I always play song 3 first whenever I buy a new album.    I’m trying to find the sweet spot first.   I am guided by the baseball protocol to place a team’s best pure hitter in the third spot in the lineup.

Usually, my approach does not bear any special fruit.   Albums from the vinyl days seemed more structured to save the gems for the beginning or end of one of the sides – often leaving the 3 spot with filler.    Nowadays,it seems like most albums are front-loaded, more like the general intent of a baseball lineup, though it doesn’t seem to me that there is any trend to place great importance on the number 3 spot in an album.

But every now and then I find that perfect song – rich and pure – right there at number 3.    When I do, I look further to see if the album lineup could succeed as a baseball lineup.

The current CD hogging my car stereo works pretty well as a batting order.   Wilco (the album), the latest effort from my favorite active band is worthy of a baseball lineup analysis.

So here is Wilco (the lineup).

1.   Wilco (the song).  The leadoff hitter should set the tone for the team.   Here, with a droll characterization of all that is Wilco, is Wilco (the tablesetter).

2.  Deeper Down.  The second slot is typically given to a control bat ,  a song that can move the runner over.   Wilco does what many teams do – put a light-hitting middle infielder as a placeholder.   If it’s possible to capture in a song the essence of fouling off a lot of pitches – this song does that.

3.  One Wing – Third – the best pure hitter, the best pure song.  Tweedy through beautiful metaphor (on base percentage) and Nils Kline through virtuoso guitar (slugging percentage) have created an OPS gem.

4.  Bull Black Nova  — Here is the power spot.  Wilco has a ‘roid rage paranoia trip taking power rips for your speakers fences.  Maybe not Ruth and Gehrig, but Wilco has put a great 3-4 combo on this album.

5.  You and I — It’s good to mix  in righties and lefties – or in rock parlance : rockers and ballads.  Wilco adds a left-handed ballad (and duet with Feist).

6.  You Never Know — Still room in the lineup for another big RBI song – the closest thing that Wilco has to a radio hit (if radio did rock anymore).

7.  Country Disappeared — The bottom of the lineup is the place for the specialty roles, the aging good-ole-crowd-pleaser, experimenting with a rookie sound.    There are familiar Wilco strains all over this one.

8.  Solitaire –  I love the simple hard-learned lesson of this one.   This song is my shortstop – a sweet and sublime fielder batting eighth.

9.  I’ll Fight – Here’s the brush back pitch.   A brash flamethower of a pitcher slotted number 9 (I’ll go National League rules — from place of origin or place of residency – I suspect Tweedy to be either a Cubs or Cardinals fan).

10.  Sonny Feeling – Okay, the batting lineup metaphor breaks down – few albums (non art-rock variety) limit themselves to 9 songs.   But this song sounds like a middle reliever – so I’ll just keep filling out my lineup card.

11.  Everlasting Everything – And here is the closer.  Kind of a veteran, ground-ball inducing type, not a high strikeout-rate type of song.   It can still pile up the saves.

There it is.  Wilco (the Scorecard).   I challenge you to take a favorite album and see how it stacks up as a baseball lineup.

[Update: Joe Mauer now qualifies for the batting title -- this post is now irrelevant.]

Under the “Tony Gwynn Rule” Joe Mauer just took the batting title lead.

Apply the batting title criteria to Joe Mauer’s stats and Joe took the lead for the batting crown over the weekend, capped by his 3 for 5 performance against the Cubs on Sunday.    Joe doesn’t have the “qualifying” plate appearances – but you don’t need all those PA’s to truly qualify, you just pay a major penalty if you’re short.

Call it the “Tony Gwynn” rule, if you will.  The rule has been around since 1967, but it was Tony who benefitted from the rule in 1996 — a season where he ended up 5 plate appearances short of the batting title threshold of 3.1 plate appearances per game.  

Tony’s season ending average was .353, ahead of Ellis Burks’ .344.   Ellis had the highest batting average of any National Leaguer who qualified for the batting title.  Did he take home the batting crown?  No.  The rule allows for trading in a player’s deficient PA’s for outs.  Apply a theoretical zero-for-five day to Tony’s stats to get him to 503,*  and Tony’s batting average would have been .349, keeping him ahead of Ellis.   

* Most use 502 as the qualifying PA’s, but I come up with 503 using my canons of construction to interpret the horribly worded Official Major League Rule 10.22(a).    The rule establishes a “minimum” of “as many or more total appearances at the plate” “as the number of games scheduled” multiplied by 3.1.     The rule includes an example, which misses in its attempt to add clarity.  The example reads: “If a major league schedules 162 games for each club, 502 plate appearances qualify (162 times 3.1 equals 502)” (emphasis mine).   

162 times 3.1 does not equal 502.  It equals 502.2.  If 502.2 is a “minimum” then 503 is the first integer above the minimum.    When interpreting a statute, I would look to the text for the meaning, and give little credit to an illustration with loose math. 

Tony’s official batting average that year remained at .353, of course, but what if Ellis had hit .350? Tony would have appeared second on the batting title list with a .353 average, confusing future stat gazers who would see a .350 ranking higher on the list.    I’ll do what any baseball geek does when he wants to minimize confusion — I’ll create a new stat (yeah, right).    Tony’s batting average that year was .353, but his “Batting Title Average” (BTA) was .349. 

As of close of business today (Sunday, June 14, 2009), Joe Mauer’s batting average is .413.   His 181 plate appearances leave him 21 short of the 202 necessary for the Twins’ 65 games to date.   Adding a hypothetical O-fer 21 streak to Joe’s season gives him a .364 BTA.  Ichiro has a batting average (if you’re above the minimum, your BTA and BA are the same)  of .360 as I type this.    A season-ending strike breaks out overnight and Joe is the champion. 

The batting leader lists of MLB, ESPN, et al.  won’t bother to adjust for this dynamic during the season.    There’d be too much ‘splainin’ to do.    I doubt I’ll have the time to update this chart during the next few weeks until Joe catches up and it just won’t matter anymore.   But here it is, shown below in a chart — a moment in the season when there is a secret champion. 

2009 AL BTA Leaders  as of the date below plus the top 2 in the 1996 NL race. 

UPDATE:  [Observation about Batting Title Average :  If Joe Mauer sits a game, his batting average stays the same, but his Batting Title Average drops (an assumed 0 for 3.1). ]

                     [Another observation about BTA:  Walks don't impact BA, but improve BTA b/c they count toward plate appearances to reduce shortfall without assuming an out.]

[Original posting on 6//14/09 -- the stats used as the basis of the article above.]

—

I just got back from a week rafting in the Grand Canyon.  It’s a month into the baseball season, and I didn’t think of baseball at all.*

*Okay.  I did once.  My river guide explained that, according to the book “Death in the Grand Canyon” everyone who dies of dehydration in the Grand Canyon has been found with water still in their canteen/water bottle.    They were saving the last gulps.  I thought of Gardy saving Joe Nathan, just in case of a save situation.  

At the bottom of the Grand Canyon it’s hard to follow baseball.  If I could have forced my attention away from the canyonscape, I had no internet.  There is no cell coverage.  Not even a newspaper with scores.  Short of satellite radio, I couldn’t have received any updates.  (Satellite radio.  Damn.  Why didn’t I think of that before I left).

As a kid, the first thing I did when my family returned from vacation was to go through the stacked up and yellowed newspapers of the last week to analyze every Twins  box score.  I’d go sequentially from the first day we left town and get caught up.  For some reason, I especially remember coming home from an August vacation and tracking a hot-hitting rookie, Kent Hrbek.  If you’re still anxiously tracking a team in August of a 102 loss campaign, you’ve established fan for life credentials.  

When I got back from the Grand Canyon, I did what I’ve done in recent years if I missed a game or two.  I clicked through the box scores and game logs on ESPN or MLB.com.  

But I didn’t analyze the game logs too closely.  The Twins aren’t playing inspiring baseball right now.  And though I love baseball, it somewhat pales in the grandeur of the sandstones and limestones and the cool blue Colorado River.  

When the buzz of exciting travel wears off, I hope the Twins are back to playing exciting baseball.

The Twins are going with a five man rotation.  Hardly news in modern baseball, huh?  Well, not just for the starting pitching, but also the outfielders.

The plan is to use five outfielders*, in somewhat equal proportions between the LF, CF, RF and DH slots on the scorecard (minus the DH slot for 9 NL hosted games).

From day to day, the factors on who plays and who stays might depend on the matchups, injuries, who needs a rest and Gardy’s whims.  Maybe one player will get hot or fall behind and the lineup decisions will fall easily into place.  But until then, here are some proposed guidelines on how to ration the at bats.

The North/South Divide

Like any rotation, it’s good to have a mix of lefties and righties.   Young, Gomez and Cuddyer bat right.  Kubel and Span, left.  More right handed pitchers means more split opportunities for Kubel and Span.  Span actually hit lefties better than righties last year (874 OPS vs. L to 795 OPS vs. R).  That is not consistent with his minor league career, but nothing about last year was consistent with Span’s minor league career.  

On the Turf

Defensively, only  Span and Gomez stand out.  Only Span can easily rotate through the outfield.   Delmon is a fixture (almost in the real estate law sense) in left.  Cuddyer plays only in right, where his strong arm is a plus if he doesn’t have too much ground to cover.  If Gomez belongs on a major league roster, he belongs in centerfield.    Kubel can flip between right and left, but if he’s not a liability in the field, he’s at least a toxic asset.    I’d trend toward Span,when used, in the big field (e.g. right field in Fenway, left field in the Metrodome), and toward Span and Gomez when the Fly Ballers are pitching (namely, Baker and Slowey).

Designating the Designated Hitter 

Span and Gomez don’t add value when there not contributing defense, so only Kubel/Young/Cuddyer should rotate through the DH slot.    Also, keep in mind, the DH spot would be a nice place to rest the Bad-Back Joes (Mauer and Crede) and Morneau on occassion.    Mauer’s back injury inhibits his running, so the DH isn’t a place to use his bat while convalescing.  Nonetheless, I’d get even a healthy Mauer more DH time than last year (only 19 PAs at DH in 08, down from an average of 75 the previous two years).  Kubel’s the default against righties, and the righties mix it up against the southpaws.

Any of the five could be thought of as a major league starter.  Yet none of the five come with a high degree of certainty.  Kubel is hopefully continuing to rehab past the ACL in the AFL incident.  Cuddyer is as defined by his injuries as he is by his one stellar season.    Delmon hasn’t approached the lofty expectations that surround him.   Something clicked for Span last year, but a track record would be a nice thing to have.   Gomez is ADHD manifest in a center fielder.  (Do you prescribe Ritalin to focus more or Xanax to mellow out?) It’s a big year for each of them to prove themselves.  And each will get 4/5 ths of a chance to do so, so the plan goes.  

* The full names for those who don’t obsess about all things Twins:  Delmon Young, Carlos Gomez, Denard Span, Michael Cuddyer, Jason Kubel.

There were the exorcized Rays and Philly getting a belated championship.  There were the Cubs looking like champions but (again) disappointing their increasingly demanding fans.  There was Roger Clemens trying to extricate himself from the allegations of his personal trainer and Barry Bonds sitting the whole year.  There was Pujols excellence and MannyBeingMannyInLA.  

But the biggest story in baseball in 2008 is the biggest story in the nation in 2008 and one that is just beginning to unfold — the It-Might-Be-Great-Yet Depression.  

I’m no economist, but I’ll play one on the internet and conjecture that baseball revenues are primarily tied to four things:

1)taxpayer subsidies, mostly in the form of all those new stadia, mostly financed through public bonds;

2) fans, either showing up at the gate or buying the cable and internet packages and licensed baseball;

3) uber-rich owners throwing money at their little trophy hobby (not technically revenue, but it can keep those salaries inflated),

4) corporations paying for the luxury suites and premium seating and advertising and naming rights.  

Oddly, I think the revenue source that will dip the least will be the from the fans.   Maybe I’m too big of a fan to objectively project my behavioral theory to apply to the casual fans or the family-of-five-on-a-sketchy salary fans, but I love the sport too much to look away.  

Regardless, baseball is about to get a financial fastball — high and tight.