By tomorrow night, at 10pm, the Diamondbacks must decide to which of their free agents they should offer arbitration. The importance of this is, if they do not do so, then they will receive absolutely no compensation when/if the players signs with another team. In a couple of cases - David Eckstein and Tony Clark - this isn't significant, because those two were not deemed sufficiently important to qualify as "Type A" or "Type B" players. However, for everyone else, the decision to offer could require some consideration, based on what happens if the player accepts.

Over on MLB.com, Steve Gilbert has written a useful primer on the topic, explaining the time-table involved [players have until December 7th to accept or decline], and what we get for the two types of players. He reckons - and these are pretty much no-brainers - that we will offer arbitration to Hudson and Cruz, but not to Johnson, for fear he might accept. If he does, even if he lost in arbitration, we'd still likely be on the hook for a much bigger sum than the 3-4 million we offered Johnson. Not many arbitration hearings result in a player getting even half of his previous season's pay, so that's pretty much a no-win situation for Arizona.

Cruz is an interesting case, because I am wondering if the team might be looking to spend a good chunk of the $10m [or so] available on bolstering the bullpen. They clearly aren't looking to use it on starting pitching; that much is clear, based on the nominal offer made to the Big Unit. And second-base is about their only other position that there's a vacancy, yet all the signs are, they aren't even bothering to go after Hudson - and there's a huge drop-off in terms of likely salary to the other free agents at that position.

The decision to concentrate on the bullpen might make some sense. That's because the key difference between the 2008 team and the 2007 team wasn't the actual performance. This season, we scored 720 runs and conceded 706; last year, the respective figures were 712-732. So the team was (fractionally) better offensively, and defensively, than in 2007. But last year, we outperformed Pythagorean expectations by 11 games: this season, we were dead on the expected figure. Perhaps the organization has decided to work on improving the two areas which were key in our title-winning year: our relief corps and the bench. The former proved brilliant at holding narrow leads, while our pinch-hitters had a .782 OPS, compared to only .656 in 2008, and drove in 21 more runs too.

The Diamondbacks didn't blow that many more leads overall this season: 35 against 33. But when you break it down by innings, the difference becomes much more marked. We lost 15 games where we were ahead after six innings in 2008; that's almost twice as many as the eight we lost in 2007, certainly enough of a difference to cost us the NL West. I also note that, where we were tied after seven, the Diamondback's record was only 6-12 this season, almost the exact reverse of the 11-6 record posted the year before. Again, because we ended up only two games behind the Dodgers, those late defeats proved extremely costly.

It's a somewhat risky strategy, since conventional wisdom is that Pythagorean performance is largely "luck", and so going after players to improve it, is like signing free-agents because they are "clutch". However, getting solid relief pitching to cover the late innings seems a necessary move, and someone like Cruz, who made only $1.9 million, would seem a good candidate for arbitration - even if he won, would he end up getting more than, perhaps, three million or so? Given he has an ERA+ of 161 over the past two years - better than Broxton, Valverde, Hoffman or Cordero - I can think of worse ways to spend money.

Tying into this is Brandon Lyon: before this season, it would have been a no-brainer to let him roll off 30-40 saves, offer him arbitration, and get the draft picks as he signs elsewhere for the big closer bucks. The baseball gods, however, decreed otherwise, and he ended the season the same way he ended 2007: the set-up man in Arizona. He already earns over $3m, so it is a pricier proposition - as a comparison, his ERA+ in 2007-08 was a decent, if not spectacular 130. He's also only a Type B, netting us a single supplemental pick, so the upside of offering him arbitration is lower, if he refuses. Gilbert says, "Lyon is comfortable pitching in Arizona and has several close friends on the team." This could be a case where we decline arbitration and work out something as free-agency.

That only leaves Adam Dunn, whom I think we will offer arbitration to, albeit with no intention of actually paying him. He earned $13m, and with his fifth straight 40-homer season under his belt, would get more than that in 2009, which would bust the Diamondbacks' budget wide open, like a chair-shot to the head of Mick Foley. However, we would then simply be able to turn round and trade Dunn to another team, for whatever (cheaper) parts we needed - relief pitching, a second-baseman, another left-handed hitter. Or if he refuses arbitration in favor of immediate free-agency, we shrug our shoulders, pick up a couple of draft picks and move on.

Brandon Webb successfully retained his throne as the Diamondbacks Cy Young, with a comfortable victory, though the margin this year was palpably smaller: Webb got 68% of the vote this year - still a comfortable victory, but down from 80% in 2007, thanks to competition from both Haren and Johnson. Hopefully, Webb will maintain his high standard in 2009, and the rest of the pitching staff will step up their game and give him even more competition in the coming season.

We now hit the final category of the 2008 'Pitties - dammit, and still three months till spring training. There was I, hoping to stretch the awards out until the rebirth of baseball: I guess I'm going to have to find other things to write about: not exactly easy, given the complete lack of activity on the Diamondbacks front. At least, above the water - I trust this is a swan-like illusion, with a lot of activity going on below the waterline. And I do not mean the reported talks with Damion Easley.

Anyway, will Webb also be able to hang on to the MVP award which he won in the 2007 Pitties? Here are the five nominees: I think we've largely discussed most of their credentials before, so this will be relatively brief. Besides, I think there is still some honey-baked ham in need of my attention...

Stephen Drew. With an .835 OPS, Drew led the regular line-up, an outstanding accomplishment for a short-stop - among those with 250 PA's, only Hanley Ramirez had a higher figure in the entire majors. Over the second-half, Drew was particularly productive, batting .326, with a .928 OPS, and ended the year having hit 21 homers.

Adam Dunn. While our playoff push finished short, it wasn't the fault of Dunn, who came as advertised: walks (42 in 44 games), strikeouts (44) and plenty of power (a 29-homer pace), showing what effect a true slugger can have. His .417 OBP has been beaten only once by an AZ player with that many PAs [Gonzalez, .429 in 2001].

Dan Haren. Everything we wanted and more, Haren had career bests in K's (206) and ERA+ (138), making the All-Star Game. Would have been better than 16-8, but for dismal support (4.1 runs per game in his nine no-decisions). Also worth noting: Haren batted a very respectable .211 and played error-free baseball with his glove.

Conor Jackson. As noted previously, only two other major-leaguers since 1995 have played 50+ games in a season at both an outfield and an infield position, while hitting .300 overall. Jackson's flexibility dug the team out of a potentially deep hole after the loss of Byrnes, and he proved himself as a reliable outfielder.

Brandon Webb. Enough said. :-)

That's all I got. ;-) Anyone doing anything interesting today? Otherwise, a generally open thread to express thanks for whatever you feel needs thanking...

I'll be back later, after a long, sustained period of munching on honey-baked ham.

[I tried to do something involving photoshopping Hudson into the above pic,
but the results were, frankly, more creepy than anything!]

When flicking through my iPod on Friday, I almost included the soundtrack to Run Lola Run in there, since it's one of the few non-musical scores I will happily listen to, in its entirety, outside of its natural setting: a throbbing techno beat that perfectly matches the film. "And then..." as the film would say, I was flipping through the Bill James Annual on Sunday night, during a commercial break on The Unit, and stumbled across their pages on base-running and how to measure it. This inspired me to look into the numbers available on the topic.

First, a little overall background on how the team did. The rawest statistic for base-running is stolen bases, and looking at that, the Diamondbacks were very unimpressive. The league average was 93, but we swiped just 58 bags, beating only Pittsburgh (57) and the almost static Padres, who managed a mere 36. [That was the least in the NL since the 1994 Mets; ten players had more than the entire San Diego squad] The Arizona success-rate was nothing to write home about either: 71.6%, compared to a league mean of 73.0%.

Baseball Prospectus takes these numbers and converts them into a number of runs, relative to the league average. Unsurprisingly, our stats translate into a figure of -5.79 runs, so that's a loss to the team, compared to what could be expected, "based on the number and quality of the baserunning opportunities... park-adjusted and based on a multi-year run expectancy table" That figure puts us ahead of Houston, Washington and Cincinnati. However, stolen-bases are only part of the base-running game, and when you look at other factors, the numbers paint a different picture - radically different, in some cases.

BP divides other advancement situations into Ground, Air, Hit and Other categories, the last including things like wild-pitches, and works out runs above or below league average. On Ground Advancement, the team does very well: a figure of +3.34 is good for second in the entire majors, trailing only the Mets. For Air Advancement, the figure is higher, as you'd expect, at 9.12; third in the league. Perhaps surprisingly, it's the Padres who lead the way there at 13.38: while they may be static when the ball comes to the plate, they are like hares when it's hit in the air. Things are less impressive when it comes to Hit Advancement, where the Diamondbacks slip to below average, with a -2.04 result; poor, though not disastrously so. Finally, on Other Advancement, the team was very close to average, at 0.34.

Put all those figures together, and you get a composite Equivalent Base-Running Runs, and the D-backs come out at 4.97; a somewhat positive figure. The list is dominated by American League teams, of all things; this goes against the commonly-received wisdom that everyone there sits back and waits for the three-run homer. Instead, the top five are all on the Junior Circuit, led by the Yankees at 22.66, with the best NL team the Marlins, all the way down at 7.59. Only the Dodgers and Padres are also ahead of the Diamondbacks. The difference between the Yankees and the last-place Giants is almost 50 runs: a significant amount, needless to say.

Breaking things down further, who were the best base-runners on the team? BP allows us to split the above figures down by players, and here are the results in the above categories for the 14 qualifying D-backs position players:

Looking at the stats, Special K was the best base-runner overall, though there was a good deal of variation in the individual categories. Reynolds was the best on Ground and SB Advancement, but was beaten by Chris Young in Air Advancement, and was mediocre or worse in the other two categories. Young came top in advancing on hits, but his team-worst SB Advancement hampered him badly. Bit of a surprise at the other end of the table; would you have had Stephen Drew as the worst base-runner on the team? He was particularly poor advancing on hits, but didn't manage a single positive score: even Eric Byrnes, with his broken hamsters, managed that.

As a check, let's take a look at the method used in The Bill James Annual. They use a plus-minus system, based on, for example, the number of times a runner went from first to third in a single, or came home from second. If you do better than average in that category, you get points added; worse, and you'll get a negative score. Add up the various areas - not just advancing, but getting doubled-off, stealing bases and hitting into double-plays - and you get a simple figure, which for the majors last season ranged between +70 (Willie Taveras0 and -39 (Dioner Navarro). Here are the figures for the Diamondbacks:

    Conor Jackson: +23
    Mark Reynolds: +15
    Chris Burke: +9
    Chad Tracy: +8
    Adam Dunn: +6
    Justin Upton +5
    Miguel Montero: +3
    Augie Ojeda: +3
    Jeff Salazar: +3
    Orlando Hudson: +2
    Chris Young: -1
    Chris Snyder: -5
    Eric Byrnes:  -5
    Stephen Drew: -10

Jackson and Reynolds still rule, though their positions are reversed, and this system also agrees that Byrnes and Drew were the worst base-runners on the team - the latter, by quite some margin again. However, there are some differences; Adam Dunn and Justin Upton are viewed a good deal more kindly in the James system, while on the other hand Young and Augie Ojeda drop down significantly. This is likely an inevitable result of the differing systems; much as with fielding, there is no one approach that can be used to reduce effectiveness to a single number.

That's why taking a variety of approaches is likely wise: for example, James doesn't include advancing on groundouts, but does include elements for double-plays of various types. That's especially true since we are dealing, in a lot of the cases, with a pretty small sample size: for example, Conor Jackson had 25 chances to go first to third all season. A few nicely-placed balls hit into the right location, and a hitter could suddenly look like Ichiro, without exerting much additional effort.

Something random and off-topic to take us through the weekend - we did this a couple of years ago and it was quite fun. Boot up your iTunes, Windows Media Player or whatever, and tell us about a dozen of the artists and/or songs you find there. They can be well-known or obscure; local, national or international; opera, rock, country and western or 14th-century monks chanting. Links go to appropriate Youtube content.

• Cat With 2 Heads! - The Aquabats
  Ska-punk isn't a genre I generally listen to, but The Aquabats enliven it with so much goofy, tongue-in-cheek humor that it's impossible to resist. Their live shows are particularly fun, combining superheroics, monsters and wrestling. Their old drummer is now part of Blink-182.
• Def Con One - Pop Will Eat Itself
  Clint Mansell is now a soundtrack composer [he does most of Darren Aronofosky's films, and Lux Aeterna is one of those songs you know without knowing, since it turns up all over the place in trailers and commercials], but before that he was the lead singer of grunge-industrial-pop band PWEI.
• Don't You Forget About Me - Simple Minds
  Scotland does not have a great rock heritage [Bay City Rollers? Big Country? The Proclaimers?] but Simple Minds can stand against any of them. For a while, they were probably bigger than U2 in Britain, but vanished up their own self-importance in the late 1980's. This is likely their best known song.
• Music of the Night - Michael Crawford
  I am, occasionally, a sucker for a musical, but only the really good ones - few genres are worse when done badly. I really liked the Phantom of the Opera movie; while impressed that Gerard Butler did all his own songs [before heading off to kill Persians], he isn't a patch on the original.
• We're All Going to Hell - The Bastard Fairies
  To be honest, the rest of their songs largely suck, but this is one of those horribly infectious tunes that gets stuck in your head. You will likely find yourself, like us, going "Hell, hell, hell, it's a wonderful place, it's a place of fire and brimstone," at the most inappropriate moments.
• Joku Raja - PMMP
  A chunk of my songs are in foreign languages: this is Finnish [found on Limewire while seeking something entirely different. Somewhat Abba-esque - two female singers; one blonde, the other brunette; palindromic name. This sounds like a Bond theme, but is actually about an abusive marriage.
• You Make Me Crazy - The Strand
  Eight years ago this Thanksgiving, I moved to AZ. Our first night, we went to see VNV Nation; opening were a local band, who smashed the inviolate law that support bands are awful. They play tonight at Chasers' [with Hardwire and American Gods]; if we didn't have a comedy show, we'd so be there.
• King of the Mountain - Kate Bush
  I have to admit, in my teen years, I had an absolute crush on Ms. Bush, ever since seeing her, aged 19, sing Wuthering Heights on Top of the Pops. Back before I met Mrs. SnakePit, obviously. ;-) 25 years and more later, she still has a voice that could melt butter.
  
• Scandinavian Hardcore Fusion - DJ Bluecore vs DJ Samination
  Ah, yes, there's nothing like Swedish techno: many are the reports of game victories written this season, while bobbing my head enthusiastically [it's obviously less appropriate after defeats...] The audio equivalent to 44 oz of a highly-caffeinated beverage.
• Cloverfield Overture (ROAR!) - Michael Giacchino
  This was the first time we ever stayed through all the end credits of a film because we liked the music so much. It's a great take on the soundtracks from Japanese monster movies, especially those by Akira Ifukube. I now have this urge to find a model city somewhere, and trample it.
• Sympathy for the Devil - Laibach
  No-one does covers quite like these guys, a Slovenian martial-rock band who can take any song and subvert it entirely [you should also hear their version of Life is Life]. They did the Beatles' Let It Be album in its entirety, and another release contains seven different version of Sympathy.
• Rompe - Daddy Yankee
  Yes, there is one Yankee I like. :-) Maybe I can blame Chris's Latin influence on my fondness for reggaeton - there certainly can't be many Scots in that group! Once again, I don't understand a word of it, but the sheer ass-kickery of the rhythms transcend any language.
  

Hark? Is that the sound of foulpole's head exploding in the distance? Could be, when he sees the news that Conor Jackson was indeed the popular choice as winner of the Unsung Hero 'Pittie, just pipping Chris Snyder by five percent, an overall margin of 42%-37%. We now move on to the Cy Young for the Diamondbacks, an award which was basically a foregone conclusion last two years, with Brandon Webb notching himself no less than eighty percent of the votes, more than nine times as much as the next man.

Of course, last season, no other pitcher with more than ten starts had an ERA better than 4.25 - Webb's in 2007 was 3.01, so he was clearly our best pitcher. Not quite the same here, as we had three such arms, including Brandon, in our rotation this year. Will that make any difference to the final voting? And your nominees - foulpole will be relieved to hear that Jackson is not among them - are...

Juan Cruz. 4-0, 2.61 ERA. Was the only National League pitcher (min 15 IP) to strike out twelve batters per nine innings of work. Over the past two seasons, working largely in Arizona's hitter-friendly park, Cruz has a 10-1 record with a 2.88 ERA and K/9 rate of 12.62, the best in the majors (again, min 15 IP). In 2008, he held all batters to a line of .192/.319/.339 - basically, turning opposing hitters into a series of Chris Burkes. He was particularly brutal on lefties, who batted only .159 against Cruz, and against the first man in an inning, with those going 3-for-40.

Dan Haren. 16-8, 3.33 ERA. Led the team in strikeouts (206) and also posted the best WHIP (1.130) of any Arizona starter since the Big Unit's 0.900 in 2004 [itself a number only Maddux has surpassed in the NL since the mound was lowered]. His record deserved to be better than it was, as in his nine no-decisions combined, Haren allowed only eighteen earned runs, for an ERA in those games of just 2.79. His best stretch came from June 1-July 19, during which time his ERA was 1.29. With just 40 walks in 216 innings, his K:BB ratio was better than 5:1 for the whole season, the first NL pitcher to do that in four years.

Randy Johnson. 11-10, 3.91 ERA. Johnson missed his first couple of starts of the season, and a 5.40 ERA in the first six appearances suggests that he was probably not fully fit, even when he returned. But after his first outing of July, he was a a totally different pitcher, and arguably, was among the best starters in the major leagues from then on in the season. Over those fifteen starts, Johnson's ERA was a mere 2.56, culminating in a complete-game two-hitter of the Rockies, the final game of the season. If, as it appears likely, that was indeed the last hurrah for the future Hall of Famer, there was no better way to go out.

Chad Qualls. 4-8, 2.81 ERA. Our E-Qualls-izer pitched better than his record would appear to indicate: on May 7, he was 0-3, despite having only a 0.93 ERA - that was thanks to six of the first eight runs he allowed, being unearned. He didn't give up an earned one in the opening or final month of the season, two scoreless streaks which totalled 31.1 innings. Admittedly, he had his issues in the middle, especially with inherited runners ['Skins has a diagram to prove it], but bounced back, nailing down seven consecutive saves after replacing Lyon in the closer's role at the end of the season. It's a role he will reprise from Opening Day 2008.

Brandon Webb. 22-7, 3.30 ERA. Webb merely posted more wins than any pitcher in Arizona - or, indeed, the National League - since the glory days of the Johnson-Schilling tandem. He was the engine which powered the Diamondbacks' blistering start, winning his first nine starts, flummoxing hitters to the tune of .198 over that time. However, possibly even more impressive were his nine appearances from July 8-August 21, where he went 7-0 with a 1.50 ERA. In 28 of his 34 starts, Webb went six innings or more, and he pitched seven-plus in twenty games. Three bad starts in late August and early September cost him the Cy Young.