Archive for 2008

Pat Burrell is playing the role of “The Forgotten” thus far this off-season. The Phillies have all ready replaced Burell, an awful defender, with another awful fielder in Raul Ibanez. That would seem to indicate Burrell is almost certainly destined for a designated hitter role, leaving him with only a few options beyond Cincinnati and other defensively unaware National League teams. How much should teams be willing to pony up for the slugger, and what is his outlook?

We know that Burrell is 32 years old and hit for his lowest wOBA since 2004. Part of that should be credited to an unlucky BABIP, and perhaps a slightly down walk rate. Burrell did increase his ISO and even if you park adjust his numbers, he was still above average. Perhaps not surprisingly, Burrell is a player who actually gains value by moving to hitting full time. The major defensive metrics all reach the same conlusion: Burrell in left field is a really bad experience. The most generous, Chone, had Burrell at -14 runs, meanwhile UZR at -14.7 runs, PMR at -19.89 runs, and Dewan’s +/- at -20 plays, or -16 runs.

That’s an average of -16.15 runs, combine that with the positional adjustment of -7.5 and you’re looking at his offensive value being zapped. As DH Burrell gets penalized -17.5 runs. 23.65-17.5 is a 6.15 run swing, in other words, Burrell gains a half of a win by simply tucking his glove in a dark corner. That’s a substantial amount when you consider the DH positional penalty is trying to punish, not improve player value.

Marcels has Burrell continuing his slide (mostly age related) and slipping to .369 wOBA, or 18.7 offensive runs above average in 582 plate appearances. That makes him worth between 1.8 and 2 WAR. If Burrell can find a way into 645 plate appearances like 2008, raise those expectations to 2-2.2. That suggests Burrell should be worth between 9 to 11 million.

The Phillies chose against offering Burrell arbitration, meaning no draft picks will exchange hands. Certainly a pro, but there are some cons to signing Burrell as well. Most of those are associated with his age and potential for a quick collapse in skills. Any team desiring to add Burrell should attempt a contract covering one or two seasons. This would allow Burrell to test the market again before his mid-30’s, and gives the team a chance to avoid Burrell’s eventually collapse.

On Friday, the Florida Marlins non-tendered right-handed reliever Joe Nelson, officially allowing him to hit the open market. While the market for relief pitchers has not been as lucrative as the previous offseason, Nelson apparently has a wide array of suitors. In fact, according to one source, 19 teams are vying for the services of the newest reliever to become available. So, who is Joe Nelson, and why is he in such high demand?

Nelson turned 34 years old back in October and, prior to last season, had a whole 47.1 major league innings to his name. Two of those innings came in 2001, with the Braves. The next two and two-thirds did not occur until 2004, when he made three relatively ineffective outings with the Red Sox.

In 2006, however, the Royals gave him a legitimate shot out of their bullpen. While his overall numbers did not portend greatness by any stretch, a few signs pointing to potential success were evident. For starters, Nelson struck out 8.9 batters per nine innings, stranded runners at an above average rate of 72.7%, and held hitters to a .281 BABIP. His fastball averaged nothing more than 90 mph, though, and he appeared to complement that with a simply average changeup. All told, his 4.31 FIP deemed him a bit above replacement but by no means dominant.

Nelson did not pitch in 2007, but, after dominating for the Florida Marlins AAA affiliate in 2008, earned himself another call to the show. In the minors last season, Nelson fanned 12.6 batters per nine innings and limited his walks en route to a 6.0 K/BB. He posted an FIP of 1.72 and an ERA of 2.10, stranding 80% of his baserunners in the process.

On the big club, Nelson did not disappoint, as he pitched 54 very effective innings in 59 appearances. In those innings, Joe surrendered just 42 hits, issued no more than 22 walks, and struck out 60 batters. The rest of his numbers looked even better: a 1.19 WHIP, 10.0 K/9, 2.73 K/BB, 84.8% LOB. All told, Nelson posted a 3.45 FIP, which, while still very solid, ended up much higher than his 2.00 ERA.

He was not throwing harder in 2008 than 2006, and he did not implement any new pitches either. A major difference between the two seasons can be found in his rate of inducing swings on pitches out of the zone. Not only did he throw a lower percentage of pitches in the strike zone, but he increased his O-Swing% from 21% to 27%. On top of that, batters made contact just 50% of the time on these pitches, way down from the 59% rate against two years earlier.

Marcel projects Nelson for a 4.21 FIP in 52 innings of work next season. With so many suitors it is probably a good bet that his average leverage index of 1.16 last season will rise a bit. After all, 19 teams do not line up for a mop up man. Before factoring in the leverage index of his appearances, Nelson is about +3 runs above replacement. Multiply that by an LI in the vicinity of 1.20-1.45 and he could be worth anywhere from +3 to +6 runs above replacement. Assuming the going rate of $5 mil/win, Nelson, at fair market value, would sign for 1-yr/$2.5 mil, essentially the same contract recently inked by Chan Ho Park.

Given the likelihood of a plethora of teams vying for his services, a bidding war of sorts may ensue, which could theoretically bump his fee up into the $5 mil range. Pretty interesting given that he is 34, has struggled to stay around the big leagues, and realistically only put together one decent season. Nelson may be a valuable part of a bullpen next season, but do not mistake him for a young flamethrowing specialist or anything along those lines. He has shown himself capable of missing bats at a solid rate, but he will need to exhibit better control to be as effective as he can be. He would definitely be worth the same contract Park signed, but if a bidding war breaks out, he isn’t likely to be worth the money.

About six weeks ago, Dave Cameron profiled Randy Johnson as a potential free agent bargain because teams were still too bent on using things like wins and ERA to quantify pitchers.

Johnson is still unsigned and not generating as much interest on the open market as one might expect for a guy who had so much success last year and only has leverage to hold out for a one, maybe two-year deal. Arizona CEO Jeff Moorad recently expressed that the team was in need of another starting pitcher, but it sounds as if the bridge between the Big Unit and the Diamondbacks has been, if not burned, then at least made impassable for the time being. Arizona wanted Johnson to take a massive pay cut from his 2007 salary despite a performance not justifying such a demand. In fact, let’s compare two pitchers:

Pitcher A threw strikes 62% of the time and generated a missed bat 6.7% of the time.
Randy Johnson threw strikes 68% of the time and made batters miss on 10.6% of his pitches.

Pitcher A, traditionally a neutral pitcher, generated 1.25 groundballs for every flyball, but also yielded a line drive on 21.1% of batted balls.
Johnson, traditionally a slight GB pitcher, was neutral on groundballs in 2008, but allowed only 18.2% of batted balls to be line drives.

Pitcher A struck out just under two batters for every walk he yielded.
Randy was almost double that, at just under four strikeouts per walk.

Pitcher A’s FIP was 4.32 over 196 innings and his Marcel projects his FIP at 4.73 next year.
Johnson’s FIP was 3.76 and he pitched 184 innings. His Marcel projects him for a 4.11 FIP in 2009.

Who would you rather have based on those numbers? Seems pretty simple right? Here’s where you’d expect me to name some random 30-year-old pitcher so that naysayers could point to Randy’s age as a means behind the snubbing. Well, Pitcher A is Jamie Moyer. Like Randy, he’s left-handed and Jamie is about 10 months older than Johnson. Moyer just signed a two-year deal guaranteeing him $13 million with easily reached innings-based bonuses likely worth an additional $1-2 million per year.

According to what we know, Johnson offered to take a 50% pay cut and sign a one-year deal in the range of $7-8 million for 2009. His Marcel projection has him worth around $15 million on a one year deal. The Diamondbacks reportedly offered him about $3 million. They made a huge, potentially division-costing mistake and Johnson still looms on the open market, an insane bargain just looking for a savvy shopper.

Jack Wilson of the Pittsburgh Pirates has been linked to numerous teams this offseason. It seemed for a bit as though a deal shipping him to the Tigers had been completed. Reports then surfaced disproving this notion and merely adding the Tigers to a list of several interested teams, including the likes of the Dodgers, As, Royals, and Blue Jays. Jack is currently owed $7.25 mil in 2009 with an $8.4 mil club option for the 2010 season.

As of right now, however, Wilson is still a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Jack turns 31 years old in a couple of weeks and a few of his performance indicators seem to be moving in the wrong direction. He has never been an offensive force, with the +6.2 batting runs produced in 2004 the best of his career, but his patience appears to be deteriorating. His O-Swing%, which measures the frequency of swings on pitches outside the strike zone, has risen from 18.5% in 2005 to 26.9% last year.

His rate of contact on these pitches out of the zone has increased as well, from 68% to 80%. Contact on pitches out of the zone does not necessarily refer to balls put in play, so a chance exists that Jack merely may have been fouling off plenty of these pitches. Regardless, the increased swing frequency helped reduce his walk rate from 7% to just 4% in 2008.

Defensively, Wilson looked stellar last season, saving +7.4 runs with the glove in just slightly over half of a season. Injuries prevented him from playing the entire year, and over the last three seasons, he has topped out at 142 games played. The UZR defensive mark in 2008 showed great improvement over the numbers posted in 2006 and 2007.

Back in 2005, Wilson saved +13.3 runs, before declining almost two full wins defensively the next season to -7.5 runs. In 2007, he improved slightly to -2.7 runs, making him a bit below average. Optimistically averaging out his defensive performance, we can call him a +4 run defender in 2009. Since he is not very likely to play an entire season based on the past three years, his positional adjustment at shortstop is +6.0, not +7.5.

The positional adjustment is per 162 games, and Wilson is currently projected to play 130 or so games. Likewise, the +20 runs adjustment given to show value above replacement, not average, would be prorated to +12 runs, since he is not projected to come close to 700 plate appearances. Put together, Wilson is -7.5 runs offensively, +4 runs on defense, +6 runs with an adjustment for position, and +12 over replacement.

This adds up to +14.5 runs, or +1.45 wins. If Wilson were a free agent right now, with a going rate of $5 mil/win, his fair market value would be $7.25 mil. As I mentioned at the start of this post, his current contract will pay him exactly $7.25 mil next season.

Wilson is not a superstar and he certainly is not the missing piece of the puzzle for a team extremely close to contending, but he appears to be an above average defender at the toughest non-catching position to field, and is not atrocious with the bat.

He might not be the definitive answer to a team, but with 130 games and 418 PA, would be productive enough to truly merit his 2009 salary. If he ends up playing 150 games and amassing 600 PA, his value rises to +2.05 WAR, worth over $10 mil in a 1-yr deal. Given that the option for 2010 belongs to the club, and isn’t triggered mutually or by the player, and that the farm systems of potential suitors need not be mortgaged for his services, a team looking for a stopgap would be well-served to acquire Wilson. Unfortunately for Jack and the Pirates, Rafael Furcal and Orlando Cabrera still need “homes” and are higher on wishlists, making it all the more tougher to trade the pesky shortstop.

We will occasionally be making some updates to the UZR data on FanGraphs over the next couple months thanks to some improvements in methodology that Mitchel Lichtman (mgl) has been working on!

While there will be no drastic changes in the UZR data, just wanted to make it clear to everyone that the numbers won’t be completely finalized until just before the start of next season.

We will of course keep you informed when the updates do occur.

This afternoon, we touched on position adjustments and why they’re needed. In the case of positions such as 1B and SS, it doesn’t take a lot of explanation as to why there needs to be a bridge so that we’re not describing an average SS equally valuable to an average 1B. However, for a few other positions, the line is much less clear. The three positions where the respective defensive abilities is less clear are second base, third base, and center field.

In a lot of circles, you’ll hear defense described in two sections – “up the middle” and “the corners”. You’ll often hear the up the middle spots – C-SS-2B-CF – as being premium defensive positions, where teams will look for gloves first and bats second. The opposite is true in the corners – 1B-3B-LF-RF – where teams want offense and consider defensive value a bonus. By this definition, second base and center field are glove first positions, but it’s something of an afterthought at third base. If we bought into this notion, we’d believe that third baseman, as a group, are inferior defenders to second baseman and center fielders.

This notion is reinforced by the fact that third baseman are better hitters than second baseman. Major League 3B hit .266/.336/.436 last year, while Major League 2B hit .276/.338/.409. This has been a trend for a while, and since the statistical analysis revolution taught most of us to think in terms of player value in terms of above or below average in relation to the offensive average of that position, we’re used to drawing conclusions that worse hitting positions are better fielding positions. Since 2B hit worse, they field better. That’s the assumption. The problem, though, is that it lacks evidence. There is simply not a large fluctuation in defensive performance when a player moves between the two spots.

Take Akinori Iwamura, for example – he played a full season at 3B in 2007, posting a -2.6 UZR/150 at the hot corner. The Rays moved him to second base for 2008, and he posted a +0.6 UZR/150 at the keystone. He’s not the exception, but instead, performances like this are the rule. When a player moves to 2B from 3B, or vice versa, their defensive performance remains relatively stable. There’s just no data to support the idea that second base is a premium defensive position and third base is not.

While there are different skills necessary to succeed at each position (arm strength being more important at 3rd, range more important at second), the pool of players who can succeed at one is mostly made up of the same pool of players that can succeed at the other. This is because the population of both positions is made up almost exclusively of players who were deemed inadequate for shortstop. At one time, second baseman and third baseman were both called the same thing – bad defensive shortstops. From there, they were separated into 2B and 3B pools, but the evidence suggests that the crop of players who end up at 3B are better overall players than their 2B brethren. Why? I have a few theories, and we’ll get into those tomorrow.

Kyle Blanks has certainly made a name for himself in the past two seasons by hitting more than .300 with in both High-A and Double-A, while driving in a total of 207 runs in 251 games. His OPS was above .900 at each level.

The slugging first baseman also won’t be missed on the field, as he checks in 6’6” and 270 lbs. But the big question (pun intended) with Blanks is: “Does he have a future in San Diego?”

The Padres team plays in a spacious stadium that puts an emphasis on pitching and defence. The club already employs a talented offensive and defensive first base in Adrian Gonzalez, who is only 26 years of age and hit .279/.361/.510 with an ISO of .231 in 616 games. He also won his first Golf Glove in 2008.

Blanks is a step below Gonzalez both offensively and defensively – although he quite possibly possesses more raw power. The hulking player is not going to play anywhere on the diamond other than first base or DH, although he is a little more athletic than he looks and did manage to steal 11 bases in 13 attempts in 2007. He also has a strong arm in the field.

It’s possible that Blanks could eventually serve as a pinch hitter and spell Gonzalez – a left-handed batter – at first base during games when the Padres face a tough southpaw, but his potential would be ruined by a bench job – and it might hinder his conditioning efforts.

Blanks’ future is also further muddled by the fact that the Padres organization spent its 2008 first round draft pick on Allan Dykstra, a college first baseman. He made his debut in High-A ball and could be in Double-A before the end of 2009, if all goes well.

The best-case scenario for Blanks is likely a trade out of San Diego to a stadium where his best asset – his power – can be fully realized. But the main problem with that is that San Diego is a long way from contending and clubs rarely trade prospects for prospects. It’s possible, though, they he could be used in a package to help acquire some young MLB pitching, which would benefit the Padres more than a slugging one-dimensional first baseman.

Back before the winter meetings started and there were all kinds of trades and free agent signings to analyze that took up all of our writing here, we were all ridiculously excited about the addition of UZR data the FanGraphs statistics section. Now that we have a lull in transaction analysis, I want to get back to talking about UZR, fielding metrics, and evaluating the best ways to view them. Most of my posts the rest of the week will focus on these issues.

Starting off, I want to talk about positional context. If I asked you who the best defensive player in baseball was, would your answer be Carl Crawford? Probably not. He’s definitely an asset defensively, but does anyone think he’s really the best defensive player in the game? His 2008 UZR/150 is better than everyone else, though, so if you were just sorting the entire league by that metric, Crawford stands head and shoulders above everyone else.

However, we all instinctively understand that the quality of defenders at each position is not even. Crawford rates remarkably well as a left fielder in large part due to the fact that left fielders are lousy defenders as a group. In fact, if we just look at UZR/150 for qualified left fielders in 2008, only three of the 13 players on the list have above average rankings – Crawford at 28.6, Fred Lewis at 12.1, and Matt Holliday at 5.2. The bottom of the list is populated by guys who should be DH’ing – Pat Burrell, Raul Ibanez, and Adam Dunn. Teams use left field as a hiding ground for good hitters with lousy defensive abilities in order to get their bats in the line-up, so when a team like Tampa goes the alternate direction and sticks a good glove in LF, he’s going to look like a superstar, thanks to the relative uselessness of his peers.

If Crawford played CF, which is his more natural position given his defensive abilities, he’d certainly rate a lot lower than +28 runs. This isn’t because CF is any harder to play than LF, but simply because the people he would be compared to are much better defensively than the people he’s compared to as a left fielder. This should seem somewhat obvious, but I’ve seen a lot of people talk about relative defensive rankings for up the middle players being lower because of the harder nature of the position, but it’s really just the peer group that is chosen for comparison.

If Carl Crawford was put into a room of 5’5 people, he’d appear tall. If he was put into a room of 6’5 people, he’d appear short. Think of left field, right field, first base, and designated hitter as positions of short people. You don’t have to actually be the best defensive player in the league to look like a defensive whiz when the standard you’re being held to is so low.

This is why, when you see us talking about total value of a player, you’ll see position adjustments come up in the discussion. Since each player is being rated by UZR relative to average at that position, we have to come up with a scale that neutralizes all of the averages so that they’re somewhat similar to each other.

Tom Tango has developed the most commonly accepted set of positional adjustments out there right now, based on historical data of how players perform when they move from one position to another. His scale is as follows:

Catcher: +12.5 runs
Shortstop: +7.5 runs
Second Base: +2.5 runs
Third Base: +2.5 runs
Center Field: +2.5 runs
Left Field: -7.5 runs
Right Field: -7.5 runs
First Base: -12.5 runs
Designated Hitter: -17.5 runs

Essentially, the width of the spectrum of major league players being used at their best positions is about 30 runs – if you have a league average defensive catcher and you make him a full time DH, you’ve whacked about three wins off of his value.

These positional adjustments match up with common knowledge pretty well – catchers are scarce, shortstops are the best non-catcher defenders, and the immobile stiffs get hidden at DH/1B/LF/RF, depending on how just how immobile they really are. It’s the middle part of the spectrum – second base, third base, and center field – that cause some disagreement. We’ll get into those three positions specifically this afternoon.

Perhaps the biggest non-tender surprise was that of former Houston Astros third baseman Ty Wigginton. Entering his final season of arbitration eligibility, Wigginton expected to make around seven million, making him too expensive for the Astros. The club attempted, and evidently failed, in shopping Wigginton around before non-tendering him last Friday. Thus far, the Giants seem to be the hot team associated with Wigginton.

Wigginton’s 2008 represents his finest offensive season. Hitting 23 homeruns in only 386 at-bats and boasting career high on-base and slugging percentages. Wigginton’s homeruns were driven off of a 18.5 HR/FB%, quite a bit higher than his 13.5% career average and previous high of 16.9%. Wigginton’s other rate statistics, like K% and BB% were for the most part what you would expect.

For the third consecutive season Wigginton’s swings out of the zone increased, this time up to nearly 33% of the time. Of course, Wigginton also got more aggressive within the zone, up to nearly 80%, and was seeing more first pitch strikes than previously. It’s also interesting to note that the pitch types and velocities that Wigginton was seeing were the same he saw in 2007, 2006, and 2005. I suppose the results were a bit better for him though.

In the field, Wigginton is not a very good defender. UZR has him at a generous -3.2 while PMR says -13.52. That’s an average of -8.36 runs and that’s with a career best UZR at third. Add a positional bonus for Wigginton playing third of 2.5, his 15 runs offensively, and the replacement modifier (depending on whether you use 22.5 or 20 runs) and Wigginton comes out as a 2.1-2.2 WAR player last season.

Unfortunately for the team that will sign Wigginton, he’s not quite that good. Sure, he’ll still belt 20 or so homeruns, but not at the rate he did last season, and that’s going to make him around half of his 2008 offensive worth. Marcels calls for 6.2 wRAA in 475 plate appearances; a WAR value between 1.4 and 1.5. Seven million is roughly open market value for a player like Wigginton, but there’s a chance some team sees him as a half of a win better than reality and pays him like such.

One of the more silent names on the winter market thus offseason has been of Orlando Hudson’s. While the demand for shortstops appears strong amongst contending teams, the second base market is considerably dryer and Hudson is suffering from that.

Like Rafael Furcal, Hudson lost a significant portion of 2008 to injury, but much less so, still appearing in over 100 games and performing well. Marcel isn’t willing to up Hudson’s projected PA total much in 2009, but he still clocks in at 488 PA and an above average offensive projection, around 7.5 runs above average when pro-rated out to 600 PAs.

Second baseman get 2.5 runs for their position over a full season, so just like with Furcal, if we project Hudson for a full slate of games, we arrive at a figure of 10 runs over average if projected for 600 PAs. Moving to Hudson’s defense, UZR loved him while he was with Toronto but cooled on him as soon as he moved to Arizona. In the end, we’re left with him rating as roughly a +8 defender in Toronto and roughly a -4 while with Arizona. Now that could just be aging or injury, or just a fluke of the park or league and UZR is just one measurement so it’s really up to you to decide where to peg his defense.

Using -4 and +8 as the range of possibilities, we are left with a player between +6 and +18 runs over average, or between +23 and +35 runs over replacement per 600 PAs (we normalized to 700 last time, but I am using the more realistic 600 PAs this time since the offensive projection was not as well suited to 700 PAs as Furcal’s was.). Sticking with the $5 million per win as the market rate, we get an acceptable range between $11 and $17.5 million per year. First, yes, that’s quite a big range, but I think it’s interesting that for someone with such a high projected value, there’s been tepid interest at best for his services so far. Perhaps teams are really scared about his wrist injury and what that could do to his offense.

Given the deal Furcal is likely about to sign, three plus a vesting or four years outright, a three year deal seems a reasonable estimate for Hudson. If Hudson’s deal ends up being for less than Furcal’s on average, that might turn out to be a steal for whichever team capitalizes on the down market.