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Sunday, March 14, 2010

The Echo Of Justin Speier: Royals 12, Angels 3

Unlike years past, I didn't order my copy of Baseball Prospectus from Amazon, but kept dawdling until we actually arrived in Phoenix. I've only just now started reading it, but already I've got some criticisms of it and its sister website: Getting back to yesterday's game — and the reason for my hauling the 2010 annual into this discusssion — the anonymous author of the Angels' section reminded us of just how awful the 2009 Angels' bullpen was, enduring the injury and temporary ineffectiveness of Darren Oliver, a fall to earth (and then some) from Jose Arredondo, another injury year to the now-no-longer-quite-so-resilient Scot Shields, the increasingly corroded Brian Fuentes, and the plain crappiness of a superannuated Justin Speier.

What's obvious is that the Angels need pitching depth, now more than ever. Unfortunately, if yesterday's performance is any indication, the guys on the B team behind the likely 25-man-roster are not ready for the Show, and may never be. Rafael Rodriguez and Ryan Brasier both got lit up by the Royals' B+ squad, Rodriguez in particular giving up a couple longballs that were no doubters to right center. The recent model Angels have managed to win with depth, and for the first time since 2002, they don't appear to have it.

MLB box

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Comments:
You're quite correct about the stat-freak geeks.

Far better to base projections on one spring training game, or perhaps reading chicken entrails.
 
Rafael Rodriguez claims to be 24, has been in the Angels' system since 2002, and looks to me like a quad-A type judging by his relatively pedestrian 7-8ish K/9 rates in the high minors. His walk rate appears to vary quite a bit as well. His main saving grace is age, and while I'm not especially down on him, neither am I too high on him, either, since he stopped striking out so many guys in his first full season at AAA (a mere 6.1 K/9 last year). That reads like a player with flat stuff and iffy control; major league batters will read him quickly and do, well, what they did to him last year.
 
Un-foiling comes from this, I imagine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOIL_method
 
But wouldn't that have been, un-FOILing?
 
Also, there is a perfectly good and far more universally understood word for this procedure if this is what they meant: "factoring".
 
Agreed, but you already mentioned the obtuse prose.
 
I know, it was meant as an example thereof. And it appears throughout the series.
 
I commented on the original article about their usage of "un-foiling." What they actually want is "expanding," since they're multiplying out the terms, not factoring a polynomial into terms.

As for the bylines, BP has stated multiple times that they don't identify authors because multiple writers and editors contribute to each team section.
 
I'm not sure I buy that. I wonder that the real reason is so they can claim the product is a work-for-hire piece for copyright royalty purposes.
 

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