A New Mini-Project: Constructing Narratives with the Colorado Rockies

I want to try an experiment.  For a while I've had this idea of going through the Rockies history and picking the player from each season that most exemplified the team that year.  I don't mean the best player, or the most famous, or the most highly paid, or anything like that.  I mean the player who's individual narrative most mirrors that of the team as a whole.

There are a few ways to do this, I think, but the method I'm going to use is this: I'm going to write a sentence (or maybe a haiku?) to describe each season, and then I'm going to look through the roster from that season and see which players best reflect the sentence I've written for the team.  While the result, hopefully, will be an interesting - to a Rockies fan anyway - trip down memory lane, I also expect to do some meta-analysis, to ask questions like the broad "How do we construct narratives?" and the more specific "What is the relationship between statistics - like W-L record or home runs - and the words that make up our stories?"

To save both you and me from an incredibly long post, I'm going to break this up and post a bit of it each day or two.  After that, and barring any significant event that demands a Nicht Diesian commentary, I promise I'll get the next Beethoven post up soon.

Part one, covering 1993-1997, is here.
Part two, convering 1998-2001, is here.
Part three, covering 2002-2006, is here.
Part four, covering 2007-2010, is here.

Hitter Value and Pitcher Value in Colorado

It has been a while since I played this broken record, and I think it's time for another listen.  The subject of this post is the value of the current Rockies roster offensively and defensively (or, more specifically, pitch-fensively).  The outcome you can probably guess if you've read my posts on the subject before: the Rockies are one of the best pitching teams in baseball (if not the best), but have a mediocre to poor offense, and that's what is stopping them from going from good team to great.

I'm just going to take for granted that you know about Wins Above Replacement, or WAR, because it's just such a mind-bogglingly useful statistic that writing this post would take probably five times as long without it.  That said, WAR is no be-all-end-all, but it's a useful shorthand for getting a close approximation of who is better than who and for what reason (for example, Albert Pujols is better than Edgar Renteria because he's an ungodly hitter, while Renteria is an aging punch-and-judy middle infielder; you don't need WAR to tell you that, of course, but it still does).

Of course, Rockies fans are generally of the opinion that the team has a deep, potent lineup capable of producing lots and lots of runs, while the pitching staff has become solid, but is unspectacular (certainly not as good as the Dodgers or Giants, our divisional foes).  Rockies fans - and the mainstream baseball media, which holds the same opinions - would be very wrong if they agreed with this position.  Consider the National League of 2010.  You may not be surprised to learn that the Brewers and Reds had the top lineups, producing 74.6 and 67.9 Runs Above Replacement respectively.  Those two teams were far and away the best in the NL.

Only three other teams produced positive value from their lineups.  Now, you have to remember that "offensive WAR" is a combination of batting Runs Above Replacement, fielding Runs Above Replacement, A more-or-less fixed "Replacement" value that denotes playing time, and a positional adjustment (which comes out very close to zero for a whole team over the season).  So it's ok that only five NL teams had positive batting RAR; none had negative WAR overall (though the Pirates were close).

Those other three teams were the Braves, the Phillies, and the Cardinals, checking in with 35.5, 24.2, and 17.6 RAR respectively.  The Rockies finished sixth in the NL - respectable, but not excellent, with -7.4 Runs Above Replacement.  It is worth noting that almost all of the Rockies positive offensive value came from two players: Carlos Gonzalez and Troy Tulowitzki.  A handful of others produced small positive contributions with the bat (Ryan Spilborghs, Melvin Mora, and Seth Smith for example), but many, many more were offensive detriments.  Consider the following unimpressive contributions:

1) Clint Barmes, -17.1 RAR
2) Eric Young Jr, -7.9 RAR
3) Chris Iannetta, -3.5 RAR
4) Todd Helton, -2.1 RAR
5) Miguel Olivo, -2.0 RAR
6) Chris Nelson, -1.1 RAR

I'm leaving out the pitchers, who also produce significant negative offensive value, and are the main reason why the AL romps over the NL in Runs Above Replacement (8 of the 14 AL teams were ahead of the Rockies in this category).  Even so, this is an unimpressive list, notable in particular for including three of the primary holders of the Second Base position throughout 2010.  More importantly, though, this list includes starters at three positions.  Considering that the Rockies got minimal value from third base, center field, and left field already, it hurts a lot to get negative value from second base, first base, and catcher.  Tulo and Cargo are good players, but they couldn't carry the lineup themselves.

At least, you say, the Rockies have a good defense.  But you'd be wrong.  Last season the Rockies finished 12th out of the 16 NL teams in defensive Runs Above Replacement, at a woeful -19.4.  How is that possible, you wonder, given how much the Rockies broadcast team lurves the Rockies fielders?

The main culprit was Ryan Spilborghs, who is a butcher in the outfield, and who is sometimes even asked to play center, poorly.  He alone racked up -16.7 RAR on defense, more than compensating for his 5.0 offensive RAR.  Melvin Mora was the other major problem, amassing -9.8 RAR playing mostly first base, second base, and third base.  In Mora's defense, he's not a second or first baseman, and being played out-of-position is a sure way to look like a bad fielder.  Nevertheless, it matter little whether the Rockies used Mora incorrectly, or if he's simply bad on defense, because the result is the same.  What's more, the acquisition of Ty Wigginton for the next two or three seasons indicates that we're liable to see more of the same: a "utility infielder" who can't field.

You won't be surprised to hear that Troy Tulowitzki and Miguel Olivo were both excellent defensively, and - if you read this blog - you also will be pleased to know that Seth Smith was solid on defense as well.  It comes as a surprise, however, if you're a Rockies fan, that Carlos Gonzalez produced negative value on defense.  Now, Fangraphs WAR - which I'm using - gets its defensive value from UZR, a statistic that not everyone agrees about.  Cargo, however, scores poorly on just about every defensive metric.  Some people argue that Coors Field has not been adequately adjusted in those defensive statistics for how hard it is to play the cavernous outfield, but even so, the point remains that Cargo's value comes almost entirely from his bat, and not his glove.  Even the production of a great fielder like Tulo is 3/4 hitter and 1/4 fielder

The result of the Rockies mediocre defense and mediocre offense is a grand total of 18.8 Wins Above Replacement.  That places the Rockies firmly in 9th in the National League, smack dab in the middle.  The Rockies do not have a bad lineup - principally because Cargo and Tulo are good hitters - but they are far from excellent.  Consider the Cincinnati Reds (a playoff team), who amassed 33.3 WAR, or the World Series Champion Giants, who's meager lineup was offset by excellent fielding, to the tune of a total 25.1 WAR.  The other two playoff teams - the Phillies and Braves - both scored higher than the Rockies here as well, with 23.6 and 22.0 WAR respectively.  Which is not to say that position players win divisions and/or championships.  But they're really important.

Ah, but the Rockies had a saving grace in the form of the best pitching staff in the National League.  By far.  As in, by three full wins.

But, the Giants!  Tim Lincecum!  Matt Cain!  Jonathan Sanchez!  Brian Wilson!  They're all so good!

Yes, they are, and the Giants were second in the NL with 21.5 WAR from their pitchers (combined with 25.1 WAR from their position players, that's a pretty solid team, though hardly an all-time great; 48 Wins is considered "replacement," so 48 + 46ish results in 94, very close to the 92 wins the Giants actually ended up with).  The Rockies, however, put up 24.5 WAR.  Buzah?  How did they do that with such "crappy" pitchers and castaways like Jason Hammel and Jorge De La Rosa?  Well, here's a comparison of the Rockies top-ten WAR pitchers with the Giants.

Rockies Pitchers 

1) Ubaldo Jimenez, 6.3
2) Jason Hammel, 3.7
3) Jhoulys Chacin, 3.0
4) Matt Belisle, 2.2
5) Jeff Francis, 1.9
6) Rafael Betancourt, 1.9
7) Jorge De La Rosa, 1.7
8) Aaron Cook, 1.5
9) Esmil Rogers, 1.4
10) Huston Street, 0.9

Giants Pitchers

1) Tim Lincecum, 5.1
2) Matt Cain, 4.0
3) Brian Wilson, 2.7
4) Jonathan Sanchez, 2.6
5) Barry Zito, 2.1
6) Madison Bumgarner, 2.0
7) Sergio Romo, 1.2
8) Santiago Casilla, 0.9
9) Javier Lopez, 0.6
10) Dan Runzler, 0.4

Again, the Giants have an awesome pitching staff.  Lincecum and Cain are as good a 1-2 punch as you'll find in baseball, and Brian Wilson is an excellent closer.  It's just, Lincecum and Cain were worth 9.1 WAR, and Ubaldo and Hammel were worth 11.0.  If you paid attention to the late season rambling about how good the Phillies, Giants, Rays, and Yankees (among others) rotations were, you might have missed out on the best rotation in baseball: Colorado's.

Indeed, consider the WAR of the top three starters from each of the 8 playoff teams, compared to Colorado.  Remember, Jimenez, Hammel, and Chacin combined produced 14 WAR last season.

1) Philadelphia Phillies - Halladay, Hamels, Oswalt - 12.4 (note: with only a few starts from Oswalt)
2) Texas Rangers - Wilson, Lewis, Lee - 11.9 WAR (note: with only a half season of Cliff Lee)
3) San Francisco Giants - Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez - 11.8 WAR
4) Minnesota Twins - Liriano, Pavano, Baker - 11.7 WAR
5) Atlanta Braves - Hanson, Lowe, Hudson - 9.7 WAR
6) New York Yankees - Sabathia, Pettitte, Hughes - 9.6 WAR
7) Tampa Bay Rays - Price, Shields, Garza - 8.3 WAR
8) Cincinnati Reds - Cueto, Wood, Bailey - 6.9 WAR

Not once did I hear the Rockies rotation mentioned as good, let alone one of the best in the NL.  And yet, there it was, it's top three every bit as good as the top three from anywhere else.  Throw in De La Rosa - who's 1.7 WAR is largely due to missing about half the year - and consider that Chacin didn't start regularly until a couple months into the season, and you've got a staff that has four 3+ win pitchers, including a guy at the top good for 6 or 7.  That's as good as it gets.  Indeed, if any team in the NL can compete with Philadelphia's four aces next year in the pitching department, it's Colorado.  The Rockies may not have the names or the pedigree - in part because of how Coors Field inflates ERAs - but they have the skill to be just as good as the hideously named Phab Phour.  Also, since rotations go five deep, it's worth noting that I'll take Aaron Cook and/or Esmil Rogers over Joe Blanton any day.

The lesson here is that the mainstream media doesn't know about park effects, or else they'd realize what a good pitching team Colorado has (National League leaders in pitching WAR two years running).  Colorado can pitch.  The problem is, that NL leading 24.5 WAR (Chicago - the White Sox - led the Majors with 24.9; another team from a hitter's park) still isn't enough to win a division without, say, at least 20 or so Wins from the position players.  Can Jose Lopez and Ty Wigginton make up that difference?  We'll see.  Regardless, the Rockies will be a fun team to watch pitch, and Coors Field will remain a fun place to watch even bad hitters mash the ball.

More Humidor!

My last post ended up being oddly prophetic, as Tim Lincecum 'caught' the evil Rockies cheating just this last home series.  Apparently he - or the Rockies - didn't read the post, which concluded that cheating by mixing in non-humidor balls would be, basically, a colossal waste of the Rockies' time and energy.  Anyway, if the Rockies were cheating, it didn't do a lot of good, as the team lost 2 of 3 and are now all-but-eliminated from the NL West race.  Maybe next year they'll start cheating earlier in the season, instead of just in September.

In all seriousness, I want to further explore this humidor-cheating theme.  The charge against my favorite team is, frankly, extremely severe, and if there is any warrant for it, I'd like to know.  If, on the other hand, this is a witch-hunt that has more to do with irrational fears and the human propensity for finding patterns where there aren't any, well, I'd like to know that too.

Whereas last time we looked at theory - and theory flatly rejected the notion that the Rockies would gain from cheating by mixing non-humidor balls in with humidor balls - today we're going to look at data.  Now, because the theory says that the Rockies would get little to no benefit from cheating as described, what we have to look at instead is whether or not the Rockies have been unduly lucky.  Do they, in short, win more late comebacks than other teams?

Lets start with the most basic stats - and this includes both home and road games.  The Rockies have come back to win 29 games this season.  They have, on the other hand, blown 39 leads.  They have won 10 walk-off games, and have watched the other team walk off 9 times.*  Neither of those numbers looks particularly suspicious - indeed, it's the 39 (!) blown leads that are surprisingly high, apparently the Rockies are forgetting to take the non-humidor balls out when they go back to the mound - but let's dig deeper anyway.

* For comparison's sake, let's also look at the San Francisco Giants, the Rockies division rival who seems most convinced that the Rockies cheat with the humidor.  The Giants have won 35 games by comeback, and have lost 22 games in which they had a lead.  They have 6 walk-off wins and 5 walk-off losses.

Another informative statistic here is the 2010 Rockies record when they are behind at the start of the Xth inning.  Consider:

Behind to start the 2nd: 10-19, .345
3rd: 10-29, .256
4th: 11-39, .220
5th: 11-43, .204
6th: 12-48, .200
7th: 15-51, .227
8th: 10-54, .156
9th: 3-56, .051

The same table for the 2010 Giants.
2nd:  11-21, .344
3rd: 14-28, .333
4th: 14-37, .275
5th: 15-47, .242
6th: 12-55, .179
7th: 13-55, .191
8th: 8-57, .123
9th: 6-61, .090

This table in isolation, and even with a Giants version for comparison, isn't all that meaningful, so let's look at the MLB league-wide numbers as well.

2nd: 330-783, .296
3rd: 408-1115, .268
4th: 413-1325, .238
5th: 367-1518, .195
6th: 317-1640, .162
7th: 263-1757, .130
8th: 170-1892, .082
9th: 96-1999, .046

To summarize, the Giants have been better than the Rockies at coming back starting behind in the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 9th innings.  The Rockies have been better coming from behind in the 2nd, 6th, 7th, and 8th.  Both teams have generally out-performed the rest of the league, which at least in part owes to the fact that both teams are above-average teams.  The Yankees, for example, are basically as good or better than both the Rockies and Giants coming from behind in every inning.  The Pirates are worse.  Makes sense.

I want to call out some particular numbers from the last chart.  The Rockies are 3-56 when trailing going into the 9th inning.  Three wins, 56 losses.  Sure, a lot of that has been on the road, but that 3-56 is way worse than the Giants 6-61, for example.  This more or less reinforces what we looked at last post: changing out humidor balls for non-humidor balls in the bottom of the ninth ain't gonna win many games.

In case you're not convinced, here are some numbers from previous seasons. In 2009 the Rockies went 2-63 (for an awesome .031 winning percentage) in games they trailed going into the ninth inning, and 4-58 in games they trailed going into the 8th.  In 2008 those numbers were 3-79 and 8-74 respectively.  Even in the magical 2007 the Rockies went 6-62 in games they trailed going into the 9th, almost identical to this year's Giants.

I don't want to spend forever parsing these numbers, because we'll just get the same thing over and over.  If baseball-reference made it easier, I'd pull these apart and separate home and road, but what we'd find is that the Rockies come from behind and blow leads more often at home, simply because Coors Field is such a good hitters park.  Remember that the Rockies have blown 39 leads this year? That's not because of a bad bullpen, indeed, far from it. The Colorado bullpen has been worth, according to fangraphs, 50 runs above replacement this year (or 5 wins), good for 5th in all of Major League Baseball.  I think that 39 blown leads has a lot to do with where the Rockies play, humidor balls or no.

"OK Mr. Smarty-pants," you're probably saying, "You've given me all kinds of mediocre data that doesn't show that the Rockies aren't cheating, and you've yet to supply an alternative hypothesis." On the first point, you're right.  I can't prove the Rockies aren't cheating because, as my last post said, there's no real reason to believe that the kind of cheating in question would actually benefit the team.  Instead, I'm trying to show, in this post, that there's not really a compelling reason to even suspect that the Rockies are cheating in the first place.  They don't win an inordinate number of comeback victories and they don't score an inordinate number of late runs (once you account for Coors Field, that is; I didn't show this data, but I did look, and if you ask nicely and really care, I will).  In short, they're not better than anyone else at winning games that they don't lead.

Now, as to your second point, I do have a hypothesis for why the Rockies have such extreme home/road splits.  I don't think the humidor has anything to do with it, rather, I think there are a couple things at work.  One is familiarity.  Every team in the Majors plays better at home than on the road, for any number of reasons that no one is quite sure about.  Sleeping in your own bed, a batter's eye you're used to, a mound that feels more comfortable... Whatever.  It just happens.  So it's no surprise that Rockies pitchers do better than those from other teams at Coors, and likewise it's no surprise that Rockies hitters benefit more from Coors than visiting hitters.  They know the park better, they're used to the way the ball breaks (or doesn't) out of the pitcher's hand, and they got a better night's sleep.

Beyond even that, though, I think the Rockies front office has figured out what kind of players play best at Coors Field.  Especially on the pitching end, the Rockies have a particular skill set they seem to target, and they seek a lot of castaways from other teams (Jorge De La Rosa, Jason Hammel, Huston Street, Manny Delcarmen, etc) and try to turn them into Coors Field specialists.  What is that skill set?  Hard to say, but I can point you to some numbers that I find interesting.

There are a lot of numbers we can look at, here, but I think the most informative ones are strikeouts and walks.  As two of the "three true outcomes," strikeouts and walks are the numbers that should be least susceptible to the altitude and cavernous alleys of Coors Field.  That's not to say Coors should have no effect on strikeouts and walks, but rather that the effect shouldn't be as big as it is on batting average or home runs.

So what do we see?  Rockies hitters have, as of today, 3016 Plate Appearances at Coors and 2959 on the road.  In those, Rockies hitters have struck out 555 times at home and 655 on the road.  In rates, the Rockies lineup strikes out 18.4% of the time at home, and 22.1% of the time on the road.  That's a pretty substantial difference.

What about walks?  The Rockies have drawn 288 walks at home and 274 on the road.  In rates, again, that's 9.5% at home and 9.3% on the road.  This is not, it seems to me, a substantial difference.  The strikeouts are telling, however, especially if you consider this amazing piece from Athletics Nation about Carlos Gonzalez.  It seems to me that the Rockies are probably taking more or less the same approach on the road as they do at home, but they're getting fooled by a lot more pitches - and especially fastballs, if you read the Cargo article - away from Coors.

More interesting, however, is the Rockies pitching staff.  At Coors, Rockies pitchers have faced 2988 hitters, while facing 2847 on the road.  At Coors, Rockies pitchers have struck out 596 hitters, while they've k-ed 577 on the road.  That's 19.9% of plate appearances turning into strikeouts at home, and 20.3% out on the road.  Not a substantial difference, which might owe to the kinds of pitches that Rockies pitchers throw.  Namely, they rely on the kinds of pitches that are least effected by the altitude and dry air at Coors.

Here's the really interesting thing, though.  Rockies pitchers have walked 217, or 7.3% of hitters at home, while walking 279, or 9.8% of hitters on the road.  That is definitely a significant difference, and while I think it's impossible - or at least beyond the scope of this post - to figure out why exactly that's happening, I strongly suspect it has something to do with the way that balls break differently when the Rockies aren't at altitude.  If, as the Cargo piece suggests, it's fastballs that are most effected, it stands to reason that more of those 3-2 and 3-1 (fastball) counts are turning into walks on the road than at home.

That's just speculation, but the point is not to prove anything, as I've said.  The point is to show that there's a perfectly reasonable - and much less conspiratorial - explanation for the Rockies huge home-road splits than "LOLCOORZ" and "OMGHUMIDORZ."  Given that the Rockies have been merely average - if not worse - at coming from behind in the last few years, and given that cheating with humidor balls is theoretically close to useless, and given that the Rockies front office is probably trying to build a team that capitalizes on the advantages of Coors Field...  Given all of those things, it takes a particularly hysterical and extremely cynical kind of person to believe that the Rockies are getting away with some awful sin against the sanctity of baseball.*

*O.K.  That's the end of the post unless you're a Rockies fan.  If you are, then feel free to read on to the part where I shed any semblance of objectivity and rant for a few sentences.  Enjoy.

So, yes, Tim Lincecum, you and your namby-pamby cry-baby Giants (and your awful, bourgeois Silicon Valley fans, and your too-good-for-everyone-else ballpark*) have officially made it to the top of my baseball hate list.  Higher than the Dodgers, higher than the Yankees.  Even higher than the Red Sox.  Congratulations.

* The cheapest seat at AT&T is $16!  And what kind of baseball stadium sells sushi and has wireless Internet access?  And I thought baseball was supposed to be for everyone.  Give me a $4 Rockpile seat any day.

Humidor!

It's even on ESPN! Rob Neyer, in his blog, is the latest high-profile baseball writer to pick up on the Rockies-might-be-cheaters idea (alternatively, depending on source, "might" could show up as "must").  A whisper and a rumor that began with Giants announcer Jon Miller has now expanded to such proportions that the great gods of Confirmation Bias, Hearsay, and Circumstantial Evidence have taken over.  While most rational people - like Neyer - do not believe the Rockies are cheating, the rampant cynicism of Internet goers everywhere, combined with their love of their own teams, has ignited a firestorm of anti-Rockies hate.

Circumstantial evidence leads the way, of course.  Fans point to Troy Tulowitzki's recent hot-streak, the magical Septembers of 2007, 2009, and, hopefully, 2010, and a handful of impressive comebacks the Rockies have engineered, as if those things are proof of improper humidor usage.  In the process, of course, we're ignoring Miguel Olivo's collapse to below mediocrity, Carlos Gonzalez's recent slump, the whole of the 2008 season, the terrible starts the Rockies have had in other seasons (including this one), and the impressive comebacks other teams sometimes engineer against the Rockies.

My point here, however, is not to argue against circumstantial evidence with circumstantial evidence in the opposite direction.  My point is to ask a very specific question to which I hope to find a very specific answer.  The question is this: if the Rockies were cheating by using non-humidor balls during their own at bats and humidor balls during their opponents at bats, what would we expect the result to be?  As far as I know, for all of the vehemence about this issue, no one has bothered to turn a statistical eye on the situation, and it seems to me that we should probably do so before we start slinging accusations around.

The first thing I want to pull out are historical Park Factors for Coors Field (from baseball-reference.com):

1995 - 128
1996 - 129
1997 - 113
1998 - 125
1999 - 125
2000 - 129
2001 - 121
2002 - 117
2003 - 110
2004 - 119
2005 - 110
2006 - 107
2007 - 109
2008 - 105
2009 - 113
2010 - 120

There's a lot of variability in there, of course, but there's a noticeable difference between what's going on before 2002 (when the humidor was put in) and after.  How big a difference?  Well, let's run some (very basic) statistics.

1995 - 2001 Average: 124.3
1995 - 2001 Standard Deviation: 5.7

2002-2010 Average:  112.2
2002-2010 Standard Deviation: 5.4

The SDs here are not totally valid, because we have too few values to really have a normal distribution of data.  Nevertheless, it is not the case that every year is equal.  If we looked across the league, the same would be true; park effects are subject to variation just as a player's BABIP, or home run totals are.  A full season may be a lot of data, but it's not enough to establish an answer for what the real park effect of a stadium is.  In the case of Coors, it seems as though there's a 10-15 percent range, for example, which is fairly substantial.

Regardless, there's a difference here.  From 1995-2001, Coors inflated scoring by an average of 24 percent.  From 2002-2010, that number has fallen to 12 percent.  In real terms, that means that 5 runs elsewhere, in the pre-humidor era, was equal to about 6 runs at Coors, while 5 runs in the humidor era is worth 5.5 at Coors now.

Now if we look at Tom Tango's wonderful Run Expectancy Spreadsheet, we figure out how much of a difference we can expect a half-inning of non-humidor balls might make.  The leftmost column in Tango's sheet is for "run environment," meaning we can calculate the expected runs per inning depending on the number of runs per game the environment in question yields.  The National League this season is very nearly a 4.40 run environment (as in, 4.4 runs per team per game), which means that the Run Expectancy each inning is 0.489.

Coors Field with humidor is probably close to a 4.95 environment, yielding a .55 Run Expectancy per inning.  Coors without humidor jumps up to a 5.45 run environment, which means a .606 RE.

The short-form, here, is that, if the Rockies are cheating late in games (which seems to be the conspiracy theory; I haven't heard it suggested that the Rockies are doing this all game), we'd expect them to see a jump from .55 runs per inning to .606 runs per inning once they switch out the balls.  Undoubtedly the sample size here is going to be too small to make conclusions if we go straight to the data right now, so let's look at a little more theory.

The assumption in our Rockies Cheat theory is that Colorado switches out the balls when they're behind late in games.  Let's start by looking at a single inning - the ninth.  If the Rockies are down by 1 run in the bottom of the ninth, how much does switching out humidor balls for non-humidor balls help?  Well, the likelihood of scoring at least one run - and thus tying or winning the game - with humidor balls is about 29%.  The likelihood of the same with non-humidor balls is about 32%.  The likelihood of scoring two or more - and thus winning outright - with humidor balls is 14%, while the same with non-humidor balls is about 16%.

Let's think about this.  If the Rockies are down by a run in the ninth inning, the switch from humidor balls to non-humidor balls will get them a tie only 3% more often, and a win only 2% more often.  Over the course of the season, that comes out, roughly, to somewhere between zero and one games.  If the Rockies are switching humidor balls for non-humidor balls in the ninth inning, they're not getting that much benefit from it.

Of course, you could argue that they start switching in the seventh inning.  Suddenly that 3% difference between 29 and 32 turns into... a 4% difference (between roughly a 65% and 69% chance of scoring at least one run in one of the three innings respectively).  Considering that, humidor balls or not, the other team continues to hit as well, the odds of winning a game down by a run in the seventh inning are not hugely different for the Rockies in either of those situations.

Upping the deficit here will do what you might expect, decrease the likelihood of a comeback and, in the process, decrease the difference between humidor and non-humidor balls.  You might argue that homers become more likely with non-humidor balls, but that's covered already in the change in the park factor.  And, what's more, the exact point here is that the increased odds of hitting a homer with non-humidor balls compared to humidor ones is probably so small in a given at bat that it's negligible.

I know that this brief theoretical look at the humidor proves nothing, but I hope it does show that, in order for the Rockies to really benefit from putting different balls in play, they'd have to do it systematically and at almost all times over the course of the season.  Considering the likelihood that they'd get caught doing that would skyrocket (compared to just doing it close and late in games), I don't see any reason for them to risk it.

I guess the point here is, if the Rockies are cheating by mixing in non-humidor balls in late innings, they should really stop.  Not only is MLB likely to find out in the long run (or the short run), they're not even benefiting that much from doing it.  Sure, those one or, let's be generous, two extra wins might mean the difference between the watching the playoffs from the dugout or from the living room couch, but that effect is far more subtle than what the hysterical cries of the masses (and Jon Miller) suggest.  The implication is and has been that the Rockies win so much at home principally because they're cheating in the late innings, and that's just patently absurd.  Even if they are cheating, they're getting so little from it that it would take 50 to 100 games to see even a one game difference.

Forgetting Coors Field

In what is quickly becoming a disappointing season for the Colorado Rockies, I'm somewhat surprised by the insistence in the (rather limited) Rockies blogosphere that the team's problem is an inability to hit on the road.  Granted, that much seems obvious, given the .301/.373/.492 line the offense puts up at Coors Field and the .232/.306/.364 line on the road.  There's no question, looking at those numbers, that the Rockies can't can't can't hit on the road.  A .306 OBP anywhere from your worst hitter is atrociously bad, let alone from your entire roster.

Consider the other teams road slashes in the NL West, for comparison:

Arizona Diamondbacks - .255/.339/.419
San Francisco Giants - .256/.325/.397
Los Angeles Dodgers - .256/.325/.382
San Diego Padres - .244/.304/.377

Amazingly, the Padres, despite playing in Petco Park, are hitting significantly better at home (.258/.339/.380) this year than on the road.  The unlikely success of San Diego this season has a great many sources, not the least of which is the magical transformation of Petco into a hitter's paradise for Padres players, whilst remaining one of the stingiest pitcher's parks for opposing hitters.

Anyway, it's clear from this list that the Rockies are quite poor on the road, but it is true that all of those teams have the benefit of playing a substantial number of their away games at Coors Field, so lets look at the NL East, too.

Philadelphia Phillies - .257/.328/.394
Atlanta Braves - .248/.334/.380
Florida Marlins - .256/.314/.410
Washington Nationals - .239/.307/.375
New York Mets - .240/.295/.366

 The Phillies have been much better than you would think, given all the doom-and-gloom talk about their offense this season.  Other than that, what stands out most here is that the Mets and Nationals, who no one picked to win the World Series this offseason, are the only teams with road splits as woefully bad (or, in the Mets case, worse) than the Rockies.

We might as well do the NL Central, too.

Milwaukee Brewers - .271/.339/.436
Cincinnati Reds - .264/.322/.414
St. Louis Cardinals - .260/.315/.405
Chicago Cubs - .252/.314/.396
Houston Astros - .244/.304/.344
Pittsburgh Pirates - .232/.289/.351

The Brewers offense jumps out at you, but their woeful pitching is the other side of the story, and the reason for their disappointing season so far.  The Pirates are truly awful, even though they certainly played the Rockies tough recently.

All told, Colorado clocks in with a tie for last in road batting average (with Pittsburgh), at 12th out of 16 in road OBP, and at 14th out of 16 in road SLG.  So the Rockies problem is definitely that they can't hit on the road.  I buy it.

But I also think this is a case where the hypothesis - that the Rockies can't hit on the road - is only a part of the whole story.  "Can't hit on the road" is a subset of the broader statement, "can't hit."  The Rockies, I would argue, can't hit on the road because they can't hit, period.  This is one of the very worst offensive teams in baseball.  Only a spectacularly good pitching staff and a set of mediocre talents particularly well adapted to playing at Coors Field keep the team slightly above .500.

Coors Field.  That's the real issue here.  I was one of the first people on the "Coors Field is no longer an absurd bandbox" train back when the humidor was put in place in 2002.  I fear, however, that the pendulum has swung too far back in the other direction.  Many Rockies fans (and announcers, I'm unhappy to report) seem convinced that Coors plays like any other park.  It doesn't.  It's still the best hitters park in baseball by a longshot, and that continues to make a mediocre-to-poor offense, like the Rockies have always had, seem good.

Coming into today, the Rockies are fourth in the NL in runs scored at 543.  Fourth, even though they are one of the worst road hitting teams in the National League.  Now the question is, are the Rockies inordinately unlucky on the road, or is Coors Field just that good of a hitter's park?

Unfortunately, "Park Factors" are calculated, primarily, by comparing home and road splits, so to say that Coors Field has a high park factor is to say that the Rockies hit better at home.  Park factor does account for visiting teams as well, but we might simply write off that influence as insignificant, certainly over the course of a single season, compared to the influence of the Rockies roster construction.

Nevertheless, we might begin to suspect that Coors Field really is a good hitter's park if it is consistently the best or one of the best hitter's parks in baseball.  Over time, sure, there still might be some luck involved, but the influence of visiting teams in the calculation feels more substantial, and over multiple seasons the sample size gets large enough that something systematic is going on.

So what has the Coors Field park factor looked like since the first year of the humidor?  It's higher than you might think.*

* I'm using the standard, ESPN "runs" Park Factor here.  Basically, a number of, say, 1.5, means that 1.5 times as many runs are scored at Coors compared to an average ballpark.

2002: 1.440, 1st in MLB
2003: 1.243, 5th in MLB
2004: 1.412, 1st in MLB
2005: 1.276, 2nd in MLB
2006: 1.149, 2nd in MLB
2007: 1.160, 3rd in MLB
2008: 1.126, 3rd in MLB
2009: 1.247, 1st in MLB
2010: 1.275, 1st in MLB

There are a few things to notice here.  First of all, Coors Field has always been in the top 5, and usually in the top 2 hitter's parks in baseball in any given season.  Even as league-wide scoring has gone down, and scoring at Coors with it, the home of the Rockies continues to rank near the top in MLB.  Coors Field, regardless of how much it has calmed down with the addition of the humidor, is still a hitter's paradise.

Also worth note here is that a park factor around 1.2 can seriously muddle simple metrics like "runs scored."  The Rockies, as mentioned above, are fourth in the NL with 543 runs this season.  If, however, we factor in that the Rockies have played 55 home games, and that those games inflate scoring by 1.275, we can roughly scale the Rockies actual production down to 485 runs or so if they played at a neutral park.  Lo and behold, that would put the Rockies 12th in the National League.

A final statistic worth looking at here - and we've done it before on this blog - is WAR.  Fangraphs has the Rockies offense (and defense) at 13.8 Wins this season, good for 16th in baseball (they adjust for DHs, so comparing across leagues is fair).  The Rockies pitching has been worth 17.4 Wins, good for 2nd in the entirety of MLB.  The problem is, hitting and defense together account for more of a team's success than pitching, so that 16th outweighs, unfortunately, the 2nd.  That's why you see a 59-55 record.

It's easy to think that the Rockies have the pieces in place to compete offensively, especially because of how lauded the lineup is in the local media.  But we forget that players who look good at Coors are merely average elsewhere, that near-MVPs like Matt Holliday turn into marginal All-Stars on other teams, that Neifi Perez looked like a passable Major Leaguer playing in Colorado.  That is still true for today's Rockies.

Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez are the Rockies best offensive players, but neither is a world beater.  The CarGo for MVP talk is nonsense.  Even with his recent surge, he is 21st in WAR in the National League, almost 2 full wins worse than the NL's best position player this season, Joey Votto.  In fact, "Little Pony" has been only the third best outfielder in the NL West, according to WAR, so far this season (behind the incredibly underrated Andres Torres and Chris Young).  Gonzalez is a good player, but Coors makes him look better than he is.

The same can be said of Tulo, who is incredibly valuable by default as a slick fielding shortshop.  That he hits a little is just a bonus, but just because he rakes on the Rockies doesn't mean he hits more than a little.  He's no Chase Utley.  One can only imagine what a player like that could do at Coors for 81 games a season.

It is true that, with the exception of Tod Helton, who has had an atrocious season, no one hitter on the Rockies right now is particularly bad.  But no one is particularly good either.  When your best offensive player doesn't know how to draw a walk and is 21st in WAR in the league, you're not likely to score a lot of runs unless you play at an extreme hitter's park.  The same could be said for when four of your regulars are producing at approximately replacement level (Helton, Spilborghs, Hawpe, and Mora).  Without offense, even a team with great pitching like the Rockies is doomed to mediocrity.

The point of this post, though, is not to write a post-mortem of the Rockies season.  We all know that anything is possible, and while it's unlikely that Colorado will catch all of the teams in front of them, stranger things have happened.  No, the point here is to remind fans of the Rockies - and really any team - that the raw numbers you see don't tell the whole story.  The Rockies score a lot of runs, but not because they have a good offense.  Rather, Coors Field is the culprit.

All-Time Yankees Roster

The following the the final write-up from the two students in my sabermetrics workshop. They worked hard on it, and they should be proud of the level of analysis they performed. The write-up was coauthored by the three of us. Also, disclaimer, I'm not a Yankees fan, but they are :). Needless to say, this is probably the only time you'll see "Go Yankees" written in this blog.

*All-Time Yankees Roster*

By Rory Davidson, Tierna Davidson, and Paul Franz

Introduction

Do you think you have the best all-time Yankees roster? Well think twice and read ours. We have made our team through a series of numbers. Whether it is looking at OPS+ or ERA+, the numbers are very reliable (compliments of fangraphs.com and baseball-reference.com). Our team goes back to Babe Ruth, Lou Gerhig, and Mickey Mantle, all the way up to Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and Mariano Rivera.

Method

OPS+ is a statistic in which they make the average OPS of the major league and make it 100 and then take another persons OPS and see how much better or worse a players OPS is. We used this stat to our advantage by looking the number and seeing if they are worthy enough, for example Babe Ruth’s OPS+ was 210 for his Yankee career, we thought, “Wow this guy is amazing lets put him up.” Of course we already knew Ruth would be on our team, but that was just an example. For pitchers we used ERA+ which the exact same thing as OPS+ but with ERA.
After we picked about 40 players we looked a little deeper into their stats and see if anything jumps out at us. Another thing we did was see if they had better seasons with another team, for example Roger Clemens was a Yankee for a period of time and did very well with them, but his prime was when he was with the Boston Red Sox so we decided to put someone else on the team.

Starters

Starting Pitcher - Whitey Ford, 1950-1967
133 ERA+, 55.3 WAR

Ford was the Yankees ace during the Casey Stengel era, leading the Yankees to no less than 8 World Series titles. There are fewer storied pitchers than hitters for the Yankees, but Ford measures up to the Berras and DiMaggios nonetheless.

Catcher - Yogi Berra, 1946-1963
125 OPS+, 62.1 WAR

As much has been written about Berra as any other player in Yankees history, thanks to a wit that lies somewhere between genius and savant. With a seemingly infinite collection of quotations to his name, Berra would be famous even if he weren’t one of the best catchers of all time. As it was, he was Joe Mauer before Joe Mauer: the All-American kid made good, with charm and the remarkable ability to hit and catch.

First Base - Lou Gehrig, 1923-1939
179 OPS+, 118.4 WAR

“The Iron Horse” was voted the best first-baseman by the Baseball Writers’ Association. Lou holds the record for the most grand slams. He played 2,130 consecutive games. That record stood for 56 years before Cal Ripkens Jr. broke it. Gerhig was also elected into the Hall of Fame in 1939. His life and career was cut short by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gerhig’s Diease), a horrible diesease in your nerves. He died 2 years after being diagnosed. He is a legend that will live on forever.

Second Base - Robinson Cano, 2005-Present
118 OPS+, 22.5 WAR

Second base was a very tough decision because the Yankees have not had very good second base-mans in their franchise, out of all of the second base players I had a very strong argument for the MVP candidate Robinson Cano. In only six years he has accumulated 102 home runs. Adding on to that amazing stat he has a career .311 batting average. Also he has been an MVP, won the silver slugger award, and runner up rookie of year. Our final reason to picking Cano as our starter was because we have a soft spot for Cano because he has helped our favorite team win a World Series.

Shortstop - Derek Jeter, 1995-Present
121 OPS+, 70 WAR

Derek Jeter is obviously the best shortstop choice in the Yankees roster. He won the Rookie of the Year in 1995 and was the only player to win the All-Star Game MVP and the World Series MVP in the same year. He was selected as an All-Star ten times and he won Silver Slugger and Golden Glove awards on four occasions. He has a .317 career batting average and team captian for the Yankees since 2003. Finally, Jeter is the all-time Yankees hit leader, passing Lou Gerhig in 2009. He still plays for the Yankees and continues to break records.

Third Base - Alex Rodriguez, 2004-Present
147 OPS+, 40.2 WAR

Alex Rodriguez is considered one of the all-time best players. Pretty good. Joining the Yankees in 2004, he was the youngest player to ever hit 500 home runs, breaking a record previously set by Jimmie Foxx. Though he used steroids from 2001-2003, he has stopped using drugs and continues to play for the Yankees as a phenomenal third baseman.

Right Field - Babe Ruth, 1920-1935
210 OPS+, 149.6 WAR

A huge no-brainer!!!!!! Babe Ruth is the best player of all time. There is nothing else to say for the greatest player ever.

Center Field - Mickey Mantle, 1951-1968
172 OPS+, 120.2 WAR

Mantle’s story reads like a Greek tragedy. The All-American boy with a broad smile and all the talent in the world saw his career and greatness always overshadowed by the history against which he was pitted. He was an infamous alcoholic, his playing career was continually marred by injury, and while he continued to march bravely out into center field, his knees could barely hold him as his career went on. It is stunning, then, that he put up the kind of numbers that he did in his career. One wonders what might have been.

Left Field - Joe DiMaggio, 1936-1951
155 OPS+, 83.6 WAR

“The Yankee Clipper,” or “Joltin’ Joe,” has been immortalized in song and popular culture, of course, but he also kicked off what would become 30 years of dominant performance from Yankee center fielders. Joe was so good - the truest of the “True Yankees” - that fans met the rookie Mantle, who would replace him, with great skepticism. We decided to leave Mantle in center, because, in the end, he was an even better ball player than DiMaggio (who we assume could handle the transition to left field alright).

Designated Hitter - Reggie Jackson, 1977-1981
148 OPS+, 16.9 WAR

The original “Mr. October” didn’t play with the Yankees for long, but he forged his legacy in the five years he spent in pinstripes.

Closer - Mariano Rivera, 1995 - Present
205 ERA+, 51.4 WAR

As we all know this was another complete no-brainer with Mariano Rivera’s record setting 205 ERA+ and that he will be holding the saves holder in 2 to 3 years.

Starting Rotation and Bullpen

Starting Pitcher - Lefty Gomez, 1930-1942
125 ERA+, 43.2 WAR

Lefty Gomez was overshadowed, in his career, by the careers of Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio, but he - along with Red Ruffing - was one of the aces and star pitchers of the first Yankees dynasty.

Starting Pitcher - Red Ruffing, 1930-1946
119 ERA+, 49.7 WAR

Red Ruffing was a converted outfielder, who changed positions after losing four of his toes in a mine accident. Odd as it sounds, the change probably helped Ruffing, who didn’t have to compete in a stacked New York outfield, and instead went on to become a hall of famer and one of the best pitchers of his era.

Starting Pitcher - Ron Guidry, 1975-1988
119 ERA+, 44.4 WAR

One of the few modern starting pitchers on the shortlist of great Yankees, Guidry won a Cy Young and was runner up for an MVP in his dominant 1978 campaign, when he went 25-3 with a 1.74 ERA. The Yankees won the series that year, behind Guidry’s stellar season, and the pitcher went on to anchor the Yankees staff through the 80s.

Starting Pitcher - Waite Hoyt, 1921-1930
115 ERA+, 47 WAR

Hoyt is probably better known as the longtime announcer of the Cincinnati Reds, but before his broadcast career he was the ace of the first Yankees World Series winning team.

Starting Pitcher - Andy Pettitte, 1995-2003, 2007-Present
114 ERA+, 42.3 WAR

Pettitte has been an amazing pitcher for the Yankees in his career. He has contributed to 5 of the Yankees World Series. Along with 5 World Series he has a 114 ERA+ and a 3.97 ERA.

Relief Pitcher - Rich “Goose” Gossage, 1978-1983
179 ERA+, 18.2 WAR

Gossage was one of the first “closers” in baseball history, amassing a now unimpressive 310 saves (151 with the Yankees). In Gossage’s time, most of these were two or three inning affairs, as his 533 innings in 319 appearances with the Yankees suggest. In his brief time with the Yankees Gossage was good enough - with an outstanding 179 ERA+ - to warrant inclusion in the All-Time discussion.

Relief Pitcher - Sparky Lyle, 1972-1978
148 ERA+, 14.4 WAR

Lyle’s WAR total is unimpressive, but he was a work horse for the Yankees, pitching over 700 innings in relief in his seven seasons with the club. He picked up 141 saves at a time when the statistic wasn’t recorded, and struck out twice as many as he walked.

Relief Pitcher - Dave Righetti, 1979-1990
127 ERA+, 23.3 WAR

Righetti started his career as a starter, winning the Rookie of the Year award in 1979. He was later switched to relief thanks to a glut of starters on the Yankees roster in the 80s, where he continued to shine as a replacement for Goose Gossage. As a minor leaguer, Righetti was acquired by the Yankees in an ill-fated trade by the Rangers for, it turned out, a past-his-prime Sparky Lyle.

Backups

Catcher - Jorge Posada, 1995-Present
125 OPS+, 45.7 WAR

Like Yogi Berra, Jorge Posada is the rare catcher who can hit. We chose Posada over the also-deserving Thurman Munson because Posada has managed to continue as a top-level performer well into his late 30s. Of course, we don’t know what Munson would have done had he not died in a tragic plane accident, but Posada has been every bit as good in his career, and he has anchored the latest Yankees dynasty.

Second Base - Tony Lazzeri, 1926-1937
121 OPS+, 46.6 WAR

The only second baseman in the discussion besides Cano played alongside Babe Ruth, routinely hitting 10-20 homers a year at a time when no one (except his slugging teammate) was hitting much of anything. Lazzeri’s Hall of Fame entrance took a long time thanks to suspect defense, but his offensive ability, especially for a second baseman, is unquestionable.

Left Field - Charlie Keller, 1939-1949
152 OPS+, 42.4 WAR

The best Yankee you’ve never heard of, Keller lost some of his best years to World War Two. Even so, a stunning .410 OBP and .518 SLG speak to his skill as a hitter. One can only imagine an outfield consisting of him, DiMaggio, and George Selkirk (who narrowly missed inclusion on this roster). No wonder the Yankees won all those World Series.

First Base / Designated Hitter - Jason Giambi, 2002-2008
143 OPS+, 21.8 WAR

The “Giambino” earned his nickname with a series of outstanding performances for the Yankees earlier in this decade. For someone as high-profile as he is, Giambi is actually one of the most underrated sluggers of his era, thanks to his amazing ability to get on base. As a Yankee Giambi’s OBP was .404, stellar even when not coupled with 30+ homers a season.

First Base - Don Mattingly, 1982-1995
127 OPS+, 39.8 WAR

Immensely popular, Mattingly never looks as impressive on paper as he is in people’s memories. Even so, his career 127 OPS+ is nothing to laugh at. Being a first baseman without a ton of power in the late 80s and early 90s works against “Donny Baseball,” especially because the generation following him hit more homers than any other, but his overall skill with the bat (and glove), along with his spot in Yankee-fan hearts, means that he warrants a spot here.

Right Field - Roger Maris, 1960-1966
140 OPS+, 27.9 WAR

No player was more polarizing in his time. As he and Mantle chased the Ruth’s hallowed home run record in 1961, Maris was subjected to the best and worst that fans have to offer. What often gets lost, however, in the Maris story is what a good hitter he was, period. His 61 homer season was staggering, and probably at least in part due to luck, but it was hardly a total fluke. Maris had led the league in SLG the year before, after all, and had hit 39 homers. He has been kept out of the Hall of Fame thanks largely to a short career, but he definitely warrants inclusion here.

Conclusion

After reading our thoughts, you probably know why our roster is the best. Not only did we do deep research, but being Yankees fans we know a lot of the players. If we were to go into even greater detail, we would write paragraphs upon paragraphs about each player. But we didn’t want to bore you (we hope we didn’t) out of your minds, so we did the main factors of each player. If we were to do a different team, that would be a different story. First, the Yankees are so much better than other teams... GO YANKEES!

The Should-Be All-Stars

I'm currently running a small workshop on baseball statistics with a couple of local students, and today we discussed the upcoming All-Star game. As you are probably aware, Major League Baseball has put itself in a bit of a conundrum, unsure whether the All-Star game is an exhibition or a meaningful competition. "This time it counts," was a catch-phrase when the league first implemented a plan to award home-field advantage in the World Series to the league that wins the Midsummer Classic. On the other hand, fans vote, meaning often rosters are not constructed to win, but to entertain.

This season, for example, Placido Polanco is on the verge of being voted in at 3B in the National League. Why? Because he's on the hugely popular Philadelphia Phillies. He's having a passable season, to boot, with a .349 OBP and .433 SLG, but compared to Ryan Zimmerman's .384 and .517, there really shouldn't be a contest, especially considering Zimmerman is the better fielder and has almost three times as many home runs (13 to 5).

Such is the whimsy of the fans, who overwhelmingly vote in undeserving large-market players and fail to support under-sung standouts like Ben Zobrist, Josh Willingham, or Andres Torres, even when those players are better - indeed, far better - than their more famous counterparts like Ryan Braun or Jimmy Rollins. One need look no further than the American League DH voting, where a retired Ken Griffey, Jr. is in fourth place to see the absurdity of the fan vote.

Of course, none of that would matter if the game didn't count for anything, but since it does, the MLB is stuck in an unfortunate, contradictory position: the game is for the fans, but also for the players, but also for the league, but also for teams fighting for a World Series win. For a single game to be all of those things is absurd, and it's no accident that there are more "how to fix the All-Star Game" articles written this time of year than "how to fix the oil spill" articles.

Anyway, in the workshop today we figured out who we think deserves an All-Star berth, based on our reckoning of the actual performances of the players involved, though with a dash of deference to established players and with a higher weight put on hitting than defense. I've also compiled my own list, and I'll also note who the current vote leader is. Since WAR is the statistic du jour on this blog, I'll simply give that for each player, with notes when applicable.

National League - Catcher

Class Pick: Brian McCann, Atlanta Braves, 2.3 WAR
My Pick: Brian McCann, Atlanta Braves, 2.3 WAR
Voter Pick: Yadier Molina, St. Louis Cardinals, 0.8 WAR

Molina is a fine defensive catcher, but he's a butcher with the bat, with a slash line of .235/.312/.314 (that's batting average, OBP, and SLG for those that don't know). By all accounts McCann is just as good with the glove, but boasts a .259/.379/.443 line. McCann is also better than Molina in "traditional" stats like HR and RBI, so this fan selection is a staunch reminder that reputation and media hype go a long way. To the fans' collective credit, McCann is in second in the latest ballot update (with a final update coming tomorrow), and may yet overtake Molina, but even a second-place finish for Yadier is absurd.

It pains me to admit that the only other legitimate pick in the National League at catcher would be Miguel Olivo, who I continue to maintain should not be the Rockies starting catcher. He has, undoubtedly, put up a stellar first half (with a 2.5 WAR that exceeds McCann's, actually), but his secondary statistics (an absurdly high BABIP, for example) point to a huge crash in the second half. I suppose we'll see.

American League - Catcher

Class Pick: Joe Mauer, Minnesota Twins, 2.0 WAR
My Pick: Joe Mauer, Minnesota Twins, 2.0 WAR
Voter Pick: Joe Mauer, Minnesota Twins, 2.0 WAR

Mauer is a star, is the reigning MVP, and leads AL catchers in WAR. Even with only 3 homers so far, he's a no-brainer.

National League - First Base

Class Pick: Albert Pujols, St. Louis Cardinals, 2.6 WAR
My Pick: Adrian Gonzalez, San Diego Padres, 3.3 WAR
Voter Pick: Albert Pujols, St. Louis Cardinals, 2.6 WAR

Adrian Gonzalez is the best player you've never heard of, as he suffers from the misfortune of playing in Petco Park. Much as Rockies pitchers are underrated because Coors Field inflates their ERAs, Padres hitters are routinely underrated. Gonzalez is doing nothing new this season; he has been one of the very best hitters in baseball for a while now (consider his 6.6 WAR last season), but because he plays at Petco, he looks merely very good instead of great.

American League - First Base

Class Pick: Justin Morneau, Minnesota Twins, 4.5 WAR (!)
My Pick: Justin Morneau, Minnesota Twins, 4.5 WAR
Voter Pick: Justin Morneau, Minnesota Twins, 4.5 WAR

That Mark Teixeira and his 0.6 WAR season are within 300,000 fan votes of Morneau is ridiculous. Only Miguel Cabrera's 20 HR even deserves to be in the conversation here, and even then that's only to be summarily dismissed from the conversation. Morneau's 4.5 WAR so far is preposterously good, because it combines the best fielding at 1B in the AL so far with a .445 OBP and a .612 SLG. Morneau didn't deserve the MVP award he won a few years back, but if he keeps this up, he will deserve the one he wins this season. His only competition - at the moment anyway - comes from the next AL player we'll see.

National League - Second Base

Class Pick: Chase Utley, Philadelphia Phillies, 3.2 WAR
My Pick: Chase Utley, Philadelphia Phillies, 3.2 WAR
Voter Pick: Chase Utley, Philadelphia Phillies, 3.2 WAR

Another no-doubter. Even with a sub-par (for him) .276 average, Utley is by far the best second baseman in the league. What's more, he has deserved more than one Gold Glove, even though he hasn't won one yet, and probably will again this season.

A tip of the hat to the fans who have Martin Prado and his 2.8 WAR in second place, despite being relatively unknown.

American League - Second Base

Class Pick: Robinson Cano, New York Yankees, 4.5 WAR (!)
My Pick: Robinson Cano, New York Yankees, 4.5 WAR
Voter Pick: Robinson Cano, New York Yankees, 4.5 WAR

Cano has been, hands down, the best player on the best team in baseball. He and Morneau will duke it out for the MVP, most likely, unless Mauer or Carl Crawford (about whom more later) can turn it on a little bit the rest of the way. As a second baseman, Cano is far more valuable than Morneau, of course, but Justin is perhaps more likely to keep up his torrid offensive pace.

National League - Third Base

Class Pick: David Wright, New York Mets, 3.2 WAR
My Pick: Ryan Zimmerman, Washington Nationals, 3.1 WAR
Voter Pick: Placido Polanco, Philadelphia Phillies, 2.0 WAR

Zimmerman is not even in the top five NL third basemen in the latest voting results, which is a travesty. Not only has he matched Wright offensively (.290/.384/.517 SLG for Zimmerman to .300/.386/.542 for Wright), but he is the best fielding 3B in the Majors. Polanco (.318/.349/.433), as mentioned above, is having a fine season, but is a simply awful choice by comparison to either Zimmerman or Wright.

American League - Third Base

Class Pick: Adrian Beltre, Boston Red Sox, 3.5 WAR
My Pick: Adrian Beltre, Boston Red Sox, 3.5 WAR
Voter Pick: Evan Longoria, Tampa Bay Rays, 3.2 WAR

It's hard to go wrong here, as Beltre, Longoria, ARod, and even the Rangers' Michael Young are all deserving. Beltre gets my nod - and the class's - over Longoria for his superior defense.

National League - Shortstop

Class Pick: Hanley Ramirez, Florida Marlins, 2.6 WAR
My Pick: Hanley Ramirez, Florida Marlins, 2.6 WAR
Voter Pick: Hanley Ramirez, Florida Marlins, 2.6 WAR

Jimmy Rollins - who has played fewer than 20 games so far this season due to injury - is a close second in the fan voting.

I'm much more torn here than my students were. Troy Tulowitzki, though he will be injured for the All-Star game, has also put up 2.6 WAR so far. Add in that Hanley Ramirez was involved in something of a snafu by not hustling after a booted grounder earlier this season and it is tempting to give the edge to Tulo. I stick with Hanley only because, in the end, he's so much better a hitter than Tulowitzki that I can't really bring myself to vote for the injured leader of the Rockies, especially when Hanley needs all the help he can get to hold off Jimmy Rollins.

American League - Shortstop

Class Pick: Derek Jeter, New York Yankees, 2.0 WAR
My Pick: Derek Jeter, New York Yankees, 2.0 WAR
Voter Pick: Derek Jeter, New York Yankees, 2.0 WAR

You were expecting Erick Aybar?

Jeter would get voted in here even if he weren't the best shortstop in the American League. He'd probably get voted in even if he were the worst. As is, however, he is the best, at least for now, so it's no contest.

National League - Outfield

Class Picks:
Andre Ethier, Los Angeles Dodgers, 0.8 WAR
Ryan Braun, Milwaukee Brewers, 1.0 WAR
Josh Willingham, Washington Nationals, 2.6 WAR
My Picks:
Andres Torres, San Francisco Giants, 2.8 WAR
Matt Holliday, St. Louis Cardinals, 3.1 WAR
Ryan Ludwick, St. Louis Cardinals, 2.5 WAR
Voter Picks:
Andre Ethier, Los Angeles Dodgers, 0.8 WAR
Ryan Braun, Milwaukee Brewers, 1.0 WAR
Jason Heyward, Atlanta Braves, 1.8 WAR

A lot of discrepancy here, mainly thanks to defense. My class, like the voters, was willing to forgo outfield defense in favor of the stellar offensive seasons of Ethier and Braun, though we dodged the over-hyped Jason Heyward in favor of the much more deserving Willingham. Even so, the defensive combination of Willingham, Bruan, and Ethier (or substitute Heyward) is brutally bad. Ethier and Braun have been two of the worst fielders in baseball this season, and while Heyward has been passable, he has not been nearly as good offensively as you might expect at .251/.366/.455. Torres has a comparable .276/.375/.448 line with a fraction of the attention, and he plays plus defense at all three outfield positions.

I also think that Holliday and Ludwick both deserve recognition for being solid hitters and fielders, so much so that they lead the way in the NL in WAR among outfielders. What's more, an outfield with Ludwick in right, Torres in center, and Holliday in left is preferable to the horror show of Bruan in left, Ethier in right, and Willingham in center. Yikes.

American League - Outfield

Class Picks:
Josh Hamilton, Texas Rangers, 3.7 WAR
Carl Crawford, Tampa Bay Rays, 3.8 WAR
Ichiro, Seattle Mariners, 2.8 WAR
My Picks:
Josh Hamilton, Texas Rangers, 3.7 WAR
Carl Crawford, Tampa Bay Rays, 3.8 WAR
Shin-Soo Choo, Cleveland Indians, 3.0 WAR
Voter Picks:
Josh Hamilton, Texas Rangers, 3.7 WAR
Carl Crawford, Tampa Bay Rays, 3.8 WAR
Ichiro, Seattle Mariners, 2.8 WAR

Carl Crawford is quietly having one of the best seasons of his career. He has been, as usual, one of the best fielders in all of baseball, and is a very good hitter to boot. Hamilton continues to be a wonderful success story, and is among the best hitters in the game whilst remaining a passable fielder.

The choice between Choo and Ichiro is a tough one, however, especially because a case could be made for Ben Zobrist, Alex Rios, Vernon Wells, Brett Gardner, and surprising Tigers rookie Brennan Boesch as well. I give the nod to Choo for his slight edge in WAR over those other guys (except Rios, who at 3.3 WAR so far this season strikes me as a fluke). Zobrist will likely make the squad for his versatility, as will Gardner thanks to Girardi being the manager.

That Choo is not even in the top 15 among AL outfielders in the voting says something about his relative star power. To me he gets the edge over Ichiro and those other guys, but it is close.

American League - Designated Hitter

Class Pick: Vladimir Guerrero, Texas Rangers, 2.1 WAR
My Pick: Vladimir Guerrero, Texas Rangers, 2.1 WAR
Voter Pick: Vladimir Guerrero, Texas Rangers, 2.1 WAR

Another no-brainer. No other DH has come close to matching Guerrero's production this season. It also makes for a great story to have Guerrero DH back in Anaheim for the All-Star Game after being ditched by the Angels this offseason for the vastly inferior Hideki Matsui.

There you have it. On the whole, the fans aren't doing an awful job this season, and there's still time for Polanco and Molina to slide out of their starting spots at third base and catcher in the NL.

The two most common debates in the process of trying to select who really deserves to be in the game were brand-name versus performance and offense versus defense. While big names are often big simply because of exposure, it is also the case that an anomalous first half - like Miguel Olivo's - should be taken with a grain of salt,whereas players performing a little below expectations like Chase Utley are as likely to improve in the second half as the Olivo's of the world are to regress.

As far as offense and defense goes, there's no question that fans tilt heavily towards favoring offense in the All-Star Game, but that only returns us to the question we started with: what is this game really for? If you're really trying to win, why wouldn't you send out your best team, rather than just your best hitters? Only Bud Selig knows, I guess.