Archive for 2008

Francisco Rodriguez secured his 57th save of the season last night, tying Bobby Thigpen’s record set in 1990. Much has and will be made when Rodriguez breaks the record and that’s unfortunate because it’s one of the worst statistics in baseball and using it cheapens what Francisco has accomplished as a premier relief pitcher for the past half-dozen years.

That’s not to say that Rodriguez doesn’t deserve the record. He has the highest entering leverage index among relievers with a reasonable sample size so he’s certainly been earning at least most of his saves. It’s just that the save statistic is borderline meaningless, a view never better illustrated than the situation in which Rodriguez earned his record tying 57th save. Rodriguez entered the game in the top of 9th with zero outs and two baserunners on. He had a four run cushion however and proceeded to yield two line drives and a pair of groundballs. For that, Rodriguez took one step closer to breaking the single season saves record and further helping himself this winter as he enters the free agent market.

Rodriguez built his reputation based on his phenomenal run through the 2002 postseason as the Angels got past the Giants for the World Series crown. He certainly didn’t let up afterward with a solid enough 2003 season, but he really exploded and reached his peak in the 2004 year as he cut his homerun rate and spiked his strikeout rate to just shy of 37%, a fantastic figure. The 2005 season was a bit of a fall back, but he managed to rebound in 2006. Since then however, it’s been a steady decline. Which is not to say Rodriguez isn’t good, he clearly is, just that he’s been getting gradually worse.

His ability to throw strikes is diminishing, down to near 60% now and he’s missing fewer bats than ever before while posting the highest walk rate, the highest hit by pitch rate and the lowest strike out rates of his career. Francisco Rodriguez has been a fantastic pitcher since he emerged on the scene in late 2002, but he looks clearly to be on a decline and he’ll be coming off a (meaningless) record-setting season. It’s a recipe for an overvalued contract that’s not likely to bear much fruit for whichever team signs on the dotted line.

When we talk about pitchers, we often refer to a pitcher’s FIP, which builds an expected ERA based on a pitchers walk rate, strikeout rate, and home run rate. In general, FIP works a lot better than a stat like ERA, because it removes a lot of the noise from results that pitcher’s don’t have a lot of control over.

However, one of those components is a bit more fickle than the other two, and it can have a huge effect on a pitcher’s performance – that component, of course, is the home run rate. Let’s take Roy Oswalt, for instance.

In March through May, he made 12 starts, pitched 76 innings, and had a respectable 20/55 BB/K rate. However, he gave up 16 longballs during that stretch, so his FIP was a downright poor 5.35, which nearly matched his 5.45 ERA. Those home runs were killing him, even though he was commanding the strike zone fairly well.

Since June kicked in, though, no one’s been able to take Oswalt out of the park. In his last 17 starts, he’s thrown 114 2/3 IP, posted a better 23/95 BB/K rate, and cut his home runs allowed down to 5. He’s certainly pitching better, as the increase in strikeouts and decrease in walks show, but five home runs in almost 115 innings? That’s nutty. As such, his FIP for that stretch is 2.93.

Just so you can see how much the home run rate affects FIP, if we change Oswalt’s HR rate in his first 12 starts to match what he’s done in his last 17 starts, his FIP drops from 5.35 to 3.31 – in other words, that difference in the home run rate is worth two runs a game. As much as we love to evaluate pitchers by walks and strikeouts, home runs have a massive effect on their performances, and a pitcher can succeed in MLB simply by keeping the ball in the park.

However, because home run rate is far less of a skill than walk or strikeout rates, most pitcher’s can’t succeed for a long team just through HR suppression. That’s why BB/K rates are a better predictor of future success than HR rates, even though HR rates have more of an impact on run scoring.

Just a little reminder that while FIP is a nice tool, if you see a guy running strong based on a remarkable HR suppression streak, it’s not as likely to be real as if he’s doing it with no walks and lots of strikeouts.

It’s not often that a player with Chris Carter’s talent spends time with three clubs in the span of two weeks. With 39 dingers, the hulking infielder tied for second overall in minor league home runs in 2008 while playing for Oakland’s High-A ball affiliate in Stockton.

Carter, now 21, was originally drafted in the 15th round of the 2005 draft out of a Las Vegas high school. He spent three seasons in the White Sox organization before being sent to Arizona on Dec. 3, 2007 for fellow slugger Carlos Quentin. Eleven days later, Carter was part of the bounty that netted Arizona pitcher Dan Haren from the Oakland Athletics.

In his first full season in the minors in 2007, after two Rookie ball campaigns, Carter slugged 25 homers, drove in 93 runs and hit .291/.383/.522. His power numbers took another step forward this season with the Oakland organization, including an ISO increase from .231 to .310, while some of his other numbers took a step back. Carter hit .259/.361/.569 with 156 strikeouts and 77 walks in 506 at-bats. His strikeout rate rose from 24% in 2007 to 30.8% in 2008, while his walk rate remained roughly the same. Carter’s batting average was a bit of a disappointment but his BABIP was .296, compared to .336 in 2007.

Oakland has another first base prospect, Sean Doolittle, who played most of the season on the same squad as Carter, before a late-season promotion to Double-A. Carter spent time at third base to accommodate his teammate but his defence is below average at both third base (41 games, 14 errors) and first base.

Doolittle, a slick fielder, is not a classic slugger like Carter and is more of a hitter in the mold of John Olerud or Lyle Overbay. The two players should open 2009 on the same team again and it will be interesting to see which player takes the next big step needed to secure a future role on the big league club.

Pitch Type Abbreviations:

FB – fastball
SL – slider
CT – cutter
CB – curveball
CH – changeup
SF – split-fingered
KN – knuckleball
XX – unidentified
PO – pitch out

About split-fingered pitches: Split fingered pitches include splitters and forkballs.

About the percentages: All pitch type percentages for identified pitches are calculated as a percentage of only identifiable pitches. Unidentified pitches are calculated as a percentage of all pitches.

About the velocity: Next to the percentage in parentheses is the average velocity for the pitch type. If it reads 00.0, it means there is not enough data to calculate the average velocity.

About the leaderboards: On the leaderboards, pitch type percentage and pitch type velocity are broken out into two separate columns for each pitch. The percentage columns are labeled “%” and the velocity columns are labeled “v”.

About the data: All pitch type data is collected and provided by Baseball Info Solutions.

Over the last thirty days, no starting pitcher has been even close to touching Roy Oswalt’s 2.48 WPA/LI. Derek Lowe, as great as he has been lately, is still a full win lower. Third on that list, however, is Francisco Liriano, the Twins lefty phenom who underwent surgery and made his return to the big leagues this year. In his early outings, he simply stunk. He wasn’t striking hitters out, walked many, and gave up plenty of hits. This earned him a demotion wherein he could hopefully, for the sake of Twins fans, work on his kinks and get that confidence and swagger back.

Prior to this recent 30-day stretch, he had made 5 starts, for just 22 innings, in which 24 hits and 16 earned runs were surrendered, along with 18 walks and 17 strikeouts. Recently, however, he made 6 starts, for 40 innings, giving up just 28 hits and 6 earned runs, walking no more than 7 and fanning 34. With a WHIP under 0.90, an ERA of 1.35, a K/BB nearing 5.0, Liriano has earned produced a 1.32 WPA/LI in these six starts. This more than made up for the poor performance early on as his seasonal wins added have gone from -0.18 to 1.14.

He may have been dominant lately, but I’m not sure I would say he is 100% “back” yet. His K/9 is 7.40—7.65 in this six-game stretch—way down from the 10.71 in 2006. His BB/9 has risen about a full batter per. Instead of 2005-06, where he was clearly a groundball pitcher instead of a flyball pitcher, his current GB/FB is 43%/41%, resulting in a 1.05 GB/FB. On top of that, his HR/FB is a very low 5.3%, meaning he has seen a vast increase in flyballs but is keeping them in the yard at a lucky or likely unsustainable pace.

Though he is still likely not himself following the surgery, he is only throwing 90-91 mph, instead of 94-95 mph on his fastball, while his slider has been around 83 mph instead of 87-88 mph. He may be effective right now, and his numbers may look like the Liriano we fell in love with two years ago, but he seems to be quite a bit away from reclaiming the throne as “the next Johan.” It definitely could happen as his body gets more comfortable, but right now, he is a different version of Liriano, inferior to what we glimpsed in 2005-06, but still effective.

As you’ve probably heard, the Dodgers offense is currently being carried by an outfielder in the midst of one of the best offensive stretches of his career. He’s absolutely crushing the ball, and his surge the last month has been one of the main reasons why LA has been able to overtake the stumbling Diamondbacks for first place in the N.L. West. Every time you turn around, he’s getting another big hit or rounding the bases after a home run.

Oh, you think I’m talking about Manny Ramirez? He’s okay, but I was referring to Andre Ethier. Check out their respective performances the last 30 days:

Manny: .362/.467/.745, 94 AB, 1.42 WPA/LI
Ethier: .396/.462/.802, 106 AB, 2.13 WPA/LI

Ethier has 23 extra base hits in 26 games – Manny has 16 extra base hits in 28 games. There’s no doubt that Manny is hitting the ball well, but there’s no argument that he’s outplaying his teammate right now. Ethier’s just outhitting him, despite get approximately 0% of the recognition. Some BBWAA voters are even talking about casting their NL MVP vote for Ramirez. I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess – these same people tried to give Shannon Stewart an MVP award, after all. However, there’s just nothing that supports the idea that Ramirez is even the best outfielder on his own team, or that his performance is the one that actually matters.

If the MVP award, as the BBWAA defines it, is actually “best performance in August and September by a team going to the playoffs”, Andre Ethier is their guy. Will he even get a single top ten vote? I doubt it. The writers will be too busy justifying their votes for Manny or Delgado.

Reason #134,324,986 why there’s no reason to care about the official postseason awards.

On July 7th, Rich Harden and CC Sabathia had been traded to Chicago and Milwaukee respectively without yet having made a start. At the time, the Cubs were at 53-36 and leading the division by 3.5 games over then 2nd place St Louis who were at 50-40 a half game ahead of the Brewers 49-40. Those three teams were 1-3 in terms of best records in the National League.

Since that date, Rich Harden has pitched 54 innings, striking out 75 and walking just 18 with two hit batsmen and six home runs allowed totaling a 2.95 xFIP and a 2.72 tRA. Meanwhile, CC Sabathia has logged an impressive 102 innings with a matching 102 strikeouts and 21 walks alongside three hit batters and five home runs allowed. That’s good for a 2.94 xFIP and a 2.50 tRA.

During this same time period, the Cardinals have given nine starts to Joel Pineiro and 12 starts to Braden Looper. Not exactly up to the same caliber as the other teams and the Cardinals have struggled as a result. Since that date, the Cubs have compiled a 34-22 record and widened their lead in the division by a game, now over second place Milwaukee who have gone an impressive 34-23 themselves.

Meanwhile, the Cardinals have only been able to hold serve at .500 with a 28-27 mark and have since fallen behind the Houston Astros in the NL Central, who made their own mid season pitching acquisition in Randy Wolf who has useful on his own in addition to helping keep Shawn Chacon away from the rotation. There was plenty of criticism of the Cardinals for not making a significant trade at the deadline because it was thought they wouldn’t have the horses to stay in the race. This time around, it appears the critics were right.

On August 23rd, the Diamondbacks beat the Marlins to improve their record to 68-61, taking a three game lead over the Dodgers with 33 games to play. They had acquired Adam Dunn a couple of weeks earlier to counteract the Dodgers pickup of Manny Ramirez, and their pitching staff had the look of a potential World Series champ. Things were going well in the dessert.

Since that day, Arizona is 3-13, now trail the Dodgers by 3.5 games in the standings, and have about a one in 10 chance of even making the playoffs. This isn’t some stretch of bad luck, either; Arizona has been getting their tails kicked. The last two and a half weeks have been a total disaster – everything that could go wrong has gone wrong.

In those 16 games, the defense has allowed 91 runs, or 5.69 RA/G. Opposing batters are hitting .305/.379/.488 against the Snakes, and it’s not just the supporting cast letting down the rest of the team.

Dan Haren, the big off-season acquisition that gave the D’Backs two all-stars in their rotation, has managed just 21 innings in his four starts during the stretch, putting 39 men on base and allowing 14 of them to score. The D’backs have lost all four games he’s started during this collapse.

He’s been better than Brandon Webb, however. Webb’s made three starts, managed only 13 2/3 innings, put 34 men on base, and allowed 21 of them to score. That’s a 13.82 RA/9, which is just miserable. Webb has gone from a favorite for the Cy Young award to a guy whose health is certainly in question – it’s hard to imagine a guy with his consistent success being this bad without being hurt. Not surprisingly, the D’backs have lost all three games he’s started as well.

We can’t just blame the pitchers, though – they’ve clearly missed Orlando Hudson, both in the field and at the plate. David Eckstein was acquired to help replace him, but he’s 4 for 26 since coming over to the NL, good for a .361 OPS. That’s not helping, and the struggles of guys like Eckstein, Conor Jackson, and Auguie Ojeda are a significant part of the reason that Arizona has only scored 50 runs during this stretch. If you’re giving up 5.69 runs per game, your offense has to do better than 3.1 runs per game, or you’re going to get beat a lot.

It’s going to be tough for Arizona to bounce back from the hole they’ve dug for themselves, and if they can’t figure out how to get Webb and Haren going again, they don’t have a prayer.

As Eric pointed out in his post last night in regards to the 2003 Eastern League All Star Game’s South Division roster, not many of the players went on to great – or even average – careers.

As I did with my post yesterday regarding the North Division roster, I am going to take a quick look at a few of the players who basically fell off the map after their All-Star appearances.

Scott Ackerman (Expos) was a defensive-minded catcher who found out pretty quickly that he could not hit pitching above Single-A baseball. Oddly, be made the All-Star team in his one and only season above A-ball despite hitting just .223/.263/.360 on the year with 17 walks in 292 at-bats.

Josh McKinley (Expos) was considered a bit of a reach as the 11th overall pick out of a Pennsylvania high school in the 1998 draft. He had just one OK offensive season in the minors (2003 with a line of .288/.367/.467 ). McKinley tried to extend his playing career by playing a multitude of positions but he spent just one more season in the minors – at Double-A split between the Montreal and Texas organizations – before hanging it up for good due to injury.

Juan Richardson (Phillies) was once considered a promising, “toolsy” prospect, who was signed out of the Dominican Republic. The third baseman never fully embraced the “patient approach” and was mostly an all-or-nothing type player who came up with nothing.

Jeff Inglin (Phillies) was originally drafted by the Chicago White Sox in the 16th round of the 1996 draft out of USC. Oddly, he put up solid power, patience, speed numbers, with decent batting averages, for seven seasons with the Chicago organization but did not sniff the Majors. He drove in 100 runs or more twice, stole 30 bases once and hit 24 homers with 72 walks in Double-A at the age of 23. He signed with the Phillies organization as a minor league free agent and made the Double-A All-Star team at the age of 27 after spending parts of three seasons in Triple-A. Inglin hung around Double-A for two more seasons with two other organizations and then walked away from his playing career.

Jeremy Ware (Expos) was a former Canadian Olympian who was never able to hit for a high average in the minor leagues, due in part to a lack of patience at the plate. He eventually found his way to independent league baseball. His Double-A All-Star appearance came in his fifth season of Double-A at the age of 27.

Josh Karp (Expos)… Are you noticing a theme here? No. 1, there were a lot of Expos prospects in this All-Star game; and No. 2, a lot of them turned out to be failed prospects. Karp was the sixth overall selection of the 2001 draft out of UCLA but had his pro career ruined by injuries. It also did not help that he was over-hyped coming out of his junior season of college.

Homero Rivera (Tigers) was another selection to the All-Star squad that left you wondering: “What were they thinking?” The Dominican southpaw had a K/9 rate of just 6.65 in his career as a middle reliever. In 2003, his last full season in the minors, Rivera vultured 13 wins in 72.2 innings but allowed 76 hits and posted a K/9 rate of just 4.46.

We all know predicting the next great player is no easy task for fans, writers and analysts, and it certainly is not any easier for the baseball minds that select minor league All-Star teams.

One of the issues of analysis Dave and I have discussed here numerous times is that defensive value must also be taken into account when evaluating a player. Without understanding what a player does for his team in the field, it is impossible to accurately evaluate him. Defense might not be as sexy as offense in the traditional evaluative sense, but it is very important. Which brings us to Yunel Escobar, the 25-yr old shortstop of the Atlanta Braves, who looked so good offensively in his rookie campaign last season, that Edgar Renteria suddenly became expendable.

In 94 games during that 2007 season, Escobar splashed onto the scene with a .326/.385/.451 slash line, and a 1.45 WPA/LI. He didn’t strike out or walk a ton, but posted a .367 BABIP that aided his line. Not to say he couldn’t continue to post higher BABIPs but we really knew nothing about his capabilities. In the field, the +- system had him at 0, meaning he was essentially the average fielding shortstop last year. Granted, he did not have a full season’s worth of chances, but last year’s numbers suggested he was a very solid hitter who would not necessarily hurt the team defensively, but would merely get the job done.

This year, things have seemingly reversed. In 128 games, he appears to be in a sophomore slump of sorts, hitting .286/.363/.395. His walk rate has risen from 7.8% to 10.2%, and he is striking out less as well, but the BABIP has dipped significantly to .312. His percentage of line drives has decreased, with an increase in the already very high groundball rate and the flyball rate. Primarily a groundball hitter, his 2.44 GB/FB last year has become a 2.37 rate this year. All of this has resulted in a -0.04 WPA/LI, which is extremely close to 0.00, making it safe to say he has been about an average hitter this year.

His defense, however, has been anything but average, as the +- system pegs him at +25, making him statistically the best fielding shortstop in baseball this year, nine plays ahead of second-place JJ Hardy. Last year, Escobar was a well-above average hitter and the average fielder. This year, he is the average hitter and a well-above average fielder. The problem is that next to nobody pays attention to the defensive side of evaluation, so he just appears to be in a sophomore slump or a decline. If he can sustain the solid defense, or at least some semblance of it, even if just half of the +25, and contribute at the pace he did offensively last year, the Braves will have one heck of a shortstop moving forward. Next year will be important for him as we’ll understand more about his true talent level both offensively and defensively.