The edge of meaning

Even by advanced metrics, the Bucs are hitting like one of the top teams in the NL these days, as you can see in the "Stat of the Day" (EQA, by team, NL) over at Baseball Prospectus.

This doesn't surprise me and I expect the Bucs to hang around fifth all year long, but it doesn't mean anything yet. For hitters and teams, the 21st and 52nd games - for no good reason - are favorite benchmarks of mine. 21 games represents three and half or four weeks' worth of play, and a player who can keep a streak going, good or bad, for three or four weeks, might be telling us something significant about permanent change(s) in his skill(z). When Jack Wilson's hot start approaches 21 games, the possibility that it has nothing to do with his stated goal of seeing pitches, drawing walks, and getting on base begins to diminish. It's a great story, don't get me wrong, and it's story I believe because it's one I've been following. But the numbers alone don't have anything like full significance until the 52-game mark, at which point, I think, a current year's statistics become as significant as the previous year's statistics. I don't remember how I came up with those numbers and there was some math involved. Whatever. I'm comfortable offering them as superstition since that's the only responsible thing to do when you come without evidence. When the Bucs are in the top five in hitting and when Jack Wilson has a 340 OBP fifty-two games into the season, then I'll start crowing about it.

While I'm on the subject of arbitrary measures of time, with pitchers I see Memorial Day weekend as a key moment. This is fantasy baseball advice, really, something we don't often indulge here at Honest Wagner. Me, personally, I don't enjoy blog posts about someone's fantasy baseball team - I don't dig that kind of window on the trivial permutations in another person's sporting experience. It's as interesting as reading about someone's collection of potatoes that look like Elvis - no, less interesting - so we refrain from the gratuitous fantasy baseball stuff here. (And we abhor and don't play fantasy football, but that's another subject.) Still, here's a general principle for fantasy baseball, which we love to play: if pitcher X, say Estaban Loaiza or Brian Meadows, opens the season at a higher level and tears up the league for all of April and all of May, then he's going to keep tearing up the league in June and July and August, probably, barring injury etc., since he made it through Memorial Day weekend. A starting pitcher who is only "hot" or demonstrating a new level of performance for the first two, three, four, or six weeks of the season is not to be fully trusted. They are high risks. Three examples: Joe Kennedy, Ismael Valdes, and our boy Oliver Perez. Two of these three guys are very tempting roto adds. Yes sir, I can see the case. But me, I'll be waiting until Memorial Day before I see them as safe bets for solid production over the next several months. Likewise, I'm not dropping Mike Mussina unless he stinks through Memorial Day.