The Best TV Shows of 2011: Summer Edition

You can see my best of 2010 list here

I was planning on writing posts for TV and music singles at the end of June to celebrate six months done and six months to go, but I'm writing my TV post a few weeks early because the spring line ups are all done and the summer line ups are just getting under way, so instead of writing a post where some shows will only be an episode or two into their season versus other shows that are completely done, I'm going to do my half way post now. Plus, I'm really bored and I already saw one movie today in lieu of my goal to see every movie on AFI's top 100 list by the end of the summer (I have 59 more movies to go).

A disclaimer before I begin: While I do watch an unnecessary amount of television, I obviously do not watch every single show like many, actual TV critics. You will notice that many of my shows come mainly from two channels: FX and NBC- for several reasons. First, I watch a lot of On Demand and those two stations along with USA are probably the three best channels to watch all of their shows On Demand. ABC finally got their act together and posted some of their shows On Demand, but not a whole lot and you can not fast forward through commercials through ABC (or FOX) like you can with NBC, USA, and FX. CBS is pretty good at their On Demand stuff but I don't watch a whole lot of CBS because I don't like a whole lot of shows they offer. Which leads me to my second point, there's a lot of crap out there and this has been an extremely weak spring line up. The most watched new show (which is purposefully omitted from this list) is Hawaii 5-0 (CBS). While a lot of people are watching the show, it has far inferior numbers compared to its new show counterparts even three, five years ago- which just goes to show you the poor quality of new programs so far. (Want more further proof, just listen to how "excited" Bill Simmons is about recent new shows when he has the great TV critic from hitfix.com Alan Sepinwall on The B.S. Report). Next, many of the shows I like and just great shows in general like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Entourage, and The League, just to name a few, did not have a season in 2011. Lastly, I do not get HBO, Showtime, or any premium network so shows like Dexter (which I have heard bad things about for its fifth season) and Game Of Thrones (which I have heard great things about but it's hard for me to get interested in medieval pieces) I can not easily watch.

So after my long-winded nothingness, let's get on with the list.
***Warning, posts may contain spoilers***

10) Law and Order: LA (NBC)

Admittedly the main reason I started watching this show was because it was On Demand, but being in law school (which actually helped me understand more about the investigation of the murder than the trial itself- which as a lawyer-in-training the trials just frustrate me more than anything. But I digress.) helped me enjoy this version of Law and Order. The season started off very slow and annoying and the show didn't really get a good feel for what it wanted to do. It had both Terrence Howard and Alfred Molina as the D.A. and the show seemed to try and coast on the allure of crimes in Los Angeles. Then, halfway through the series, one of the lead detectives, Rex Winters (Skeet Ulrich) was murdered and the show changed for the better. Alfred Molina became a detective, Terrence Howard played the main attorney and the show added Alena De La Garza who played D.A. Rubirosa at the end of the original Law and Order run to become Howard's assistant and the voice of reason and morality. (SIDENOTE: As an actual attorney, you can't just practice in one state then up and leave to practice in another- you have to take a new bar for every state you want to practice in. But hey, that's the magic of television). Anyways, since the change the show reverted back to its glory days of aggressive prosection and a giant twist at the end of every episode. Just one of the many shows I like (and on this list) that gets cancelled after one season. Although I'm sure creator Dick Wolf isn't all that broken up about it while he is counting his millions of dollars that he's made from this franchise.

9) How I Met Your Mother (CBS)

How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM) took the biggest dive being the best comedy of last year in the number two slot dropping all the way down to nine. I thought HIMYM had a really bad year in Season 6. Don't get me wrong, the season had some great, fantastic moments, mainly centered around the fathers of the shows two best characters Marshall (Jason Segel) and Barney (Neil Patrick Harris).

HIMYM suffers from two fatal flaws as it keeps getting renewed (CBS renewed it for at least another two seasons). The first is that the show centers around Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) who is in my opinion the worst character out of the five main ones. The vast majority of people think the best are either Marshall or Barney so despite where you think Ted ranks, the fact that he's probably your third favorite character at best yet also the lead says a lot of things about the show. To me, Ted is like J.D. from Scrubs, he kind of sucks but he's the glue that holds the awesome supporting cast cast members in place. The second (and I think biggest) flaw going six seasons deep is that the show has dug itself into a hole calling it "How I Met Your Mother". If this show had a different title yet told the same exact jokes except older Ted (voiced by Bob Saget) was telling his kids about his youth instead how how he met his wife, then I think the show would have been better by this point. Seriously, if you were one of those kids how pissed would you be if your dad told a three week story? The show now has to center around Ted and his relationships which hurt the show this season.

This season centered around the relationship between Ted and his girlfriend Zoey (Jennifer Morrison a.k.a Cameron on "House"). The relationship did nothing to advance the character development of Ted (in fact it seemed to hurt it) nor did it in any way explain why you would tell your kids this story in how you met your wife.

If I could I would have left HIMYM off of my list but by default it's in and I'm confident that when my end of the year list comes out How I Met Your Mother will not be on it. But because it is so ingrained in our culture, I still laugh at it, and the stuff that worked was really good, HIMYM earned the 9th spot on this list.

8) The Office (NBC)

The Office moves up from barely cracking the top 10 in 2010 (at #10) to now being solidly in there at number eight.

This year was Michael Scott's last season on the show so Steve Carrel can go out and make more shitty movies that aren't funny but I'm sure pay him a helluva lot more than what he made doing television. At this point in The Office I've stopped comparing the show to Seasons 2-4 because you're always going to get let down if you do that, but the Michael Scott farewell tour was poignant, beautiful and funny. You have truly seen how Michael Scott (Carrel) has involved into the asshole he once was in the beginning of the season into one of the best bosses a guy could have at the time of his departure. Now the only question that remains is: who will become the new boss of Dunder Mifflin in Scranton? My vote is for Darryl (Craig Robinson) but based upon how awesome James Spader was in his interview in the season finale, I think I might like to see him be the new boss. (Same as the old boss? Not a The Who fan? Oh well, moving on).

7) 30 Rock (NBC)

30 Rock is back! There was a huge stretch there where I was only watching the show because it was just second nature to me and not because it was funny. The season stumbled a bit when Tracy Morgan had kidney surgery thus forcing Tracy Jordan (Morgan) to take a hiatus from TGS but as a whole, 30 Rock had a great season. The show reverted back to what made it good in the first place- Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) being high and mighty, Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) having problems in her social life, developing the relationship between Jack and Liz, and having only bit parts for the writers of TGS and Kenneth (Jack McBrayer). The show took a huge step in the right direction as it moved from #15 in 2010 to cracking the top 10 in 2011. The show is still not as funny as it was in Seasons 1-3 which was somewhat disappointing to me because I have such high expectations for this show based on when it first came out, but overall Season 5 of 30 Rock was funny and a success and earned the number seven spot on this list.

6) Community (NBC)

I write these posts from 1 to 10 instead of from 10 to 1 so by this point I have already written five pieces and the length is starting to get long. I will say this about Community though. While this show is probably the smartest comedy on television right now, the biggest problem I had with them in Season 2 is that they had a lot of unfunny episodes this season, especially during the middle of the season. The show was and always has been extremely well-written but a lot of episodes used that smart writing for character development instead of humor. Unlike shows in which you'll read about later, I think Community took a slight step back this season. I know there are a lot of people who really enjoyed Community this season much more than I did and really appreciated the intelligence of the show, even when it wasn't funny, but silly me to ask for humor when I watch a comedy television program. But despite my little negative rant, the show still had some fantastic moments (most notably the two part paintball episodes to end the season) and just for being so cutting edge and original, Community earns the number six spot on this list, up from number nine last year.

5) White Collar (USA)

What, that many NBC shows in a row is just too jarring for you? OK, let's take a break.

White Collar moved up from the 8th best show of 2010 to my 5th best of 2011. The show follows along white collar expert in the FBI Special Agent Peter Burke (Tim DeKay) and smooth talking Ocean's-11-George-Clooney-esque con man Neil Caffrey (Matt Bomer) as a tag team duo catching a different white collar criminal week to week.

Like all original USA shows (and unlike FX shows) they are not *that* well written and are very formulaic and always have a happy ending but what I especially enjoyed about Season 2 of White Collar (especially the parts shown in 2011) was that it finally wrapped up the series long conflict of what happened to Kate / why everyone was searching for the music box.

Sometimes you need mindless TV which will always put a smile on your face which is why White Collar earned the fifth best spot on this list.

4) Lights Out (FX)

FX is probably the best network out there in terms of original programming but it's sadly a station that nobody watches. AMC is the big up and coming station with two great and established shows such as Mad Men and Breaking Bad and even still AMC is having trouble attracting viewers. Needless to say FX is in trouble. Whether it is a sports team or a TV station, the best way to attract people to watch you is by putting out quality products. But as the Tampa Bay Rays as well as FX has learned, that philosophy has not always paid off. The best show of 2010 was an FX show called Terriers which got cancelled due to poor ratings and Lights Out unfortunately fell to the same fate.

Lights Out follows boxer and former heavyweight champion Patrick "Lights" Leary (Holt McCallany) from him scrapping the bottom of the barrel (and lower) to try and regain his glory days back at the top. Even with boxing movies such as Rocky, Raging Bull, Cinderella Man, and most recently The Fighter, Lights Out felt original- mainly because nothing could go right for this underdog whereas the underdog always wins in the movies. Even when good things happened to Lights Leary and his family, even worse things would just pile on top and ruin everything again.

I encourage all of you to check out this show so I won't completely ruin the ending for you (which was jaw-dropping and amazing and heart breaking all at the same time) but even though the season ended like it was expecting a second season, it was a perfect series finale and the show was great enough to be the 4th best show of 2011 so far.

3) Parks and Recreation (NBC)

Parks and Rec has done a lot of things to make sure people don't watch it. First, they had an awful first season which almost made me stop watching the show forever if it wasn't for DME showing me how awesome Season 2 was. Then, it took them 16 months between the start of Season 2 to the start of Season 3 which made me not rank the show in my final end of the year column for 2010 (although it was 7th in my mid-year column) but it is back now and Season 4 is expected to start back up in the fall. (I will say though in Parks and Recs defense that I'm pretty sure the huge gap between Season 2 and Season 3 was because Amy Poehler got preggers. Oh well.)

Parks and Rec follows around Leslie Knope (Poehler) in a governmental parks department in the small town of Pawnee, Indiana. The concept of the show is nothing exciting or special but the casting and characters around Leslie Knope are great. They range from one of my favorite stand up comedians right now Aziz Ansari to Reshida Jones (who played Karen on The Office) to Aubrey Plaza (the stand up comedian chick in Funny People). Season 3 also starred the fantastic Rob Lowe with Adam Scott (the brother of Will Ferrell in Stepbrothers) which added great conflict for the second half of the show. But the best character is the head of the Parks Department Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) who is Leslie's boss and is a true libertarian who doesn't believe in big government (or that any government should ever have a parks department for that matter).

Season 3 centers around the Parks department and the town of Pawnee getting out of financial debt but really, the show and cast are just hilarious no matter what situation they are in and the show has been consistently great and funny all season long which is why it earns the #3 spot on this list.

2) Modern Family (ABC)

For my past two posts (the two for 2010) the best comedy has landed in the number two hole. I think it is just hard to rank the best comedy number one ahead of the best drama, as is true here. But make no mistake, the best comedy, here being Modern Family, is just as good in its own right.

Modern Family moved up nine spots from the eleventh best show of 2010 to my second best show of 2011.

Modern Family is not On Demand so the fact that I go out of my way to watch this show should give you an indication of just how good and hilarious the show is. Modern Family is one of a few examples on this list to make a great leap from Season One to Season Two. The show has always been funny but now that everybody has a firm grip on their characters (although Modern Family really wasn't one of the many shows to suffer from a lack of voice in its first season) this show is not only more hilarious but has deep heart and you're able to connect with its decently big cast (six adults and four kids spread across three families and generally at least three story lines an episode) along with building relationships between all the characters within the show.

The weird thing about Modern Family is that I can't really quote major lines from the show. Those who personally know me know I love to quote (or at least attempt to quote because I generally get the quote wrong) my favorite things and yet I can't do it with Modern Family. Just trust me though, the show is fucking hilarious and brilliant and deserves to be the best comedy of 2011 and the second best show of the year so far.

1) Justified (FX)

Jumping up four spots from my fifth best show last year to the best show so far this year, Justified's sophomore season has far surpassed its rookie one to rightfully earn the top honor.

Out of my millions of facebook friends (and by millions I mean 172. Don't feel bad, I purposefully delete those who I will never talk to again) only two of them watch Justified- and only one of them I actually continually converse with. So you need to watch Justified for the sole reason so that I have somebody to talk about this show with.

But in all seriousness Justified is amazing and you need to watch it.

The show follows around Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) as a bad-ass U.S. Marshall stuck back in his hometown of Harlan County, Kentucky. The season started off slow (although it had a great premiere giving closure to the end of Season 1 while setting up the characters and story lines for Season 2) it picked up about five episodes into the season stepped on the pedal, hit a few babies and old ladies along the way, and never looked back with its last four episodes of the season being some of the best television in awhile. Three out of the last four episodes could have been the season finale for me (although one actually WAS the season finale) and each episode was just better than the last.

Season 2 mainly centered around Olyphany versus Mags Bennett (Margo Martingale) who is a rotund (to put it lightly) 60-ish year old lady who runs the weed business in Harlan County versus Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), the bad guy from Season 1, and the Crowder clan. Mags and Boyd Crowder play some of the best and charismatic bad guys on television, but my favorite was one in Season 2 was one of Mags' son- Dickie Bennett (Jeremy Davies). They all just pull you into every scene they're in while being some of the ruthless, ill-hearted people around. You still want them to win yet also want Raylan to kick their ass.

I loved Season 2 and the leap Justified took and, as mentioned earlier in the post, along with some great shows not even airing in 2011, I think it's going to be hard to knock Justified out of the top spot by year's end.
__________________________

Here is a recap of my list:

10) Law and Order: Los Angeles (NBC)
9) How I Met Your Mother (CBS)
8) The Office (NBC)
7) 30 Rock (NBC)
6) Community (NBC)
5) White Collar (USA)
4) Lights Out (FX)
3) Parks and Recreation (NBC)
2) Modern Family (ABC)
1) Justified (FX)

Making sense of xWHIP through the power of relativity

The following is my latest article for The Hardball Times.

Before reading this article, I encourage you to read my earlier xWHIP and eFIP; this is an extension of the data presented from it. All statistics are current through May 27.

Earlier this week, I presented an updated form of my xWHIP Calculator, which, with the power of normalization, calculates a pitcher's expected hits and expected innings based on his batted ball profile. In raw form, I presented various data points for both xWHIP and eFIP. While useful, such absolutes can be hard to interpret. What does a 1.16 xWHIP mean in isolation? Particularly with the low variance in WHIP in baseball (the range tends to be largely between 1.10 and 1.50), small differences in WHIP can make a larger difference than you might think.

To address these problems, I have calculated each player's xWHIP Z-Score to give some sense of relativity. Because we are dealing with pitchers, where lower is better, I calculated the data so that the lowest Z-Scores equate the best impact players, while higher Z-Scores indicate the worst players with the biggest impact. I also tabulated a column of weighted Z-Scores scaled to expected innings pitched through May 27. This will give you some sense of which players should, in theory, have had the biggest impact on WHIP through the first two months of the season.

Because this column is weighted based on expected innings to date, which may vary in the future based on past playing time, it should not necessarily be consulted in evaluating a player's prospects (e.g., Zack Greinke has the highest Z-Score at -1.98, but only a -1.22 weighted score due to his limited number of relative starts to begin the season). For future value, you should consult the player's unweighted Z-Score, which should be scaled based on relative expected future innings. For example, if pitcher A is expected to pitch 20 percent more innings than the average full-time starter for the rest of the season, his Z-Score should be adjusted accordingly.

To make the data easier to interpret, particularly because I am using Z-Scores in lieu of an index (this was done because of pitcher clustering; the Z-Score calculations give a better sense of impact and relativity for xWHIP), I color-coordinated the data below.

Orange cells mean that the pitcher is in the upper echelon of the relevant column. For xWHIP, this means the pitcher has an xWHIP below 1.27. For dWHIP (the difference between actual WHIP and xWHIP), this means that the pitcher's xWHIP is at least 0.05 points lower than his actual WHIP to date. For Z-Scores, it means the pitcher has an xWHIP Z-Score of -0.35 or lower. These are likely pitchers to target for acquisition, particularly if one or more of his xWHIP, dWHIP, or Z-Score is colored orange.

Blue cells mean that the pitcher is in the lower tier of the relevant column. For xWHIP, this means the pitcher has an xWHIP of or above 1.34. For dWHIP, this means that the pitcher's xWHIP is at least 0.05 points higher than his actual WHIP to date. For Z-Scores, it means the pitcher has a Z-Score of +0.35 or above. These are likely pitchers to avoid or trade, particularly if one or more of his xWHIP, dWHIP, or Z-Score is colored blue.

Yellow cells are "neutral." These are players who are unlikely to have any significant impact on your team's future WHIP, for better or worse. The xWHIP threshold for neutrality is 1.27 to 1.33. I chose 1.27 as the lower end of the xWHIP threshold, despite the fact that the league average xWHIP is 1.33, because the sample of fantasy players in use is a subset of the starting pitching population. The worst pitchers in the league are unlikely to be on a fantasy roster, and at the same time are likely to post the highest WHIPs. In my preseason E.Y.E.S. post about how to calculate auction values, I tabulated the league average fantasy player's WHIP at 1.265. Because starters tend to have a higher WHIPs than relievers on average (expected mean starter WHIP was 1.30), I am using 1.27 as the lower bound of neutrality.

That all noted, here is a visually organized presentation of the data. The left set of data is organized by xWHIP, while the right set of data is organized by dWHIP (you'll need to click the image to enlarge it):



As always, leave the love/hate in the comments below.

xWHIP and eFIP

The following comes from my latest article on The Hardball Times. All statistics are current through May 27, 2011.

Sabermetricians have shown that once the ball is out of the hands of the pitcher, the pitcher has very little control over the outcome of the ball put into play.

DIPS theory tells us that a pitcher controls a few things about the outcome of an at-bat, each to a variable degree. The pitcher has the most control over the elements of the game that only involve himself, and omit others. A pitcher is in almost absolute control over the general location of his pitch. There are some marginal or unpredictable variants such as temperature, weather, wind speed and wind direction that factor into pitch location, but a pitcher who does not hit his spots can generally only blame himself. He either gripped the ball incorrectly, released it too late, did not properly adjust his throw for weather condition, "has the jitters," just can't pitch, etc. A pitcher likewise almost completely (though less completely than location) controls intentional walks, which essentially eliminate the batter from the equation of the outcome. Though players like Miguel Cabrera and Jeff Francouer come to mind as the rare player who interferes with the pitcher's attempt to intentionally walk them, it is generally true that if a pitcher wants to intentionally walk a batter, it will happen.

Once the batter comes into the equation, the pitcher loses his control over the outcome. Once the pitch is released from his hands, he has done all he can do. It is then in the batter's hand as to whether contact is made, where on the ball the contact is made, how hard the ball is hit, and whether or not it is pulled, amongst various other variables. In this regard, a pitcher has some, but not total, control over unintentional walks and strikeouts. The pitcher tries to fool the batter, but the batter may or may not buy the bait. The fielders are irrelevant before the ball is put into play, so the outcome is largely dominated by an exercise in game theory between the batter and pitcher.

A pitcher also controls the tendency of the ball to be on the ground or in the air. As noted above, once the ball is released from the pitcher's hand, what happens to it is ultimately a question of what the batter does. A pitcher can throw the ball with heavy sink to induce ground balls, or throw it high in the zone to induce a popup, but the hitter, not the pitcher, ultimately controls the angle of trajectory, the force of contact, and the direction of the ball off the bat. Once contact is made, the ball is either put in play, in which case the pitcher's fielders have the ultimate control over what happens next, or the ball is foul, in which case the batter-pitcher game repeats, or the ball is a home run, over which the pitcher has some, but not ultimate, control. (This is the theory behind xFIP and using a normalized home run rate in lieu of the pitcher's actual home run rate as traditionally used in FIP.)

BABIP research by ball in play type out indicates that league fielding per batted ball type tends to be relatively stable. It tends to fluctuate annually, but only slightly and negligibly. For example, the expected hits rate on ground balls in play between 2004 and 2008 was .239. From 2008 to 2010, it was .236. So far this year, it is .238. The same is true for infield fly balls, line drives and outfield fly balls (though the latter two tend to fluctuate more, which is probably the result of scorer bias*). It is also true that line drive rate seems to remain relatively stable and out of pitcher control as well in the long run. Only a handful of pitchers have cumulative line drive rates that are not between 18 and 20 percent over the past five years, and most of those pitchers tend to be extreme batted-ball players. Even in the outlier, however, no pitcher has a line drive rate below 16 percent or above 22 percent. Noting this, you can probably say that Mat Latos' 9.2 percent line drive rate and Travis Woods' 24.5 percent line drive rate on the season are either the result of bad luck or funky scoring and that we should expect such to persist in the future.

*Note: scorer bias might make one skeptical of batted ball-based evaluation/prediction tools, but it is important to note that I am not, nor are most, preaching a black-and-white bible of truth with sabermetrics and sabermetric tools, but rather commenting upon the tendency of outcome or a rough baseline from which to make better, more informed decisions. Tools like tRA and the xWHIP Calculator are hardly perfect, but they lead to more informed analysis and decision-making.

From this research, I stood on the shoulders of men much smarter than myself and created the Expected WHIP (xWHIP) Calculator. (You can download the beta version for xWHIP3 by clicking here.) In case you are not familiar with how the xWHIP Calculator works, let me give you the quick rundown of how to use it and what it does. Refer to the picture of the beta of version 3.0 below (note: the 2008-2010 environment is loaded in the hits/outs created field; I do not have the runs created data for 2008-2010 to provide at this time).


The first and only manual step is data entry. Begin by entering data into the gray cells by using the player's page on Fangraphs. The xWHIP Calculator is calibrated to Baseball Info Solutions (BIS) batted ball data, and, to avoid unnecessary scorer bias through consistency, you need to enter BIS data, which is what is available on Fangraphs. You can also change the pink cells of "specialized data points," but will likely require information that is not publicly available to properly modify such. Hence, you should probably leave them untouched (well, unless you want to use a player's career home run per outfield flyball rate in lieu of the league average mark*).

*If you modify the HR/OFFB% cell, do not change the park factor cell, or you risk double counting.

Once you've entered the data, the rest is all automatic, courtesy of my tireless hours of work in creating the xWHIP Calculator. My xWHIP formula first adds up all the batted ball data, and then normalizes it based on a regressed line drive rate. I use 19 percent, or about the league average. Then, with my new "normalized" batted ball distribution, I multiply each ball in play form by its expected hits rate. This gives you expected hits. The calculator also also calculate expected home runs based on the normalized data.

Once a normalized batted ball distribution is created, the xWHIP Calculator also calculates an expected innings total (xIP). I calculate expected innings because actual innings pitched, like hits, is a function not only of player skill, but fielder interference/assistance and other statistical noise. A great or poor play is the difference between an extra batter faced and the end of the inning*. Expected innings is calculated by multiplying events by expected outs created by event. For example, a ground ball put in to play tends to result in 0.808 outs per occurrence. Caught stealing and pick off rates are something that varies by catcher and pitcher, but calculating such to be effectively utilized is something that I am not properly equipped to do. Hence, I use a league-average rate of .02 outs created per base runner to account for expected pickoffs and players who might get caught stealing. This formula gives me expected outs, which I then divide by three.

*This is why K% is more stable, indicative and, as a predictive/evaluational tool, valuable than K/9.

Using expected hits, expected home runs, and expected innings, as well as the other calculated data, we get a few valuable output points from the xWHIP Calculator. The primary purpose of the calculator and its calculations is to give a pitcher's expected WHIP. xWHIP may not be important from a purely sabermetrics standpoint, but fantasy baseball players find it quite useful. xWHIP is calculated in three ways. First, xWHIP1 calculates a pitcher's expected WHIP using actual innings pitched. Second, xWHIP2 calculates a pitcher's expected WHIP using expected innings (xIP). Finally, quick xWHIP, or qxWHIP, calculates a player's expected WHIP based purely on a player's actual innings pitched, strikeout total, and WHIP. qxWHIP was created by Alex Hambrick, and the theory behind it is explained here.

The xWHIP Calculator also has a quick-and-dirty defensive adjustment for pitchers that converts a team's defensive results into an expected "hits saved" compared to the hypothetical "league-average defense" per inning. This defensive adjustment has severe limitations (defense is hardly uniform infield-to-outfield, or player-to-player), and is optional, but it gives some sense of how a team's overall defense can be roughly expected to affect a player's "true talent" line.

In addition to xWHIP, however, the new versions of my xWHIP Calculator also tabulate two mainstream ERA estimators using normalized data. The first ERA estimator is eFIP, which is based on xFIP. xFIP is traditionally calculated by subtracting two times a pitcher's strikeout total by the sum of three times a pitcher's walk total plus 13 times .105 times that player's flyball total, all divided by innings pitched. The resulting figure is then added to some constant, usually 3.2, to scale xFIP to look like ERA. xFIP tends to be my ERA estimator of choice, but I have several problems with the popular version of the formula. First, it uses a pitcher's flyball total to calculate expected home runs. Flyball total is a composite of outfield fly balls and infield fly balls. As popups can never be home runs, it is silly to include them. In addition, home-run-per-outfield-fly-ball rates tend to be more stable over the long term than home-run-per-fly-ball rates.

Second, and perhaps this is offset by including popups in the traditional expected home run formula, xFIP does not account for line-drive home runs. Line-drive home runs are few and far between, but they do occur a few times per 100 hits that are scored as line drives.

Third, xFIP is tabulated irrespective of expected flyball or outfield flyball rate. Pitchers, as noted above, do not seem to have much control over line-drive rate. If a pitcher, particularly in smaller samples (which give you less valuable data outcomes), has an atypically low or high line-drive rate, then a pitcher's xFIP is skewed accordingly. The difference is, at most, a couple of home runs, but, like my infield flyball grudge with traditional xFIP, why use it if you don't have to?

Fourth, xFIP does not account for park factors. Each of the 30 major league parks has different park dimensions that uniquely affect home run totals. Petco and Busch Stadium affect pitcher's home runs allowed totals radically different than do the parks of Chicago. Players only play about 50 percent of their games at home, so you need to modify park factors accordingly, but the difference in expected ERA between Busch Stadium and Coors Field is substantial enough that it requires accounting, though that causes the xFIP formula to further sacrifice simplicity.

xFIP is a nice formula because it is simple and easy to calculate. Normally, accounting for my gripes would sacrifice much of xFIP's simplicity appeal. However, given all the calculations the xWHIP Calculator makes, calculating a modified expected FIP to correct for my gripes is simple. I term this modified xFIP formula "eFIP."

In addition to eFIP, the newest versions of the xWHIP Calculator will also calculated batted ball normalized versions of tRA or tERA, which I have termed "EXTRA." EXTRA is calculated the exact same way as tRA, but it uses the pitcher's normalized, not actual, batted ball data as the inputs.

Now that you know the parameters, let's look at some of the major league's leaders and losers in xWHIP, eFIP, and EXTRA using 2011's runs environment and statistics through May 27, 2011. You can download the data file by clicking here.

Before reviewing the data, take note of the following. First, the following calculations use major league outs/runs/hits numbers, not league-specific numbers, so American League pitchers will tend to fare worse than these numbers, while National League hitters will tend to perform better. Second, changes in a player's strikeout (xWHIP2) or walk rate (xWHIP1, xWHIP2) would have an appreciable effect on a pitcher's expected WHIP. Third, while only starting pitchers (pitchers with at least one game started) are included in my data file, with the exception of Zack Greinke, only starting pitchers with 30 or more expected innings are included in my leaderboard (136 starting pitchers qualify). Fourth, I am calculating WHIP with unintentional walks (BB-IBB+HBP, or uBB); uBB better evaluates a pitcher's control and expected baserunners. Finally, the league average xWHIP and eFIP are 1.32 and 4.00, respectively. The actual current major league average WHIP and FIP are 1.30 and 3.95, respectively.

First, the WHIP under-performers to date (calculated using "actual WHIP" (see above) minus the mean of a pitcher's xWHIP1 and xWHIP2):

Name                   xIP        aWHIP     xWHIP     dWHIP
Davies, Kyle           44.54      1.90      1.57      0.34
Lackey, John           42.57      1.88      1.63      0.25
Reyes, Jo-Jo           55.06      1.66      1.42      0.24
Arroyo, Bronson        67.25      1.52      1.30      0.21
Greinke, Zack          29.99      1.14      0.93      0.21
Capuano, Chris         57.87      1.48      1.28      0.20
Dempster, Ryan         66.79      1.56      1.36      0.19
Garza, Matt            59.54      1.35      1.16      0.19
Holland, Derek         61.03      1.58      1.39      0.18
Jackson, Edwin         70.82      1.50      1.33      0.17
Tillman, Chris         50.41      1.67      1.50      0.17
Scherzer, Max          67.28      1.48      1.32      0.17
Carpenter, Chris       73.60      1.43      1.28      0.15
Lee, Cliff             78.18      1.25      1.10      0.15
Myers, Brett           69.78      1.51      1.39      0.13
McDonald, James        54.30      1.52      1.40      0.12
Norris, Bud            68.42      1.30      1.18      0.11
Dickey, R.A.           61.18      1.60      1.49      0.11
Francis, Jeff          69.59      1.40      1.30      0.10
Wood, Travis           62.79      1.41      1.31      0.10
Hudson, Dan            72.45      1.33      1.23      0.10
Rodriguez, Wandy       67.84      1.32      1.22      0.10
Lilly, Ted             63.55      1.34      1.25      0.09
Duensing, Brian        54.92      1.44      1.36      0.09
Morrow, Brandon        40.47      1.38      1.30      0.08
Baker, Scott           61.52      1.30      1.22      0.07
Stauffer, Tim          65.87      1.32      1.25      0.07
Niese, Jon             62.10      1.44      1.38      0.06
Volstad, Chris         52.02      1.44      1.38      0.06
Danks, John            66.59      1.40      1.34      0.06
Harang, Aaron          61.74      1.32      1.26      0.06
Narveson, Chris        57.44      1.35      1.29      0.06

Much of this leaderboard is populated with under-inspiring pitchers who, while unlikely, have pitched pretty poorly this year and are hardly worth a spot on your bench. Case in point: the injured John Lackey and "immutable" Kyle Davies. A few names do stand out, however. I think the ship sailed on Ryan Dempster (whose numbers are infinitely better if you omit his 0.1 inning pitched disaster at Arizona) after his 11-strikeout performance on May 13, but maybe some owner has not been paying close enough attention this past month (e.g., people in college). We all know Cliff Lee and Matt Garza have had their share of bad luck this year, but what about Chris Carpenter and Zack Greinke? Greinke's performance to date puts him in company with the top three guys in the league, but his 5.79 ERA has been ugly. If any owner is having second thoughts about the Royals ex-Ace, or is willing to deal him at market value, I'd strongly considering biting. And what about Bud Norris? I wrote about him last week, but his ownership rate is still below 50 percent (it actually went down a notch). I think a lot of people are overlooking just how good Norris has been this year. Jeff Francis and Travis Wood are a pair of pitchers who could help you in other categories without hurting your future WHIP.

Next, the WHIP over-performers to date (calculated using "actual WHIP" (see above) minus the mean of a pitcher's xWHIP1 and xWHIP2):

Name                   xIP        aWHIP     xWHIP     dWHIP
Tomlin, Josh           60.26      0.93      1.24     -0.32
Lohse, Kyle            67.89      0.91      1.22     -0.30
Humber, Philip         56.67      0.98      1.28     -0.30
Britton, Zachary       59.14      1.12      1.38     -0.26
Ogando, Alexi          54.57      0.94      1.18     -0.25
Johnson, Josh          56.03      0.96      1.19     -0.23
Hudson, Tim            62.97      1.14      1.35     -0.22
Morton, Charlie        58.11      1.31      1.52     -0.21
Harrison, Matt         55.43      1.25      1.46     -0.20
Chacin, Jhoulys        64.78      1.10      1.30     -0.20
Maholm, Paul           66.89      1.16      1.36     -0.20
Beckett, Josh          58.97      0.98      1.18     -0.19
Penny, Brad            59.28      1.32      1.51     -0.19
Hochevar, Luke         70.45      1.23      1.41     -0.18
Liriano, Francisco     46.26      1.48      1.66     -0.18
Verlander, Justin      75.59      0.96      1.14     -0.17
Jurrjens, Jair         54.41      1.02      1.19     -0.17
McClellan, Kyle        61.16      1.21      1.38     -0.17
Haren, Dan             77.03      0.89      1.06     -0.16
Kennedy, Ian           71.84      1.10      1.24     -0.14
Coke, Phil             49.98      1.27      1.41     -0.14
Moseley, Dustin        57.56      1.23      1.37     -0.14
Burnett, A.J.          65.88      1.29      1.42     -0.14
Hanson, Tommy          62.63      1.09      1.22     -0.13
Carmona, Fausto        70.32      1.22      1.34     -0.13
Correia, Kevin         68.79      1.19      1.31     -0.12
Billingsley, Chad      67.93      1.26      1.37     -0.12
Cahill, Trevor         69.18      1.23      1.35     -0.11
Pineda, Michael        61.86      0.99      1.11     -0.11
Lincecum, Tim          74.38      1.05      1.16     -0.11
Hellickson, Jeremy     55.45      1.24      1.35     -0.11
Weaver, Jered          82.98      0.96      1.06     -0.10

Here we find a lot of players with BABIP-deflated ERAs who are on the Atkins diet when it comes to strikeouts: Kyle Lohse and Zach Britton's combined strikeouts per nine rate (9.81) is equal to that of Bud Norris. Most of these "trailers" tend to be groundball pitchers because groundballs, while having a lower expected runs outcome per event, have a higher hits-resulting rate. A year of xWHIP has taught me that ERA and WHIP tend to be inversely related to groundball and flyball rates. Alexei Ogando throws hard, but can you really trust a flyball pitcher (64.5 percent AO%) in Texas (inflates home runs by 10 percent)? Ogando's SwStr% (8.9 percent) indicates he is capable of slightly better than league-average strikeout totals. As you might notice not all players on this board are "bad" or have "bad" expected WHIPs (e.g., Josh Beckett). This is only a tool to help figuring out who has been under/over-performing, and an under-performer may very well be worth keeping.

Then we have the pitchers who are secretly better than their listed FIP.

Name               xIP      aFIP    EXFIP   dFIP
Karstens, Jeff     45.60    4.92    3.57    1.35
Volquez, Edinson   51.36    5.77    4.50    1.27
Arroyo, Bronson    67.25    5.48    4.33    1.15
Gorzelanny, Tom    52.31    5.28    4.14    1.14
Hochevar, Luke     70.45    5.46    4.35    1.11
Dempster, Ryan     66.79    4.80    3.78    1.03
Myers, Brett       69.78    5.44    4.49    0.95
Greinke, Zack      29.99    3.06    2.18    0.88
McDonald, James    54.30    5.11    4.29    0.82
Lester, Jon        68.85    4.25    3.48    0.77
Capuano, Chris     57.87    4.61    3.86    0.75
Bedard, Erik       51.52    4.32    3.68    0.65
O'Sullivan, Sean   50.48    6.26    5.61    0.64
Lewis, Colby       64.90    5.26    4.62    0.64
Latos, Mat         53.83    4.35    3.80    0.55
Buchholz, Clay     58.87    4.77    4.25    0.52
Romero, Ricky      63.02    3.98    3.48    0.50
Baker, Scott       61.52    4.19    3.70    0.49
Pelfrey, Mike      64.67    5.07    4.59    0.48
Carmona, Fausto    70.32    4.29    3.82    0.47
Colon, Bartolo     57.80    3.79    3.32    0.47
Blackburn, Nick    62.39    4.65    4.19    0.47
Norris, Bud        68.42    3.75    3.30    0.45
Chen, Bruce        41.62    5.12    4.68    0.45
Arrieta, Jake      60.54    4.66    4.23    0.43
Chacin, Jhoulys    64.78    3.96    3.56    0.40
Scherzer, Max      67.28    4.36    3.98    0.39
Lilly, Ted         63.55    4.67    4.28    0.39
Dickey, R.A.       61.18    4.75    4.37    0.38
Gallardo, Yovani   68.64    4.27    3.91    0.36
Litsch, Jesse      46.74    4.69    4.35    0.34
Kuroda, Hiroki     70.70    4.15    3.81    0.34
Rodriguez, Wandy   67.84    4.05    3.71    0.33
Liriano, Francis   46.26    5.44    5.11    0.33
Volstad, Chris     52.02    4.24    3.91    0.33

If there is any pitcher to avoid on this list, it's Edinson Volquez. I took a lot of flack being a vocal Volquez hater this offseason, and while it's only been 51 innings, I really want to say "I told you so" about how bad his control was going to burn him this year. Volquez has a 4.16 xFIP, so a lot of people might be tempted to buy, but even if you tinker with his batted ball distribution a bit, his expected FIP is putrid. A 4.50 FIP would be "average" by standards two or three years ago, but in the new era of the pitcher, it's trade-or-cut material. Ryan Dempster's a name on this list I really like, but, as noted above, the ship has probably sailed on him by now. Same goes with Erik Bedard, who has been lights out over his past five or so turns. And what about Bartolo Colon? Is he the real deal after injecting cheeseburgers from his belly into his elbow? No matter which you choose, all the metrics seem to check out (3.77 ERA, 1.20 WHIP, 3.61 FIP, 2.90 xFIP, 3.86 eFIP, 1.20 WHIP, 1.28 xWHIP), but something does not smell right. A 5.9 percent SwStr% ties for his second-lowest mark since 2002 and is well below his post-2002 average of 7.6 percent, but his strikeout rate (23.6 percent) is a career second-best at age 38? I'd use the "it checks out" line to hedge your risk.

What's up with Jeff Karstens? He's been good on the surface (3.57 ERA, 1.28), but regular FIP says look out (4.70). Karsten's improved strikeout rate (18.9 percent this season, 12.2 percent career) makes sense if you look at batters' swing-and-miss rate against him (9.0 percent this year, 7.1 percent career, 8.4 percent major league average), but what is causing it? It's not his velocity (88.4 MPH fastball this year, 88.5 career) or pitch usage (none of his four usage rates varies by more than a few percent points this season). His change-up has been wicked awesome, but both his fastball and slider (thrown almost a combined three-fourths of the time) have fared poorly both this year and for his career. Tread at your own caution.

Chris Capuano, on the other hand, has been secretly good for the Mets, even if the results do not say so. His ERA (4.94) and WHIP (1.45) have been atrocious, but his peripherals (3.86 eFIP, 1.28 xWHIP, 7.74 K/9, 19.4 percent K%) say this waiver wire fodder (2 percent Yahoo ownership) might be worth a careful look.

And the guys whose FIPs are not telling the whole story. Keep in mind that in the second "year of the pitcher," ERAs are not what they used to seem.

Name               xIP      aFIP    EXFIP  dFIP
Bergesen, Brad     51.38    3.90    5.15   -1.26
Morrow, Brandon    40.47    2.53    3.63   -1.09
Tillman, Chris     50.41    3.85    4.89   -1.04
McCarthy, Brando   62.85    2.67    3.60   -0.93
Jurrjens, Jair     54.41    2.97    3.85   -0.88
Coke, Phil         49.98    3.83    4.65   -0.81
Hudson, Dan        72.45    2.88    3.66   -0.78
Buehrle, Mark      72.50    3.82    4.59   -0.76
Zimmermann, Jord   60.00    2.98    3.73   -0.75
Sabathia, CC       77.83    2.99    3.70   -0.71
Fister, Doug       63.85    3.57    4.27   -0.70
Garza, Matt        59.54    2.01    2.71   -0.69
Lohse, Kyle        67.89    3.23    3.91   -0.68
Bumgarner, Madis   57.50    3.16    3.84   -0.67
Zambrano, Carlos   66.71    3.94    4.57   -0.62
Humber, Philip     56.67    3.77    4.35   -0.59
Hernandez, Livan   68.75    3.94    4.47   -0.53
Halladay, Roy      86.09    1.93    2.46   -0.53
Billingsley, Cha   67.93    3.29    3.82   -0.53
Johnson, Josh      56.03    2.72    3.24   -0.52
Masterson, Justi   64.33    3.23    3.72   -0.49
Marquis, Jason     63.53    3.80    4.27   -0.47
Weaver, Jered      82.98    2.74    3.21   -0.46
Oswalt, Roy        44.97    3.29    3.73   -0.44
Kennedy, Ian       71.84    3.41    3.84   -0.42
Beckett, Josh      58.97    3.03    3.45   -0.42
Pineda, Michael    61.86    2.84    3.25   -0.42
Morton, Charlie    58.11    3.91    4.29   -0.38
Reyes, Jo-Jo       55.06    4.25    4.61   -0.36
Maholm, Paul       66.89    3.60    3.96   -0.36
Chatwood, Tyler    53.24    5.09    5.45   -0.36
Nova, Ivan         54.62    4.61    4.96   -0.36

My mother always told me to never trust Brandon Morrow. As I noted last week, you're better off selling him at cost to another saber-friendly owner and investing the funds elsewhere. Jordan Zimmerman is much better than he's been or his presence here indicates, and I would sit tight with him. Is Justin Masterson finally putting it all together as a post-hype sleeper? 3.61 xFIP versus lefties (165 batters) and 3.26 xFIP versus righties (110 batters). Sorry Orioles fans clinging to old Bedard jerseys; Chris Tillman is not the stud or the sleeper we thought he was. Ditto on Brad Bergesen, who I once had a fantasy man crush on several years back. After 10 years, you should not be fooled by Jason Marquis. He tends to start things off well with new teams, but it always ends badly. Has Doug Fister been ol' reliable for you thus far? Don't expect it to persist, as he's more likely to take his hand and slap your fantasy team with it in the future. I've shaken off my preseason (Phil) Coke addiction, and what of former top Twins draftee Phil Humber? 2.85 ERA, 3.77 FIP looks nice for something you plucked off the waiver wire for a stream that never seemed to end in a drop, but lackluster strikeouts plus league-average WHIP plus poor ERA prospects equal trade toss in to get a better deal done. Finally, Livan Hernandez is not even worth mentioning.

Next time out (this upcoming Monday), we'll look at EXTRA, actual ERA and actual tRA to date. Until then, as always, leave your love/hate in the comments below.

I'm Done With Gordon Beckham

As both a White Sox fan and as a guy who owns him in my AL-only league I'm sick of Gordon Beckham (or "Bacon" as we in Chicago with our thick accents call him) and I want him sent to the minors.

Currently Bacon is hitting .230 with an on base under .300 (.291) with a SLG of only .345 and he's hitting with Jack Wilson Power with a .115 ISO. He only has four home runs and two stolen bases. It's even frustrating watching Beckham at the plate.

This year Bacon is only hitting .267 off of fastballs being thrown to him according to ESPN.com. Hitting a fastball is just one of the basic fundamentals every professional baseball hitter should be able to do, and Bacon can not seem to do that right now. This year Bacon is having a career year (in a bad way) with his strike out rates and walk rate. Currently Beckham is striking out a little more than once every four at-bats (26.1%) and only walking a measly 4.9%. Bacon is also having a career year with a swinging strike rate of 11.8%, up 2.5% from in his 2010 season.

There appears to be very little evidence that Bacon's awful start is due to bad luck. Sure, his BABIP is nine points lower than his career average, but even if that normalizes, he bats .250 at best? Even if you could find some statistic that Bacon should be producing better than he is, I'm still pessimistic because he just looks like he has no plate discipline. All you need to do is watch Beckham swing and have no control over the strike zone to see how poor he's batting.

We are already 30% done with the 2011 season and this year along with last year is just evidence to me that Bacon should be sent down to the minors. Yes, Bacon was an elite prospect selected by the White Sox eighth overall in the first round of the 2008 draft. However, there was only 364 days between the time Beckham was drafted and when he became an everyday starter for the ChiSox. Gordon Beckham only played 7 games (50 at bats) in AAA Charlotte before getting called up.

Bacon batted in the #2 hole at the beginning of the 2010 and 2011 season, but after slumping and getting off to horrible starts both years, manager Ozzie Guillen moved Bacon down to the 8 or 9 slot and let Alexei Ramirez shine at the top of the line up. Ozzie made the move he said to help take the focus and attention away from Gordon. Admittedly the move has helped somewhat as Bacon is batting .284 in the month of May, however he also struck out at a higher percentage (34.3%) than he did in March and April (20.4%). I also don't see Bacon's May triple slash line (.284/.364/.418) continuing all season with his continued poor control of the strike zone (Bacon essentially had the same BB/K rate in May as he did in April/March) and his high May .395 BABIP.

In term of Bacon's defense I do think his game at second base has vastly improved since he started playing there at the beginning of the 2010 season. At first his play and range was sub par (at best) and made errors on simple plays or failed to turn easy double plays which showed in his overall -1.2 UZR/150 and -0.8 Fld. In 50 games in 2011 however Bacon has a 2.0 Fld and 6.3 UZR/150 which is the only reason Bacon's WAR is not currently below zero (it's 0.5). But until Bacon's bat follows his glove, I think he should stay in AAA.

To replace Beckham, I believe that Brent Lillibridge should play second (Lillibridge is an infielder by trade). With 119 less plate appearances and non-consistent playing time (although that is changing more of late) Lillibridge has more home runs (five to four) and stolen bases (4 to 2), a superior better ISO (.345), and a better triple slash line (.291/.375/.636) than Gordon Beckham. Sure Lillibridge's strike out rates, walk rates, and swinging strike rates look eerily similar to Beckham's, but at least Lillibridge is producing right now (also Lillibridge has a more normal BABIP) and at 27 years old, it finally looks like this prospect is performing like he should have.

Now let me be clear, when I say I'm done with Gordon Beckham I do not mean that I want the White Sox to trade him or that I don't think Bacon will EVER be able to hit. The dude is only 24 years old and there is still plenty of time for Bacon to be the player we all thought he could be after his rookie campaign. But I do believe Bacon's development is actually being stunted while in the majors and should be sent down to fix his mechanics and get back to basics in AAA before being on the major league squad again. Listen, I want Bacon to succeed. I want him to live up to his potential and to be the player we thought he would be but I do not think he can do that right now.

NL Waiver Wire: Weeks 7 and 8

Celebrating my one year anniversary working for The Hardball Times this week. Here are the latest tabs on the NL Edition of the Waiver Wire series: Week 7 and Week 8.

Enjoy

Brandon Morrow (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bud Norris)

The following is my latest article from The Hardball Times.

All stats are current through Monday, May 23.

Eight weeks in to the 2011 baseball season, and Bud Norris is no longer "flying under the radar." Through his first nine starts (55 innings pitched) of the season, Norris is supporting a disgusting 64 strikeouts (27.6 percent strikeout rate, fifth-best amongst all major league starters) to a mere 20 walks (8.62 percent walk rate, on par with perennial Cy Young candidates Tim Lincecum and Josh Johnson) for a strong 3.20 K/BB ratio.

He is also getting more groundball outs (44.7 percent) than flyball outs (38.3 percent), sporting a 1.17 GB/FB ratio and 80.8 percent GB/AO ratio. Norris' peripherals (3.38 FIP, 2.84 xFIP, 3.50 tERA, 3.34 nxFIP*, and 1.21 xWHIP) are quite strong, but his results to date in more traditional metrics have not been too shabby, either (3.91 ERA and 1.31 WHIP, though in "the year of the pitcher," such stats rank 93rd and 89th, respectively, out of the 169 starting pitchers with 10-plus innings pitched in 2011).

*nxFIP stands for normalized xFIP. It is calculated similarly to xFIP, only a pitcher's line drive rate is normalized to 19 percent, with his residual balls in play being distributed based on the pitcher's groundball to flyball and outfield flyball to infield flyball ratios. Once the normalized outfield flyball total is calculated, I multiply this figure by one-half the pitcher's home park park factor for home runs per outfield flyball rate times 11.5 percent.

Noting this dominance to date this year, and highlighting that Norris was hardly an "unknown" entering the season after last year's well-publicized 158 strikeouts (9.25 K/9, eighth-highest in the major leagues among starters with 150-plus innings pitched) and 77 walks (18th-highest walk total in the majors last season amongst all pitchers) over 153.2 innings, why is Norris not owned in even half of Yahoo leagues (46 percent ownership)?

More curiously, why is Norris owned in just over half as many leagues as his fragile American League clone, Brandon Morrow (82 percent Yahoo ownership). It's not like Morrow (5.06 ERA, 1.44 WHIP) is exactly lighting the world on fire.

First, let's look at how the two pitchers are similar. Here are each's peripherals (and the major league average for each category) on the season:

Player	K%	BB%	SwStr%	F-Strike%	Contact%	GB%	FB Velocity	Slider%	FIP	xFIP	xWHIP	wOBA-against
Bud Norris	27.6%	8.6%	12.0%	62.5%	73.0%	44.7%	92.6 MPH	37.6%	3.38	2.84	1.21	.313
Brandon Morrow	30.3%	10.6%	12.4%	64.8%	72.5%	32.9%	93.4 MPH	24.7%	2.12	2.97	1.28	.288
MLB Average	17.9%	7.8%	8.4%	58.9%	80.9%	42.2%	91.7 MPH	15.1%	3.80	3.70	1.34	.312

And for their careers:

Player	K%	BB%	SwStr%	F-Strike%	Contact%	GB%	FB Velocity	Slider%	ERA	FIP	xFIP	xWHIP
Bud Norris	23.7%	10.5%	11.2%	57.0%	74.8%	42.0%	93.5	34.7%	4.63	4.13	3.80	1.36
Brandon Morrow (as SP)	26.1%	11.6%	11.1%	54.4%	74.9%	37.9%	93.7	15.4%	4.54	3.64	3.82	1.42

Both pitchers stand out as big strikeout pitchers for their career (posting top-10 SwStr% rates of any starting pitcher between 2007 and 2011) with large walk rates to boot (a combined 339 batters walked over just 640.1 combined innings pitched (4.76 BB/9, 12.1 BB%)).

Each is right-handed, throws a good number of breaking balls (particularly the slider), and each throws hard. Morrow has proven to be a bit more of a strikeout pitcher than Norris for his career, but Norris makes up for that with more groundballs.

There is a difference in their career and 2011 FIPs, but some of that might be HR/FB% luck, as each pitcher has near-identical xFIPs for their career and on the year.

Morrow and Norris have comparable fastball velocities as starters, and hitters similarly struggle to make contact against their pitches. Norris tends to throw more (and a lot of) breaking balls (particularly sliders) than Morrow, which is clearly a red flag for his long-term health, but it is not exactly as though Morrow is a model of health himself, having been on the DL at least once each of his pro seasons (not to mention the fact that Morrow also has diabetes). Both pitchers are also about the same age (26-ish), with Morrow being Norris' senior by less than a year.

Both tend to fair worse against lefties, but only Morrow's career split (4.57 xFIP versus LHB, compared to a 3.48 xFIP versus RHB) stands out as significant (Norris' career LHB/RHB xFIP split is 4.00 to 3.63), but Morrow's struggles against lefties have lessened in recent years (3.87 xFIP versus LHB in 2010, 3.12 in 2011).

Hence, for all intents and purposes, we have two identical pitchers. Yet one is owned in less than half of fantasy leagues out there, while the other is almost universally owned.

That is mind-boggling, especially when you consider that not only does Norris play in the NL, meaning that about 10 percent of his opposing batters tends to be pitchers, but he plays in the weakest division in baseball, the NL Central, which, although he cannot face his own team, still nonetheless features the below .500 and offensively-inept teams that are the Pirates and Cubs (sad face) in a disproportionate number of series. Compared this to Brandon Morrow, who faces three of baseball's most fearsome offenses in the Boston Red Sox, Tampa Bay Rays, and New York Yankees in a disproportional number of games.

Yet Morrow, modern strikeout champion of the almost no-no crown, has brand power, while Norris toils away on the shelf like a generic-label product that is also manufactured by the brand-name producer. It makes you wonder why Dallas Braden did not get any kind of love heading into the season (yeah, yeah the whole foot nerves thing, we get it).

Noting this all, what does it mean?

It means that you can get a hefty return for Morrow, trade less than that away for Norris, and come away with a relative profit that improves your team overall while maintaining the same level of production in mixed leagues.

Brand name is a large component of arbitrage in fantasy baseball. Players with less hype and less of a track record of success, including breakout players, tend to have lower trade values than established or hyped players. This is why it is so hard to "buy low" and "sell high" most of the time.

On the flip side of that coin, however, is the "sell low" and "buy high" strategy. It may seem anachronistic, but selling low or at market on hyped guys and buying low on players that owners tend to be cautious with can net you a large profit because such deals tends to maximize the value you receive while relatively minimizing the cost you have to pay.

Take, for instance, the cost of acquiring Jose Bautista last year. I went on record early and often in last year's AL Waiver Wire and other fantasy columns noting how much I believed in Bautista's pull power in the Rogers Center. I never thought he would hit 50 homers from the beginning, but I bet a friend in May, 2010 that he would hit 30 and tried to up the ante, double or nothing, to 40 around the All-Star Break.

Most Bautista owners wearily plucked him off the wire last season and were cautious to play him. On one hand, you gotta ride the hot streak, but on the other, "This is Jose frickin' Bautista we're talking about."

You obviously could not have acquired him for free, as a "toss in" or for a fungible bench player, but compared to the value produced by Bautista each month last season, you could have acquired him for pennies on the dollar. In one of my primary leagues last season, I traded away Jay Bruce plus Dan Uggla in May to get Bautista and Martin Prado.

The unknown is scary, but fear has a deprecating effect on value that you can intelligently exploit to your advantage. Think of it as buying junk bonds. People are afraid of owning them as an investment vehicle, but they're less risky than common stock.

That's why I like to invest heavily, albeit at a discount, in players like Michael Pineda and Brandon Beachy either on draft day or early in the season (though sometimes, as in the case of Kyle Drabek (who I, thankfully, was able to universally flip for Ryan Dempster after his 0.1 inning disaster at Chase Field), you just lose).

The end of May brings the beginning of real trading season in fantasy baseball. For the first six to eight weeks of the season, owners tend to be patient, opting for waiver wire moves, "waiting it out" and minor trades over major/big-name trades to fill team holes. It is not really until you reach the 50-game mark that a team's "needs" becomes readily apparent. Owners are cautious to avoid conflating "need" and poor construction with bad luck. Accordingly, this is what I recommend.

First, trade Morrow. With a 5.06 ERA and 1.44 WHIP on the season, this may be a harder task than it was in the preseason, but Morrow's AL-leading 12.09 K/9 (second-best in the major leagues) and enticing peripherals will lure plenty of owners to bite if you going trade fishing. Morrow, thanks to Josh Shepardson and the boys at ESPN, was a hype machine this offseason, and I guarantee you that you overpaid for what Morrow is capable of doing on his own merit.

I almost guarantee you as well that, despite what you paid for Morrow (unless you ridiculously overpaid for him), there is an owner out there willing to relieve you of your investment at cost (or better). Enough people understand FIP to think they would be buying low on an ace.

But why trade Morrow? His FIP, xFIP, and tERA are all under 3.00 this year, and he is a strikeout god. The answer is in his control. Much of Morrow's preseason hype came as a result of his second-half recall on free passes issued. Over his final ten starts of the season (56.1 innings pitched) before getting shut down, Morrow only walked 22 batters, good for a 3.51 BB/9.

That was a marked improvement over his career walks-per-nine rate (north of 5.00), but it came at the expense of fewer first-pitch strikes than either his career or first-half averages. First pitch strikes tend to be half the battle in walk rates for pitchers, and a 56-inning sample is hardly a reliable enough sample size to discount umpire luck or some other element to blame other than truly improved control. Furthermore, Morrow's current walk rate (4.22 BB/9) represents a large step back from last year's second half "improvement."

At the same time, Morrow's peripherals, while impressive, may not truly be as notable as they currently look. If we ignore Morrow's season debut (5.1 innings pitched, 10:2 K/BB ratio), his strikeout rate on the season falls from north of 30 percent to 27.0 percent on the dot, or a batter per nine innings. Likewise, his walks-per-nine rate would increase to 4.38.

A 27.0 percent strikeout rate (11.1 K/9) is hardly something to sneeze at, but if we also regress Morrow's current 2.9 percent HR/FB rate to his career rate of 8.1 percent (I do this cautiously, rather than regress his HR/FB rate towards the major league average of 10.5 percent*, as there is an as-yet-unproven theory that power pitchers can outperform league-average HR/FB rates), his FIP rises from 2.20 to the 3.50.

Of course, that is still solid, but if Morrow's control regresses any further, or if Morrow's groundball rate continues to float around what it was while he was in Seattle, his expected FIP could easily approach the 4.00 mark.

*League average HR/FB percent tends to be around 10.5, while HR/OFFB percent tends to be closer to 11.5.

More worrisome are Morrow's numbers if we plug in his 2011 stats, omitting his first start, into the lastest version of my xWHIP calculator (NOTE: I do not have runs-created values for 2011 offhand, so the tERA cell is set to 0.00):



Do not get me wrong; Morrow is clearly valuable and a pitcher worth owning that will do wonders for your strikeout rate. At the same time, however, he is a commodity whose current perception overshadows his actual and potential value. When a player has this kind of potential trade value above his expected value, he is a prime trade chip.

At the same time, I would recommend acquiring Norris for all the reasons to love Morrow, except he will cost you a fraction of what you'd have to trade away to get Morrow. Norris, like Morrow, has his control and injury-risk issues, but he racks up elite strikeouts and could conceivably pile up more total innings over the rest of the 2011 season.

Norris' peripherals show that he is just as likely to have taken that "big step forward" as Morrow, but the season is still young and his slowly-increasing army of owners might cautiously believe that they are just riding a hot streak.

Do not let anyone sucker you into believing that Norris is thriving off weak teams and favorable matchups. While it is true that his two worst starts came against two strong offenses in the early-hot-hitting Philly (April 3) and St. Louis last week (May 18), Norris still shut down those same Cardinals earlier in the season (6.0 innings pitched, zero earned runs, 6:2 K/BB ratio on April 26), and he obliterated Milwaukee at the beginning of the month (7.2 innings pitched, no earned runs, 11:3 K/BB ratio on May 1).

As the above indicates, Norris is not just a poor man's Morrow; he is the smart investor's Morrow clone. Both Morrow and Norris are elite strikeout sources who probably will not obliterate your WHIP or ERA (even in a season where some 40 starting pitchers (minimum 10 innings pitched) have sub-3.00 ERAs) on the merit of their relatively undifferentiated pitching talents. Neither pitcher is likely to win many games, Morrow because he tends to rack up high pitch counts and depart games early, and Norris because he plays for the offensively inept Astros).

One, however, probably has a trade value above market, while the other can be had at a discount. Earlier in May, I was able to trade away Brandon McCarthy and Luke Gregerson (whom I replaced with Sean Marshall) for Norris. If you offered that for Morrow, you'd probably be laughed out of your league. Yet, no one had anything to say about my under-the-radar move.

Would you trade away Morrow, or am I just crazy? If you would trade him, what kind of value would you need/do you think you could get in return? Sound off in the comments below.

What to do with Alex Rios

Alex Rios is a conundrum of turbulence. A five-tool prospect of the early-to-mid naughts, Rios really didn't do much with his bat over his first two seasons in the majors, posting a combined .273/.315/.390 (.705 OPS) triple-slash line with 11 home runs, 29 stolen bases, 126 runs scored and 87 runs batted in over 257 games played (979 plate appearances). His glove was slick (+23.0 fielding runs above average (FRAR)), but defense is irrelevant in all but the most intricate fantasy formats.

The 2006 season was a breakout year for Rios, however. Over a mere 128 games played (he was slowed down after the All-Star Break due to a ball he fouled off his foot that led to his hospitalization), Rios slashed .302/.349/.516 (.865 OPS) with elite defense (+9.6 FRAR).

Though still somewhat allergic to walks (7.0 percent walk rate), Rios batted in 82 men, while showing a good balance of power (17 HR, .213 ISO) and speed (15 SB, 6.2 speed score). Before his foul-ball injury, Rios' season looked even brighter, batting .359 with 43 RBI and most of his homers (11) through his first 60 games played.

Recovered from his foot folly, Rios followed up his quality 2006 campaign with even better fantasy numbers in 2007 and 2008, batting a combined .294/.343/.480 (.823 OPS). His power (39 HR) and speed (49 SB) blend remained tantalizing, while he racked up 150 RBI and 205 rusn to boot and acted as a model of health (316 combined games played out of a possible 324). Rios' 2006-2008 performance was rewarded by then-General Manager J.P. Riccardi, who gave him the contract we all associate him with today.

Rios had broken out by 2009, but there were some signs that, heading into his age 28 season, Rios, for all his enchantment, was not infallible. For one thing, despite Rios' strong clipping (20.5 percent career line-drive percentage heading into 2009), he remained immune to ball four. Through his first five seasons in the majors (2875 plate appearances), Rios had only drawn 186 walks on his own merit (BB-IBB), for a sub-par 6.5 percent walk rate.

Rios showed some improvement in 2006 (7.0 percent) and 2007 (7.7 percent), but took a large step back in 2008 (6.4 percent) that he would never undo. For a sense of comparison, the major league average walk rate between 2004 and 2008 fluctuated between 8.2 percent and 8.7 percent.

Despite a low strikeout rate that was seemingly improving and settling in around the upper teens between 2004 and 2008, Rios' strikeout-to-walk ratio remained sub-par. The major league average K:BB rate for hitters is around 2:1, but Rios only touched that mark once, in 2007, floating around just under 3:1 the rest of his major league seasons (including 2008).

Rios' sleek wheels (93 stolen bases between 2004 and 2008) were also not as pretty as many analysts pegged them to be. Rios had only eclipsed the 15 stolen base mark in two of his five major league seasons (17 in 2007 and a career-high 32 in 2008). Double-digit stolen bases are always nice, but for as great as Rios' speed was touted (mid-6s speed score), the results rarely materialized in the form of fantasy gold.

Furthermore, and far more worrisome, were the 30 times Rios did his Mike Leake impression was caught stealing between 2004 and 2008. Now, a 75 percent success rate is not bad, but it lowers Rios' net stolen base total between 2004 and 2008 to 63, an average of just over 12 per season.

Still, Rios was a pull-hitter in one of baseball's coziest places for right-handed batters (just ask Jose Bautista, who has hit 41 of his past 70 homers there). His strong batting average between 2006 and 2008, paired with his 24 home runs from 2007 and 32 stolen bases from 2008, gave promise of a .300/20/20 campaign with .300/25/30 upside in the near future.

But then things started to fall apart.

Rios, a consensus top-50 pick of 2009, batted .264/.317/.427 over the first 108 games of the season for the Blue Jays. He continued to steal bases (19 over his first 108 games), but his ISO trended downwards for the third consecutive season. He continued to pray to a Dunn-hating J.P. Riccardi (6.5 percent walk rate), and though his line drive rate was not poor (18.1 percent on the Jays), it represented a career low that further manifested itself in a career-worst BABIP (.289 through his first 108 games played).

Rios was placed on waivers and given away wholesale—for nothing more than salary relief—to the White Sox in mid-2009, and he has resided there ever since. Kenny Williams hoped a change of scenery would be all that Rios needed to return to his glorious 2006-2008 status. I was incredibly, and probably overly, critical of the move at the time.

I did not understand fielding metric sample size requirements at the time, and rather than seeing a major league-average hitter with strong outfield defense capable of posting 3.0-plus WAR seasons, I saw a squandering of cash being thrown at Rios.

For the sake of my credibility, Rios did exactly what I predicted him to do over the final two months of the 2009 season with the White Sox, posting an atrocious .199/.229/.301 line over his final 41 games. Rios stole five bases for the Pale Hose, but he was caught twice. He also only had three home runs to go along with an Erstad-ian .103 ISO.

I continued to hate on Rios in the early offseason (culminating in an infamous radio argument with a certain White Sox post-game announcer over whether Jayson Nix, at the major league minimum, would have been a better player for the Sox than Alex Rios, an argument that persists between the two of us to this day, immortalized on Twitter), but I made amends in March of 2010, pegging Rios as a post-hype sleeper bargain (his preseason rank was No. 141 on Yahoo) for the upcoming season.

In some sense, my analysis of Rios was again dead on. I claimed Rios would hit somewhere in the ballpark of .286/.331/.443 with 20 home runs and 30 stolen bases. His end of season line was in fact .284/.334/.457 with 21 home runs and 34 stolen bases.

Still, for all the good Rios did by the end of the year, almost all of that performance came in the first half of the season. I pegged Rios' second half as the universe balancing out of the type of luck he experienced in the first half (no, I do not believe in the gambler's fallacy), but I should have looked at his numbers in US Cellular field a bit more closely before I ranked him as my No. 12 overall outfielder heading into the 2011 season.

Take a gander at Rios' numbers by month on the White Sox, and pay particular attention to his wRC+, which measures his relative batting value to the rest of the league adjusted for park/league:

Month	AVG	OBP	SLG	BABIP	BB/K	ISO	wOBA	wRC+
Aug 09	0.210	0.221	0.383	0.241	0.09	0.173	0.254	44
Sept/Oct 0	0.211	0.253	0.300	0.227	0.38	0.089	0.246	38
Mar/Apr 10	0.277	0.326	0.470	0.294	0.50	0.193	0.356	118
May 10	0.344	0.406	0.700	0.311	1.00	0.356	0.471	196
Jun 10	0.297	0.355	0.406	0.346	0.33	0.109	0.330	99
Jul 10	0.293	0.321	0.414	0.317	0.28	0.121	0.310	86
Aug 10	0.261	0.303	0.409	0.297	0.29	0.148	0.313	89
Sept/Oct 1	0.228	0.291	0.354	0.258	0.40	0.127	0.297	78
Mar/Apr 11	0.163	0.245	0.235	0.181	0.67	0.071	0.228	34
May 11	0.268	0.305	0.411	0.271	0.50	0.143	0.305	88
TOTALS	0.255	0.305	0.403	0.276	0.40	0.148	0.311	87

Notice that with the exception of April and May of 2010, Rios has been a below-average major league hitter in each of the months he has played for the White Sox. Sure, he was league average in June 2010, but if that's the kind of upside he is providing fantasy owners and White Sox fans alike, then perhaps he does not warrant either the $12 million per year Kenny Williams is paying him or the $20-plus you shelled out to get him on draft day.

In my Ottoneu league, Rios went to an owner for $1 courtesy of a programming glitch we were to lazy to fix. That seemed like a steal of a deal, but one quarter of the way through 2011, his .201/.266/.299 line, with three homers and four stolen bases (with three caught stealing) is hardly looking like a bargain (especially in comparison to my $2 Carlos Quentin).

So what do you do? In light of this data, do you jump ship, ride it out, or "buy low?"

On the bright side, Rios' xBABIP with the White Sox is .328. His actual BABIP on the team has been .276. With less than 1000 plate appearances in a black-and-white jersey, it is very possible that Rios is on an extended cold streak. If you adjust his White Sox batting line of .255/.305/.403 to reflect his xBABIP, you'll find his expected triple-slash line improves to .297/.340/.445. That neatly reflects his 2006-2008 overall performance level.

Furthermore, the move from Rogers Center to U.S. Cellular Field is far from a move to spacious Petco Park for a left-handed batter. Whereas Rogers Center has a right-handed batter index of 116 for home runs and 97 for batting average, the south side bandbox has respective indicies of 145 and 98.

In other words, the two parks have relatively equal expected effects on batting average for righties, while Rios' new home is a 20 percent more favorable environment for going deep. U.S. Cellular Field, in fact, has the highest right-handed batter home run index of any park in the major leagues, with Great American Ballpark a distant second at 125.

If anything, this is an argument is favor of Rios' 20-home run capability, while his three home runs and four steals to date say that a 15/15 or better campaign, even with Rios' struggling, is well in the cards.

On the negative, however, Rios is now 30 years old, and he's not getting any younger. Players tend to peak in their mid-20s, plateau through about age 30, and then decline in ability. Rios may simply be on the downside of a productive fantasy career.

His .097 ISO on the season is far away from stabilizing (we need at least 550 plate appearances to start drawing conclusions with respect to power), but if you take April and May of 2010 out of the equation, Rios' power on the White Sox has been more of an outage than a surge. At some point, a player isn't just having bad luck; he could simply be coming apart at the seems.

Still, Rios is only 30. If he was a couple of years older, perhaps I would be more skeptical, but I have faith that Rios will bounce back somewhat this season and end the year with 15 or so home runs and 20 stolen bases, hitting .280 the rest of the way. That's not bad, but, especially if the White Sox keep Rios in the bottom dregs of their lineup, it's hardly going to end up being what you expected and paid for on draft day. Oliver expects Rios to hit .267/.318/.429 the rest of the way, and to end the season with 18 home runs and 22 stolen bases.

There is probably someone out there willing to take a gamble on an "established" player like Rios, thinking there is plenty of upside left in the tank. Trading Rios is very possible if you are either tired of his early season struggles (a terrible reason to sell) or think you can get more value in return than what he is worth to you or what you think he can do.

Just don't go selling off for 70 cents on the dollar, because a 15-20/20-25 rest of season pace with a average-or-better fantasy batting average is not easy to come by on the waiver wire, especially in deeper formats.

At the very beginning of May, a frustrated Mike Stanton owner offered me a straight-up swap for Rios. I pounced and have not looked back; with Stanton's May surge, I doubt you can get the same deal done at this point, but swapping out Rios for a player like Hunter Pence or Jason Heyward might be possible, and I would personally make either deal.

I can't say I would give the same advice to Kenny Williams, however.

What would you do, or have you done, with Alex Rios? As always, leave the love/hate in the comments below.

Gloria Allred Is Suing The Atlanta Braves

I think this entire segment is hilarious but go about 4:22 in to see Stewart's take on Gloria Allred's press conference

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
We're Here, We're Queer, Get Newsed to It
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Bonus: Will Farrell and Jon Stewart commenting about the press conference

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Will Ferrell
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Archer March Madness: The Winner (Part One)

So its the beginning of May, and sure I've neglected GOI and have stopped posting, but before the professional basketball season ends and now that I am done studying for the day, I think it's time to finally post the winner of the best Archer quote as voted on by you the fans.

And the winner is...

Drum roll please....

......

and just for funsies

......

LANA, THE HELIUM!

As of the writing of this post "Lana, The Helium" (the #2 overall seed) beat out "DANGER ZONE" (the #1 overall seed) by a vote of 7-5

Seeing as I am not in my apartment I can not post the bracket at this time, but that will come soon (cross your fingers) in part two.

Once I finish law school within a few weeks I hope to only post but do more wacky brackets and maybe do another version of my top TV characters dot dot dot

The 2011 DUI All-Stars

The following, as if he read my mine, comes courtesy of a friend named "Happy."

These players might not hit over .240, but they shouldn't have a problem hitting .240 on a breathalyzer. Ladies & Gentlemen, your 2011 DUI ALL-STARS (a * indicates that the player received a DUI in 2011):

1. Coco Crisp* (OF, projected BAC of .210): Stellar defense led prosecution to drop all charges.
2. Edgar Sangeria (SS, .200): post-game celebrations with Dusty Baker could lead to trouble
3. Miguel Cabrera* (1B, .240): perennial contender for the Triple Crown Royal
4. Shin-Soo Choo* (OF, .200): what else is there to do in the post-LeBron wasteland?
   
5. Austin Kearns* (OF, .215)
   
6. Ryan Doumit (C): recently apprehended for operating a flying saucer while using a cellular phone.
   
7. Adam Kennedy* (2b, .110): Regrettably, he realized that plowing through pitchers of MGD wasn't the same as plowing through major league pitchers.
8. Brandon Inge (3B, .250): Take the 'randon' out of "Brandon Inge drinking"
9. Derek Lowe* (SP, .195

Bench: Elijah Dukes (OF, projected BAC of .230): went from batting fifth to pleading the fifth; high slugging percentage didn't transfer from the bedroom to the field. Was also caught stealing second base from Dick's sporting goods.

The team, of course, is managed by Tony "don't you know who I am" LaRussa.