On November 14, 2006, ESPN printed the following headline:

“DeRosa cashes in on career year, to sign with Cubs.”

The reaction from Cubs fans was about the same – the team had just signed a player that didn’t become a regular until age 31 and had his first real effective season in the hitters paradise of Texas, and they’d signed him to a three year deal to boot. It seemed like something of an overpay for a guy best suited to a super-sub role. His first year in Chicago went pretty well, though, with Mark DeRosa basically being a league average hitter and solid enough defender at second base. The Cubs, however, weren’t impressed enough, and went on an offseason quest to acquire Brian Roberts from the Orioles, offering three and four player packages to try to get the O’s second baseman to the Windy City.

In retrospect, the contract was apparently a stroke of genius and they should thank their lucky stars that they failed to land Roberts, because DeRosa’s been a revelation for the Cubs this year, and should get some down ballot MVP votes.

He’s hitting .292/.384/.490, good for a 2.10 WPA/LI – only Chase Utley has a better mark among NL second baseman. He’s been better offensively than bigger name teammates, such as Derrek Lee or Geovany Soto. Among NL players with a higher WPA/LI mark than DeRosa’s, only Carlos Beltran, Hanley Ramirez, and Utley play up the middle positions. That’s not a bad crowd to run with.

At 33, DeRosa’s having a year so far better than anything else he’s ever done, it’s remarkable. His “career year” of 2006 totaled a whopping -0.23 WPA/LI, and he’d accumulated -1.95 WPA/LI in his career through 2007. He’d been a below average hitter for basically his entire career, and heading into his age 33 season, there was no reason to expect a breakout like this. His preseason Marcel projection had him hitting .279/.354/.426, and it was one of the most optimistic projections for him out there. He’s blowing that line out of the water.

Mocked at the time it was signed, DeRosa’s contract is now one of baseball’s best values for 2008 – $4.75 million for a guy playing at an all-star level at an up the middle position. That signing, and the non-trade for Roberts, really couldn’t have worked out any better.

The first rule when searching for underrated or overrated players is not to look at the players themselves, but to look at their teams. Players that play in big markets and for successful teams get a much larger percentage of media exposure then those that don’t. For that reason, merely good players on good teams are viewed as great while great players on bad teams are viewed as merely good or sometimes even worse.

Tonight, I kick off my attempt to give such unfortunate hitters at least a little bit of their due. Matt Holliday made himself a national star last year during the Rockies’ amazing run. Full crowds chanting M-V-P whenever Holliday strode to the plate made for excellent imagery and the amazing run of wins both into and during the playoffs didn’t hurt either. Thus it comes as a bit of a shock to me that just because the Rockies have regressed in 2008 that the hype around Matt Holliday (the hitter at least) has as well because he might be having a better season this year.

For one thing, he’s created more runs than any hitter in the National League not named Albert Pujols or Lance Berkman. While his slugging and overall OPS are down from last years lofty figures, offense across baseball is down and Holliday has upped his on base percentage enough to maintain the .421 wOBA that he posted in 2007.

Really, the only major difference between last year and this year’s incarnations of Matt Holliday is that this year, Holliday is taking more pitches, whether in the zone or not, which is what’s aiding his large jump in walks. And despite watching more strikes go by and missing pitches that he swings at slightly more often as well, he has cut down his strikeouts by a fraction as well.

It’s not Matt Holliday’s fault that his RBI total has fallen from 137 last year to under 80 this year and that the Rockies win totals have fallen from 89 to under 80, but because they have he’s become under appreciated for the hitter he is. If he truly is on the trading block this winter, with one year left before free agency, expect a large number of suitors.

Roy Oswalt has been one of the best and most consistent pitchers in baseball this decade. He never got enough credit, likely due to pitching with Roger Clemens for the last few years, and does not have an intimidating frame out on the mound, but any team would be better with him on their staff. This year, though, many analysts have questioned what is wrong with Astros righty. Baseball is a game of reputations, and it is very possible for a player to have an entire season generalized on great or poor performance either very early or very late into a season.

This seems to be the case for Oswalt, who pitched poorly early on, but has been great recently, arguably the best starting pitcher in baseball over the last thirty days. Don’t believe me? Heck, based on his performance early on and the lack of national publicity directed towards the Astros, I wouldn’t believe that either, but his 1.47 WPA/LI in this span outranks everyone else.

His recent performance has lowered his seasonal ERA and FIP both to 3.91 which, while good, are definitely worse than we have come to expect from Oswalt. His FIPs since 2004 have been 3.17, 3.16, 3.30 and 3.59, leading to this year’s 3.91; it appears his controllable skills are steadily declining. Are they? His K/9 is the highest it has been since 2004, while his BB/9 is almost a half-batter lower than last year. His HR/9, however, which has ranged from 0.59 to 0.73 recently, is currently 1.09, which explains quite a bit.

How has the home run rate increased? The culprit is a HR/FB rate that has gone from 6.7-8.7% over the last four years to 13.8% this year. The league average in this category is generally 11-11.5%, so Oswalt had outdone it by a good margin for a few years. This year, though, his rate has been worse, despite decreasing quite a bit over the past month.

This leads into the title of the post. Yesterday, Pizza Cutter, my colleague at Statistically Speaking, wrote an article about Kelly Johnson in which he discussed how performance is equal to talent and luck; last year, Johnson’s performance was more luck-driven, whereas this year his performance is worse, but comprised of more talent. How does this apply to Oswalt? Well, since his HR/FB was so much lower than the average for those years, his FIP might not be the most accurate indicator of controllable skills. Look what happens when we introduce xFIP, which normalizes the home run factor of FIP:

Year   FIP     xFIP
2004   3.17    3.73
2005   3.16    3.56
2006   3.30    3.75
2007   3.59    4.08
2008   3.91    3.74

According to these numbers, Oswalt’s FIP is expected to be right around where it should have been from 2004-2006. The difference between FIP and xFIP is at its smallest point this year, meaning that Oswalt’s current performance is more talent driven than the result of “luck,” which I use very loosely because there may or may not have been something in his repertoire that limited home runs. His flyball rates have stayed stagnant, however, eliminating the possibility that perhaps he just had very low percentages of flyballs in those years.

We might not know how much talent or luck Oswalt has or benefits from, but he isn’t as bad as some people made him out to be earlier in the season. His xFIP has been in the same general range for the last five years. If there is something wrong with him, it would be that this is the first year in that span in which his FIP has not surpassed what was expected of him.

Ever since “Bull Durham“, people have had a mental picture of the pitcher with a million dollar arm but not the results to match. If you throw hard but don’t command the strike zone, you’ll inevitably hear the words Nuke LaLoosh tossed around. Perhaps no pitcher the last few years has personified that great arm/bad results combination more than Dustin Nippert.

In short stints over the last four years, Nippert has racked up 119 innings of major league experience, and he has not been good at all. His career FIP of 5.29 is lousy (although quite a bit better than his 6.88 career ERA) and he’s ran up a -1.28 WPA/LI in his combined work that totals half a season. His performance makes him a replacement level pitcher, and he’s earned it, mixing in lots of walks and home runs with only a slightly above average strikeout rate.

However, it’s not enough to just look at Nippert’s results and conclude that he’s terrible, because Nippert has legitimately terrific stuff. His average fastball sits at 93.8 MPH, which puts him just ahead of CC Sabathia, Justin Verlander, and Edinson Volquez among starting pitchers. Clearly, his fastball has enough get-up on it to get major league hitters out. He also has a power change-up (84.1 MPH) and a slower curve (77.5) MPH that give him two off-speed pitches and enough weapons to attack hitters from both sides of the plate.

Overall, the package of stuff seems good enough on paper for Nippert to turn into a quality pitcher. The big problem for him, so far, has been command – his 4.69 BB/9 rate is terrible, and when you’re pitching from behind in the count all the time, you’re simply not going to have much success getting people out. Nippert also appears to lean a bit too heavily on his fastball, as 70% of his pitches as a major leaguer have been the straight heater. As a four-seam guy who isn’t inducing weak grounders with his fastball, he simply can’t afford to be using his fastball that frequently.

With better command and a better approach to pitching, Nippert could still have a decent career ahead of hismelf. He shows flashes of potential, like his seven shutout innings against Seattle this afternoon, but it will take more than an occasional quality performance to shake the LaLoosh comparisons for good.

From the Washington Post, March 9, 2005:

Jim Bowden, the general manager of the Washington Nationals, picked up his cell phone earlier this week and punched in the speed dial for Dana Brown, his scouting director. Bowden wanted to discuss Ian Desmond, a shortstop the Nationals brought into big league camp after taking him in the third round of last year’s draft.

“Dana,” Bowden said. “You made a mistake when you drafted Desmond.”

Brown was shocked. “Why?” he asked.

“Because you took him in the third round instead of the first round,” Bowden replied.

…

So, even though Desmond will almost certainly start the year at Class A Savannah, the obvious question arises: If Cristian Guzman, the starting shortstop, was injured, would the Nationals look to Desmond?

“I wouldn’t be afraid to put him out there,” Robinson said.

“I wouldn’t be afraid to bring him to the big leagues to play defense,” Bowden said.

Ultimately, Bowden said, Desmond’s bat will determine how quickly he rises.

* * *
My what a difference four years can make – three if you consider Ian Desmond was considered by Baseball America to be the Nationals’ fourth-best prospect heading into 2006. After being the talk of the town in 2005, Desmond has endured some lean times with the bat. The slick fielder has just finished his first full season at Double-A after spending three years in A-ball despite the glowing remarks in the article snippet above.

During the 2008 season, Desmond hit .251/.318/.406 in 323 at-bats. He walked just 31 times and struck out in 78 at-bats, but Desmond has shown some promising power in the last two seasons and could be a 15-15 man at the Major League level, with above-average defence and a few stolen bases tossed in for good measure.

One area Desmond needs to improve in is his at-bats against right-handed pitchers. His OPS was almost 150 points higher against southpaws. A more patient approach could also help him get into better hitters’ counts… He appeared to be making headway in 2007 when he posted a .357 OBP, but he regressed in Double-A and was closer to his career OBP of .312. As well, Desmond appears to put too much pressure on himself with runners in scoring position and hit just .198.

With incumbent Cristian Guzman resigning with Washington recently through 2010 ($16 million), the Nationals organization essential bought Desmond two more years of development time, which it looks like he’ll need. And unfortunately for Washington, the organization has no other shortstop prospects anywhere near ready to help out. Desmond will continue to work on his bat during the 2008 Arizona Fall League with an eye on 2011.

Bottom of the second. No score. Indians vs. White Sox. John Danks on the mound, Jhonny Peralta on first. Victor Martinez at the dish. Danks checks the runner, delivers the first pitch to Martinez. CRACK! Victor launches the ball deep to the leftield line… it… is… outta’ here! Indians fans cheered as the Tribe took a 2-0 lead in a game they would go onto win 9-3. Believe it or not, this was the first home run of the season for Victor.

Yes, Victor no longer belongs to the 200+ PA/0 HR club. Its other members: Joey Gathright, Chone Figgins, Omar Vizquel, Brendan Ryan, Miguel Cairo, Augie Ojeda, and Juan Pierre will have to say goodbye to their colleague.

Sure, Victor’s season has been hindered by injuries but, still, 57 games and neary a dinger until last night? From Victor Martinez? The guy might not be Barry Bonds out there, but over the last four years he was an extremely solid bet to OPS around .860, with 20+ home runs and 35+ doubles. Including last night, Victor is hitting just .274/.328/.344, with 1 home run and 12 doubles.

According to his gamelogs, this is by far the most games he has ever gone without a home run. From April 16, 2005-May 27, 2005, he went homerless in a string of 32 games. This almost doubled that amount. As Dave mentioned last week, his replacement Kelly Shoppach is leading all AL catchers in home runs, so the Indians are still getting production from that department, just not where they expected. The Tribe won’t make the playoffs this year but a hearty congratulations goes out to V-Mart on his first home run of the year. I hope he got to keep the ball.

Last winter, two starting pitchers signed multiyear contracts as free agents – Hiroki Kuroda (3 years, $36 million) and Carlos Silva (4 years, $48 million, $#%!). It appeared to be a combination of a really bad year for free agent pitchers and teams learning about the risk of pitcher attrition and how badly long term contracts for free agent pitchers can go. The recent busts of guys like Barry Zito and Jason Schmidt hung like a cloud, suppressing big money deals for starting pitchers.

This winter will be different. This is almost certainly going to be the greatest collection of free agent arms to hit free agency at the same time in the history of the game. The quality and quantity of arms available this winter is staggering – here are the guys who, in my estimation, have some chance of getting either a multiyear deal or a one year contract for a significant chunk of cash.

CC Sabathia, 2.98 FIP, 4.05 WPA/LI
Ben Sheets, 3.20 FIP, 2.18 WPA/LI
Derek Lowe, 3.33 FIP, 2.33, WPA/LI
Ryan Dempster, 3.38 FIP, 2.91, WPA/LI
Mike Mussina, 3.44 FIP, 1.62 WPA/LI
AJ Burnett, 3.65 FIP, 0.00 WPA/LI (can opt out of current contract)
Andy Pettitte, 3.78 FIP, 0.99 WPA/LI
Randy Johnson, 3.83 FIP, 0.23 WPA/LI
Kyle Lohse, 3.90 FIP, 1.54 WPA/LI
Greg Maddux, 4.03 FIP, 0.70 WPA/LI
Jamie Moyer, 4.29 FIP, 0.63 WPA/LI
Randy Wolf, 4.32 FIP, -0.43 WPA/LI
Oliver Perez, 4.74 FIP, 0.37 WPA/LI
Braden Looper, 4.89 FIP, -0.44 WPA/LI
Jon Garland, 4.91 FIP, -0.72, WPA/LI
Pedro Martinez, 5.40 FIP, -0.62 WPA/LI

There’s literally something for everyone. You want to throw huge money at a franchise savior? Sabathia is the jewel, but there’s always the luring upside of Sheets and Burnett that will tempt shoppers looking for an all-star in his prime. Want a solid middle of the rotation arm who never gets hurt? Look at Lowe, but lean on Dempster and maybe even Lohse as a fall back plan. Want a hall of famer with something left in the tank? There’s Johnson, Maddux, Mussina, and even Pedro, whose velocity is back to 2005 levels and whose main problem has been an absurdly high HR/FB% that could easily regress to the mean next year. Or do you want a lefty who misses bats? You can try to get Pettitte to leave NY, but if you lose out, you could turn to Perez and Wolf. Or maybe you just want to give a lot of money to a guy who isn’t that good but your fans won’t know that until its too late – you’ve got options with both Garland and Looper. And I didn’t even manage to pigeonhole Moyer into any specific category.

The supply of quality pitching on the free agent market has never been higher, but don’t expect to see prices dropping just because there are lots of choices this winter. All this quality pitching becoming available also means that there is a lot of payroll commitments expiring at the end of the season – the 16 pitchers above made about $148 million in 2008, so even without any inflation, there’s $9.25 million per pitcher available to that group. Toss in the fact that teams are still making significant amounts of money through new revenues, and I think we should expect that these 16 guys will sign for a total of at least $200 million for 2009, not even counting the value of the long term contracts that the top names will get.

With so many pitchers available, one thing is certain – this will be one of the most fun hot stove seasons we’ve ever seen.

Stephen Drew and Adrian Beltre both hit for the cycle last night marking only the second time in baseball history that two players hit for the cycle on the same day. The previous occurrence was also in September, the 17th in this case, way back in 1920 with George Burns of the Giants and Bobby Veach of the Tigers.

Dave Cameron mentioned this morning about the similarities between Adrian Beltre and Stephen Drew as hitters. Well, it just so happens that Veach and Burns followed coincidentally similar career paths as hitters as well.

George Burns was enjoying what would be one of his final few productive seasons back in 1920. Breaking in as a regular in 1913, Burns consistently posted above average OPS numbers as an outfielder thanks in part to excellent walk totals peaking with 101 in 1923, but come his 30s and the burgeoning era of power during the 1920s, Burns would find himself out of a regular job by 1924 and out of baseball entirely after 1925 at the age of 35.

Bobby Veach suffered a similar fate as to that of Burns. Also breaking in as a regular in 1913 as an outfielder, Veach had more power than his counterpart in New York with similar, though less prolific, on base skills. After a successful decade and change with the Tigers, Veach was purchased away by the Red Sox in 1924 at age 36 and promptly had the worst season of his career, which is note-worthy because even then he managed to post a .295/.359/.426 line, good for a 102 OPS+. Veach then bounced around with the Yankees and the Senators in 1925 and despite posting a combined 105 OPS+ that season he, like Burns, would not play again.

All in all, for two players that shared no other connections beside being the only players to ever hit for the cycle on the same day (until yesterday), Veach and Burns shared a funny number of likenesses.

While researching for the article my brother and I are writing in this year’s THT Annual, I stumbled across an interesting tidbit regarding Pat Gillick: he loves acquiring players he formerly employed. I won’t go through the whole list now, but, with the Phillies at least, he signed or traded for Jamie Moyer, Arthur Rhodes, Greg Dobbs, Freddy Garcia, and Ryan Franklin. Another former player of his is Jayson Werth. Werth never played for Gillick’s Blue Jays, Orioles, or Mariners, but he was drafted by Gillick’s Orioles in the first round back in 1997.

It should come as no surprise, then, that when Werth was let go by the Dodgers following injury recovery, Gillick jumped up and brought him to the Phillies. He performed well in a platoon role last year and looked to possess all the raw skills that make a player successful. This year, the plan was for Werth to platoon with Geoff Jenkins in right field. Jenkins was inconsistent—or consistently below average depending on how you want to phrase it—and is now hurt, while Werth has been a rock for the Phillies. In fact, over the last fourteen days, no other hitter has contributed more wins to his team than Werth.

That’s right… over the last fourteen days, Jayson’s 1.16 WPA/LI leads all major league hitters. Mark Teixeira is in second place at 0.90, just about one quarter of a win lower. Werth’s WPA in this span ranks third in the NL and fifth in the whole sport, behind three Carlos’s (Beltran, Delgado, Pena) and Shin-Soo Choo. This impressive run is built upon a .370/.492/.804 slash line, complete with 5 home runs and 5 doubles.

All told, Werth is hiting .279/.377/.525 this year, a .902 OPS, with 21 home runs in 326 at-bats. He has turned some of his grounders into flyballs and has a 22.6% HR/FB, up from last year’s 13.3%. His 2.52 WPA/LI on the season ranks, believe it or not, 15th in the National League, ahead of Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, Dan Uggla, Prince Fielder, and Adrian Gonzalez. Whether or not some of those players are having down years, the fact remains that Jayson Werth, a low risk acquisition prior to last season, is one of the main reasons the Phillies are still within striking distance of the NL East.

The Dodgers spent a good bit of money on Hiroki Kuroda to bolster their rotation this winter, and overall, he’s pitched pretty well. His 3.64 FIP over 156 innings has resulted in a 1.36 WPA/LI, meaning he’s been nearly a win and a half better than an average pitcher. That’s pretty valuable, and the Dodgers couldn’t have hoped for much more when they signed him.

However, on a day to day basis, it’s been nearly impossible to predict what Kuroda will give you. He’s taken inconsistency to a whole new level. Take a look at this histogram of his starts by game score, showing the frequency of each type of start he’s had this year (using intervals of five).

Kuroda’s average game score for the season is 52 (a bit above average, as GS is set to be average at 50), but as you can see, the distribution is nothing like a bell curve. It’s more of a shipping barge. Or maybe a Dodger Dog with some weird toppings. The reason for that, of course, is that Kuroda has been sometimes miserable (three starts below 20) and sometimes awesome (one start at 90 and one at 91), and then just about every interval in between. He’s been horrible. He’s been bad. He’s been mediocre. He’s been okay. He’s been solid. He’s been good. He’s been excellent. He’s been great.

What he has not been is consistent. In total, the package has been quite valuable, but in isolation, you really have no idea what you’re going to get from Kuroda when he takes the mound. You want him on your team, but if the Dodgers do end up making the playoffs, I’m sure a few fans in LA are going to be holding their breaths when he takes the mound. He hasn’t exactly inspired a confidant expectation of results so far.