Archive for 2008

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 Eight: Seattle Mariners

A victim, yes victim, of good luck in 2007 and the misfortune to not have enough foresight in the front office to properly weight their own assets. It’s not they there were far off base in thinking that they had a chance at the AL West title in 2008. While they did over perform in 2007, so did the Angels and a revised division standings had all four teams within just a few games of each other.

Seattle’s collapse in 2008 was the product of a multitude of failures. The trade for Erik Bedard improperly judged their own prospects and over valued Bedard’s 2007, glossing over the valid injury concerns. The signing of Carlos Silva showed continued ignorance of how to evaluate past pitching and a complete misjudgment of the free agent market.

The Mariners failed to plan for Richie Sexson not bouncing back, resulting in having Bryan LaHair and Miguel Cairo splitting time after Sexson was released. They inexplicably gave Kenji Johjima a three-year extension, tying up their catching position. They failed to notice that Yuniesky Betancourt‘s defense was slipping or that Raul Ibanez’s defense had already collapsed.

Yes, they faced some bad luck. The number and extent of the injuries they encountered were unfortunate and would have hurt any team. They also dealt with unlucky hitters in the form of line drives not going for hits as often as would be expected. Those unlucky breaks would have turned any good team into an average one, but combined with a lack of planning reminiscent of FEMA-circa Katrina, it created a crater so large as to finally swallow the front office.

Going forward, the new front office will benefit from a bar set so low that they would exceed expectations simply by not doing anything and thus not actively damaging themselves. It’s likely to be a few years before serious contention can come again, but with some real talent in the organization and loads of financial resources finally paired with competence in management, that day may come sooner than most think.

Tired of hearing the Pirates demand the moon for Jack Wilson, the Tigers turned to the free agent market and signed Adam Everett to a one year, $1 million contract for 2009.

Everett is the epitome of an all-glove, no hit player. He’s one of the worst offensive players in baseball, posting a career wOBA of .289 and racking up -6.81 WPA/LI over 2,500 PA. It’s even worse if you just look at the last three years, where he’s posted wOBAs of .276, .268, and .264. Those are brutal numbers.

However, over the last five years, Everett has also been something like the very best defensive player in baseball. His UZR/150 since 2003: +14.4, +16.9, +13.8, +24.9, +24.4, +10. Considering that his peer group have already been selected as the best defenders in the game, the fact that Everett just blew them out of the water speaks to how great he was with the glove. Even while recovering from a fractured fibula and while playing through a shoulder problem, he was still one of the best defensive shortstops in the game last year.

So, the Tigers are clearly paying for his glove, and are willing to live with the bat. How valuable is the total package?

Marcel projects Everett for a .280 wOBA in 2009. Over 600 PA, that adds up to -29 runs compared to an average hitter. I told you he was a bad hitter. His glove projects as something like +15 runs for 2009, and the position adjustment for a shortstop is currently accepted at +7.5 runs, so he gets 22.5 runs back for his defensive value. That makes him a -6.5 run player over a full season, or about 13.5 runs above a replacement level shortstop.

Maybe you think Marcel’s a little too optimistic about his offense. Maybe you think a +15 projection for his defense is too high, considering he did break his leg last year. Maybe you don’t think he can play a full season, considering he’s only played 150 games in a season twice in his career. These are all valid concerns, and so I’d feel comfortable with a projection as low as +10 runs and no higher than +15 runs.

That makes Everett about a +1 to +1.5 win player. He got $1 million, which is what teams pay for bad utility players who belong in Triple-A. This is a pretty massive steal for the Tigers, and along with the Gerald Laird trade earlier today, they’ve added something like three wins to their roster in 12 hours and spent a grand total of about $4 million to do so.

Heck of a day for Dave Dombrowski.

Today, MLB’s winter meetings kick off in Las Vegas, and with that, the off-season kicks into high gear. We’ll see a bunch of trades, some free agent signings, and a lot of rumors floating around in the next few days. Here at FanGraphs, we’re going to team up to bring you nearly instant analysis of the transactions, breaking them down as they happen. If there’s a lull, we’ll still be pushing out our regular content, but expect heavy coverage of all the moves over the next few days.

Trade number one, according to Ken Rosenthal, is Gerald Laird going from Texas to Detroit to become the Tigers new starting catcher. Texas clearly needed to move Laird due to their logjam behind the plate, and the Tigers needed a backstop, so this was a good fit between the two teams. But what should Detroit expect from Laird?

Inconsistency is probably the best expectation. Laird’s had an up and down career, where he went from very good in 2006 to miserable in 2007 before bouncing back to be okay in 2008. His skills haven’t changed much, but he’s gotten drastically different results from his balls in play over the last three years: a .345 BABIP in 2006, a .278 mark in 2007, and a .315 mark in 2008. His career BABIP is .310, just a bit above average, so both ’06 and ’07 stand out as random variance. He’s not a .296 or .224 hitter.

For 2009, Marcel has him at .259/.313/.398 for a .310 wOBA, but remember, Marcel doesn’t do park adjustments, so it doesn’t know that Texas is a fun place to hit. We need to knock that projection down to account for the lack of 81 home games in Arlington, so let’s call Laird a .300 wOBA guy for next year.

A .300 wOBA would make Laird worth about 15 runs less than an average hitter over 500 PA, but of course, catchers don’t hit like average hitters, so the +12.5 run positional adjustment covers almost all of that, and leave’s Laird as a -2.5 run offensive player. A bit below average for his position, basically.

Catcher defense is extremely hard to measure as a whole, but we can measure parts, such as blocking balls in the dirt and controlling the running game. Laird is above average at those by about five runs, so we’ll call his defensive value +5, admitting that there’s a huge part of his job that we just can’t measure yet.

-2.5 offense + 5 defense = +2.5 runs compared to a league average catcher. That makes Laird something like a +2 to +2.5 win player, or a guy who should command something like $10 to $12 million per season on the open market. He’s arbitration eligible, however, and unlikely to get more than $3 or $4 million in salary for 2009. That makes Laird a pretty huge bargain.

Detroit did a nice job of identifying Laird as a guy who could help them. Marc will be around to tell you about the prospects they’re sending to Texas, but I’d say this move gets a thumbs up for the Tigers.

On December 16, 1985, I entered this world. Less than a year later, on September 3rd, 1986, a rather scrawny right-handed pitcher named Greg Maddux made his major league debut with the Chicago Cubs. Though I did not realistically become a baseball fan until the age of seven, Greg Maddux has been in the major leagues for just about my entire life. He also happens to be my baseball idol, the pitcher I modeled myself after and tried to emulate throughout high school, and the only non-Phillies player whom I routinely watched. In fact, when the MLB.com computer broadcasts began, as well as the MLB package on digital cable, it became possible to literally watch all of his starts, a possibility of which I took full advantage.

Today, just a few hours after this article posts, Maddux will officially announce his retirement. An era is about to come to an end, and I don’t know exactly how I feel.

In many ways, I knew this day was coming for much of the 2008 season. Maddux hinted at retiring several times throughout the year, so when the story broke, the news was not exactly shocking. Still, it is a very weird feeling to know that he will not don a uniform at the start of next season. Or, for that matter, ever again. On one hand, I am glad that he made this decision, as his final season still resulted in an above-average 4.22 ERA, 4.09 FIP, and 3.27 K/BB ratio. On the other hand, however, it feels as if a chapter in my life is inching closer to its end, which is always odd to process.

Clemens is gone, as are Bonds, McGwire, and Sosa. Mussina already announced his retirement plans. Smoltz has become extremely injury-prone and does not likely have much left in the tank. Glavine is but a shell of his former self. Pedro, Unit, and Griffey have, at best two more years in them. And now Maddux is hanging up his cleats. With regards to sports, I’ve always said that you know you will feel old when players you grew up watching start becoming coaches. While this has only realistically happened with Joe Girardi and Ozzie Guillen, so far, it feels as if I am going to reach this point in no more than a few years.

My love for watching Maddux pitch dealt primarily with his crafty, technician-like approach on the mound. In every aspect of my life, I have been attracted to the technicians. Be it Maddux, Bret “The Hitman” Hart, John Stockton, Andre Miller, or any number of other players in different sports. Don’t get me wrong, I still like to watch the flashy players, but the technicians just seemed to have this aura about them that kept me hooked. Maddux kept a poker face on the mound, only breaking character during incredulous moments. He had the fielding skills that made you shout “how on Earth did he catch that?” And he had the smooth pitching windup that you just had to try and emulate.

As a Phillies fan, I was particularly spoiled this year with a World Series Championship. In Game Five of the NLCS, however, even though the Phillies clinched, arguably my favorite moment involved Maddux retiring Ruiz-Hamels-Rollins in the fourth inning. The Maddux of old has not been seen in almost five or six years, but he has still had moments during which he looked like his vintage self. This was one of them. He retired Ruiz quickly, on two pitches. Hamels then stepped in, and on a 2-2 count, threw the 2-seam fastball that is commonly referred to as “the Maddux fastball” for strike three looking. Jimmy Rollins came up next, and on a 2-2 count, was caught looking on the same Maddux fastball.

Hearing the stunned reactions from other bar patrons that night just made me grin. It wasn’t that I was glad that the Phillies were retired or anything of the sort, but this really felt like his final performance, and I took such pride in watching a glimmer of the pitcher who dominated baseball for most of my childhood and teenage years. The Winter Meetings begin tomorrow, and we will be covering moves throughout the day. The one move that will likely affect me moreso than all others, though, will be Maddux being traded away from baseball, to a life that will include watching son Chase in his baseball endeavors. Regardless, it is going to be very weird not having Maddux around next season. Goodbye, Greg, and from at least this devoted fan, thanks for the tremendous career.

I’m pleased to announce that UZR (ultimate zone ratings) stats are now available on FanGraphs!

This would of course not be possible without MGL (Mitchel Lichtman), and I’m extremely grateful that he allowed us to use his fielding model. He’s put in a tremendous amount of work getting the stats ready for use on FanGraphs and I really can’t thank him enough.

Unlike other versions of UZR, the ones that appear on FanGraphs use Baseball Info Solutions location data instead of STATS location data. Also, this UZR data does not currently include outfield arms and double plays are treated as regular outs. Here are the definitions for all the UZR stats available:

DG (defensive games): The number of outs made by an average fielder at his position given the exact distribution of balls in play for that player divided by the number of outs an average player at that position makes per game.

exO (expected outs): The number of outs plus reached base errors that would be made by an average fielder given the distribution of balls in play while that fielder was on the field.

RngR (range runs): The number of runs above or below average a fielder is, determined by how the fielder is able to get to balls hit in his vicinity.

ErrR (error runs): The number of runs above or below average a fielder is, determined by the number of errors he makes as compared to an average fielder at that position given the same distribution of balls in play.

UZR (ultimate zone rating): The number of runs above or below average a fielder is in both range runs and error runs combined.

UZR/150 (ultimate zone rate per 150 games): The number of runs above or below average a fielder is, per 150 defensive games.

The UZR stats can be found in the fielding section on the player pages or in the fielding section on the leaderboards. Later this week I’ll have them integrated into the team sections. Additionally, the plan is to update these stats at least weekly during the 2009 season.

Update: The team pages now have fielding data too!

During the latter part of this week, Dave has discussed defensive metrics and how they are, or should be, treated moreso as inferential statistics than descriptive; that the results should be treated as data points as opposed to concrete and isolated performance indicators. As odd as it sounds, defense is still undervalued today. And when I say undervalued, imagine me putting a ton of emphasis to really hammer home the point that defense just is not considered as important as offense. If I were to compare Manny Ramirez and Carl Crawford (as I will below), those who do not really consider defense to be valuable with scoff at the results.

Here are Crawford’s and Ramirez’s runs projections for 2009:

Manny Ramirez: +30 batting, -7.5 adjustment, +20 replacement, -15 defense
Carl Crawford: + 3 batting, -7.5 adjustment, +20 replacement, +10 defense

Put together, this puts Ramirez at +27.5 runs and Crawford at +25.5 runs. Converted to wins, that is a mere 2.75 to 2.55 advantage for ManRam, and that isn’t even including baserunning metrics such as BP’s equivalent baserunning runs. Now, for a second, imagine if I were to go on air at ESPN and discuss how Crawford in 2009 is almost just as valuable, all told, as Ramirez: can you imagine the type of criticism I would receive? In fact, I expect to get some here as well, even though our fanbase tends to value defense a bit more.

Even in my own head it sounds odd that Manny’s production is only two runs higher than Crawford. I hate resorting to arguments centering around how the media shapes our views of events, but this is definitely a big part of why fans focus moreso on offense, or consider offense as worth much more than defense. Only when a player is considered a defensive wiz is the run prevention with the glove deemed important, and in cases like that, people almost go too far, saying that offense doesn’t matter at all because of how solid the player’s glove looks.

Shows like SportsCenter only show the spectacular plays, and this is why our views on the defensive resumes of certain players (See: Derek Jeter) are warped. He has made some fantastic plays in his career, and we have seen them over and over again, but he is not a good fielding shortstop in any sense of the word. This doesn’t show up in the form of errors or fielding percentage, though. Even though innate flaws exist in new age defensive metrics and our perceptions of their usage, we can all agree that fielding percentage is awful. Jeter won’t make errors on certain plays, primarily because his range prevents him from making these plays.

Watching a game, we tend to evaluate defense solely on whether or not the play was made, not if the player had enough range to reach said ball. If Chase Utley bobbles a ball at second base, even though he showed more range to get to the ball than any other second baseman in the league, many fans would think of it as a poor play. Was it? I personally feel it would be a great sign because he was able to reach the ball, which boils down to a big point: fans are spoiled, and defense is honestly one aspect of a game where watching a game hurts our opinions and evaluations.

Shane Victorino has terrific range in centerfield, but because he scurries to a Flyball A and Carlos Beltran is able to glide to Flyball A, many people would consider Shane the better fielder. Beltran made the play look easy, and therefore it becomes expected. He is expected to make that play and those viewing the games get spoiled into considering this normal, when in fact it is insanely impressive fielding. When we see enough of something, it gradually establishes the norm in our minds, and everything is treated relative to that norm as opposed to the average for the league. This is why many fans will consider an average or slightly above average defender miraculous with the glove simply because his predecessor had awful range and displayed poor defensive abilities.

Even with all of the defensive metrics available today, this is an area that still isn’t concrete from an evaluative standpoint. This fact makes it tough to justify defensive importance when statheads like us are under intense scrutiny to mathematically and logically prove our points. I’m not sure how fans, myself included, can get past being spoiled or falling into a comfort zone with what we watch as opposed to how the average performer would perform, but until we reach that point, comparisons like Ramirez-Crawford from above will continue to look ridiculous. After all, how could Crawford’s defense and baserunning come even close to what Manny can do with the bat? Perhaps if a defensive metric comes out that leverages the importance level of the situation we could begin to show this, or one that, with very educated estimates, shows what hit would have been recorded had the ball not been fielded (as in, factoring in the run values of what would have occurred had the play not been fielded), but this is still a tough analytical facet to sell.

Defense is very important, but how important is still uncertain in the eyes of many fans, primarily because of how we value errors, and how we get spoiled watching certain players.

With the economy in a rut, people everywhere are cutting back on their discretionary spending. Even with MLB seemingly in pretty good financial shape for now, one clear trend has emerged from the signings we’ve seen occur so far this off-seasom, and that’s that teams have decided that setup men just aren’t worth big bucks anymore.

Last year, 21 non-closer relief pitchers signed major league contracts, ranging from the $500,000 Chad Paronto got from the Braves to the $4.75 million that Scott Linebrink got from the White Sox. Those 21 players signed for an average of $3.1 million per year, and the top of the class got multiyear deals – four for Linebrink, three for David Riske, and two for Octavio Dotel, Ron Mahay, Luis Vizcaino, and Masa Kobayashi.

So far this year, we’ve seen two relievers get a multi-year deal (Jeremy Affeldt, two years at $4 million each and Mike Lincoln, two years at $2 million each) while Doug Brocail and Bob Howry both took $2.75 million for one year, Jorge Julio got $950,000 for one year, and Trever Miller got $500,000 for one year.

Affeldt had a breakthrough year and was probably the top left-handed relief pitcher available. He signed for half of what the top setup men were getting last year. Riske had a 4.45 FIP in 2007 and got $13 million for three years – Howry had a 4.49 FIP in 2008 and settled for $10 million less than that.

If Linebrink were a free agent in this market, it’s not even clear he’d get more than a one year deal after getting four years last winter.

Perhaps Juan Cruz will surprise me and get a monster deal, but right now, it looks like the reliever market is going through a pretty significant correction. If your team needs a bullpen upgrade, this looks like the year to be a strong buyer, because there are deals to be had.

Earlier this week, both Dave and I discussed the importance of adding context to free agent and trade analyses. Baseball does not take place in a vacuum, where everything is equal, so a signing might make a lot of sense to one team while making little sense to another. Dave whipped out a neat spreadsheet that showed the average dollars per win a team could spend based on its payroll and desire to win 40 games above replacement level. The idea is that anybody could win 50 games at $12 mil with a team consisting of replacement players, so the ultimate goal would be to win 40 more games with (2009 payroll – $12 mil).

Following that, I put the context-analysis to work by evaluating how much money Ben Sheets would cost, at fair market value, and how that relates to the Brewers available funds and strategy. Updating that work, the Brewers, prior to today, would enter 2009 with $62,699,000 committed to players who combine for 35 WAR. Now, the projected Brewers payroll was initially considered to be $85 mil; however, factoring in their $20 mil/yr offer to CC Sabathia, the figure is probably closer to $90 mil. For the sake of this post and any Brewers signings moving forward, we will put them at $90 mil for 2009, meaning that, prior to today, they had $27.3 mil to spend in order to add five or more wins.

The Brewers just signed Jorge Julio to a 1-yr deal, so how does he fit into this mold? Well, the base salary for Julio is rumored to be $950,000, with another $950,000 available in incentives based on appearances and how many games he finishes. Based on his past, I will say that the $600k incentive will kick in but not the $350k. Therefore, Julio would likely be paid $1.55 mil in 2009. How much is he worth?

Marcel projects him to pitch 46 innings at a 4.27 FIP. That comes out to 22 runs allowed. A replacement level reliever would pitch 46 innings at a 4.75 FIP, for 24 runs. Essentially, with nothing else taken into account, Julio is worth +2 run above replacement, or +0.2 wins. Normally, we would add a few runs to factor in the leverage of the reliever’s appearances, but it isn’t likely that Julio will be called upon too often in a pinch. I’ll add another run, making him +0.3 wins above replacement for 2009. If wins cost around $5 mil right now, then the fair market value for Julio would be $1.5 mil. The Brewers are paying just slightly over that figure.

This would give the Brewers 35.3 WAR as opposed to 35.0, with $25.75 mil left to spend to amass those remaining 4.7 wins. This deal isn’t going to kill the Brewers, unless Julio vastly defies his true talent level, or he is used in the wrong situations, and it could prove to be a nice reclamation project of sorts. If the payroll is upwards of $90 mil, they could still sign Sheets to his fair market value of $14.7 mil, adding 3.2 wins in the process. This would put them 1.5 WAR away from the goal of 90 wins, with $11 mil leftover. What they will do remains to be seen, but Julio looks like a pretty good signing relative to his projected contribution, base salary, and the incentive likely to kick in.

The 2008 season was definitely the year of the first baseman when you consider how many of them were drafted in the first round of the amateur draft: seven out of 30 players, compared to one in both 2006 and 2007.

No first baseman drafted in the 2008 first round moved quicker than St. Louis’ Brett Wallace (although Toronto’s David Cooper played at three levels at topped out at High-A ball). The hulking first baseman, though, has been assigned to play third base to address an organizational weakness and to avoid that Albert Pujols guy at the Major League level.

Wallace had a modest beginning to his pro career with an assignment to A-ball, where many top college players start out. He hit .327/.394/.490 with an ISO of .163 in 153 at-bats. He also posted a walk rate of 10 percent and a strikeout rate of 20.9 percent. The organization then skipped Wallace over High-A ball and challenged him with a promotion to Double-A. Wallace responded by hitting .367/.392/.653 with an ISO of .286 in 49 at-bats.

He wasn’t done there, though. St. Louis then decided to send him for some extra work in the Arizona Fall League (AFL). Wallace’s bat did not skip a beat and he hit .309/.381/.585 with six home runs in 94 at-bats. The negatives, which bear watching, to the left-handed hitter’s season were that he struck out 27 times in 24 AFL games and hit just .182 against southpaws.

Wallace, who was drafted by the Blue Jays out of high school, likely will not be able to remain at third base at the Major League level due to limited range thanks to his 6’1” 245 lbs frame and thick lower half. That said, he has surprised some scouts with his play at the hot corner – by handling much of what he gets to, thanks to steady hands. If he cannot handle third base in St. Louis, Wallace will be a highly-sought-after trade commodity because he is not going to push the future Hall of Famer off of first base.

Yesterday, we spent a couple of posts talking about how defensive statistics have to be handled a bit differently than offensive statistics. Today, we’ll use a current event transaction to delve into this a little bit further.

Yesterday, the Cardinals acquired Khalil Greene from the Padres to fill their void at shortstop. The Padres are in cost cutting mode, and didn’t want to pay Greene the $6.5 million he was due in the last year of his contract. The Cardinals wanted to upgrade from Cesar Izturis, and are hopeful that Greene can provide significantly more offensive value now that they’re freeing him from the clutches of Petco Park.

However, Tony LaRussa has always been a defense first guy at shortstop. From Mike Bordick to Royce Clayton, LaRussa wants his shortstops to defend well, and if they hit, that’s a nice bonus. Clearly, the Cardinals wouldn’t have acquired Greene had they not been convinced that he could handle playing shortstop at a level satisfactory to LaRussa’s desires. So what do we make of Greene’s defense?

Well, his +/- ratings from 2006 to 2008 go from +13 to +7 to -4. If each year was considered an isoloated result, we’d conclude that two years ago Greene was one of the game’s best defenders at the toughest position to field but had fallen off substantially since then, to the point of being below average now.

Was Greene a terrific fielder who has since deteriorated to the point of being a minor liability? Maybe, but because of the variance in single year metrics, we certainly can’t state that with any kind of confidence. However, if we view each year as a data point, we’d find that the mean of his defensive value over the last three years is between +0 and +5, depending on how much weight you give to the most recent data points. Because of the larger sample, we can state with significantly more confidence that Greene was something like a +0 to +5 defender over the past three years, which would allow us to make a pretty decent projection for what he’ll do going forward.

As with all projections, a multi-year weighted collection of data will be more accurate than if you simply use the past year’s results and take them as the gospel truth. Every projection system worth it’s salt incorporates regression over several years to determine future output, and with Greene, that’s exactly what we have to do with the defensive data. The -4 rating from 2008 is a data point, but whether it represented an actual decline in his ability or not, we just don’t know. There’s too much noise in the data to support that kind of claim.

So, Cardinals fans should expect Greene to be something like a league average defensive shortstop or maybe a tick above. Toss in enough gap power to overcome his low OBP, and St. Louis just picked up a +2 win player for 2009. Considering his salary only values him at just over 1.25 wins, the Cardinals are getting a bargain for their money. Unless the PTBNL in the day is a significant prospect, we’d have to call this a good move for St. Louis – even with Greene’s -4 +/- score from 2008.