Alive

April Fools is as good a Day as any for the Diamondbacks to embark on their sixteenth
slate, because when it's all over someone will play the fool. Active payroll is higher than it's been in a decade, even adjusting for inflation, yet the roster somehow lacks a single bankable star.

Instead, the Diamondbacks sport a few very good players and a few more good ones. Neither group, however, has garnered a fraction of the attention drawn by their most controversial and, by now, least secret weapon - a laboriously advertised culture of gritty clutchness.

So far, three of the grittiest Diamondbacks - Willie Bloomquist, Adam Eaton and Cody Ross - are unavailable due to a variety of dashing spring ailments. We'll keep you posted on their characteristically gutsy rehabilitations.

***

I drafted those paragraphs a couple days ago, and this morning Nick Piecoro wrote basically the same thing, only much better. I had even titled my draft "On The Cusp of Something".

Today Kevin Towers guaranteed 90+ wins. Good for him. I admire his balls, and frankly, his track record of extracting more with less. But now he's constrained by a lot less less, spending almost $100M and significant surplus talent, with three established Arb/Pre Arb starting arms (IPK, Hudson, Miley) and several more in the fold (Corbin, Skaggs, etc).

What it all will result in, we're not quite sure. The Rockies and Padres still cant pitch, so it's hard to see the Diamondbacks bringing up the divisional rear.  The Dodgers and Giants have too much talent to do that either, but their reliable, underlying assets are really not all that different from our Sedona Reds.  The club that plays best in one run contests will probably win this division.  Call me a eunuch, but unlike baseball's sexiest GM, I have no idea who that will be.

That is baseball's greatness, above other sports.  For all its familiar ritual, marking the seasons and years of our lives, it's the game's day to day - and even seasonal - unpredictability that gives it life.  The scalded liner nonchalantly turned into a rally destroying double play.  An unknown prospect who baffles a Murderers Row.  A fortuitous call or a bad hop.  

Sincere observers just dont know any of that until it actually happens. Those seeking certitude or standing, predictably surrender to faith.  Others of us watch to discover, in what often seems an inevitable world.  To confirm that even the familiar can be beautiful and mysterious - and that we are ignorant and alive.

Grit Leap Forward?

Grit. We're pretty sure it matters, but unclear how much or even what it means.

The first problem with grit is that it's not reliably defined - at all.  It's more a subjective take on a player's perceived approach to the game and how he looks, than it is an objective accounting of what he does. Faced with a slump, for example, is it grittier to express anger in the clubhouse, be stoic, or upbeat and positive? That pretty much runs the gamut of human response, yet 'grit', determination or competitive focus could reasonably be manifested by any of those.

Is it gritty to play through injury?  Chris Young and Justin Upton did that in 2012, yet neither apparently are seen as especially gritty by Kevin Towers. Perhaps Upton did (or didnt do) something else that displeased the GM.  Maybe he didnt join Bloomquist and the coaches in the weight room at 6AM? It's hard to say. What's old news, however, is that an unsettling share of so-called gritty overacheivers tend to be older white players. Is it because the class of African American players lack an objective work ethic or dedication to sacrificial team principles, or does it reflect the fact most player evaluators (fans, pundits, GMs) are also white, which may bias attitudinal expectations and evaluations?

Another issue with grit is that it's an input, not a result. Even were it an unbiased input, and we believe it influences output, we cant really measure or prove that connection. And to the extent grit influences results,the results themselves are largely apparent now, rendering hidden benefits of grit relatively obscure, if not moot.  In other words, we can now measure fairly accurately how Eric Chavez performs Late & Close, or makes productive outs or whatever, regardless of whether he's perceived as gritty or not. We can evaluate actual results, rather than rely on perceived assets.

This applies especially to established veterans. The work ethic or grit of a youngster with a less established record, however, could reasonably alter subjective projections.  It logically flows that a good work ethic leads to a more promising upside, etc  But most of the time, this annointing of grit applies to older players and it's harder to argue they have much hidden upside. Their makeup and professionalism have presumably been reflected in their career results to date - baked into the statistical cake.

Is there a hidden benefit to grit? Something we cant readily see in the new, granular stats? There very well may be, like an ability to make teammates better.  In fact, rigor requires we remain open to that possibility. But the more practical question, for Diamondbacks fans, is whether Kevin Towers can chase, identify and exploit grit as a market inefficiency. Has Towers identified a hidden competitive benefit to these so-called gritty players that his GM counterparts cannot?

Some of Towers' easily contradicted assertions this offseason - for example his lauding Martin Prado's rather mediocre batting record Late & Close - either suggest he has no special insight as to the value of resolute grit and clutchness. Or perhaps he does, and the erroneous platitudes are some brilliant subterfuge.

The view of Towers, here, essentially splits the difference. I think he understands a great deal about professional baseball that I dont. When you're around something a long time, you can intuit what works and what doesnt, even if you cant accurately articulate why. It's a feel and I think Towers has a feel for chemistry, in game leverage and certain aspects of roster construction.

But when he or Gibson go on about grit, they can sound more enamored with idealized personal attributes than they are with real competitive results.  They almost sound like they prefer players who they can lift weights with at six in the morning, or hunt with in the offseason.  Perhaps younger, idealized versions of themselves, in their own image. Instead of diverse and challenging colllections of talent, who need to be professionally managed and assimilated and who might also be more objectively equipped to help them win.

Thank You For Mowing My Rather Expansive Lawn For A Quarter Century....Now, Go Away

Led by an unidentified "small market owner", baseball's Lords of the Realm are trying to dismantle collectively bargained pension plans currently protecting non uniformed personnel.  Of course, all Diamondback personnel are uniformed, sartorial advocates for The Organization, but you get the idea. Scouts, groundskeepers, the widow working the Will Call window.

 

Were MLB publicly traded, its (conservatively estimated $8 billion) annual revenue would position it as a Fortune 300 firm, neighboring boutique mom and pops like Visa and Campbells Soup. 

Bear in mind, too, that MLB's most salient business distinction - its federal antitrust exemption -  enables this often collusive bevy of baseball owners to orchestrate an advantageous network of regional monopolies, and mark up their prices devoid of direct competition. Unlike Campbells and Visa, there's no Progresso or American Express cutting into baseball's consumer demand and bottom line. 

More generally, MLB competes for the sports or entertainment dollar, but that's tangential competition, similar to the way Campbells "vies" with Sara Lee for the food dollar or Amazon "battles" Visa as transactional clearing houses that really arent all that similar.

Not only is baseball's operational profit margin thus legally protected, but those profits and rising franchise values are concentrated among just thirty ownership groups. Compare that to the nation's true corporate behemoths, whose revenues dwarf mlb's, but whose profits are distributed among hundreds of thousands - and in some cases, millions - of shareholders. Even in an era of diminishing pensions, that a cottage industry this profitable - and concentrated - would dick around with the pensions of low level scouts and groundskeepers is another stained window into the sort of people running mlb.

Who is the pension-smashing small market owner most responsible?

I cant say it's Kendrick. For one thing, Phoenix isnt a small market (although it's often mistaken as such). Secondly, mlb has never lacked for slimeball owners. The Dolans in Cleveland. Pohlan in Minnesota. Loria. My (uneducated) guess is it's one of them, and Ken is laying low, with a big smile on his mug, as others do the dirty work.

Slim Shady

Here's some photos from today's SRFest against the Cubs.

First, the leaner Cahill, warming up in the outfield grass.  Not sure if you can make him out, but he's the red and white blade, center.   

 

 Here's the right field berm about a half hour before game time.

...and at first pitch

My son and I sat out here for a couple innings. With hordes of squatters on blankets and a cultural disregard for personal space, it was a little like India. The shirtless drunks and mundane food - closer to Indiana.  

Here's Cahill preparing to bounce another swinging strike to Alfonso Soriano. Just get it over (with), Trevor.  























Finally, here's the 85% shade Derrick Hall brags about, an hour into the game.  This was snapped an hour and twenty minutes from first pitch, and one can see it's still not 80-85%.



















Salt River is shaded better than any Cactus venue,  but clearly a third of the fixed seats are still in bright sun well into the contest.  And unlike Scottsdale Stadium, there's no shade trees on the berms here. The clubs should be proud of their design accomplishment, but there's no need to mischaracterize the reality that most patrons are still baking in sunlight most of the time.

With Friends Like This...

The fan friendly Diamondbacks once again addressed curiously soft stadium attendance, under current leadership, by raising prices Saturday.

For 56 of 81 home games, the least expensive ticket now available to the general public will range from $12-16, which excludes mandatory fees for purchasing seats online or at the park on gameday.  Unsurprisingly, these Outfield Reserve seats, located in the corners of the top deck, are generally regarded as the least desirable at Chase Field. Prices, of course, go up from there.

Bleacher sections, for example, are 26% more expensive than they were in 2011. Today's mean average bleacher price is $21.22, excluding fees. These individually purchased seats sold for $11.50 as recently as 2004 under previous management.  They cost $11 during the championship 2001 season, but for next month's home opener against St Louis run $33 a pop. 

For 25 lower demand games, the club offers $9 Outfield Reserve seats, which is still more expensive than the lowest priced points of entry offered by most divisional rivals. The megamarket Dodgers and enormously successful Giants, for example, both offer $8 uppers for assorted low demand games, and tickets to Colorado's popular centerfield bleachers, The Rockpile, are just $4 across the entire 81 game schedule.  Including Opening Day. 

Puttin' On The Pits

There were five or six reasons why this page lay dormant for ages and none of them are all that interesting. But there's two reasons why I'm back. To talk Diamondbacks' baseball and bear witness to the horrors metastasizing at azsnakepit.com.

The horrors, I tell you.

The Pit's set forth a sweeping censorship campaign disguised as some civility overhaul, and I got taken off guard - and offline - during a pomp and circumstantial Changing of The Mods.  This adolescent and uncivil power grab they dub "A New Hope" more closely resembles "The Phantom Menace" with hints of The Spanish Inquisition. Mainstream remarks magically disappear, sometimes en masse, and the funniest part is sinister warnings are issued after you're punished and your comment is killed. 

These after the fact "warnings" or chilly online icebergs, lock up one's screen with all the inherent charm of pop up malware, except there you might at least momentarily glimpse something useful, like an indecent girl or decent mortage rate, instead of being laboriously told what you already know isnt true: that YOU HAVE BEEN ISSUED A WARNING!!!

**************************

In club news, somehow this free postgame storytelling confab completely eluded the Pit's paltry eight man editorial staff.   Bound to happen, I suppose, when they're up to their epaulets, restricting all speech requiring restriction. 


One thing I did see over there was this magnificent slideshow of Jeff Moorad's 16,100 sq foot house in PV.  Apparently, it's up for sale again. You may remember Moorad. He was Kendrick's partner, whose mlb ownership application here was a long, drawn out, contentious struggle. When he finally two timed his way out of Phoenix, he and Kendrick squabbled for two more years over Moorad's outgoing share. Then his failed attempt to buy the Padres took another couple years. Now he's trying to dump his Queen Mary of the Desert for the second or third time.

I cant find evidence Moorad's tried to actually kill any of his adversaries, but it seems reasonable to conclude from this litany that one of his negotiation strategies is hoping some of them will simply die of old age.

And take a look at that house!   Maybe if he had downsized a tad, to nine or ten bathrooms, he'd have saved just enough to buy the Padres.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Turns out the Pit did note the storytelling bit, in the ninth paragraph of one of their roundup columns. And I missed it. One of their typists was kind enough to bring that to my understandably sporadic attention ;-).

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Rockies Bring B Game

Phoenix 'Small Market', Per Derrick Hall

Gem from Thursday's CEO Chat:

Derrick Hall: We are defined as a small market based on pricing and revenues. The larger markets have the greater revenues, and thus the larger payrolls. Despite our population, we are defined as a small market club.

A characteristically deft and misleading statement. Let's break it down:

We are defined as a small market based on pricing and revenues.

No. The Diamondbacks are more accurately defined as a small franchise, by way of discretionary spending and a thinly veiled corporate disregard for what customers actually want. Resulting gate revenue is a nexus of market and how artfully Hall's tiered prices enable and drive customer utility, which evidenced by a perennially half empty stadium, isnt too artful.

By contrast, the adjacent Suns levy some of the NBA's higher prices, and regularly realize above average attendance (and corresponding revenues). Only eight NFL teams charge less than the Cardinals' $87.58 average ticket, yet the Cards have sold out (99%+ capacity) five consecutive seasons (2006-10). Even our newly challenged "little" baseball franchise on Jefferson exceeded NL average attendance seven consecutive years - under previous ownership - but has mysteriously lagged league average draw for seven straight years under Mr Kendrick.

This isnt to suggest Phoenix is a notable hotbed of rabid fandom, but rather to expose Hall's contrary implication that daunting demographics or economics resign Phoenix sports franchises to an inevitable consequence of half empty stadiums and measly revenue.

Market size is best defined by market size. Refining it with per capita income to better approximate potential market demand, is appropriate. And assuming that the recession eats into ticket sales sounds reasonable. But to imply that some overarching theoretical market ceiling, looming over local sports demand, is inevitably or primarily responsible for the Dbacks' actual and specific "small market" revenues is a deductive fallacy that smacks of artifice.

For years, Hall has spread a narrative that his front office is "doing everything right" off the field, despite the club's poorest extended attendance record coinciding with his leadership. Blame for spotty attendance is lobbed anywhere but there. First he blamed baseball ops for not winning enough games. Then when Byrnes won the most games in baseball between 2007 and early 2008 and still didnt draw much, Hall implicated Jerry Colangelo for the franchise's "lack of identity and continuity". In March 2008, I sat in Hall's office where he posited that this "lack of identity" went back four or five years, which is amusing given five years prior to our meeting, Colangelo's Dbacks were coming off a 98 win playoff season witnessed by 3.2 million paying fans. Or just a tick under 40 thousand per game.


By 2009, excuses planted by Hall and his broadcasting minions about local fans not grasping the game's competitive vicissitudes, or appreciating his efforts to build a "championship style team" under AJ Hinch, were well established. When that narrative died on the vine, he started blaming "the economy". When the team "on the field" inexplicably won another title in 2011 and Hall still drew barely 2 million, now apparently we're a "small market" in "the economy". Who knew.

The unaccountable logic Hall is trying to pass off is the same code language he's crafted for years, and it's the same con game Bud Selig and his daughter tried to pass off in Milwaukee for two decades:

Fans arent coming to our games, but it's not our fault.

It's somebody else's fault.

Yeah, we own the business and set the prices and provide the entertainment, but it's basically the people's fault.

The fans. Customers. The market.

Believe me, we're doing everything humanly possible to attract fans to the ballpark. I dont honestly see how another owner could do more under these circumstances.

Until a Jerry Colangelo or Mark Attanasio or Mark Cuban comes along. Someone who delivers reliable value instead of insisting that a market respond to empty embellishments.

The larger markets have the greater revenues, and thus the larger payrolls. Despite our population, we are defined as a small market club.

For now, I wont quibble with the payroll chain of reasoning because there's something more subtle and interesting here.... and quintesentially Hall. Notice how more lucrative markets are described rather expansively - he doesnt say "large" markets, which tends to limit our focus to behemoths like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. He says "larger" markets, with "greater" revenues. He's trying to evoke as many markets over Phoenix as possible. Which is fine, until....

...he abandons that rhetorical standard by repeatedly labeling Phoenix as a "small" market. Not "small-er". Not slightly below average. Not ahead of eleven (count em, eleven) franchises in 2010 revenue. And god forbid! Not "middle third". No, no, no. Dont you see? We're just "small". You know, like Pittsburgh and Florida and so on. Poor "small" us. There are, apparently, no "mid market" franchises in Derrick Hall's breezily manipulative lexicon. Only "larger" and....

"Small".

One irony of this 'deft' salesmanship, of course, is that Mr Hall, Chief Information Operator, has now presided over five of the seven lowest attended campaigns in franchise history. So he's intimately familiar with the concept of small, even if he cheerfully refuses to own up to it.

A final irony, perhaps, is while Mr Hall toasts 2011 by deflecting responsibility for subpar attendance with "small market" fabrications, his effective predecessor, Colangelo, began selling millions more baseball tickets fifteen years ago, in a market housing 36% fewer residents than today. That's about one and a half million fewer people Valleywide. To put that gap in some perspective, one and a half million is the current population of Phoenix proper - the nation's fifth most populous city. Or Milwaukee's entire metro.

Surely and Slyly

Suppose I need to say something, if for no other reason than to finesse Derrick's prostate off my front page. While others confirm our brick red battalion lost an evenly matched NLDS, and before that, won an awful lot, and generally seem pretty happy about it, I'm disillusioned. Not with the club or Gibby or even with Nyjer "Not So Lovely" Morgan. I've lost confidence and trust in Major League Baseball, specificially its arbitration of balls and strikes.

Before you assume I'm a misguided poor sport, let me assert that the Diamondbacks were robbed in Milwaukee, as surely as Jesse James robbed banks and as slyly as banks robbed this country. And the disturbing part is, these games really were pretty well adjudicated, by MLB standards. At least to the naked eye.  So well, in fact, that no one to my knowledge is complaining about it.

But thanks to TBS displaying PitchTrax in an offset window throughout the series, we were able to track the subtle shenanigans of just how one sided umpiring has become. To the naked eye, Game 5 started really well. Unlike Game 1, when Gallardo was visibly gifted with called strikes on the bottom edge that were consistently denied IPK, the Dbacks patiently took many close pitches just off the plate - and the umpire here was resolute before the din of the Milwaukee throng.  He called one outside pitch on Hill a strike, early in the count, but other than that was rock solid.  The Dbacks worked Yovanni's pitch count and the home crowd was not pleased.  

When IPK took the hill, it was clear from PitchTrax that he was painting the edges of the zone better, or at least more aggressively, than Gallardo. IPK was, for the most part, throwing strikes, towards the edges, whereas Gallardo tended to miss one, two or three inches off the outside corner. The umpiring accurately reflected that.

Things fell apart, though, during Justin Upton's second AB in the third inning. The first two pitches were clearly outside to Arizona's most celebrated hitter - yet both were called strikes. Neither was an "edge" location that could be called "either way", less so given the pretty tight zone established over the frst couple innings. So instead of 2-0 to your 30 home run dude, it's 0-2 against a strikeout pitcher. Yovanni preceded with care and Upton worked the count. Justin then got his team's biggest gift, when a high but clear strike on PitchTrax was missed by the ump, and JU later lofted a solo home run in the at bat.

There were three umpire errors in that one PA. Brewer fans were understandably ticked by the missed strike, but the whole AB was messed up and the fact is most of the breaks in it went the Brewers way.

It got worse after the Dbacks took the 1-0 lead on the road. By midgame, I'd tallied eight or nine gifts for Gallardo, one for Kennedy and the one for Upton. Saito relieved and got a couple calls. But the worst was Frankie Rodriguez, who transformed his appropriately French-named battery mate, LeCroy, into an NHL goalie, with an assortment of 55 foot sliders, jerked fastballs soaring over the opposite batters' box and what may have been a couple wrist shots.

After Aaron Hill led off with a walk and Upton took a pair of balls nowhere near the plate, F-Raud was presented with a strike two or three inches outside, per Pitchtrax. It's one thing when you give a pitcher a 2-0 strike when he's more or less hitting spots or if you've established a wide zone for both sides, but neither applied here. No Diamondback pitcher got that call, let alone anyone that wild, begging the question if Frankie's uniform influenced the call. Milwaukee's setup showman followed up with terrific 2-1 slider, eventually whiffing Upton and the Dbacks failed to score, despite a Montero single and a couple walks in the inning.


We'll never know what would've happened if Upton went to 3-0, late in a pressure game with men on, but as this whole series, and particularly the finale, was so evenly contested, one cant help but wonder if one team getting a dozen or more 'breaks' and the other receiving three or four didnt effect the overall outcome.

The big takeaway isnt that Milwaukee got breaks at home. Or any implication their sterling record at Miller Park is more or less tainted than other home marks. And to be fair, I didnt see Pitch Trax for the games at Chase, because I attended both - who knows what transpired, on and off the corners, those nights. The revelation, for me, was the size of the discrepancy between what my naked eye told me was the extent of favoritism - and what PitchTrax objectively exposed it as.

When I say objectively, I dont mean objective balls and strikes. The grid is just a superimposed image over the plate and can be positioned poorly, as in the DET/NYY NLDS, where fastballs in the dirt regularly registered as low strikes on PitchTrax .  I mean that PitchTrax objectively exposed identical pitch locations that were assigned different values by the umpire, and those values correlated quite a bit with the pitcher's uniform. It doesnt really matter if individual pitches were in or out of a "true" zone. What matters is that identical pitch locations were called inconsistently, and that the inconsistency appears somewhat predictable (ie not random).

That's what PitchTrax helps clarify and quantify. Without it, you'd watch a game and say, geez that "looked" a little outside and that pitch looked "about the same" as the one the ump called differently earlier. You get a sense one team's being favored, but you're not sure. Especially on the plethora of borderline pitches, where good teams and pitchers live.

Until Frankie Rodriguez waltzed into the eighth, the naked eye (along with ambient crowd noise) told me this was a well officiated zone, if anything favoring the Diamondbacks. Gallardo's pitch count was up. The crowd was mad about a bunch of called balls from Gallardo that looked close. The pitch before Upton's homer looked darn good. Ian Kennedy didnt struggle much with balls and strikes. A few called strikes to Dbacks looked a little outside, so overall it looked pretty even handed to the naked eye, after discounting the crowd's wrath.  Certainly not a home job, as in Game 1 or the Dbacks final visit to AT&T Park.  But PitchTrax still exposed a litany of more subtle discrepancies that generally favored the home team.

Concerns are obvious. A decade ago, people snickered at the thought NBA games were "fixed", but now we know better. The potential financial benefit to any league ensuring home teams win as often as possible is large.  Local fans have a good time and return. The well established disparity between NBA home and away records is alarming, to a point where home status has a higher correlation with game outcome than the relative strengths of the teams. Baseball, where the relative strengths of starting pitchers often drive daily results, tends to mitigate this home/away effect.

But I wonder if it's getting worse. I'll have to look into that. We know from steroid and free agent history that baseball's barons slyly collude at the expense of competition on the field, and it might be in their perceived (and notoriously shortsighted) interests to once again do so. Make every home team a "winner". Fans will surely love it.

Oh, and congratulations, Milwaukee.

Hall Mulls Elective Surgery, Dbacks Clinch

Dbacks CEO and Chief Information Operator, Derrick Hall, declared in a declared press conference that he has declarative early stage (I or II) prostate cancer and is "thinking about" a November surgery to remove the malignancy.

The five year survival rate for most prostate cancers (including Stage III and many Stage IV diagnoses where cancer has spread to nearby tissue) is nearly 100%. The ten year survival rate, which includes these later stage, regional malignancies, and reflects higher historical mortality due to subsequent medical advances, is 91%. Most diagnosed prostate cancers, however, are Stage I or II and Hall's is presumed to be such. If so, his mortality prognosis is essentially the same as a 46 year old male with no cancer at all.

In other news, his players won the NL West. 

Ryan Roberts, above

Amazin' ???

AMAZIN'

CAST

Gerry Grote.....portrayed by......Miguel Montero

Donn Clendenon.....Paul Goldschmidt

Ken Boswell.....Aaron Hill

Bud Harrelson......John McDonald

Ed Charles.......Sean Burroughs

Cleon Jones....Justin Upton

Tommie Agee.....Chris Young

Ron Swoboda.....Gerardo Parra

Ed Kranepool.......Lyle Overbay

-featuring-

Tom Seaver......Ian Kennedy

Jerry Koosman......Daniel Hudson

Tug McGraw....JJ Putz

-and introducing -

Josh Collmentor as Don Cardwell

-and-

David Hernandez as "The Young Nolan Ryan"

• Watch the trailer of the 1969 film on which the play is based.