I love pitching. Maybe it’s my inherent bias toward defense, maybe it’s my experience as a pitcher growing up, I’m not sure which provides more influence. What I do know is that I’m always drawn to pitchers and their control over the game. It is with that that I present my third and final moment of the 2008 season which is actually two moments.

Moment #1a: June 8th, Rich Harden faces the Angels

Rich Harden has always had unquestioned talent, but his lack of health have kept him from compiling the totals he’s capable of and gaining the appreciation that he would finally get in 2008. Nobody has been able to miss as many bats, as consistently, as Rich Harden does when he’s on and finally given a full season this year he generated a swing and a miss on 14.8% of his pitches, 1.2 points ahead of second place CC Sabathia and 2.7 points ahead of third place Tim Lincecum.

In this particular game, Macier Izturis stepped up to lead off. He takes a fastball on the lower outside black, fouls off a change just slightly higher and toward the center of the plate and then strikes out foul tipping a 96-mph fastball waist high and back on the outer black. Three pitches, three strikes, one strikeout.

Howie Kendrick is next. He bites on a slider below the knees for strike one. He hacks at and fouls an outside fastball off to fall behind 0-2. Harden then drops another filthy slider, this one at 87-mph, off the table and into the dirt which Kendrick fans at for strike three. Three more pitches, three more strikes, another strikeout.

You get where this is going now right? Garret Anderson is the third batter and stares at identical belt-high outer black fastballs for strikes one and two. Harden then goes back to the 0-2 money pitch and drops an 88-mph slider over the plate but below the knees for a swinging strike three. Nine pitches in total, nine strikes, three swinging, in total and three strikeouts.

Moment #1b: June 17th, Felix Hernandez faces the Marlins

The Mariners had fired GM Bill Bavasi the day before, they were 24-46 through their first 70 games. The season was over and there wasn’t much to play for or pay attention to anymore. Except for Felix. Owner of the best overall stuff in the league, Felix has struggled to harness it and use it to generate the results everyone know he’s capable of. But he shows flashes of brilliance.

In the top of the third, Felix retired Matt Treanor on a first pitch ground out and then faced Alfredo Amezaga. Fastball called strike one on the outer black, fastball cut on and missed for strike two and a slider taken on the inner half for strike three and there were two outs. Hanley Ramirez’s turn lasted marginally better. A wild first pitch was followed by Hanley swinging and missing on a slider low and away, taking a 97-mph fastball on the outer edge and then striking out on a ridiculous slider in the dirt.

Impressive, but we’re not even close to done yet. To the top of the fourth and now it’s Jeremy Hermida’s turn. He watched a pair of 89-mph change ups on the inner half for strikes and then failed miserably at making contact with an 85-mph curveball below the knees. Jorge Cantu, come on up and take a shot. Felix dials him up with straight cheese, 97, 97 and 96-mph fastballs all up in the zone. Cantu watched the first, missed the second and, according to MLB while I’m skeptical, managed to nick the third for a foul tip strike three.

Finally, Mike Jacobs come to bat. Felix drops a curveball in for strike one then gets Jacobs to chase a fastball well outside and finally puts the finishing touches on the five batter stretch with an 88-mph slider that catches the inside part of the plate for a called strike three. Five batters, 16 pitches, five strikeouts. One ball and one pitch, one, that a batter managed to make contact with.

There two stretches were the highest examples of pitching as an art. This was dominance in no other terms.

With Game Five of the 2008 World Series tied at three runs apiece, Pat Burrell stepped up to the plate against JP Howell, and promptly smashed a double off of the left-centerfield wall. The shot came within an inch of leaving the yard, and as he made his way back to the dugout in favor of a pinch-runner, he seemed to possess the look of somebody who has just experienced his final plate appearance with a team. Eric Bruntlett, the pinch-runner, eventually came around to score what would amount to the game- and World Series-winning run.

This was arguably the biggest moment of his career, but his biggest moment of the regular season came months earlier, in a game I actually got to attend. Though he has always been a hot or cold player, Burrell has been eerily consistent over the last several seasons. On May 2, however, he was putting the finishing touches on a Pujols-esque hot streak. Entering the early May affair with the Giants, Burrell was one of the top offensive players in baseball with a .333/.454/.677 line to go along with 8 HR and 9 2B in just 119 plate appearances. The graph for this May 2 game, which produced the third top offensive play of the season, is below:

The game began with quite the forgettable pitching matchup: Kyle Kendrick vs. Patrick Misch. Chase Utley backed Kendrick early by belting a two-run homer in the bottom of the first, a score that would hold until the top of the fourth. Trailing by two, former Phillie Aaron Rowand doubled to the delight of his hardcore fans, and came around to score on a Jose Castillo single. Wasting no time in retaliating, Pat Burrell walked and Pedro Feliz smacked a two-run homer of his own against his former team. The Phillies led 4-1 and seemed on their way to an easy victory.

Kendrick pitched a scoreless fifth and sixth before being lifted in the top of the seventh on the heels of surrendering consecutive singles to Castillo and Emmanuel Burriss. Ryan Madson came in, and things sort of broke down. Keep in mind this was back in May, and not September or October, when the entire country essentially saw Madson dominate with an out-of-nowhere 96 mph fastball. With two on, and nobody out, Eugenio Velez singled to load the bases.

Madson then got a key out by fanning Fred Lewis, but things broke down from there. Ray Durham stepped in and roped a two-run single to right, bringing the score to 4-3. Randy Winn followed with a little single of his own, once again loading the bases. Bengie Molina then grounded out, scoring Velez, and knotting the game at four runs each. The seventh, eighth, and ninth innings would all pass before any more runs would score.

JC Romero started the top half of the tenth for the Phillies, and was rudely greeted by an Aaron Rowand home run. The rest of the inning was rocky for Romero, but he eventually got out of a jam with the Phillies trailing 5-4. As the bottom of the tenth began, the Phillies had a 20.6% probability of winning the game. That mark dropped 11.5% when Jayson Werth led off by striking out against flamethrowing closer Brian Wilson. Chase Utley promptly singled to right, raising their expectancy to 21.4%.

Ryan Howard was due up next, and mostly everyone in attendance felt he would deliver a walkoff home run. After all, not only is Wilson a righty, but he was a righty who predominantly threw fastballs, precisely the recipe for disaster with a guy like Howard. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out, and Howard’s at-bat ended with a ‘K’ on the scorecard. The Phillies now had just a 10.05% probability of winning the game. As soon as Burrell’s theme music played, though, again, the reaction from the crowd was one sensing a walkoff on the horizon. Just like Howard, Burrell is quite adept at hitting fastballs with plenty of velocity.

On a full count, with two outs, in the bottom of the tenth—pretty much the cliche dramatic situation in a baseball game–Burrell absolutely crushed a deep fliner to left field. As soon as the ball made contact with the bat, everyone, including Burrell and the Phillies, knew the game had just ended. Burrell’s two-run walkoff home run off of Brian Wilson capped a torrid first 30 games, and produced an expectancy swing of 89.95%, the third most of any play this season.

The off-season is officially underway, as thanks to the always entertaining and somewhat unpredictable Billy Beane, we’ve got our first big trade of the winter. While all the details aren’t known as of yet, pretty much every big media outlet is reporting that the Oakland A’s have acquired Matt Holliday for a potpourri of young players whose identities we will eventually learn.

Holliday is an interesting player. Thanks to the Rockies miracle run in 2007, he got all kinds of media attention, even finishing 2nd place in the MVP balloting last year, but because he plays half his games in Coors Field, there’s an underlying skepticism about his real abilities that hangs over his head.

His detractors will instantly point to his enormous career splits between his performance at home and on the road – .357/.423/.645 in Coors, .280/.348/.455 everywhere else. He has almost twice as many home runs in Colorado as he does away from the thin air, and given what we know about park effects and the offensive environment a mile high, we shouldn’t be surprised that Holliday has benefited significantly from his home environment.

However, when you see people pointing to his road numbers as a proxy for his true talent level, you should immediately reject the rest of their conclusions, because despite the ease of that kind of analysis, it simply isn’t accurate. You cannot just throw out Holliday’s performance in Colorado and pretend that it didn’t happen simply because the park is hitter friendly. Instead, the correct way to project his future performance is to adjust his past results to account for the park effects, and use the entire sample of data that we have.

Thankfully, the offensive metric of choice around here is WPA/LI, which expresses offensive wins (without the context leverage that WPA includes) and is park adjusted. By using a linear weights metric like WPA/LI, we can evaluate Holliday’s past offensive value, adjusted down for the Coors effects. Here’s his WPA/LI for each of the last three years.

2006: 3.37 WPA/LI
2007: 5.05 WPA/LI
2008: 3.98 WPA/LI

His WPA/LI boost in 2007 was more about the extra playing time (he cracked 700 PA for the first time in his career) than it was about a huge improvement in his abilities. For the last three years, he’s been a pretty consistent excellent hitter.

Even with the move out of Coors Field and into pitcher friendly Oakland Coliseum, Holiday should be expected to be something like a .300/.380/.500 hitter. Considering he’s been both durable and a quality defensive outfielder, that makes him something like a +4 win player for 2009.

Is he the best player in baseball? No, definitely not, but he’s definitely one of the better outfielders around, and if the A’s think that they’re within four wins of contending next year, he could be the piece that puts them over the top.

If you were happy for the election to end so that you could stop having people asking for your vote, I’m sorry, but I’m extending the vote request window.

Over the weekend, I was nominated for a $10,000 college scholarship thanks to the work I’ve done over at USSMariner, and weirdly enough, the winner is chosen by public voting. So, if you’ve enjoyed any of my writing and want to help out, just click the link, vote for David Cameron, and I’ll be one step closer to $10,000.

All your support is greatly appreciated.

A continuation of the series of retrospectives looking back at the regular season and how teams fared. They will be presented, from first to last, in order of their run differential as given by the BaseRuns formula and adjusted for strength of schedule, which I feel is the best measurement of a team’s actual talent level.

Number Twenty two: Houston Astros

Ignore that 86-75 record. The Astros were nowhere near that good of a team this year. Their pythagorean record was just 77-84 and BaseRuns agrees with the long dead Greek philosopher, crediting the Astros with 699 runs scored (23rd in the league) and 754 runs allowed (20th in the league). That’s good for a 75-86 mark, inverse of their actual record.

The 2008 Astros remade 3/5ths of their infield replacing Craig Biggio, Morgan Ensberg and Adam Everett with Kazuo Matsui, Ty Wiggington and Miguel Tejada. Those were three pretty good candidates for replacement as they all had bad years at the plate last season. The new trio were better, but collectively only a few runs above average thanks to Miguel Tejada’s post-April collapse.

Lance Berkman certainly exploded in 2008, but Hunter Pence regressed and Luke Scott was dealt away in the Tejada deal and overall the Astros offense remained pretty static compared to last year. That wasn’t a level they should be proud to stay at either.

The bullpen certainly could have used the revitalized Brad Lidge this year, but actually did quite fine on their own thanks to Chris Sampson, Jose Valverde and the newly re-signed LaTroy Hawkins. In the rotation, Randy Wolf was a decent enough idea, but really it was more important to do whatever it took to get Brandon Backe out of there. Oswalt clearly had a down season, but Wandy Rodriguez added another data point to the trend that he’s capable of being an above average starter in the NL.

Besides needing to make decisions on the rotation for 2009, the Astros should also really look into trying to upgrade their defense up the middle which spent another year being a liability and with Tejada at shortstop needs all the help it can get from other positions. Though if that means more playing time for Michael Bourn maybe it’s best they just forget it.

Scott Boras is well known for the books he produces to sell his free agents to perspective buyers. This year, he may have even outdone himself. According to the New York Times, Boras’ book on Oliver Perez includes a chapter “One Of The Five Best Left-Handed Starting Pitchers.”

Seriously. Oliver Perez. Scott Boras actually wants people to take him seriously, and he’s calling Perez one of the five best lefty starters in the game. Scott, just a question, but which of these pitchers do you think Perez is better than?

CC Sabathia
Johan Santana
Cliff Lee
Cole Hamels
Randy Johnson
Scott Kazmir
John Danks
Jon Lester
Mark Buehrle
Jamie Moyer
Joe Saunders
Andy Pettitte
Ted Lilly

No, really, I’d love to see the argument that Perez is better than any one of those 13, and those are just the guys where there’s absolutely no chance Perez is better. You can’t make a non-laughable case that Perez is better than any of those guys. You just can’t. There’s a litany of other guys with good arguments that they’re as good or better than Perez too, and in reality, he’s probably more like a top 25 LH starter

Perez is, at best, an average starting pitcher. His career FIP of 4.67 by his great season in 2003 that doesn’t look like it will ever be repeated. He’s one of the most extreme flyball pitchers in the game and his command sucks – he can only survive by racking up a ton of strikeouts, but those decline as a pitcher ages faster than command improves.

Forget the Sandy Koufax comparison – Boras will be lucky if Perez figures out how to become the new Ted Lilly, which is basically his best case scenario. Anyone spending money on Perez thinking that they’re getting a guy with a front of the rotation ceiling is fooling themselves – or being fooled by Scott Boras.

The Graduate: Joba Chamberlain | Born: September 1985 | Right-Handed Pitcher

Perhaps you’ve heard of this graduate. Joba Chamberlain was one of the most talked about young player of 2008 despite splitting the season between the starting rotation and the bullpen. A more defined and constant role in 2009 could help him become one of the best pitchers in the American League. Overall, he allowed 87 hits in 100.1 innings with rates of 3.50 BB/9 and 10.58 K/9. Chamberlain also allowed just five homers (0.45 HR/9). His fastball averaged out at 95 mph, which he threw 65.3 percent of the time. He also utilized a slider, curveball and occasional change-up.

The Riser: Zach McAllister | Born: December 1987 | Right-Handed Pitcher

Zach McAllister rebounded from a bumpy 2007 to post excellent numbers during the 2008 season. He allowed 133 hits in 151 innings split between two A-ball affiliates. In 14 starts in the second half of the season at High-A ball, McAllister posted a 1.83 ERA with rates of 1.32 BB/9 and 6.29 K/9. He showed solid control, but his low strikeout numbers temper his ceiling a bit. As a sinker baller, though, he relies on pitching to contact. McAllister has a solid change-up but needs to improve his slider.

The Tumbler: Alan Horne | Born: January 1983 | Right-Handed Pitcher

Alan Horne’s 2008 season was ruined by injuries including a bicep strain, which caused him to miss a good chunk of the first half of the season. Horne, who was on the cusp of a Major League promotion before the injuries, will have to wait until 2009 for his debut. In 2008, during three rehab starts in High-A ball, Horne posted an ERA of 23.14. In eight Triple-A appearances, he allowed 35 hits in 32 innings of work and posted rates of 6.19 BB/9 and 6.75 K/9.

The ’08 Draft Pick: Corban Joseph | Born: October 1988 | Shortstop

Corban Joseph was nabbed in the fourth round of the 2008 draft as an offensive-minded shortstop out of a Tennessee high school. He had a solid pro debut and posted a line of .277/.358/.434 with an ISO of .157 in 159 Rookie Ball at-bats. His rates were: 11.2 BB% and 15.1 K%. Eventually, Joseph may need to move off shortstop, but he should have enough power to play third base in the Majors.

The ’09 Sleeper: Austin Romine | Born: November 1988 | Catcher

It’s easy for Austin Romine to get overlooked as he spent time in 2008 splitting the backstop position with one of the Yankees’ top hitting prospect – Jesus Montero. Romine more than held his own, though, with a line of .300/.340/.437 with a .138 ISO in 407 at-bats. He needs to be a little more patient at the plate with a BB% of 5.8, but his strikeout rate was a solid 13.8 K%. He has a much better chance of sticking behind the plate than Montero, although he allowed 18 passed balls in 54 games. He also threw out 20 of the 98 runners attempting to steal a base.

Up Next: The Houston Astros

Word trickled out this morning that the Houston Astros had re-signed LaTroy Hawkins to a one year deal for $3.75 million. That seamed a bit cheap to me, given what pitchers are getting in free agency these days, so I took a closer look at Hawkins’ numbers to see if I was missing something. What I found was one of the strangest outliers I’ve ever seen.

Check out Hawkins’ batted ball graph:

Look at that ridiculous spike in GB% during 2007. His whole career, Hawkins has been an average groundball guy, but in 2007, he became the relief pitching version of Brandon Webb, just without all the strikeouts. It wasn’t a small sample size thing, either – Hawkins faced 225 batters in 2007 while pitching a full year in relief for the Rockies. Out of nowhere, with seemingly no explanation, his GB% jumped from 44% to 63% in a single year.

As you’ll notice from the graph, the trend didn’t continue in 2008, as his GB% fell back to 46.1%. He offset the lack of groundballs by returning his strikeout year to 2005 levels, posting a 6.97 K/9. His 3.28 FIP in 2008 was the best he’s posted since 2003.

So what happened? GB rates have extremely high year to year correlations, and they normalize very quickly. You just don’t see huge swings in groundball rates from year to year like this. The odds of it being random variation are extremely slim. It is much more likely that Hawkins changed his approach in some way during the ’07 season, decided he didn’t like the results, and scrapped it for 2008. However, I haven’t been able to find any evience that this is true.

So, Rockies/Astros fans, what have you got? What happened to LaTroy Hawkins in 2007, and why didn’t it carry over to 2008?

The story of the Florida Marlins in 2008 could be summed up by saying they had a ton of offensive firepower, but poor pitching outside of Ricky Nolasco and very poor fielding as well. One of the heavy hitters, definitely known more for his power than anything else, is Cody Ross, the protagonist of the fourth biggest play of the season. Take a look at the game graph below, and compare it to our fifth biggest play, which involved Jason Giambi’s walkoff:

When I first saw the graph for this June 7 game between the Reds and Marlins, it seemed odd: it looked like the big swing in win expectancy at the end of the game was not as impressive as Giambi’s. In fact, they were both very, very close, however the difference soon dawned on me. A bit before Giambi’s at-bat, the Yankees had a much lower probability of winning the game than the Marlins did with the same leading time before Ross’s plate appearance. Regardless, both were huge plays ensconced in the top five of all offensive plays this season.

Leading 2-0 in the fourth inning, Luis Gonzalez homered to extend the lead against Bronson Arroyo. An inning later, Jorge Cantu added a solo bomb of his own, giving the Fish a 4-0 lead through five innings. In the top of the sixth, that poor defense I mentioned earlier came back to haunt the Marlins. With two on and two out, back to back errors by Jorge Cantu and Wes Helms allowed the Reds to score a run. With the bases now loaded, Andy Phillips smacked a game tying three-run double to left off of Scott Olsen.

The game would remain tied until the bottom of the seventh, when our hero, Cody Ross, hit an RBI single. No sooner than the very next frame did Adam Dunn crush a solo home run to once again knot the game. The Reds attack continued against Logan Kensing, as singles by Jerry Hairston Jr and Jay Bruce extended their newfound lead to 7-5. After a 1-2-3 inning for Burke Badenhop, Francisco Cordero entered the game for the Reds, hoping to show why he received that ridiculous contract in the off-season.

At the beginning of the bottom of the ninth, the Marlins had a 9.8% probability of winning the game. Cantu led off with a double, increasing their WE to 20.8%. Wes Helms then grounded out, advancing Cantu to third base, but decreasing the Marlins’ expectancy to 12.6%. Dan Uggla walked, putting runners at the corners, and again increasing their probability to 22.1%. Luis Gonzalez followed with a sac fly, that, despite bringing the Marlins within one run, added another out and reduced their expectancy to 10.2%.

Ross then stepped up to the plate to engage battle against Cordero in a PA with a leverage index of 3.58. On a 1-1 count, Ross smashed a line drive over the outfield wall to win the game, 8-7. With just a 10.2% WE entering the plate appearance, Ross’s gigantic home run resulted in an expectancy swing of 89.8%, just slightly ahead of Giambi’s 89.6%, and good enough for the fourth biggest offensive play of the season.

A continuation of the series of retrospectives looking back at the regular season and how teams fared. They will be presented, from first to last, in order of their run differential as given by the BaseRuns formula and adjusted for strength of schedule, which I feel is the best measurement of a team’s actual talent level.

Number Twenty one: Colorado Rockies

What befell the Rockies this year? A legitimately good team in 2007, the 2008 version of the Rockies saw their position players regress heavily on both offense and in the field. Where they scored 860 runs last season, they scored just 747 this year, though BaseRuns does credit them with 766 (good for 14th in the league). And while they limited opponents to just 758 runs in 2007, that figure jumped to 822 this season, though again BaseRuns has them a bit better at 792 allowed (23rd in the league).

Regressors at the plate included Troy Tulowitzki, who suffered through some injury problems this season and whose absence also hurt Colorado’s middle infield defense. Todd Helton had an unlucky year concerning his BABIP as it dropped roughly 40 points despite a similar line drive rate from 2007. Matt Holliday, though he had a good year, did take a step back from his 2007 peak.

There was some good news as the Rockies finally saw some actual major league production out of Chris Iannetta, which helps their future prospects look a little brighter. However, if they do hope to rebound on offense, they’re going to have to stop giving reams of at bats to players like Willy Taveras.

Beyond the plate though there was also an aforementioned defensive problem. Whereas the Rockies boasted a perfectly fine defense in 2007, it was built exclusively on the backs of their middle infield, that is Kazuo Matsui and Troy Tulowitzki. Tulo, as previously stated, had some injury problems this season which kept him out about 60 games and limited his effectiveness to an extent while he was playing as well. Kaz Matsui went to Houston, who saw their defense improve, and was replaced in Colorado by Clint Barmes and Jeff Baker, a pair of poor substitutes glove-wise.

Of course it wasn’t just the hitting and the fielding, there was also the pitching that went south. Though the fact of the matter is that the 2007 Rockies didn’t boast that great of a staff, even after giving them credit for Coors Field. The rotation was fine and all with Jeff Francis and company, but the bullpen was inconsequential at best. This season saw the departure of such luminaries like Tom Martin and Ramon Ortiz and a return to form from Brian Fuentes which resulted in a significant leap forward for the pen.

They needed it though as the rotation took a step backwards. Gone was Josh Fogg but Greg Reynolds stepped into his big shoes of terrible and made them bigger. Francis regressed and Taylor Buchholz was shifted to the pen. They did see a nice uptick from Ubaldo Jimenez, but he wasn’t enough to counterbalance all the negatives on his own.

The Rockies are said to be shopping Holliday and possibly others around and they have almost surely lost Fuentes to free agency. Given all that, there’s little chance that 2009 sees a return to prominence for them and how long it takes for them to climb back into the NL West depends a bit on their return on Holliday and a lot on just how bad the rest of the division remains in the near future.