Fun with Opening Day rosters

April has always been one of my favorite months, mostly because it means the end of winter and the beginning of baseball season. Opening Day is something of a personal holiday for me, and so I don't totally mind that we've now stretched it out to last a full three days.

As a Red Sox fan, this year has a bit of a different feel for me, as the Sox purged half their roster last August and have now fully embraced a youth movement for the first time in years. As I mentioned on Twitter on Monday, the Sox' Opening Day lineup this year was their youngest on average since 1998, when Pedro Martinez made his Boston debut, Nomar Garciaparra was a 24-year-old MVP-caliber shortstop, and Manny Ramirez was a young slugger for the defending AL champion Cleveland Indians. Meanwhile, Jackie Bradley Jr., now the team's starting left fielder, was at home eagerly awaiting his 8th birthday. So yeah, it was a long time ago.

At any rate, my little bit of sleuthing with respect to the Sox' lineup led me to check out some other teams' lineups, to see what kinds of trends I might uncover. While this type of stuff might fall under the category of "Things That Interest Me and Only Me", so be it. I'll share it here anyway, just in case you care.

This year's Red Sox, with an average age right around 28.5 years old (remember, this is of the Opening Day starting lineup, not the whole roster), clocks in as the 8th-youngest lineup out of the 30 major league teams. The five youngest Opening Day lineups belonged to the Royals (27.1 years), Astros (27.5), Mariners (27.6), Nationals (27.7), and Indians (28.0), while the five oldest lineups belonged to the Yankees (31.6 years), Phillies (31.2), Rangers (30.7), Blue Jays (30.4), and Tigers (30.3).

The banged-up Yankees blow pretty much everyone else out of the water in terms of age, thanks in large part to the oldest outfield in baseball—at 34.5 years old, only the Cubs (33.5) come anywhere close. While the Yankees are currently fielding a cobbled-together lineup of rookies and retreads, things wouldn't be much different for them even if they were perfectly healthy. Substituting Jeter, A-Rod, Teixeira, and Granderson for Nunez, Nix, Youkilis, and Wells actually increases the team's average age all the way up to 33.2 years old, a figure that would make them the oldest team in baseball by a margin of more than two years. No matter how you slice it, these guys are old.

All told, the average age of an Opening Day starter this year is 29 years, 39 days, yielding an average birthdate of February 23, 1984. The average birthdate for a Yankee, meanwhile, would be September 14, 1981, and for a Royal, March 11, 1986. In other words, I'd be older than average in any one of these lineups, and that's just a little bit depressing.

By position, Designated Hitters (like these guys), Right Fielders (like these guys), and First Basemen (like these guys) are the oldest on average, whereas Center Fielders (like these guys) and Shortstops (like these guys) are the youngest. There are 41 Opening Day starters who were born in the 1970s, 9 born in the 1990s, and about the same number who are younger than 25 (35 of them) as those who are 35 or older (37 of them). There were no Opening Day starters this year who were 40 or older, though Todd Helton and Ichiro came pretty darn close.

Age not doing it for you? You want to know about these guys' names? Fine, I can do that, too. As far as last names, we had 4 Cabreras, 3 Gonzalezes, and 15 other surnames shared by 2 players (also a Barmes and a Barnes, a Beltran and a Beltre, a Brantley and a Brantly, a Braun and a Brown, and a Gomes and a Gomez).

There were 10 guys named Chris, 7 guys named Justin, 7 Matts and a Matthew, 6 guys named Carlos and one named Carl. We had 5 Michaels, 2 Miguels, and 4 Mikes; 5 Joses and 5 Joshes; 5 Jasons and 2 Jaysons; 5 Brandons and a Brendan. We had 4 AJs, a BJ, a CC, a JJ, a JP, and a guy named RA. And finally, in my personal favorite, there were 3 Johns, 2 Jons, a Juan, a Jonathan, a Jonathon, a Johnny, a Jonny, and a Jhonny. Just spell it however you want, guys, it doesn't make it any more unique.

We also had 7 names that showed up as both a first name and a last name—those would be Desmond, Francisco, Gordon, Jay, Martin, Nelson, and Ryan. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending on your perspective), none of those gentlemen owned the unique distinction of having the same first and last name. I'm holding out hope for a Desmond Desmond somewhere in the near future, and I'm sure there's somebody out there who will oblige.

Do names and ages have anything at all to do with the overall success of a team? Who knows? The favorites out in Vegas this year include one of the youngest teams (Nationals) and some of the oldest teams (Tigers, Blue Jays), with a lot of muddled confusion in between. Let's just hold this one for later, and revisit it all in October. Sound good?

Song of the Week(end)... a Tim Wakefield tribute

Today was a sad day for Red Sox fans (no, not sadder than September 28th... or October 12th... or November 30th... but sad nonetheless), with the announcement by the team that veteran knuckleballer Tim Wakefield is hanging up his spikes.

I've been a huge fan of Wakefield's since before he was even in Boston (for reasons unknown to me, I was a big Pirates fan back in 1992, when he burst on the scene as a rookie and pitched the team to two complete-game victories over the Braves in the NLCS--a series the Pirates would ultimately lose), and he remains one of my all-time favorites, alongside Trot Nixon and Jason Varitek. After enjoying a career renaissance in Boston with an out-of-nowhere 14-1 start to the 1995 season, Wake deservedly became a Red Sox fan favorite for the better part of the next two decades. For reasons I'll never fully understand, just about every Sox game I attended for 10 years was pitched by Wake, and I was never disappointed to see his number come up (even though Pedro games were an experience like no other).

Wake was occasionally spectacular, always reliable, and a consummate team player in an age where such a thing has become increasingly rare. My heart broke for him when he allowed the gut-punch home run to Aaron Boone to end the 2003 ALCS (it never should have come to that in the first place), and I was then incredibly happy for him when he earned the start in Game 1 of the next year's World Series. The Sox will be a little less fun without Wake's goofy knuckleball around, and I salute the man for a highly enjoyable career.

So, in honor of Wake, this week's Song of the Week(end) is Tim McGraw's "How Bad Do You Want It?", Wake's entrance music from last year. This may be the only time you'll see a country song here on the blog, but this one's for a good cause. I'll miss you, Wake. Enjoy retirement.

A trip down Memory Lane

I had a brief moment of fun this morning when I was alerted to the fact that John Beck is poised to become the Washington Redskins' 13th starting quarterback since the 2000 season. Oh, what a good laugh I had at that one.

"Ha! Stupid Redskins," I laughed while glancing over at my Patriots Super Bowl Champions mug. "The Patriots have only used 3 quarterbacks since 2000! Tom Brady has started 149 games in that time, more than the top 6 Redskins quarterbacks (Jason Campbell, Mark Brunell, Patrick Ramsey, Tony Banks, Donovan McNabb, Brad Johnson) combined! I've seen college teams that use fewer starting quarterbacks! Who the hell is Tony Banks!?!?"

Yup, it was a fun time. But then, suddenly, I was interrupted by a strange, nagging feeling. It almost felt as if... this Redskins futility... was oddly familiar. Then I realized that, for all the good luck that my Patriots have had in the Brady/Bledsoe era, and for all of the titles that my Boston teams have won in recent years... good God, the Red Sox have trotted out some seriously awful starting pitchers.

Yeah, I took a look back... and it turns out that, since 2000, the Red Sox have used... HOLY CRAP!! 66 different starting pitchers!!! That's not a pitching rotation, that's a pitching conveyor belt! Only three times since 2000 have the Red Sox used fewer than 10 starting pitchers in a season (not coincidentally, in two of those years--2004 and 2007--they won the World Series; in the third, 2010, their entire lineup got hurt and they missed the playoffs entirely), peaking at a ridiculous 14 in 2006. 

Yup. Redskins fans, I sympathize with you. My football team may not know the agony of awful starting quarterbacks (well... we used to), but my baseball team certainly feels your pain. I think in some of those years we would've been better off with Mark Brunell or Jeff George toeing the rubber than, say, Kason Gabbard or Darren Oliver.

Now, if you don't care about the Red Sox, or this sort of stuff doesn't amuse you, move along... I'll have more bank-related rants later to keep everyone happy. But for the rest of you, come join me on this trip down Memory Lane--brought to you by... oh, let's say Rolando Arrojo.

Since 66 pitchers is way too many for me to wrap my head around, it's clear that some categorization is necessary. My buckets here are arbitrary, meaningless, and amusing. That's the point. Come on, let's have some fun.

The Studs (564 total starts)

Pedro Martinez (139), Curt Schilling (98), Josh Beckett (173), Jon Lester (154)

These guys are aces, and they're durable. They're a big part of the reason the Red Sox have won two World Series in the last decade (Lester less so, but bear with me), and they've combined to start 29% of the Red Sox' games in the last dozen years. Sure, Beckett and Lester might have been crushing beers in the dugout this year, but whatever. At least they get guys out.

Tim Wakefield (292 total starts)

Yeah, I gave him his own category. So sue me. He's been with the team for the entire dozen years, and he's started games in every one of them. He alone has started 15% of Red Sox games this century, and that's just ridiculous. We won't see many like him ever again.

The Complementary Pieces (286 total starts)

Derek Lowe (101), Clay Buchholz (76), Bronson Arroyo (61), Matt Clement (44), Alfredo Aceves (4)

These are your middle-of-the-rotation guys--they're not gonna single-handedly win you any titles, but they are capable of being important pieces on some title-winning teams (and Lowe and Arroyo certainly were). You need some of these guys. Just not a rotation full of them.

The Johns (133 total starts)

John Lackey (61), John Burkett (59), John Smoltz (8), Jonathan Papelbon (3), John Halama (1), John Wasdin (1)

Their names are all John (or Jonathan--he didn't really fit anywhere else... whatever). They all pitched for the Red Sox. Most of them sucked.

The Asians (179 total starts)

Daisuke Matsuzaka (105), Hideo Nomo (33), Tomo Ohka (23), Byung-Hyun Kim (8), Sun-Woo Kim (4), Junichi Tazawa (4), Bruce Chen (2)

Yeah, that's right. I lumped them all together. Some of them were better than others, but let's be honest--we basically consider them all to be the same guy. Except maybe Matsuzaka. He's... unique.

The Journeymen (255 total starts)

Frank Castillo (49), Rolando Arrojo (30), Julian Tavarez (29), Ramon Martinez (27), David Cone (25), Brad Penny (24), Wade Miller (16), Paul Byrd (14), Kyle Snyder (10), Jeff Suppan (10), Bartolo Colon (7), Jason Johnson (6), Ramiro Mendoza (5), Bret Saberhagen (3)

Most of these guys pitched in the majors for a long time. Some of them still do. We don't really know why. They didn't make much of an impact in Boston, though some of them (like Saberhagen, Cone, and Colon) certainly made marks elsewhere, before they got old and terrible. I forgot that half of these guys ever pitched for the Red Sox.

The Lefties (163 total starts)

David Wells (38), Casey Fossum (33), Jeff Fassero (23), Pete Schourek (21), Andrew Miller (12), Kason Gabbard (11), Darren Oliver (9), Erik Bedard (8), Lenny DiNardo (7), Abe Alvarez (1)

Seriously, these guys all basically suck, and yet they combined to account for a full season's worth of starts. The only one of them who had even a modicum of talent weighed a million pounds and was basically an affront to athletes everywhere. Every one of them is the reason why I'm tying my first-born son's right arm behind his back and forcing him to throw lefty. If you're left-handed, you'll last way too long in the majors on way too little talent.

The "Prospects" (59 total starts)

Justin Masterson (15), Brian Rose (12), Paxton Crawford (11), David Pauley (5), Kyle Weiland (5), Felix Doubront (3), Geremi Gonzalez (3), Devern Hansack (3), Michael Bowden (2)

To my recollection, all of these guys were considered "top prospects" at one time or another. Whoops. I'll apologize to Doubront, Weiland, and Bowden if they turn out to be something useful--until then, they stay here.

Who? What? (12 total starts)

Kevin Jarvis (3), Pedro Astacio (1), Scott Atchison (1), Hector Carrasco (1), Josh Hancock (1), Dustin Hermanson (1), Steve Ontiveros (1), Hipolito Pichardo (1), Ryan Rupe (1), Charlie Zink (1)

I seriously don't know who most of these guys are, or why they started games for the Red Sox. Okay, fine, I know most of them but banished any memory of them to the darkest recesses of my mind. Except for Kevin Jarvis. I very seriously have no idea who he is. I still think Baseball Reference might be playing a joke on me.

Hey, that's it... that's all of them. Here's a pie chart.

Wasn't that fun? Now, please, whoever is GM of the Sox next year... please pay someone to get rid of John Lackey. I can't take this much longer.

Quote of the Week

Alright, reverse jinx time. You may all be aware that my Red Sox are currently intent on finishing the season in the same devastatingly pathetic way that they began it, coming uncomfortably close to giving away what seemed to be an assured berth in October's playoffs. I'm trying not to think about it, and so far Tom Brady's helping.

So since I don't know what else to do, I'll just try the reverse jinx here. Plus, it's a great Yogi Berra-esque line anyway, and I think it's a useful one to refer back to later.

This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK 

“There’s nobody to blame but everybody.”
                                - Red Sox DH David Ortiz

Well said, Papi. Now please, win some games.  

(h/t Freakonomics)

Quote of the Week

Alright, so this week's choice is admittedly weak and incredibly biased. But I can't help it. With the MLB Playoffs scheduled to start tomorrow, ESPN will air an appropriate installment of its 30 for 30 series tonight, "Four Days in October".

The documentary is, of course, a chronicle of the Red Sox' historic ALCS comeback against the Yankees back in 2004. I'm pumped. I have to be. It's the only Sox-related thing I have to look forward to this October. So with that said...

This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Don't let us win tonight." -Red Sox 1B Kevin Millar; October 17, 2004



Shameless promotion aside, if you're at all a sports fan, this should be awesome to watch. I'm generally an outspoken critic of ESPN, but the 30 for 30 series is one of the best things they've done in a long time. The pieces are well-conceived and well-produced, and I'm incredibly excited for tonight. Go Sox (or, for the next couple of weeks, Go Twins)...

A.J. Green and the flawed concept of "amateurism"

With college football now underway and the NFL season kicking off tonight, I couldn't be more excited (especially since football takes my mind off the Red Sox, who I hear are still playing baseball games...good to know). But then along came the A.J. Green story, and (once again) a renewal of the age-old debate over amateurism in collegiate athletics.

This issue is far from new (as the legendary Brian Bosworth demonstrates so well in the below picture), and the Green story sheds no real new light on it. But as revenues in collegiate athletics continue to rise, it simply seems like incidents like this are happening more frequently--and will continue to do so. The clash between the NCAA and its athletes may be inching ever closer to an inevitable boiling point.

Green, for those who don't know or didn't feel like clicking on the above link, is a junior wide receiver at the University of Georgia. Yesterday, following a lengthy investigation, he was suspended 3 games by the NCAA for selling one of his game-worn jerseys to someone who "qualifies as an agent" under NCAA bylaws. On the surface, this is a clear violation of NCAA rules regarding amateurism. But Sports Illustrated's Andy Staples points out the clear hypocrisy of the situation.

If you're looking for a Georgia No. 8 jersey direct from Green, you're probably out of luck. Fortunately, you can buy 22 different variations of Green's No. 8 directly from the Georgia athletic department's official Web site. Want the white replica? That'll cost you $59.99. Want the ladies' version in white and pink? That'll run you $55. Want the red authentic -- a grass stain-free version of the one Green sold? That'll be a cool $150.

For selling one A.J. Green jersey to an agent, Green will miss a third of his junior season, including key SEC games against South Carolina and Arkansas. For selling thousands of A.J. Green jerseys to the masses, the University of Georgia will get a boatload of money.

I've personally done a full 180 on my opinion regarding collegiate athletes' amateurism. I once believed, as the NCAA seems to, that the value of a free education (via athletic scholarships) was far greater than any royalties or benefits that a player might otherwise receive. The learnings and lifetime earnings potential from a college degree were no small benefit, and this seemed just compensation for services rendered. Those athletes who insisted on being paid (or at least allowed to work part-time jobs) seemed to be belly-aching about semantics.

But things have changed in the past 10 or 20 years. ESPN and Nike have taken over the collegiate athletics universe, with explicit permission from the schools in question. A perfect example is Monday night's Boise State-Virginia Tech football game, in which both teams wore "special" Nike-manufactured jerseys during an ESPN-televised game (commemorated, in a nice circular logic sort of way, by ESPN.com). Both ESPN and Nike stood to make boatloads off this marketing bonanza, none of which will accrue directly to the players on the field.

At the same time, graduation rates among student-athletes have plummeted. Only 46% of University of Georgia football players actually graduate, and this distinction somehow manages to qualify for best in the Southeastern Conference. It is hard to imagine that the other 54% are actually realizing any of the benefits of their "free" education.

There is, of course, an argument in defense of the continued practice. For all the money that ESPN and Nike make, so too do the colleges and universities that these athletes represent. These earnings allow those schools to invest more into facilities and faculty, raising the level of education for all concerned, athletes or otherwise. For the athletes' part, they choose to play NCAA athletics with eyes wide open, many of them recognizing it as a necessary apprenticeship toward a (possible) multi-million dollar professional career.

But the options for the high school athlete with professional aspirations are severely limited, as neither the NFL nor the NBA will allow a player to sign a contract directly out of high school. Court challenges against these policies have gone nowhere (hello, Maurice Clarett), as the courts have essentially ruled that collective bargaining agreements negotiated by professional athletes (and their unions) trump all else. Baseball, for its part, has no similar restrictions, but revenues for college baseball are nowhere near as high as those for football and basketball.

I'm certainly not pro-union by any means, but it seems our student-athletes are at a significant disadvantage because they lack a central lobbying organization of their own. ESPN, Nike, and the NCAA are very powerful bodies, and the individual athletes are currently subject to their whims without a clear central voice to defend them. That may change.


[Sports Illustrated]

White girls like the Red Sox, black people like soul food

Tiptoeing ever so carefully into the world of racial profiling, I thought I'd pass along this post from Gizmodo. Crunching data from hundreds of thousands of OkCupid (an online dating site) profiles, the folks at Gizmodo ran a frequency analysis to see which words and terms showed up most often among individuals from different races, genders, and religions. I've posted their graphic summarizing "what white girls like" below.

The Gizmodo author summarized that:

If I had to choose over-arching themes for white people's lists, for men, I'd go with "frat house" and for women, "escapism." Whether one begot the other is a question I'll leave to the reader.

Given my history with religion (raised Catholic, now mostly agnostic), I also found their chart measuring writing proficiency against religious identification to be interesting and amusing.

Obviously there's some serious self-selection bias going on here, since these charts are really just measuring "what white girls who opted to sign up for OkCupid, a site that has disproportionate numbers of members from large cities, like". But it's amusing nonetheless, as are the rest of the "profiles" on the site.

Maybe female Red Sox fans just have a really, really hard time finding a date without help from the internet. What do I know? I married a Yankee fan.

[Gizmodo]

Expectations are tricky things

Last Thursday, the market was sent tumbling after the Labor Department's weekly jobless claims report came out worse than expected, with 500,000 Americans filing for first-time jobless benefits versus analyst expectations of 480k.

Following historically bad home sales data--both for existing homes and new homes--early this week, analysts revised their expectations for jobless claims, with a consensus of 495k instead of 480k for this morning's report. The actual number beat expectations with 473k initial claims, immediately sending the market higher (please ignore the fact that the rally seems to be failing; it's the initial response that I'm focusing on).

This market bounce came despite the fact that the number fell in line with last week's estimates, and that the two-week total of 973k came out to average greater than the original 480k per week expectation. In fact, with this morning's data, the 4-week moving average for jobless claims has now reached its highest point since November 2009.

We often find ourselves in strange places when we revise--or don't revise--our expectations. As a lifelong Red Sox fan, I (like most Sox fans) find myself disappointed by this season, despite the fact that the team's basic performance--on pace for 92 wins--would have been considered a great success in any year before 2004's famous drought-busting championship. Texas Rangers fans, meanwhile, are likely ecstatic about their team's first-place season so far, despite currently having a worse record than the Red Sox.

As individuals, we are typically very quick to raise our expectations, but very stubborn about revising them downward. The market tends to behave in much the same way, which is what makes the last week's market action so compelling. I have rarely seen a market that is more unsure and inconsistent in its determination of what separates "good news" from "bad news".When we don't know what to expect, it's hard to determine whether or not we should be excited.

In general, I think it would be wise for us all to beware of runaway expectations. Following a once-in-a-lifetime tech boom and an unprecedented housing bubble, many of us became accustomed to an incredible level of consumption and economic growth. As we try to muddle through the recession, we shouldn't expect to return to our previous level, or really anywhere close to it--at least not quickly. If we expect that, we'll probably find ourselves like me, a disappointed Red Sox fan desperate for football to start up. Believe me, you don't want to be like me.

[Calculated Risk]