bloggers into their own section…well, that’s exactly what I like to see. Maybe that’s also one of the reasons there are so many female contributors at SBNation sites…you get one woman posting, then you get more women, and then even more. (Although some of the blogs are still epically sexist. I’m sure we can name those for ourselves.)

Jason Isringhausen hasn’t faced major-league hitters since 2009, but for some reason he’s got a good chance of making the Mets bullpen. (Possibly because it is, after all, the Mets bullpen?)

Pitching profile of one of my favorites, Justin Masterson

Pascarelli followed Leyland during the 1992 season as he was managing the Pirates into what turned out to be their last NLCS appearance for now. He uses Leyland’s experience and anecdotes about a few other well-known managers of the time as a springboard to explain exactly what it is that managers do all day. It’s a valuable exploration of that for the time period in which it was written, but it’s also valuable as a record of why and how the Pirates began to go horribly wrong. The team chairman at the time, Douglas Danforth, decided to make 1992 the year of the salary dump, ignoring Leyland’s wishes and the comfort of the players. Danforth’s successor wasn’t any better. (No wonder John Smiley hated Minnesota; he must have felt horribly betrayed.)

Pascarelli’s treatment of Leyland is a bit different than Rosenbaum’s. The management style is the same but Leyland comes off as more of an ornery cuss in ’97. Perhaps the makeup of the teams as well as the different writers may explain that. Leyland’s Pirates were a family, which is not the vibe one gets off the rent-a-team Marlins for the most part.

Interesting bits to read for:

• Patrick Leyland’s 1st birthday, during the 1992 NLCS. (He was born during the 1991 NLCS.) This is the same kid who’s now a catcher in the Tigers’ minor league system. How time flies.
• Bob Walk’s nickname: Walky.
• Barry Bonds was a pain off the field before coming to the Giants. His performance and behavior on the field made up for it.
• Nobody went to Pirates games when they were winning, either.
• Apparently one couldn’t use the 4-letter curse beginning with F in a general-interest sports book in 1993. (All the other words were spelled out.) I don’t use it here due to workplace nanny filters, not my own reticence, btw.

One of the things I’ll definitely be starting here is a series of baseball book reviews. Look for a review of Peter Pascarelli’s The Toughest Job in Baseball over the next few days, followed by reviews of J.C. Bradbury’s The Baseball Economist and Hot Stove Economics. I’ll also be reviewing baseball fiction and baseball manga here too (I’ve got both translated volumes of Cross Game looking lonely and unwanted in my bedside bookrack.)

Jamie Moyer 1962-11-18
Tim Wakefield 1966-08-02
Omar Vizquel 1967-04-24
Trevor Hoffman 1967-10-13
Brad Ausmus 1969-04-14
Arthur Rhodes 1969-10-24
Ken Griffey 1969-11-21
Mariano Rivera 1969-11-29
Takashi Saito 1970-02-14
Craig Counsell 1970-08-21
Jim Thome 1970-08-27
Darren Oliver 1970-10-06
Jason Giambi 1971-01-08
Gregg Zaun 1971-04-14
Mike Redmond 1971-05-05
Brendan Donnelly 1971-07-04
Billy Wagner 1971-07-25
Jorge Posada 1971-08-17
Henry Blanco 1971-08-29
Ivan Rodriguez 1971-11-30
Jose Contreras 1971-12-06
Brian Moehler 1971-12-31
Melvin Mora 1972-02-07
Jason Varitek 1972-04-11
Chipper Jones 1972-04-24
Manny Ramirez 1972-05-30
Raul Ibanez 1972-06-02
Andy Pettitte 1972-06-15
Juan Castro 1972-06-20
LaTroy Hawkins 1972-12-21

Despite the Twins playing outdoors this year, I’m not changing the name of the blog either. I got seriously scorched on my trip to Detroit and I hate heat so I’ll be safely blogging from inside. My trips to Milwaukee are scheduled for May and September and the Miller Park roof will probably be closed.

No, really. (That log doesn’t include today’s scoreless inning.) If I hadn’t looked it up, I wouldn’t have believed it either.

The guys I had tagged for pumpkins based on 2007 were Peter Moylan and Hideki Okajima and my suspicions about the latter were quite founded. My suspicions about the former were also on the mark, as he was either going to fall to earth or get hurt due to overuse. Moylan’s not having a very good 2009, either, but that’s likely due to coming back too soon after injury.

Here’s my list of pumpkins for 2009:
Grant Balfour, Tampa Bay Rays;
Craig Breslow, Minnesota Twins;
Hong-Chih Kuo, Los Angeles Dodgers.

(I dismissed Cliff Lee and Ryan Dempster from the Pumpkin Report because they are essentially veteran players, and I also excluded Seth McClung because his performance was less Cinderella and more like, I don’t know, Hime-chan no Ribon–it only lasted for an hour and it wasn’t spectacular.)