Chris Jakubauskas claimed by Pirates

• Huh
• Wait, why?
• I guess Jak wasn't very good
• He's over his head as a starter and just a standard replaceable long reliever. He belongs in the NL
  
• Guess this opens the door a little wider for someone like Nick Hill, and increases Carlos Silva's chances of sticking as a long guy
• 

   

• But what's the point of clearing space when you already have so much space?
• Whatever

Robert Manuel claimed by Red Sox

• Whatever

Peculiar moves, both of them, but it's not like we gave away a Jason Vargas or a Ryan Langerhans (yet). As impersonal as it may be to reduce players to a numerical set of projections, neither Jak nor Manuel really mattered, and neither will likely be missed. Best wishes to the Jakubaustrich anyway, as if nothing else he's going somewhere where he has a few friends. Or acquaintances. Or just people he knows kind of. If the National League can turn Ronny :(edeno's frown upside-down, it can work for anyone.

Update: Manuel, of course, can go straight to hell, and take the rest of his new teammates with him

Reports surfacing that Chris Jakubauskas has been claimed off waivers by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Jakubauskas was a decent pitcher for us this season coming in roughly average. He's not a big loss.

And here's the official press release link.

• The hot rumor of the day is that the M's and Tigers have been talking about a three-team deal involving Brandon Morrow and Edwin Jackson. I'm only bringing this one up because the M's have been linked to Jackson before, so I can believe in their possible interest. That said:
  
  (1) Jackson isn't very good. Don't believe the ERA. He took a step forward, to be sure, as he's cut his walks in three straight years, but he's still a flyball guy with come-and-go command and stuff that doesn't get as many strikeouts as you'd expect, and when you put it all together, he's (maybe) a #3 with upside. Ignore anyone that focuses on his first half while ignoring his second. That isn't how these things work. Nor is it reasonable to focus on Jackson's 2009 while ignoring his prior track record. Pitchers develop differently than hitters, to be sure, but they're still prone to regression from presumed breakthroughs, as we saw from guys like Edinson Volquez, Ervin Santana, and John Danks. So just because Jackson improved in 2009 doesn't mean he's necessarily going to sustain or continue that improvement going forward. You have to play the odds. Plus the guy he was in 2009 wasn't terrific in the first place.
  
  (2) We have no idea if, in this scenario, Jackson would be coming to us anyway.
  
  I don't know if this rumor has legs. As is the case with every rumor that comes up around this time of year, my conclusion is that, yeah, it could happen, but it probably won't.


• You know what's really unfunny? Any joke about the post-game spread. For some reason, people love to make these jokes. They make them all the time. And they're always terrible. Knock it off.


• Free agency is upon us, and as such, all 30 teams are free to negotiate with Russell Branyan. If you're someone that really wants him back, I wouldn't be concerned. If you're someone that really doesn't want him back, I wouldn't get excited. Branyan is one of Z's guys, and though nothing in the offseason is guaranteed, I would be really, really surprised if Branyan weren't back as next year's 1B/DH. Branyan's going to look at the market, but once he realizes that no one's offering huge money for an aging slugger with a bad back, I'd expect him and Z to agree to terms. If I made 100 different roster predictions for the 2010 Mariners, something like 97 of them would involve Russell Branyan.


• Dave wrote about the Ryan Doumit possibility last night. A lot of people are trying to link the M's to John Lackey. You shouldn't listen to them. You should probably listen to Dave. If I tried to rank rumors on a five-point scale from really likely (1) to really unlikely (5), Doumit would probably rank a 2. The Jackson stuff would be a 3 or a 4.
  

From the LA Times.

Article headline: Dodgers won't be pursuing John Lackey

Article content:

[LA's team president] said that would rule out Lackey "unless there is an effective way to make that kind of deal."

In other words, the Dodgers won't try to sign John Lackey unless it makes sense for them, and unless they can get him at what they perceive to be a fair and decent deal.

So, the Dodgers won't do anything that they perceive as being "outlandish" and irresponsible.

This is a quote that says nothing. Nothing at all. It's a team president saying the team won't do something the team thinks is stupid. Mannion might as well have said "We can't get him, unless we can." And yet someone at the Times thought this was enough to support such a concrete, assertive headline.

This isn't a big issue on its own or anything. John Lackey almost certainly will not be going to LA. It's just symptomatic of what I hate most about this time of the year - people making far too much out of far too little. I get it. Rumors are fun. People like to talk about roster change. But this business of trying to make little things out to be bigger than they are really soaks my socks. Quit it. Quit it. Just quit it. It sucks. Be honest.

Closely related to the one below, of course...

Help me out here. I can't decide how best to handle this part of the offseason.

Dave Krynzel looks like he's having fun wearing a hand-me-down cap from Tony Clark.

Warning: what follows is not a baseball post.

Driving home from work today, I found myself in some approximation of bumper-to-bumper traffic when a guy in a sports car to my right floored it to get ahead of me and merged into a 15-foot gap without signaling. Per usual, it pissed me off, and I spent the next half mile thinking about what I could do to him if I could catch up. I could flip him off. I could smirk and wave dismissively. I could throw a banana peel I had on the seat next to me at his windshield. I wanted to catch up bad. I wanted to catch up and teach him a lesson about being an asshole.

Drivers who pull those sorts of stunts bother me to the point where sometimes I've memorized and made note of their license plates so that I could indulge in a fantasy where I track them down at their houses. But this isn't about annoying drivers. This is about the human compulsion to judge other people based on very limited information.

People love to judge other people, and they love to arrive at these judgments so quickly that our culture has come to recognize and embrace the significance of a good first impression. When you're applying for a job. When you're meeting the parents. When you're on a first date. A good first impression can open doors while a bad one can lock them, and this isn't really something that people have ever questioned; rather, it's something that most people are happy to go along with, accepting that it's just a part of living life. In the past I've gone so far as to gloat about how important it is for people to make a good impression on me if they want me to like them.

And the nature of first impressions is that they're being made all the time, by everybody, to strangers. The man in the sports car this afternoon, for example, made a bad one on me, and presumably on others. The same goes for someone that talks on his cell phone too loud. A good first impression will be made by someone that, I dunno, holds a door open at the grocery store. People are always making impressions on other people, and in so doing are being judged on their actions.

But it's not that we judge their actions. We don't think "it was nice to hold the door open," or "it was a dick move to pass me on the street." We think "that woman is a good person for holding the door open," or "that guy is a prick for passing me on the street." We have a tendency to arrive at these sweeping conclusions based on very limited observations of behavior, and too often we celebrate these conclusions as being evidence of our perceptiveness. "Adam didn't say very much at dinner. He's kind of jerk."

Evolutionarily, you can kind of understand where this might come from. In nature, it's necessary for one to make snap judgments about another so that the former knows whether it's safe to proceed. If the other animal seems non-threatening, you can go ahead and eat the plant. If the other animals is a potential predator, it's best to avoid it at all costs. In nature, every being has to think quickly, or else it may shortly no longer be able to think at all.

But we don't really live in nature anymore, nor do we encounter frequent situations in which we're met by a possible predator, so the tendency to arrive at these snap judgments of another isn't nearly as important anymore. We can afford to take our time. We can afford to take our time in evaluating other people, and as such it seems like first impressions should play a far lesser role than they currently do.

The reason I'm posting this on a baseball blog is that it was baseball that got me thinking in this vein in the first place. Consider the scout. A scout will observe a potential draft pick over a small number of games. Maybe one game. Maybe four games. And based on these games, the scout will file a report on the player that goes back to the organization. This report will in large part determine where the player goes on the organization's draft board.

What of the scout that catches a pitcher on a day that he has the flu? What if he's watching a talented hitter who maybe strikes out against a couple breaking balls and goes hitless? What if he's watching a worse hitter who maybe stays back on a breaking ball and hits it for a single? Scouts are hired based on their skill in player evaluation, but they are limited to their windows of observation, and sometimes those windows can paint a remarkably misleading picture.

What of all the scouts that saw Ichiro in his first Spring Training and called him a bust?

We - the more statistically-inclined and forward-thinking baseball community - insist on basing our evaluations on all the available evidence, and if there isn't enough evidence, then this is reflected by our conclusions. But take us outside of the realm of sports and we start to act more like the rest of the population, judging people on one or two acts and a ton of alleged intuition.

First impressions are dangerous. They're dangerous because they bias you in one direction or another when these biases aren't justified. They can open you up to people who may not be very good, but worse and more often, they can close you off to people who have a whole lot to offer. One of my best friends is a pastel polo, pink hat-wearing Red Sox fan from Massachusetts. She possesses a number of characteristics I ordinarily consider off-putting, and it was only because of situations outside of my control that I got to know her better and realized how great she is. Left to my own devices, I doubt she'd be a friend of mine today.

That sucks. By believing so heavily in the significance of a good first impression, we are costing ourselves some potentially excellent relationships, because by and large we ignore the odds and see everything in black and white. This is probably best expressed in graphical form:

Any single act by another person gives us insight into that person's true nature, but there are very, very few acts - perhaps none - that give us an absolute answer as to whether or not the person is worth getting to know, or whether that person is romantically compatible, or whether that person is worth flipping off on the freeway. And so it is only by accumulating a wealth of information that we can approach a valid answer. A wealth of information that doesn't often fit into one act or one conversation or one first date.

Think about your worst qualities. We all have them. For example, I'm short-tempered. Sometimes I'm obliviously inconsiderate. I have a bad memory and things often slip my mind. Now think, would you want to be judged on these, or are you allowed to have the occasional bad day where your positive qualities might not show through? Shouldn't you then afford others the same courtesy? There are any number of innocent or perfectly acceptable reasons for why a person may act or appear in such a way that we perceive to be obnoxious, and it seems to me that we should try harder to give other people the benefit of the doubt, because the risk is minimal, and the reward is potentially gargantuan. Everybody has bad qualities. Where we fall short is in determining whether or not the positive qualities outweigh them.

Try not to consider this preaching. I'm not preaching, because I don't take my own advice. I got mad at that guy in the sports car. I wish ill on the woman in front of me who ordered the last chocolate croissant. But I'm trying to get better. I'm trying to get away from being so damn judgmental, because the truth of the matter is that there isn't a benefit. How does writing off another person based on limited interaction help in the least? There is far more to gain by opening yourself up to other people than there is to lose, and just being aware of this...I don't know if I'll ever be able to reverse my wiring, but I feel like I have a chance. And that makes me happy.

Time. In life, as in baseball, you need to give people the time and the opportunity to prove what they are. Don't, and you may find yourself running through Times Square in a thong.

Luke Scott looks like he's talking to someone important and is ashamed to have such a dweeb for a friend so when you come up to him he pretends he doesn't know you. 

May 19th, they say, was the turning point. Following a rough start against the Angels in which he gave up a bunch of hits and a bunch of stolen bases, Felix was called out by Don Wakamatsu for a lack of focus and determination, and from then on it was like night and day. Beginning the next weekend with eight innings against San Francisco, Felix ripped off a four-month streak the likes of which few have ever seen. Over his final 25 games, Felix would allow just 40 earned runs while turning in 24 quality starts, and Wakamatsu was praised by many as the manager that finally got through to our ace of frustration. Felix, it seemed, had arrived, and either because of Wakamatsu or by sheer coincidence, the sentiment has been that something clicked that night in May, turning Felix into the guy we'd been waiting for him to become.

And, sure enough, that guy is amazing. We've all heard of lucky ERAs, but it's hard to fluke your way to a 1.98 over 182 innings. From May 24th through the end of the season, Felix was both a shutdown righty and a workhorse, keeping the opponent off the board while not once throwing fewer than 101 pitches. It was like the best of both worlds, as Felix partnered Rich Harden's effectiveness with Roy Halladay-level durability, and it was a performance many feel would've won Felix the Cy Young had he been able to sustain it all year. It was that first month and a half, they say, that wound up holding him back.

They're probably right, in that had Felix run a 1.98 ERA over a full season, voters would've had a hell of a time placing him second. But while Felix's streak was extraordinary, it may actually serve to make the strongest case in Greinke's favor. Just look at the following comparison:

From May 24th through the end of the season, Felix pitched as well as we've seen him in four years. He proved himself to his coaches, he proved himself to opponents, and he proved himself to a fanbase that'd been waiting to see him take his game to the next level. Felix's turnaround is seen as his ascent. His ascent to the top, his ascent into the upper echelon of pitchers in the world. His ascent to the throne.

And Greinke was still better.

Greinke's ERA, Greinke's FIP, Greinke's tRA...not only was Greinke better than Felix in 2009, he was better than Felix at his best in 2009, and he was better than the 12 starts we got out of Felix in 2005. The hot streak that was supposed to legitimize Felix's candidacy instead works for Greinke, because Greinke was better than that hot streak, and he was better over a full season.

You could, of course, argue that Greinke kind of got lucky with his home run rate, that 11 in 33 starts for a flyball pitcher isn't a sustainable level of performance. And you'd probably be right. Greinke will almost certainly allow a higher rate of home runs going forward. But while projections and regressions look forward, statistics look backward, and the fact of the matter is that, along with all of his other achievements, Greinke only threw 11 pitches that got hit out of the park last year. Only 11 of his pitches had the necessary characteristics such that the opposing batter was able to hit a home run, and though that likely isn't repeatable, it's what happened, and it's one of the reasons why this will go down as one of the least-debated Cy Youngs of all time.

Felix's May 19th light switch was his strongest argument for the award. And when a player's strongest argument turns out to support his competition, that leaves absolutely no doubt as to who deserves to win. Would I take Greinke as the better starting pitcher going forward? I'm not sure. That one would require more thought. But an assertion that requires no further thought at all is that, in 2009, Zack Greinke was the best pitcher in the world. Congratulations to one eccentric son of a bitch.