On Monday, Dan Rosenheck of The Economist responded to the “predictably hagiographic” coverage of Marvin Miller’s death by outlining  what he calls the “mixed legacy” of the founder and longtime leader of the MLBPA. No doubt several of Rosenheck’s points are imminently debatable, as should be expected. His is, after all, a contrarian position. During the early stages of Miller’s tenure he was up against the only federally-sanctioned monopoly in American history. It was difficult to perfect MLB’s compensatory system when the compensators had grown accustomed to having no system at all. In the latter stages Miller chose to prioritize relevant privacy issues over the long term maximization of revenue, as Rosenheck would’ve preferred. Union negotiators are frequently tasked with a precarious balancing act. Certainly, Miller, like any man in his position, made some difficult rationalizations and, inevitably, evaluators of Miller’s legacy from both camps will be victims of their own hindsight biases.

That said, the centerpiece of Rosenheck’s argument is extremely compelling. The system of free agency which is “often cited as Mr. Miller’s crowning achievement,” though it “maximised total wages…also created a grossly unfair dichotomy among the players between the haves and the have-nots.” The majority of professional baseball players, youngsters toiling in the minor leagues, “are effectively still bound by the old reserve clause” which Curt Flood famously described as means of re-legalizing slavery. Many are quick to dismiss the economic challenges facing professional athletes. The “well-paid slave” is obviously an oxymoron. But underlying Rosenheck’s argument is evidence that the baseball player’s plight may be more familiar to many Americans than they suspect. In the wake of the Occupy movement and the Obama-Romney election most IIATMS readers are probably accustomed to seeing graphs like this one:

It was meme of the month: even before they lost, the Yankees were lost. They were lost without Derek Jeter. Nick Swisher looked lost at the plate. Curtis Granderson appeared to have lost his eyesight. Robinson Cano had lost his mojo. Joe Girardi lost his father. According to Donald Trump at least, A-Rod “didn’t have a clue.” The Yankees offensive collapse was historic and, as such, inspired hyperbole. “Lostness” was the metaphor of choice, not only on Twitter and the message boards, but, increasingly, in mainstream outlets like the New York Post, New York Magazine, and ESPN. Will Leitch’s conclusion following Game Three of the ALCS included a line which took the trope to its inevitable extreme: “They look lost; they look like they’re carrying their bats upside down.”

Especially at the lunatic fringe, as represented by Trump’s typically opportunist rant, the implication was clear: What the team was suffering was more than just a slump. It testified to some greater, probably moral, failing.

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It is perhaps appropriate that the 2012 MLB season ended on the night of the first debate of the 2012 presidential election. It was a celebration in statistical misnomers. The candidates cited data which was substantially outdated. They applied results from independent studies to programs which were not objects of the quoted research. With gusto, they attacked inefficient legislation, even when neither had anything to do with it implementing it. They answered questions about taxes with inappropriate anecdotes about people and businesses to whom the cited taxes didn’t apply. Both sounded like they were the Neo of U.S. economic policy, when, in fact, it’s unlikely either knows how exactly his own proposals would be implemented, much less whether they can produce any of the desired effects.

Fitting that, as this snoozer of a debate was unfolding, Miguel Cabrera was putting the finishing touches on a season which will be remembered mainly because of the somewhat misleading statistical oddity known as the Triple Crown. Not that Cabrera’s season hasn’t been great, particularly down the stretch. But, if one of the arbitrary Triple Crown categories were runs or hits or stolen bases or OBP or WAR, we’d probably be discussing this as yet another performance which warrants Miggy’s inclusion in the AL MVP discussion, but leaves him well behind a prohibitive favorite.

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I postulated yesterday that the snubbing of Johnny Cueto, Zack Greinke, and James McDonald may have been related to their pitching schedules. Somewhat surprisingly, Tony LaRussa admitted today that he took their pre-All Star Break starts into account, even ruled out Cueto and Greinke because they were scheduled to start next Sunday (LaRussa was, as it turns out, misinformed in the case of Greinke, who the Brewers intentionally scheduled to start Saturday, so he could make a triumphant return to Kansas City). LaRussa’s decision (and his discussion of that decision) is unprecedented. Previous All-Star managers have always chosen their teams based on the most deserving players and then reacted to rotations and injuries. This is why last year, for instance, there were 84 All-Stars.

This should (and almost certainly will) be a red flag for MLBPA. All-Star Games are more than just resume-building for many MLB players. Greinke is among the many players with contractual incentives based on All-Star appearances. Although it is pretty clear the Brewers didn’t conspire with LaRussa, if his approach is emulated, teams could save money by scheduling their stars to pitch the Sunday before the Break. I have no doubt LaRussa was merely trying to consider all the factors in order to build the deepest, most competitive roster, but by doing so, I expect he has sparked a new controversy about the selection process.

Rest assured, over the next week pretty much everything we complain about today and tomorrow will be corrected as players are added to the roster due to pitching rotation conflicts and injuries, both real and convenient. It is quite possible that the reason Tony LaRussa did not select Zack Greinke, Johnny Cueto, or James McDonald, all bubble candidates in a deep class of NL starters, was that all are scheduled to pitch next weekend and therefore might be deemed unavailable for Tuesday’s game. That said, there’s little I love more than All-Star roster math. Here are a few things I find interesting about this season’s initial selections.

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This past Friday, Baseball-Reference updated the formula for their version of Wins Above Replacement (bWAR). Sean Foreman posted a fantastic explanation of the changes on the B-R blog. It’s a bookmark-worthy link, not only for it’s insight into the statistic’s evolution, but also for the table outlining the differences between the bWAR and fWAR (FanGraphs) formulas.

The Baseball-Reference update also inspired an outstanding Tangotiger post which analyzed changes that were made, changes which weren’t made, and differences behind the various popular (and personal) versions of WAR. Both are rather dense reading, but, if one wants to understand Wins Above Replacement’s increasing popularity and, moreover, if one wants to make informed arguments using it as evidence, there is probably no better place to start than these two posts.

As regular IIATMS readers know, I have serious qualms with the way WAR is habitually used, especially as evidence in single-season (or even smaller) samples. Unfortunately, because of the metric’s seeming elegance, it is too often regarded as the final word in assessment, rather than as a starting point, and its margin of error is wholly disregarded, sometimes even by savvy analysts.

I applaud Sean Foreman and Baseball-Reference for continuing to improve the wildly popular metric and for making it transparent. WAR is better for their diligence, and sabermetrics are better with bWAR. However, the changes also reveal exactly why conclusions drawn solely from marginal WAR differences are inherently flawed.

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Just to put into perspective the excellence of Retro Jeter, here’s a little table which feature’s the Captain’s April stats and the last months in which he equalled such totals:

Prior to the season, the conventional wisdom was that the race for the American League pennant consisted of six teams. A few, myself included, argued that the Blue Jays warranted inclusion in the elite class of AL contenders. Very rarely does a season begin with so much consensus. Of course, what happens in April stays in April. No team is further than nine games back, a margin which is easily surmountable given the five months remaining. However, I propose that because the league is so top heavy this year and because the Big Six (Seven?) played a disproportionate number of games against each other this past month, there is more to learn from April than there might usually be. What follows is a power ranking of the presumed contenders:

1.) Tampa Bay Rays (1st Place AL East, 15-8 Overall, 12-7 v. Contenders)

They didn’t have the best overall record, they didn’t even have the best record against the other top teams. However, Tampa had easily the toughest schedule in April, playing all but four games against other teams in the Big Seven, and facing Detroit, Boston, Toronto, and Texas on the road. Nevertheless, they managed to finish the month atop their division. They lost only one of their ten home games and are red hot going into May, having won ten of their last 12.

Highlight: There were a number, but taking the rubber game this past Sunday night in Texas probably tops the list. Tampa co-Ace, David Price, humbled the scorching-hot Rangers lineup and Tampa sent a message to the team that ousted them from the postseason each of the last two seasons.

MVP: Price and James Shields both won four games for the Rays, but Evan Longoria led the team in OPS (.994) and seemed to come through every time the Rays needed a clutch hit.

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Michael Pineda‘s season-ending surgery is disappointing no matter how you slice it, but it’s made even worse because he’s not scheduled for Tommy John, which has come to be almost a right of passage for power pitchers at his age. Instead, Pineda will go under the knife to repair a torn anterior labrum. Shoulder surgeries are easily the worst case scenario for pitchers and, among all common sports injuries, shoulder surgeries have among the lowest rates of recovery, with, as of 2008, less than a third of patients returning to their previous levels of performance (compared to well over 50% for elbow injuries). The return rate is so notoriously poor, pitchers almost alway try to pitch through the injury before submitting to surgery. Rich Harden, as one extreme example, tried rehabbing and pitching with a torn anterior capsule for nearly four seasons before finally resigning himself to going under the knife. Randy Johnson chose to retire rather than undergo the dreaded operation.

In 2010, I tracked the progress of eight pitchers who were trying to return from shoulder injuries (you can see the entire series here). The results were not encouraging, especially if the expectation is for Pineda to contribute next season. Only Ted Lilly, who did not have a “tear,” but rather “fraying,” managed to return to anything like his previous form and the vast majority of the pitchers surveyed were back on the D.L. before the end of the season, if they returned at all. The worst case scenarios include the plight of Brandon Webb. Once a perennial Cy Young candidate, Webb injured himself in his first start in 2009 and has yet to return to a major-league mound, although he is currently rehabbing with the intent of auditioning for teams around midseason. Webb is one of many examples of pitchers who went through a prolonged rehab process only to discover that the damage had not been fully repaired, forcing them to start over with another operation.

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