Archive for 2008

The Chicago Cubs are going to win the NL Central en route to their second straight playoff appearance. They have been firing on all cylinders virtually all year and bolstered an already solid rotation by adding Rich Harden, who has been nothing short of fantastic since joining the team. The Philadelphia Phillies, with just six games to go, a 1.5 game lead on the Mets and a 3.0 game lead on the Brewers, look like they very well may be heading to Dane Cook October baseball for the second straight season. Two key players in this regard are Carlos Zambrano and Brett Myers, big pitchers with plus arms who could largely determine the fates of their respective teams.

Each has had a very interesting week, however. Zambrano tossed a no-hitter against the Astros, at Miller Park (not the home park of either the Cubs or Astros), posting the following line: 9 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 10 K. And no, nobody in the Cubs front office decided to protest the ball four in the hopes that their appeal would result in a perfect game. How did he follow that act? Well, against the Cardinals, Big Z went just 1.2 innings, surrendering 6 hits and 8 earned runs, while walking 3 and striking out just 1 hitter. Talk about opposite extremes. When put together, Zambrano had a two-game stretch of 10.2 IP, 6 H, 8 ER, 4 BB, and 11 K, which results in a 6.75 ERA. No way anyone would, without knowing, guess that the above line divides into a no-hitter and, well, an all-hitter.

Since his callup, Brett Myers has been brilliant for the Phillies, one of the major reasons they have stayed alive and taken the division and/or wild card lead, however you choose to look at it. From August 9 to September 14, Myers made 8 starts, compiling this line: 62 IP, 52 H, 11 ER, 11 BB, 62 K, good for a 1.60 ERA. The last start in that span, on September 14, Myers tossed a complete game against the Brewers, going 9 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 4 K. How did he follow that masterpiece up? Well, he took on the fiesty fish from Florida on Friday night and promptly posted this line: 4 IP, 9 H, 10 ER, 2 BB, 3 K. His ERA actually rose from 4.06 to 4.46. His two-game stretch? 13 IP, 11 H, 11 ER, 3 BB, 7 K, a 7.62 ERA. After giving up 11 ER in 8 starts, he managed to give up 10 in one outing.

Interestingly enough for Zambrano, he is a repeat “offender.” On July 29, in Milwaukee, he pitched a five-hit shutout with nine strikeouts. Two starts later against the Cardinals he surrendered 9 ER and 10 hits. On August 21, against the Reds, he gave up one run over seven innings of work. His next start, in Pittsburgh, 8 hits and 6 runs in 4.1 innings. All of this seems very Jeff Weaver. Make no mistake, both Z and Myers are tantamount to their team’s success, but it is rather strange how pitchers so good can look so very bad, and ironic how these awful outings followed tremendous ones.

Yesterday, Daisuke Matsuzaka pitched seven scoreless innings to help Boston beat Toronto. He only gave up two hits and two walks while striking out six, pushing his record to a gaudy 18-2 and lowering his ERA to 2.80. 18-2 with a 2.80 ERA in most years gets you right near the top of the Cy Young voting. However, no one’s talking about Dice-K as a potential Cy Young winner, and it’s not just because of Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay’s brilliance – it’s because Matsuzaka is having one of the strangest seasons ever.

His 2.80 ERA is 61 percent better than league average – that’s obviously outstanding. But, this isn’t a normal type of dominance, where he blows hitters away and looks like an ace every time he takes the hill. This is… something else.

Dice-K has a staggering 5.17 BB/9 – among qualified pitchers, it’s the worst of any starter in baseball. If you walk five guys per game, you generally don’t stay in the rotation long enough to rack up big innings totals. If we lower the IP qualification to 50 innings, we get the following pitchers who have displayed worse command than Dice-K this year:

Kason Gabbard: 4.82 ERA
Miguel Batista: 6.70 ERA
Tom Gorzelanny: 6.66 ERA
Radhames Liz: 6.69 ERA
Tom Glavine: 5.54 ERA
Fausto Carmona: 5.19 ERA

Batista, Gorzelanny, and Liz are basically the three worst pitchers in baseball this year, while Gabbard, Glavine, and Carmona all ended up on the DL with arm problems. So, Matsuzaka’s peers in strike throwing include the worst of the worst and some guys who were pitching hurt.

He’s 18-2 with a 2.80 ERA. With the worst walk rate in baseball of any pitcher in baseball who was able to keep his job. His FIP is a pretty ordinary 4.01, which is about the best you could possibly hope for given the worst walk rate in the league. He misses enough bats to offset some of the control problems (8.21 K/9) and has also had great success keeping the ball in the park (0.63 HR/9), though his 5.9% HR/FB rate suggests that’s not all skill. He’s also benefited greatly from a .271 BABIP, which has directly led to him stranding more baserunners than anyone in the AL.

Essentially, Matsuzaka has been the master of getting himself into, and then out of, a lot of jams. This is the kind of season that comes around every 50 years or so – for instance, Herb Score had a somewhat similar performance in 1956 – he went 20-9 with a 2.53 ERA on ratios of 4.66 BB/9, 9.49 K/9, and 0.65 HR/9. Score wasn’t exactly a command artist either, but his strikeout rate was ridiculous for the era – the next best guy in the AL had a 7.73 K/9, and the next best guy after that was 6.47. So, while Score dominated despite having control problems, he also was far better at missing bats relative to his peers than Matsuzaka has been.

Really, for a pitcher to experience this much surface-level success while pitching as badly as Matsuzaka has is nearly unprecedented. There’s little doubt that his 2008 season will go down as one of the most unique in history, and it’s unlikely to be repeated any time soon.

What’s happened to Kosuke Fukudome? Generally you would think that an established player coming over from Japan would struggle during the first few months of his MLB career while he adjusted to the different styles and levels of play and then settle into a groove. Fukudome however, started off a star in Chicago’s north side as the Cubs raced out in the NL Central going 35-21 through May while Fukudome posted a .310/.412/.442 batting line while playing more than adequate right field defense.

Fukudome would start to decline in June, but still managed a fabulous OBP thanks to 17 walks against just 22 strikeouts, giving him a fantastic .123 isolated discipline. Kosuke even doubled his home run total to that point with three in June giving him a decent, but not spectacular .138 isolated power mark. So while his average dipped down to the .260s for that month, his more important slash stats remained viable and healthy.

Then something seemingly happened on June 29th as from that point forward Fukudome has regressed in every category. He’s only hit three home runs during that 66 game span and a total of 11 extra base hits giving him a lean .089 isolated power and while he still drew 26 walks during that time, he also struck out at a much higher rate, 49 times in 233 plate appearances, a 21% clip compared to just under 16% prior. And those 26 walks represented about a five point decline in walk rate over that prior period as well.

Overall, it’s been a .207/.293/.296 slash line for Fukudome since June 29th. One might wonder if pitchers have adjusted to his lack of power and are starting to throw him more strikes as they fear him less. Or maybe he was just really comfortable in the five spot of the batting order, where he started the season until the middle of June when he got moved up to leadoff and subsequently bounced around as he’s faltered.

After three consecutive seasons with ERAs under 4.00 in one of baseball’s most unfriendly ballparks to pitchers, perennially underrated pitcher Aaron Harang is currently holding a 5-16 record and a 4.70 ERA leading to many traditionalists passing it off as a terrible season. But what really, if anything, has changed for Harang in 2008 compared to his 2005-7 stretch and is his season really all that bad?

The first such piece of evidence to investigate is the strikeouts since they usually tell us most of the story. From 2005-7, Harang punched out 21.1% of the batters that he faced. That’s down to 19.6% in 2008. Okay, that is a decline, but it’s not much of one, equaling about 15 batters per full season or less than half a batter per start.

Lets move on to free passes. It is usual here to just look at walks, but there are two problems with that. One, it counts intentional walks which any measurement will tell you are just not nowhere near as costly and in terms of evaluating a pitcher’s control should just ignored. Secondly, it ignores hit batters, an egregious omission since hitting a batter is almost always indicative of poor control. Over the prior three year span, Harang let just under 6% of batters reach base freely while this year it has moved to just a shade over 6%, a really minuscule difference.

What is mostly responsible for Harang’s suffering this season are the fly balls and the home runs. Harang’s groundball rate has plunged to its lowest rate since 2002 back when he was with the Athletics. In addition to that, Harangs percentage of home runs allowed per fly ball is also at an all time high, not a good thing to miss with a newfound increase in fly balls. In fact, if you took Harang’s home run per batter faced rate from 2005-7 and applied it to 2008, you should shave 11 home runs off his season which all by itself would be enough to bring his ERA down under the 4.00 mark assuming the standard 1.4 runs per home run.

It seems likely that Harang’s groundballs and home runs per fly would regress a bit toward his career norms next season, making him more than a decent buy low candidate but there is another ominous sign. Paired with the decline strikeout rate is a rather abrupt fall in swinging strikes generated, a key driver of strikeouts going forward for pitchers. I would expect Harang to get his home runs allowed back under a bit more control in 2009, but pay careful attention to those strikeouts to see if they fall off any more.

The Cy Young Award in the American League is more than likely going to go to Cliff Lee, and deservedly so. After all, he leads all starters in WPA/LI, has the highest K/BB in baseball, the lowest WHIP, the most innings, the most complete games, ranks third in strikeouts… oh wait, that’s Roy Halladay of the Blue Jays. Throughout this entire season we have watched in shock, disbelief, and awe as Cliff Lee put together one tremendous season. His season, however, is not that much better than Roy Halladay’s, and many fans could make very good cases that Halladay has had the better year.

On the season, which happens to be the best full season of Doc’s career, Roy has a 5.06 WPA/LI (5.19 when you count his one relief appearance), a 5.60 K/BB ratio, a 1.06 WHIP, 2.79 ERA, and a 2.98 FIP. By all accounts, his is one of the best season’s over the last eight or nine years, but it is very likely it will not be recognized as such when the baseball writer’s vote. Now, I’m never one to cry over “injustices” especially when these athletes are making more money than my entire street combined, but in a year when K-Rod broke the saves record and Cliff Lee came out of nowhere to post ridiculous numbers, Halladay will be lucky to even receive some first or second place votes.

If you look past the rates, his numbers get even better, as his 228.2 IP lead all AL starters, as do his 8 complete games. His 196 strikeouts ranks third in the junior circuit. W-L record, as we know, is a terrible evaluative barometer, but it is extremely hard for many to look at a record like Lee’s 22-2 and think that someone who went 18-11 was more effective. Run support could help explain this, though; Lee has the fourth highest at 6.16 RS/9 while Halladay’s is twelfth lowest at 4.57 RS/9. If Halladay had anywhere near the run support of Lee, and his record was more like 23-5 or 21-7, don’t you think more people would be discussing him as a legitimate contender?

This just magnifies the problems with W-L record, not just in the mainstream but even in the world of analysis, because whether realized or not, it is very, very difficult to block the W-L out of our minds. Moving forward, Halladay is much more likely to repeat, or come close to repeating, this year’s performance. Even though both have very sustainable BABIP’s hovering around the .300 mark, Lee’s LOB% is close to 80%, which might be sustainable for Randy Johnson 2001-03 or Pedro 1999-00, but probably not the Cliffmeister. Additionally, his HR/FB is an unsustainably low 4.9%. Halladay’s numbers in these areas are very close to the league average.

Aspects like moving forward or which pitcher is “more real” are not taken into account in a Cy Young Award race, and Lee will very likely win the award based on his performance and how good of a story it is, but make no mistake, Roy Halladay is putting the finishing touches on his best year, a masterpiece of a season, one just as good, if not better than Lee’s, and he deserves all the accolades that may or may not come his way.

As most people have noticed over the years, talent ebbs and flows between positions. The AL had four terrific offensive shortstops back at the beginning of the decade, but now, it’s a wasteland of mediocrities. We’ve seen a surge of terrific catching enter the NL in the last few years, filling what was a pretty enormous hole for the league.

Somewhat under the radar, we’ve seen another strong talent push – have you noticed how good the crop of American League right fielders are right now?

Nick Markakis – 2.86 WPA/LI
J.D. Drew – 2.70 WPA/LI
Jermaine Dye – 2.28 WPA/LI
Shin-Soo Choo – 1.83 WPA/LI
Bobby Abreu – 1.73 WPA/LI
Magglio Ordonez – 1.27 WPA/LI
Vladimir Guerrero – 0.94 WPA/LI
Denard Span – 0.84 WPA/LI
Alex Rios – 0.50 WPA/LI
Gabe Gross – 0.46 WPA/LI
Ichiro Suzuki – 0.09 WPA/LI

Ichiro and Rios have supplemented their slightly above average hitting with excellent defense, which isn’t represented in WPA/LI, so they’re both quite a bit more valuable than this list shows. Span, meanwhile, has racked up his value in half a season – when you include defense, he’s been better than everyone but Markakis on a per game basis.

If we were just looking at a per-game basis, we could argue that Vladimir Guerrero has been something like the 8th or 9th best right fielder in the AL this year. Even though it’s a down year for Vlad, that’s remarkable – in most seasons, you can’t find seven or eight guys at any position in either league that are better than him on a per at-bat basis.

It’s really a pretty remarkable crop of talent. Markakis gets lost in the shuffle sometimes, thanks to the presence of bigger names like Guerrero and Ordonez, but he’s been the best of the bunch this year, and at 24 years of age, may have established himself as one of the game’s young stars. With other talented youngsters like Span and Choo also showing some real value, the position looks strong for years to come.

Things may not be rosy in Washington, but the Nationals High-A ball affiliate had an excellent season that culminated with a Carolina League championship title. The Potomac Nationals crushed the Myrtle Beach Pelicans by scoring 35 runs in four games. With any luck, one or two members of the Potomac offence will develop and start driving in runs for Washington in the near future.

Truth be told, though, many of the players that had a big series project as future bench players, including Boomer Whiting (who hit .375 in the playoffs). The speedy outfielder split the season between two A-ball affiliates and hit .270/.370/.342 in 374 at-bats. He stole 47 bases, walked 52 times with 64 strikeouts, and scored 77 runs. Unfortunately, Whiting, 24, hit just 16 extra base hits all season.

Infielder Daniel Lyons (.300) also had a nice series at the top of the order and scored a handful of runs. Like Whiting, Lyons split the 2008 regular season between both A-ball affiliates and hit .272/.392/.405 with 23 stolen bases, 77 walks with 96 strikeouts, and scored 83 runs. He has a little more sock in his bat and banged out 43 extra base hits, including 30 doubles.

Jhonatan Solano, normally a defensive-minded catcher, earned MVP honors in the series for batting .429 with two homers, four RBI and five runs scored. Overall in the playoffs, he hit .346. On the season, the 22-year-old hit .250/.312/.350 with five homers in 280 at-bats. Solano could make the Majors as a back-up catcher based solely on his receiving skills, positive attitude and limitless energy.

Last night, the Rays took an 8-6 lead into the 9th inning, looking to win their third straight game and put a bit more distance between themselves and the Red Sox in the A.L. East. Instead of walking away winners, however, they watched Dan Wheeler cough up the lead without retiring a batter, giving up four runs in the process, and they ended up 11-6 losers. Wheeler was pitching the 9th due to the recent struggles of Troy Percival, who has spent most of the year closing games for Tampa Bay but has looked vulnerable of late.

So, with a playoff spot a virtual certainty, the folks down in Tampa have to be deciding – just what should their playoff bullpen look like?

J.P. Howell and Grant Balfour have been outstanding all season, and give the team reliable relievers from both the right and left sides. Those two are definitely going to get high leverage innings in October. But what innings? And what about the other roles?

Wheeler’s obviously still in the mix – one bad outing doesn’t ruin a successful season. But his run prevention is built on a ridiculous .193 BABIP – his 4.27 FIP is more indicative of his real talent level. That makes him a solid bullpen guy, but nothing like a relief ace. Tampa would likely rather have him working the 7th inning than the 9th.

Chad Bradford and Trever Miller have the specialist roles locked up – they’re both good against same handed hitters, not so much against anyone else.

Those five have jobs, and for the most part, roles. But with four man rotations in October come the opportunities to have 7 or even 8 man bullpens, so there’s still some open spots.

Percival is likely to get one if he’s healthy, though it’s anyone’s guess how he’ll be used at this point. Do they allow such an extreme flyball guy to pitch in one run games? Unlikely. His home run problem probably takes him out of the mix at closer, so perhaps he joins Wheeler in middle relief, where he can be used in spots where a single bad pitch won’t turn the tide of the game.

That makes six. One, maybe two spots left, with Jason Hammel, Edwin Jackson, and David Price fighting for a spot on the playoff roster. You have to think that Hammel’s the odd man out here, as Jackson will be the long man coming out of the pen after spending the whole year in the five man rotation. And Price is just too talented to spend the postseason watching on TV. If they end up just carrying 7 relievers, though, do they go with Jackson or Price? Reward the guy who has given you innings all year or the phenom with upside? It’s an interesting question.

The folks running the Rays are smarter than me, but here’s my suggestion: Give as many high leverage innings as you can to Balfour and Howell, use Wheeler and Percival in the middle innings, spot Bradford and Miller as specialists in key at-bats, and go with Price over Jackson. Don’t pass up a chance to have a lefty throwing 95 coming out of the pen, especially if you think you’re going to have to go through Boston eventually.

Well, that’s that. With the news now official that Erik Bedard has a tear in his labrum the book on his 2008 and perhaps even his Mariner career is closed.

The result of a protracted three month negotiation between Bill Bavasi of the Mariners and Andy MacPhail of the Orioles that took more bizarre twists than your typical Lost episode, Erik Bedard landed with the Mariners for a whopping five players including Adam Jones, George Sherrill and highly touted minor league pitcher Chris Tillman.

The traditional media mostly sided on the side of Bavasi as the Mariners were coming off an 88-win season while many in the blogosphere were skeptical of the price paid in order to acquire Bedard. Erik did his best to stifle any possible opposition to the trade in Seattle with his first three pitches, a called strike fastball, a swing and a miss on a curveball low in the zone and a ridiculous breaking curve in a dirt that Ian Kinsler had no prayer of connecting on.

After that though it was all downhill. Bedard hurt his hip and as it turns out, his shoulder, in that game and couldn’t even make his second start on schedule. Off and on the disabled list, Bedard entered the season’s final month seeming unlikely to pitch again in 2008, but Mariner fans were still holding out hope that a winter’s worth of rest would return the 2007 version to them in time for 2009. But now that is not to be.

A labrum tear, no matter how minor, means at minimum a half year of rehab and it means that Bedard will not be opening the 2009 season in anyone’s rotation. As a fifth-year arbitration player and someone who did manage to pitch decently in the scant 81 innings he threw, Bedard would likely be due a raise from his current $7 million salary and thus he becomes a serious non-tender candidate for Seattle.

More than just a symbol of a season that’s seen everything the Mariners built turn to rubble, the loss of Erik Bedard represents a loss to all of baseball as the talent he displayed in 2007 was something special and despite his cold reputation from media members, my own, albeit brief, interactions with Bedard suggest otherwise. The loss of Bedard for most of 2008 and a significant portion of 2009 isn’t just the final nail in one of the worst trades of all time, it’s a loss for fans of baseball period.

On February 6, 1998, the Yankees acquired Chuck Knoblauch from the Twins for a four-player package including prospects Eric Milton and Christian Guzman. Following a relatively poor rookie season in which his OPS+ was just 38, Guzman’s sophomore campaign saw him smack 25 doubles, 20 triples and jump to a 70 OPS+. Next year, in 2001, he performed so well that, despite playing no more than 118 games, he finished 16th in MVP voting. From 2002-2004, his OPS+ regressed to the seemingly expected range of 77-79. The Washington Nationals liked his fielding, approach, and perhaps his still not yet reached potential and inked him to a nice contract prior to the 2005 season.

Guzman promptly pulled a “Beltran,” which is my new term for someone who performs poorly in the first year of a big and/or new contract. During that season, he posted a Bloomquist-like .574 OPS. Christian missed the entire 2006 season, but returned towards the end of last year, playing 46 games and posting an .846 OPS. Though it was less than one third of the season, his rates were better than ever, leading some in the fantasy world to buy low, in the hope that he could parlay that production into a very solid 2008 season.

He has not disappointed this year. In 132 games, his OPS is .787, which is the highest it has even been in a season in which he played 120+ games. His 9 home runs are one off of his career high, and his 34 doubles established a new career high. Additionally, his rate of strikeouts is at a personal low of 10%. Unfortunately, his rate of walks is also a very, very low 4%, the fifth lowest in the senior circuit. Guzman has always built his OBP largely off of his batting average, and this year is no different. With a BABIP of ~.340 and a very low walk percentage a good chance exists that his current numbers are not as much driven by skill as luck.

On the defensive side, he is currently at +15 at shortstop, good for fourth at the position, meaning he is producing nicely on both sides of the ball. His numbers may regress or he may establish himself capable of posting higher BABIPs, but this is the first season he has played over 130 games in which his production has been of this caliber. He may have gotten laughed at as an all-star due to each team needing a representative, but his season has definitely been all-star worthy.