Archive for 2008

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

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

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

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

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

From the Washington Post, March 9, 2005:

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

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

Brown was shocked. “Why?” he asked.

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 2005 amateur draft was a college-heavy draft in the first round. Twenty of the first 30 picks came from college programs, and only five prep pitchers were chosen in the first 35 selections when also considering the supplemental first round.

Those five pitchers – Chris Volstad, Mark Pawelek, Aaron Thompson, Chaz Roe, and Ryan Tucker – have followed very different career paths in the last three seasons.

Volstad is the most accomplished of the group and currently has 56.1 Major League innings to his credit, all having come this season. He was also the first of the quintet to be drafted at 16th overall by Florida. The sinker-slider specialist spend about three seasons in the minor leagues before making his MLB debut in 2008. In 10 games, he has posted a 3.20 ERA with 53 hits allowed, 26 walks and 37 strikeouts. Low strikeout rates have plagued Volstad throughout his minor league career (6.20 K/9 career), but the 6’8” right-hander gets a good downward plane on the ball and induced two ground ball outs for every fly ball out this season at Double-A. His fastball can reach the mid-90s when he needs it to.

Pawelek is a sad story. Blessed with immense natural talent, the right-hander has rarely been motivated in pro ball and has been disciplined numerous times by the Chicago Cubs organization, which drafted him 20th overall in 2005. Pawelek was most recently sent home early for the season after failing to acquire a passport in a timely manner for a trip to Canada. Despite solid numbers in his first two pro seasons, Pawelek has spent parts of four seasons in short season ball. He may finally be out of chances with the Cubs.

Thompson was the second high school pitcher selected by the Marlins in the top 35 draft choices. He does not possess the same stuff as Volstad, but Thompson was considered more polished coming out of high school and had better command and control. However, he has not advanced quite as quickly as Volstad. The left-handed has struggled this year in Double-A by posting an ERA of 5.62 in 16 starts. He has allowed 111 hits in 81.2 innings to go along with 40 walks and 53 strikeouts. Thompson’s biggest problem is that when he’s off, he’s really off. In his last 10 starts, he has had four games where he has allowed 39 hits and 25 runs in 15.1 innings. He will look to make up for lost time with a stint in the Arizona Fall League.

Chaz Roe was nabbed with the 32nd overall pick by the Colorado Rockies. He has moved at a steady pace and spent most of the season at Double-A despite beginning the year in High-A ball. Like Thompson, Roe will also spend time pitching in the Arizona Fall League. In 16 Double-A starts, the 6’5” righty has allowed 98 hits and 34 walks in 105.1 innings. He has also struck out 70 batters. Like Volstad, Roe has yet to strike out a lot of batters, given his good stuff, but he does induce his fair share of ground balls (1.6 ground ball outs per fly ball outs) at Double-A.

Tucker was Mr. Dead Red coming out of high school. He had an excellent fastball but not a whole lot more. His fastball was good enough to dominate Double-A hitters this year, but not Major Leaguers. At the lower lever, Tucker posted a 1.58 ERA in 91 innings with 37 walks and 74 strikeouts. At the Major League level, Tucker has posted an 8.39 ERA with 42 hits allowed in 34.1 innings, along with 22 walks and 26 strikeouts. Major Leaguers have simply sat on his fastball, which is one of the reasons why some scouts have projected Tucker to be a big league reliever since his prep days.

It’s always fun to watch prospects diverge from a draft class.

There are only two major league hitters right now with a WPA of 2.00 or above that have single-digit home run marks: Joe Mauer (8) and Brian Roberts (9). Mauer gets plenty of pub regardless of his power outages but it seems that Roberts is still considered a “fluke” due to his great 2005 season that is yet to be matched. Following that tremendous campaign he had a disappointing 2006, which saw his OPS drop almost 200 points, and I’m not sure he has regained any of his reputation since that disappointment.

Last year he improved upon that 2006 season, and this year, has seemingly improved even moreso, as his OPS is the highest it has been since that all-star year. Oddly enough, his strikeout rate is the highest it has ever been, and he is walking at a rate less than last year. The increase in his percentage of hits per at-bat—a “technical” way of saying batting average—has kept his OBP virtually idential to last year.

While he has only hit 9 home runs, he still hits the ball hard, evidenced by his league-leading 46 doubles and 8 triples. The Orioles must possess a doubles-mindset, as teammates Aubrey Huff and Nick Markakis find themselves #2 and #5 in the two-bagger category. Roberts is also fifth in the AL in stolen bases, a skill at which he has been adept even whilst others were digressing.

His defense is a different story. The plus/minus system has numbers for him from 2006 until now, and he appears to be in full-decline mode. In 2006, he was a +7 defender; last year, at 0, he was the average second baseman; and this year he is -6, so below average. While someone like Chase Utley puts up great offensive numbers and leads the league defensively, Roberts’ true value is likely going to be masked because many fantasy leagues do not count defense, and the vast majority of fans use offense as their sole evaluative factor anyway. Though his WPA is a nice 2.36, and he has been 1.58 wins above average from a context-neutral perspective, these are offensive measures; his defense would drag them down.

Lastly, curious to see how Roberts fared in comparison to fellow second basemen and the rest of the league, I looked at the skills assessment page on Bill James Online, and found the following:

Skill           MLB      2B
Running         95th     93rd
Discipline      88th     96th
Average         86th     87th
Power           36th     63rd
Fielding        N/A      59th

His baserunning, plate discipline, and ability to hit for average appear to be exemplary, but he is not a power hitting keystone cornerman in the general sense of the term, and his fielding has been bad enough to not even earn him a percentile in the all-players category. Roberts is a fine player, and he has helped the Orioles not be dreadful this year, but their desire to trade him should make a bit more sense now.

Stephen Drew and Adrian Beltre are pretty similar players. Both are fairly aggressive hitters (Beltre has a career 0.44 BB/K rate, while Drew is at 0.46) with some power (heading into Monday, Beltre’s ISO this year is .186, while Drew’s is .180). Drew plays SS like a 3B while Beltre plays 3B like an SS. They’re not clones, but as far as baseball players go, they aren’t that different.

So, it’s fitting that on the day when Drew became the third player in Diamondbacks history to hit for the cycle, Beltre would follow a few hours later by becoming the fourth player in Mariner history to accomplish the same feat. Both even racked up five hits, though Drew had a pair of doubles while Beltre doubled up on the single.

So, which cycle helped their team more?

Drew racked up .396 worth of WPA, led by his first double of the night. In the seventh inning of a tie game and a runner on, his two base hit set the stage for the D’Backs to take the lead – the leverage index for that play was 2.30, so he gets a nice clutch bonus for coming through when the team certainly needed a run.

Beltre accumulated .387 WPA, and because he just wants to be like Stephen, he also doubled with a runner on first in a tie game in the 7th inning. The score was even identical in both games (6-6), and just like Arizona, the Mariners went on to take the lead on an ensuing single.

It was only the second time in baseball history that two players have ever hit for the cycle on the same day. It hadn’t happened in 88 years, and it will probably be 88 years before we ever see it again. The fact that the two players had such similar games, and are such similar players, just makes it all the more interesting.