Koji Uehara is better than Jonathan Papelbon

The ninth inning has been something of a sore spot for the Red Sox this season. Joel Hanrahan was terrible, then hurt (or hurt because he was terrible). Andrew Bailey was excellent in April, but struggled after coming back from his injury, bottoming out this month. Something of a panic broke out last week, when Bailey blew two games in three days, that the Red Sox needed to acquire a new closer.

Yes, I agree with you - the idea of the closer is, itself, dumb. Saving your best pitcher for in case you're winning makes no sense. You're preaching to the choir. The fact is, teams use a closer, and it's a good idea for your closer to be a good pitcher. Moving on. 

Anyhow, one prominent suggestion was that the Red Sox should work out a deal with a Phillies team stuck in baseball purgatory for Jonathan Papelbon. This is a bad idea. One reason that it's a bad idea is that it's dumb to trade for saves. Pitchers with saves cost more money than pitchers without saves, even though they aren't generally better. SOME are better. Mariano Rivera and Craig Kimbrel and Billy Wagner and Dennis Eckersley are/were mcuh better than their contemporaries. But, as the Red Sox have learned the hard way THREE @#$%^& TIMES in the last two years, trading for Joel Hanrahan and Andrew Bailey and Mark Melancon because they had saves isn't a panacea. Trading for pretty good pitchers and making them closers? Yes! Trading for pretty good pitchers who have racked up saves? No!

Jonathan Papelbon is a pretty good pitcher. From 2006 to maybe 2009 he was a great pitcher. In 2010 he was mediocre. Since 2011, he's been between good and very good. The problem is, he won't cost what a good to very good pitcher will. That's one reason the Red Sox shouldn't trade for him. The other is that they have a reliever who is better.

Actually, they might have two who are better, but Junichi Tazawa's track record is short, even if his K/BB ratio isn't.

Anyhow, let's go to the old comparison chart! These numbers are since the start of the 2012 season.

Year	ERA	SV	IP	ERA+	WHIP	H/9	HR/9	BB/9	SO/9	SO/BB
PLAYER A	2.32	53	100.2	174	1.003	7	1.1	2.1	10.6	5.17
PLAYER B	1.85	4	68.0	238	0.721	5.2	1.1	1.3	11.8	8.9

Since you've already read the title to this piece, you know that Player A is Jonathan Papelbon and Player B is Koji Uehara. Papelbon beats Uehara is saves. He also is ahead in innings, so if you want to argue that he's more durable, you might be right, but the difference in their chances of getting hurt in the second half of 2013 is not worth what the Red Sox would have to give up for Paps. Since the start of last year, Uehara has struck out more batters, walked fewer, and been harder to hit. As a result, he gives up runs less frequently

If the Red Sox are going to use the traditional closer - and as a first place team following three straight playoff misses, they are - Uehara is a perfect choice.

Aside: The Red Sox aren't an ideal candidate for revolutionary bullpen usage. And by "revolutionary," I mean "what they did in 1987." 

Uehara's home run rate is a touch higher than I'd like to see, but there are so few runners on when he pitches that they are that they are likely to be solo shots. Indeed, three of the four he's allowed in 2013 have been with the bases empty. More importantly, Uehara represents an opportunity for the Red Sox to finally create their own closer, the way they did seven years ago with Papelbon. Uehara is a one-inning guy, so it's not like using him for short stints otherwise jeopardizes his usefulness. (Farrell continues to use Tazawa for one-inning stints as well, which is a soap box that I'm not planning to get off of.)  He came cheap.

The idea that someone the Red Sox could acquire is likely outperform Uehara over the next four months by such an amount as to justify the cost of that acquisition is kind of crazy. He's been one of the better relievers in baseball since the Orioles moved him there at the start of 2010, and has brought that to another, elite level over the last year and a half.

You may say that the Red Sox need now to fill the role Uehara is vacating if they use him as closer, and that's true to an extent. However, getting a "middle reliever" from outside the organization is much less expensive than getting Jonathan Papelbon, and the Red Sox have internal options for the role as well. Alex Wilson, Rubby De La Rosa,  and Brandon Workman could all be solid relievers right now, and Jose De La Torre could as well. Another option would be to not get into such rigid usage patterns with the current crop of guys. Craig Breslow, Andrew Miller, and Junichi Tazawa can pitch multiple innings. Farrell needs to let them do that sometimes. Burning through five relievers to get 11 outs is incredibly inefficient. It's one of the reasons there has been talk of the Red Sox pen being "overused" despite the fact they've gotten an above-average number of innings from their starting pitching.

The Red Sox are in first place, and they have one of the best relievers in the game as the closer. Since taking over the role, he's retired all six batters he's faced, four via the strikeout. He gives the best high-fives in the game, which is worth something. If you want to argue that Uehara doesn't have the "closer's mentality," I don't know what to tell you. I'm pretty sure the idea of a "closer's mentality" is made up, but if anyone has it then it's Uehara - he comes into the game with his sort of crazed intensity that I certainly wouldn't want to be in the way of.

Instead of giving up prospects for a closer, the Red Sox just need to trust the best reliever they have to do the job.

Los Angeles Architecture and Design Museum: Astutely ironic, or just terrible?

Christine and I returned this week from a lovely nine-day vacation throughout California. It is my intention to make a few more postings about this trip, but if history is any indication, I will not. Such is life. Anyhow, we saw lovely places, great friends, and some pretty fascinating wildlife.

And, probably the worst museum I've ever visited in my life.

We had heard some good things about the Los Angeles Architecture and Design Museum. With minimal investigation, we took the recommendation at face value. With a few days in LA, and neither of us, nor our friendly companions, having visited said museum previously, we decided to give it a shot. Now, you may be saying "What the heck does Los Angeles have to do with architecture and design? Isn't that city sort of infamous for not having any of either?" I'll get to that.

We entered the museum, having paid our $10 fee. The exhibit when we entered was called "Windshield Perspective." It was a series of photographs giving a perspective of driving down Beverly Boulevard. But there wasn't really any information on these buildings. It was as though the curator/exhibit creator had gone to the hall of records and simply charted what building had been there for each census, dating back to the 1920's. A few of the placards had additional information on a current or past business, but most of it read like a business database. Informational, perhaps, but not really the sort of thing I pay to see in a museum. And not even the dates that the new business moved in, or interviews/quotes from neighbors about the turnover, or how the boulevard had changed over the years. Just what had been at each number on that block in 1930, 1935, 1940, 1945, 1950...

As if mocking itself, the museum was interspersed with quotes from philosophers or other famous folk, seemingly with nothing to do with Los Angeles or architecture. Kierkegaard had lots of interesting things to say, but I'm not sure what the application was here.

After completing the exhibit, we were rather stunned to find that it was not just the opening room, but the entire museum. One room, with pictures of a city street.

Then, the punch line:

So was this a well-meaning exhibit gone wrong? Or was it a clever way of saying "Yeah, Los Angeles doesn't give a crud about architecture and design. In fact, we spit in the face of such things. We just had an entire museum dedicated to the poorly-planned, uninteresting mundanity that characterizes so much of our city."

As a free museum, it might have been a lark. For $10 though, my expectations weren't through the roof - just that maybe the museum would be more interesting than the pictures of old local sport clubs that you find in Applebee's.

This current exhibit runs through July 9th. Even if the effect was intended, I cannot recommend this to anyone. There simply is not enough there, as you wait for the punch line, to warrant the entrance fee.

Overcoming political differences: Everyone hates Justin Bieber

I found this survey, by Public Policy Polling, to be pretty wonderful. PPP had one of the better records in the 2012 election season, which gives them some level of authority on public opinion polling. Basically, they polled 571 people on their music tastes, and used political affiliation as a crosstab. Bieber and Chris Brown were the two who saw the most agreement between the supporters of the two political parties. Since Chris Brown is actually a felon, that's a good reference point to where we're starting.

The most polarizing figures, Beyonce, Jay-Z, and Rihanna, all had positive ratings by Democrats and negative ones by Republicans. More research is forthcoming by the humble proprietor of this establishment to try to find out what these three artists have in common. 

How to fire a terrible umpire?

A lot - I mean a real lot - has been written about the Angel Hernandez blown call, and then the blown replay, in Wednesday night's game between Cleveland and Oakland. It is a problem that lacks any real, satisfying solution. The A's lost a game-tying run. They are a contender in a tough division - that run, and that game,may be important for them in the grand scheme of the season. That stinks for them. 

Some have called for the game to be stopped and replayed, as if it were an official rules protest, but as many have countered, that sets a pretty unworkable precedent. "How bad does a call have to be to replay a game" is just not a road we should be going down. What if the call had been in the first inning? What if it had cut the deficit from two runs to one, instead of tying it? What if the teams hadn't been playing the next day? Much of the calls to replay the game seemed to stem from the fact that it was convenient to do so. A decision like this shouldn't be made based on convenience.

Instead of cancelling the game, the response of Major League Baseball has been much more interesting. In my view, they've basically thrown Hernandez - who is a terrible umpire - under the bus. They haven't announced sweeping changes or rule discussions or anything, because they can't really. MLB can't fire Hernandez. I'm not sure that they can suspend him. They can't, in any workable way, reverse his decision. They CAN, however, publicly shame Hernandez and the rest of the umpire hierarchy into changing the way things are done, and they are doing that by making the public as mad as possible. 

It's expected to have ESPN and other independent sports news outlets focus on the blown call. It's less so to have MLB.com, the official site of major league baseball doing the same. Why would they do this? They WANT people to be mad. Why? Because MLB isn't one autonomous being, with a straightforward mission and a way to enact it. It's a group of organizations, made up of several groups playing within a specific set of rules. The owners essentially have formed a trust. While there points of disagreement within ownership, I'd guess that everyone, even the useless robber baron Jeffrey Loria, wants games to be officiated as well and fairly as possible. The players union, while often directly in disagreement with the owners, are on the same page on this one. The umpires, however? What is their goal. Ostensibly, it is to officiate as well as possible, but it's also important to them to keep their jobs, as it is for any of us. Who among us, when something has gone wrong at work that we were responsible for, didn't shift at least some of the blame elsewhere, if only onto a process or technology or something benign. Self-protection is a factor here.

Like I said earlier, Angel Hernandez can't really be fired for incompetence. In general, I think it should be hard to fire people willy-nilly. Hernandez is a bad employee though. He was a bad umpire even before he made it to majors, as this Buffalo News article points out. The man was a lousy minor league umpire in 1991. He's been a lousy major league umpire for a long time. He just blew a major call. TWICE. The argument against instant replay is that it removes the human element. Well, apparently not when you have an incompetent, arrogant rube watching the replay.

And THAT is why MLB is bringing attention to Hernandez situation, rather than sweeping it under the rug. Hernandez IS incompetent, and should be disciplined, but really can't be. The powers that be are trying to get people furious enough that they demand change. They are essentially union-busting. The umpires union, a legitimate organization that consists generally of competent, hard-working officials, has an Angel Hernandez problem. The longer it takes them to solve it, the worse they are going to come out of this. 

SoxProspects.com: Potential Red Sox bullpen reinforcements

With Joel Hanrahan leaving Monday night’s game with soreness in his right arm hours after Andrew Bailey was placed on the 15-day disabled list, the Red Sox bullpen is in a state of flux.

Read the rest of this article on SoxProspects.com