All the rage, pardon the pun, on Friday was to talk about Chris Perez’s new contract with the Cleveland Indians. He avoided arbitration by signing a one-year deal for $7.3M for the 2013 season. Instantly, various articles and Tweets began popping up about Perez being overpaid and closers, in general, being thoroughly overpriced. Perez is not the Indians best reliever. That distinction belongs to Vinnie Pestano. That being said, is there a way to validate the Perez contract?

Last year, with Perez as a chief example, Jonah Keri of Grantland hit a home run with his piece about closers. Also, the timing could not have been better for Keri’s piece, immediately following Perez’s Opening Day blown save against the Toronto Blue Jays and following Perez’s Spring Training stint on the disabled list. Furthermore, Perez was coming off a season with a velocity drop, a major drop in K/9 rate, and a spike in BB/9 rate.

Keri goes on to cite the “Shutdowns/Meltdowns” stat of Fangraphs. In essence, the stat asks nothing more than “Did the relief pitcher help his team’s chances of winning the game?” by using win probability. If we use shutdowns as the predominant statistic for evaluating relief pitchers, which Keri’s article suggests, then Chris Perez was the 11th most valuable relief pitcher in 2012. If we subtract meltdowns from shutdowns for all relievers, Perez would have ranked ninth.

Read more...

Around this time last winter, I took a shot at using social media to get shutdown setup man, and Twitter aficionado, Vinnie Pestano to agree to an interview with me for TheClevelandFan.com. I succeeded. In what has been one of the most entertaining winters in recent memory for the Cleveland Indians, I found myself hoping to get a player’s perspective on what has happened so far and what lies ahead. The choice of who to approach was easy.

It’s not just a coincidence that Pestano was the recipient of the 2012 Bob Feller Man of the Year Award as voted on by the Cleveland chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. Pestano has been a constant for the Indians, both as a tremendous late inning reliever and as a fun-loving, approachable personality on Twitter. Underneath all of the Dumb & Dumber references, video game postings, and corny jokes is a player who is serious about his craft and desperately wants to bring a winner to Cleveland that the city is proud to support.

Pestano was candid with me, both on and off the record, on a number of subjects, ranging from Hall of Fame voting and attendance to his strengths and weaknesses as a pitcher. Obviously, the things that were said in confidence aren’t going to be included in this article, but the takeaway from those off the record remarks is that Pestano is a realist, who loves to pitch for this team and understands the frustrations that we have as fans.

With the official start of Spring Training under one month away, Pestano generously took time out of preparing for the season to spend a few minutes answering the mountain of questions that I had for him.

Read more...

All of a sudden, we're closing in on the season. The NFL is winding down with just three games left in their season, and once that is done, baseball is at the next exit. Teams report to spring training and that is as exciting as you can get

How the heck did it get here so quick? Usually the offseason is cold and long. So far we've had it be cold, but not blistering, with little snow, and really, how many of you believe it is the middle of January already? I certainly don't.

I've only been able to do a few parts in the "Piece by Piece" series and I know I've promised a new edition some time ago, but with all the fun with Nick Swisher and what not, it fell on the back-burner. But with the big additions over, and the stretch run of the offseason now in motion, we must finish Piece by Piece. So look for that late this week, early next week as news is sparse.

Read more...

I had no intention of writing about this year’s Baseball Hall of Fame voting. None. Zip, zilch, zero. Felt it was already extensively covered elsewhere, and the comments on other articles I’ve seen approach the insanity that has only been replicated at the bottom of CNN/FoxNews articles about the recent presidential election. Figured I’d find a much better way to spend my time. But then the unthinkable happened; not only did the Baseball Writers Association of America not elect a single candidate to the Hall this year, they also allowed Kenny Lofton to fall completely off the ballot. So with an equal combination of frustration, anger and reluctance, I approached the keyboard late this week to at least get my thoughts down on “paper,” submitted for the world to see. If you’re completely over the Hall debate and have absolutely no interest in discussing or reading about this anymore, I totally understand. Good news is you’re still getting a Lazy one this week, and I’m saving the Hall stuff for the very end so you can pull the ripcord before that point if you’d like. We’re still going to have a nice Sunday chat about Trevor Bauer, Spring Training, and even a little Jeanmar Gomez thrown in for good measure. So whether you’re in for the whole show this week or not, here’s a meandering effort for you to digest with your morning coffee, fresh waffles and crispy bacon on this unseasonably warm Lazy Sunday…

Read more...