Hiroki Kuroda: Baseball Ace

"People are overlooked for a variety of biased reasons and perceived flaws."
-- Peter Brand, 'Moneyball'

There's a scene in the early part of the movie "Moneyball" in which Brad Pitt (as Billy Beane) and Jonah Hill (as Peter Brand) announced their free agent targets to the rest of the Oakland Athletics' staff. The room full of skeptical scouts groaned as the three underwhelming names were announced: Scott Hatteberg, Jeremy Giambi, and David Justice. Each had a flaw that rendered them totally undesirable to the much of the baseball establishment -- Hatterberg couldn't throw, Giambi had off-the-field issues, and Justice was old. But the existence of those flaws was exactly what made them desirable to Beane and Brand. They were undervalued by everyone else, and the A's exploited that ignorance. This process also led Beane and Brand to relief pitcher Chad Bradford, whose services were similarly shunned because he "threw funny."

In the decade since "Moneyball," baseball has gotten smarter and better at finding hidden inefficiencies like these. But like most things, baseball can never be perfectly efficient. Those "biased reasons and perceived flaws" that Peter Brand referenced still exist, causing players to be overlooked or undervalued. And there might be no better evidence of this phenomenon than Hiroki Kuroda. Two offseasons ago, Kuroda was coming off a stellar 2011 season in which he threw 200 innings with an ERA of 3.07. At that point, his career ERA in Major League Baseball was a very solid 3.45. But he ended up settling for a one-year contract with the New York Yankees for $10 million, while comparable (or worse) pitchers like C.J. Wilson and Mark Buehrle were getting deals worth several times more. Like Scott Hatteberg or Chad Bradford, Kuroda was undervalued because he was guilty of four perceived "flaws" that rendered him imperfect in the eyes of many around baseball.

1. He was old. Everybody fetishizes young pitches, but nobody likes old ones. Old pitchers deteriorate, break down, and get hurt. Kuroda was 37 entering last season. He had thrown a total of about 2,400 career innings between Japan and the United States. Like David Justice, he was considered to be past his prime, or at least close to falling over a cliff. This ignored the fact that Kuroda actually had the best season of his career at age 36. Plus, one of last year's Cy Young Award winners, R.A. Dickey, was also 37 years old. Not all pitchers in their late-30's need to be immediately sent to the glue factory.

2. He couldn't win. Baseball is still very much an old-school sport, and is biased towards pitchers who Win Games. In four years with the Dodgers, Kuroda's career record was under .500 (41-46). Of course, this was hardly his fault. How could it be, when his ERA in those seasons was 3.45. The real culprit was the Dodgers' dismal offense (back then, Yaisel Puig had not yet descended from Olympus). In fact, in three of Kuroda's four years there, the Dodgers ranked in the bottom third of the league in runs scored. Still, Kuroda won himself the unfair notoriety of being a pitcher who "couldn't win."

3. He pitched in the NL West. For some reason, this fact hurts the perception of many players (especially pitchers). It's not just about the publicity disparity between East and West. It's about the reputation that NL West players have earned for themselves -- like numbers posted out there have to be taken with a grain of salt, because, you now, it's the NL West. The division is perceived to be somehow "lesser" or "easier" compared to the rest of baseball. This is especially true for pitchers, because three of the division's five ballparks (Dodger Stadium, Petco Park, and AT&T Park) are enormous and pitcher-friendly (this school of thought conveniently ignores how hitter-friendly the other two ballparks are -- Coors Field and Chase Field). The division is also infamous for being home to inferior offenses (blame the Padres for this one). So when a pitcher like Kuroda moves out of that friendly environment and relocates to the AL East -- where the parks are smaller, offenses are more fearsome, and designated hitters exist -- people are inherently wary, even if those fears are motivated by a misunderstanding of the NL West.

4. He was Asian. This was probably Kuroda's biggest miscalculation, being Japanese. The bias against Asian pitchers is very real and very strong. It's probably buoyed by a few high-profile disappointments who came over from Japan, like Hideo Nomo, Hideki Irabu, Daisuke Matsuzaka, and Kei Igawa. It's interesting to note that this bias is actually being discredited as we speak, thanks to the unprecedented success being enjoyed by Asian pitches at the moment -- not only Kuroda and Yu Darvish, but also Hisashi Iwakuma, Wei-Yin Chen, Hyun-Jin Ryu, Koji Uehara, and Junchia Tazawa. A banner year for the continent, really.

For all of these reasons, Kuroda didn't receive lucrative multi-year offers after his 2011 season, instead settling for a one-year deal for $10 million with the Yankees. There were, of course, skeptics. An old Asian pitcher with a poor career record moving from the NL West to Yankee Stadium? Based solely on perception, Kuroda was a prime candidate to crash and burn in New York. So when his first nine starts with the Yankees resulted in a 3-6 record and an inflated 4.56 ERA, the vultures were circling.

Ever since then, Kuroda has done nothing but turn all of those biases upside down. After that nine-start rough patch, his ERA for the rest of the 2012 season was 2.92. This year, it's 2.59. Age didn't affect him -- at 37, he threw a career-high 219.2 innings last year, plus another 16 in the playoffs. Winning games wasn't a problem -- despite continuously poor run support, Kuroda is 22-15 in his Yankees career. Moving from the NL West to the Yankee Stadium bandbox was startlingly easy for him; in fact, his ERA in Yankee Stadium has somehow been a run-and-a-half better than his road ERA. And so far, believe it or not, the past failures of a few of his Japanese countrymen have not hindered his performance in the slightest.

Through 45 career starts and nearly 300 innings with the Yankees, Kuroda owns a 3.14 ERA and 1.13 WHIP. Over that stretch, he's had the 12th-best ERA in all of baseball, in a virtual tie with both of last year's Cy Young Award winners, David Price and R.A. Dickey. For quite a while now, he's been an ace. Yet any team in baseball could've had him last year for just $10 million, which is just slightly more money than what Heath Bell is making. Baseball keeps getting smarter, but there are always undervalued Scott Hattebergs and Chad Bradfords out there for the taking. Hiroki Kuroda is Exhibit A.

Do the Phillies Know Who the Good Baseball Players Are?

This offseason, the Philadelphia Phillies stood at a crossroads. Their expensive and aging roster was only good for 81 wins and a third-place finish in 2012. The team's general manager, Ruben Amaro, had to decide whether to make another run at a championship with his existing core, or begin to rebuild with younger players. He chose the first course of action. In his mind, the Phillies are still good enough that a few smart additions could mean a World Series title. And he's right, because any team that has a pitching staff led by Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, and Cole Hamels is automatically in the mix. He just needed to make a few upgrades on offense to give this Phillies core one last chance at a title before Chase Utley's knees implode.

Amaro sought out players who could fill his four biggest needs on offense: right field, center field, third base, and middle-infield depth. The four players he ended up acquiring -- the players who are supposed to bolster Philadelphia's roster for a championship run -- are so deeply flawed that they have me questioning whether Ruben Amaro knows what a good baseball player looks like.

1. Michael Young, Third Baseman
Ah, Michael Young. He was quite an excellent player once. This is no longer the case. Actually, Young was probably the worst everyday player in baseball last year. He came to the plate 651 times last year and only drew 33 walks (by comparison, he grounded into 26 double plays). That comes out to a .312 on-base percentage. His power numbers were nonexistent: a .370 slugging percentage with just eight homers. He's technically a third baseman, but being virtually immobile, he isn't any good at that either, which is why his Texas Rangers stuck him at DH most of last year. However, the Philadelphia Phillies play in the National League, where playing Young at DH would be entirely illegal. If Young plays the field every day and continues to rack up almost as many double plays as walks, he could very well repeat as the Worst Player in Baseball.
Viable Alternatives: Kevin Youkilis, Jeff Keppinger, a scarecrow

2. Delmon Young, "Right Fielder"
But if someone is going to challenge Michael for that title, it's going to be his long-lost brother Delmon. Now, Delmon's power numbers were better than Michael's last year: 18 homers and a .411 slugging percentage. But remarkably, his plate discipline was somehow even worse. He swung more often than any other player in baseball (60% of the time), even more than Josh Hamilton. He only walked 20 times in 608 plate appearances -- while grounding into 20 double plays. He drew ball four 3.3% of the time, which was the second-worst walk rate in all of baseball, behind only Alexei Ramirez. At least Ramirez plays good defense.

"But perhaps Delmon Young plays good defense too," one might respond. One clearly has not ever seen Delmon Young. This is a man whose contract with the Phillies includes weight clauses. Weight clauses. Meaning that six times during the season, Young gets on a scale and can earn an additional $100,000 from the team each time he measures in under 230 pounds. No, Delmon Young can't play much defense, which was okay when he could DH for the Tigers in the American League. Like Michael, Delmon can do no such thing for the National League Phillies. Which means Delmon will be "running down" fly balls in right field all year, which could do irreparable damage to Roy Halladay's career ERA.

The icing on the cake: last season, Young was involved in a public altercation, described in this paragraph by the New York Times:

"According to the police, a heavily intoxicated Young yelled anti-Semitic slurs and attacked a group of tourists outside the New York Hilton, the Tigers’ team hotel, about 2:30 a.m. Friday. According to a police report, Young began yelling the epithets at a group of four tourists who were giving money to a panhandler who was wearing a skullcap and a Star of David pendant around his neck, and the encounter became physical."

So, he's terrible at baseball, but at least he's an anti-Semite.
Viable Alternatives: Nick Swisher, Josh Hamilton, Torii Hunter, Scott Hairston, Domonic Brown

3. Ben Revere, Center Fielder
It doesn't seem fair to include Revere in the same breath as Michael and Delmon Young. Because at least Revere can do two things that the Youngs can't: play defense and run fast. Revere is an excellent defensive center-fielder and he stole 40 bases last year. Unfortunately, at the plate, Revere is completely impotent. Sure, he hit .294 last year. But those hits were almost all singles, because Ben Revere cannot hit for power. Literally -- he's been to the plate over a thousand times in his major league career and he has yet to hit one home run. Of his 275 career hits, only 33 went for extra bases. His career slugging percentage is .323. The sad part? That's still higher than his career on-base percentage: .319.

Like both Youngs, Revere doesn't draw walks. He did so only 29 times last year. So without any plate discipline, or any power, Revere's offensive value relies completely on his legs. He'll swing at the first good pitch he sees and try to beat out an infield single. That's a nearly useless offensive player. At the very least, he'll play a good center field. He'll need to, what with The Weight Clause manning right field.
Viable Alternatives: Michael Bourn, Denard Span

4. Yuniesky Betancourt, Shortstop
Betancourt only signed a minor league deal, so he might not make the Phillies roster. But given the combined age of Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins (68) and their combined number of healthy knees (??), it's safe to bet on Betancourt making more than a few appearances at shortstop and second base.

He's played over 1,000 career games, and he's never not been useless. His career on-base percentage is an unsightly .290. Heck, Michael Jordan's minor league OBP was .289. He's drawn 129 walks -- since 2005. He, too, doesn't hit for power (.392 slugging percentage) and he's not even a good defender. Speed? Well, he does have 30 stolen bases in his career ... and he's also been caught 30 times. Betancourt's Wins Above Replacement totals for the last six years look like this: -1.2, -0.8, -1.3, -1.5, -0.8, -0.4. Yes, those are minus signs in front of all those numbers. He's been worth negative value in each of the last six seasons.
Viable Alternatives: Me, You

Add up the total WAR that all four of these players contributed in 2012 and you get -2.4. Revere was the only one with positive value. Add up the total number of times that these players walked in 2012, and you get 91. Carlos Pena walked 87 times last year, by himself, and the Astros signed him for less than what the Phillies are paying Michael Young. When asked on the radio about his team's aversion to walks, Ruben Amaro replied,

"I don't care about walks, I care about production."

I don't care about walks, I care about production. If this is what Amaro really believes, then the Phillies are in serious trouble. Failing to understand that walks are a form of production is crazy. Maybe Amaro is waging his own mini-war on Moneyball philosophy. If so, he's losing. The three teams with the highest on-base percentage last year were the Cardinals, Yankees, and Tigers -- in other words, three of the last four teams standing in the playoffs. The Phillies finished just 17th in OBP and ended up in third place.

Apparently, Ruben Amaro didn't settle on these four players because there were no other alternatives (which, by the way, is false). He actually sought them out because he thinks they are good at baseball. He sees players not in terms of the value they provide, but in terms of broad labels. He looks at Michael Young and sees "Hardened, Grizzled Veteran." Delmon Young: "Power Bat With Playoff Experience." Ben Revere: "Pesky, Gritty Glue Guy." Yuniesky Betancourt: "Savvy Middle Infielder."

The Phillies needed an infusion of skilled offensive players to help get them back to the World Series. Instead, they got Michael Young, Delmon Young, Ben Revere, and Yuniesky Betancourt. The Phillies needed a shot in the arm. They got a punch in the face.

It's That Time of Year Again

"Did the Oakland Athletics win the World Series? No? Aha, 'Moneyball' has failed yet again!"

Some people actually think like this, including a national columnist for CBS Sports named Danny Knobler, who gave a recent article this gem of a title: "Whether the Giants or Tigers win, Moneyball loses" (this was a few days ago, when the World Series was still in doubt). Click here for a link, if you have sadistic tendencies and wish to read the whole thing (I've just taken relevant excerpts). It goes on to say:

"Two games in, we don't yet have a winner of this World Series, but we already have a loser. It's not the Tigers (yet, anyway). It's Moneyball. If the Giants continue this fun run they're on, Moneyball loses, because if there's one team in the game that's more old school and less Moneyball than anyone else, it's the Giants. Unless it's the Tigers. If the Tigers become the first team since the 1996 Yankees to overcome a two games to none deficit (since then, eight teams have tried but failed), then Moneyball loses, too. And don't think some defenders of old-school scouting aren't watching and celebrating."

There are so very many things wrong with these statements, the most fundamental of which is drawing any kind of meaningful conclusions from the World Series participants. What if the A's make the World Series next year? Would that instantly validate 'Moneyball' strategies as the only way to build a baseball team? No! The playoffs are unequivocally, preposterously random. The Giants wouldn't have gotten to the Series without winning six straight elimination games, four of which were on the road. One loss in those six games and they never make it. The Tigers wouldn't have gotten there without playing in a god-awful division; they didn't even have one of the 10 best records in baseball. If you want to draw conclusions about "right" or "wrong" ways to build baseball teams, use the larger sample size of regular season results. Saying that 'Moneyball' doesn't work because "anti-Moneyball" teams got to the World Series in one random year is like saying that Duke and UConn are bad basketball programs because they lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament last year.

Now, we get to the really juicy stuff:

"For almost a decade now, ever since the Michael Lewis book that sold plenty of copies and sold plenty of fans on the idea that the A's won games because of a better use of computers, the old school/new school debate has been baseball's hottest."

Is that the worst sentence ever written? I mean...it's certainly up there, right? If you read/saw Moneyball and came away from that book/movie and thought it was about "how the A's won games because of a better use of computers"...man, I don't even know.

For the rest of this article, Knobler operates under the premise that Moneyball was about a baseball team eschewing old-school scouts in favor of computers and advanced statistics. In a micro sense, that's true. But really, that premise is wrong. The Moneyball philosophy was about a low-payroll team trying to find market inefficiencies in order to field a competitive roster. At the time, Beane's scouts were overvaluing certain attributes (speed, defense, bunting) and undervaluing others ("bad-body" athletes, on-base skills, advanced statistics). Beane responded accordingly. As markets shifted to compensate, those inefficiencies changed over time. The landscape is completely different today! Billy Beane's team in 2012 was built on speed and defense, skills he might have scoffed at a decade ago! But writers like Knobler can't seem to understand that Beane and other progressive front offices aren't ideologically wedded to stuff like sabermetrics and on-base percentage. Those were tools used in the execution of a broader strategy, NOT the strategy itself. The tools have changed. Why am I wasting my time.

"The divide within the game never was as great as it was portrayed. The A's and other 'Moneyball teams' rely on scouting (without it, the A's never sign Yoenis Cespedes). The Tigers and Giants and other 'old-school' teams hire smart young guys who can analyze the numbers coming out of their computers."

Yes! Exactly! This is reasonable! Every front office uses a variety of different methods, ranging all across the "Baseball Ideas" spectrum. Because it would be silly not to use as many strategies to gather as much information as possible. Why does the rest of this article exist, then?

"But if it's not black and white, there are quite a few variations of gray, with the Tigers and Giants at one end of the scale and Moneyball as a concept at the other."

Knobler: "So the divide within the game was exaggerated, a balance of ideas exists, and it's not black-and-white." [realizes he now has nothing more to say and his article is effectively over] "Oh no wait, it's actually very polarizing, and let me explain why..."

"While the Tigers front office uses statistics as part of the evaluation process, 'it's not going to make the decision for us,' Dombrowski said. 'For some teams, it does.'

Giants general manager Brian Sabean said the same thing. The Giants front office wants all the information it can get, but would never make or reject a possible deal simply because of something they saw in the numbers."

There's two ways of looking at these comments.
1. Who in the heck bases their decision-making solely on numbers?
2. Who in the heck never uses numbers in their decision-making?

There obviously has to be a balance between statistics and scouting in front offices, a balance that Knobler has already admitted exists, yet ignores. Suggesting that executives in 'Moneyball' front offices are robots who pour data into Excel spreadsheets and make their decisions based on the numbers their computers spit out is preposterous. It's a straw man argument. I'm surprised that Dombrowski is playing along with this crap. Then again, this is the same guy who decided it would be a great idea if he could get Delmon Young to be his DH and hit in the 5-hole.

"Most decisions both these teams make come out of a strong belief about a player by one scout or another.

'You can't eliminate the human element of the game,' said Scott Reid, who has long been in charge of Dombrowski's pro scouting staff."

Because if it were up to Billy Beane, baseball wouldn't have a human element. It wouldn't even be a human game. Ideally, it wouldn't be "played" so much as "simulated" between opposing computer programs that could reduce the entire season to 0.074 seconds, with the "winner" receiving some terse congratulatory handshakes before retiring to his mother's basement for the winter.

"Scott Reid has worked with Dombrowski for 20 years. Dick Tidrow has been with Sabean for nearly that long, and Paul Turco has been with him even longer. They're exactly the type of guys who were most offended by the portrayal of scouts in Moneyball."

That's so weird, because Hollywood is usually so good about portraying real-life people and events with stunning accuracy.

"They're exactly the type of guys who are most satisfied to see a 2012 World Series involving two teams that lean the other way. 'We've always tried to stay up with the times,' Reid said. 'The sabermetric stuff has been great for the game. It's great for the fans. But it's information based on past performance. It does sometimes verify what your eyes and your scouting people are seeing.'

Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod. "Sabermetric stuff"--or, "numbers," to the rest of us nerds--DOES verify what your eyes are seeing. That's what numbers do. That's why they exist. To quantify and record what our eyes see, because our minds can't remember every single data point. Eyewitness testimony absolutely has its uses. It's also unreliable because its subject to the whims and biases and other shortcomings of the brain. Numbers attempt to remove that human flaw and just record facts. But apparently they're worthless because all they're based on is "past performance." What good could they possibly do?!

"But when there are conflicts, the Tigers and Giants are more likely to trust their eyes and their scouts.

This year, the eyes are winning."

No, my eyes lost. They had to read this garbage.

Jon Heyman Doesn't Get It

Jon Heyman, Self-Proclaimed Baseball Insider, unleashed this unmercifully ignorant Tweet tonight:

the #moneyball a's lead AL w/ 14 steals & are second worst in obp at .277 (to seattle, thanks to humber's perfecto)

For (what seems like) the one-billionth time: Moneyball is not about on-base percentage.

Not. About. On-base percentage.

Moneyball is about exploiting market inefficiencies. At the time--a good ten years ago, mind you--on-base percentage happened to be an inefficiency that the A's pursued. At the expense of things like speed and defense, which some felt were overvalued (as seen in the Johnny Damon contract, among others).

Believe it or not, Jon: the market has changed since 2002.

On-base percentage is definitely fairly valued now. Players like Adam Dunn have finally been recognized, and paid, for the value they provide (though a bit too late in Dunn's case).

Accordingly, the A's have actually swung in the opposite direction, towards speed and defense, sometimes even at the expense of OBP (as seen in their second-to-last ranking in that category). Heck, last offseason they tried to throw money at Adrian Beltre, an accomplished OBP hole but an elite defender at third. The Rays made the same philosophical transition a few years back--they consistently save the most defensive runs in the majors each year, and look how they're doing. 

Also, Jon, if you would take a moment to examine Oakland's roster, you'd quickly realize what the A's are aiming for. Their starting lineup features players like: Kurt Suzuki, Daric Barton, Cliff Pennington, Jemile "Brother of Rickie" Weeks, Josh Reddick, Coco Crisp, etc. All of those players are either good defenders and/or fast. Most all are ridiculously cheap, and are all the A's can afford right now. None are OBP specialists.

It is quite incorrect to imply that A) the A's worship at the feet of the All-Powerful OBP Deity and B) that Moneyball is equivalent to OBP in any way.

It's even more incorrect to Tweet about it snidely.