Archive for 2008

While surfing through my MLB Extra Innings package the other night I came across a bottom line statistic that piqued my interest: Pirates outfielders had (at the time) a .904 OPS, which led all of baseball. I knew Nate McLouth had gotten off to a scorching start; that Jason Bay had seemingly begun to bounce back from a disappointing 2007; and that Xavier Nady had been producing better than many gave him credit for. What I did not know, however, was that these three have arguably been the most productive outfield in the entire sport.

Looking first at their OPS, the Pirates trio all ranks in the top fifteen amongst major league outfielders. McLouth comes in 5th at .940; Bay in 7th at .932; and Nady in 14th at .886. There are no other threesomes in the top fifteen and, in fact, the only other outfields in the top thirty-five belong to the Cubs and Giants; however, Alfonso Soriano, Mark DeRosa, Kosuke Fukudome, Aaron Rowand, Fred Lewis, and Randy Winn all have a lower OPS than Nady’s .886.

When combined, the Pirates outfield is currently 229-768, in 892 PAs, complete with 55 doubles, 3 triples, 39 home runs, and 114 walks or hit by pitches. Ultimately, they are hitting .298/.385/.535, good for a .920 OPS.

Reverting to WPA furthers their case: all three are in the top twelve amongst major league outfielders. Bay ranks 3rd with a 2.81 WPA; McLouth is 9th at 1.76; and Nady comes in at 12th with a 1.56. Added together, these three have contributed 6.13 wins.

Pat Burrell is far and away the outfield leader, at 4.40, but the next closest Phillies OF Shane Victorino has a -0.96 WPA. Additionally, both Manny Ramirez and J.D. Drew rank in the top ten with a combined 4.64; however, even with Jacoby Ellsbury added in they increase only to 5.26, still almost a full win lower than the Bucs.

If I had to put money on it I would say the Red Sox will surpass the Pirates by the end of the season but, almost halfway through 2008, the 34-37 Pittsburgh Pirates have the most productive outfield in the game.

When J.D. Drew signed his 5 year, $70 million contract with the Red Sox, they were destroyed by national media writers such as Bill Simmons who pushed the narrative that Drew was an unclutch loser who couldn’t perform under pressure and wasn’t any good even when he was healthy. Theo Epstein and company were pilloried for their staunch desire to acquire a high on base outfielder and overlooking all the obvious flaws that made him such a bad player. Drew was held up as the example of the kind of move that statheads make when they don’t get their nose out of a spreadsheet.

Drew has news for that group of writers – you can all apologize now.

Drew has been absolutely sensational so far in 2008, putting up a .315/.424/.576 line that is the best of any American League outfielder. Only Milton Bradley (DH, plays in Texas) and Alex Rodriguez are posting a higher OPS than Drew, and his 2.00 WPA/LI ranks 4th in the league.

He’s doing it through his usual blend of patience (15.8% BB%, #4 in AL) and power (.261 ISO, T-4th in AL), reversing a decline in his isolated slugging percentage over the last few years. His performance has kept the Boston offense rolling despite the struggles and then injury to David Ortiz, and right now, he’s pretty clearly the Red Sox best player.

In the year and a half he’s been with Boston, he’s been worth about 25 runs more than an average hitter. Depending on what you think of his defense, the conclusion is that Drew has been worth about 4 to 5 wins above a replacement level right fielder during his time in Boston. Wins are going for close to $5 million apiece in the free agent market, so if Drew was compensated fairly, we’d expect that he’d have earned between $20-$25 million for his work. Thanks to a $14 million average annual payout, we know that the Red Sox have paid him about $20 million since the contract kicked in – pretty much dead on what he’s been worth.

J.D. Drew is a very good baseball player. The Red Sox are a very good organization. The narrative about both of them was wrong.

The Detroit Tigers minor league system is lacking in blue chip prospects, but the organization is having some luck with re-energized castoffs from other organizations, including Chris Lambert. He is not going to be the savior of the Tigers staff, but he has a chance to contribute at the Major League level, which is something that seemed unlikely even a year ago.

Lambert was originally drafted out of Boston College in the first round (19th overall) by the St. Louis Cardinals in 2004. He had a nice college career and pitched exceptionally well during his first year in the Cardinals system by posting an ERA below three, allowing fewer than nine hits per nine innings and by averaging one strikeout per inning. Things began to unravel, though, midway through the 2005 season when he hit Double-A and Lambert struggled mightily until 2008. He was obtained by the Tigers midway through the 2007 season for washed up Mike Maroth.

Now in Triple-A Toledo, Lambert currently has a 2.97 ERA in 14 starts and has allowed fewer than one hit per inning. He has also struck out 61 batters in 78.2 innings of work. The one downside is that he has been allowing more than one fly ball for every ground ball out, although only four balls have left the yard.

When he was drafted, Lambert possessed a mid-90s fastball and knee-buckling curve ball, along with a developing change-up. His stuff is not what it used to be, but he is learning to be more of a pitcher and less of a thrower. He no longer projects as a potential No. 2 starter, but he could still develop into a workhorse at the back end of the Tigers rotation.

Part of my daily routine involves checking the league leaders page here and sorting by various stats. In doing so this morning I found that there are currently four players, with enough PA to qualify for the leaderboard, who are yet to hit a home run.

Juan Pierre, Julio Lugo, and Jason Bartlett are not necessarily surprising members of the club but, as the title of this post suggests, the fourth member is Victor Martinez. While not a power threat of the Albert Pujols or Ryan Howard ilk, he has hit 16-25 home runs each of the last four years with a steadily increasing OPS of .851-.879 in that span.

Through 54 games this year he has 0 home runs, a .333 SLG, and a .665 OPS. Granted he is injured right now but Indians fans might want to hope the lower numbers are a result of poor health rather than a shift in performance. It’s still too early and his updated projection may not have changed too drastically however something is definitely up.

His flyball percentage of 38.2% last year currently sits at 29.2%. He also has a BABIP of .314 so it is not as if he has been extremely unlucky. His walk and strikeout rates have curiously decreased as well. Plate discipline stats look very similar across the board with the exception of pitches swung at outside the zone. He’s swinging at 29.83% of those OOZ pitches—up from 23.76% last year—yet making essentially the same 76% of contact.

Victor’s first home run in 2007 came in his fifth game; he homered in his second game in 2006; in both his eighth and ninth games in 2005; and his second game in 2004. The 54 homerless games this year is a little over four times the aggregate total preceding his initial dinger in the last four years. With his injury, V-Mart may miss 6-8 weeks, meaning it could be the middle of August before he hits his first home run… if that.

Marlins second baseman Dan Uggla seems primed to post his best offensive season yet. Through 67 games he is hitting .289/.369/.613—a .982 OPS—with 19 home runs, 23 doubles, and 49 RBI. His slash statistics and OPS would all be career highs should the season, for whatever reason, end today. His SLG has surpassed the .600 mark due to 43 extra base hits out of 73 total. His .324 ISO confirms that, yep, Uggla’s got plenty of power.

Interestingly enough, Uggla has been somewhat inconsistent, month to month, this season. In April (and March 31) he proved detrimental, represented by his -0.216 WPA. Since then, however, he has contributed 2.039 wins to the second place Marlins. Even though his June WPA is a positive 0.504, his general statistics look closer to his April than red-hot May:

April: 115 PA, .255/.330/.471, .801 OPS, 4 HR
May: 113 PA, .347/.425/.827, 1.252 OPS, 12 HR
June: 62 PA, .245/.339/.491, .829 OPS, 3 HR

His SLG in May essentially equaled or surpassed his OPS in both April and the first half of June. While a player with a K% as high as Uggla’s–he’s in Ryan Howard territory right now–may not sustain high and respectable batting averages it does not mean he cannot still prove to be a productive power threat. Last year, he hit 31 HR with a .245 BA and a .286 BABIP; right now he’s close to 2/3 of the way toward matching his home run total and he’s got a .289 BA/.351 BABIP helping to increase his productivity.

If the Marlins want to defy the odds and stay in contention until the end of the season, Dannyboy is going to need to sustain some semblance of consistent productivity since most would attest their young pitching staff is not very likely to hold up from now until September 30th.

Matt Lindstrom throws harder than anyone else in baseball. His average fastball velocity is 97 miles per hour, and he breaks triple digits regularly. No one else in baseball is even with 1 MPH of Lindstrom’s average fastball – Jonathan Papelbon is next at 95.6 MPH. The heat is his calling card, and not surprisingly, he throws it a lot – 71% of his pitches are fastballs.

Like a lot of power relievers, Lindstrom’s second pitch is a slider. He throws it 22.2% of the time, and realistically, it’s the pitch he’ll throw you if he’s not going to try to light up the radar. However, Lindstrom’s slider checks in at a more modest 83.9 MPH velocity. That’s not slow by any means, but it’s not even close to being among the hardest in the league – the BIS data here on FanGraphs has him throwing the 101st hardest slider in baseball. Some of those are miscategorized fastballs and cutters, so he’s probably closer to the top 80, but the velocity difference of 13 MPH between his fastball and slider is still pretty staggering.

The people he shares a similar slider velocity with include Bill Bray (91.3 MPH fastball), Seth McClung (93.1 MPH fastball), Jason Frasor (93.9 MPH fastball), Jeremy Guthrie (92.8 MPH fastball), Leo Nunez (94.2 MPH fastball), and Jason Hammel (92.0 MPH fastball). Lindstrom’s 97.0 stands out from that crowd like a sore thumb.

For whatever reason, Lindstrom just doesn’t throw the slider with the same power that he dials up his fastball, and that’s likely one of the main reasons his strikeout rate is lower than you would expect with a guy who can pop triple digits. When he’s bringing the heat, it’s pretty straight, and when you get something that moves, it’s simply not a dominating power pitch anymore.

In my inaugural post here at Fangraphs, back on April 14th (seems like forever ago), I wrote about Phillies leftfielder Pat Burrell and how he had been extremely consistent in his productivity over the last few years. Despite this, his low batting averages, combined with a disastrous 2003 season have led some fans to value and appreciate his production much less than they should. Two months later, Burrell is still producing at a very high level; in fact, according to some metrics he is producing at a higher level than anyone else in the league.

Based on his win probability statistics, Burrell has a higher WPA (4.48) than anyone in the sport. Additionally, his WPA/LI of 2.94 ranks second and his clutch score of 1.29 deems him the third clutchiest player in the major leagues.

He has 18 home runs this year, putting him in a tie for sixth even though it is the third-highest raw total (ironically, the first and second highest raw total belong to, among others, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard). Last year, 51.4% of his balls in play were of the flyball variety; this year it has dipped to 42.4%. However, his HR/FB has actually risen from 16.2% to 24.0%.

Through 70 games, he has produced a .289/.433/.614 slash line, ultimately resulting in a 1.047 OPS. Compare that to his 2005-2007 numbers:

2005: .389 OBP, .504 SLG, .893 OPS
2006: .388 OBP, .502 SLG, .890 OPS
2007: .400 OBP, .502 SLG, .902 OPS
2008: .433 OBP, .614 SLG, 1.047 OPS

The numbers this year are so high they don’t even align in the above table! Okay, it’s still early and it’s doubtful he has changed his pre-season projection that much but he has definitely showed signs of improvement in recent years. This improvement is not evident anywhere moreso than his BB% and K%:

2004: 14.8 BB%, 29.0 K%
2005: 15.0 BB%, 28.5 K%
2006: 17.5 BB%, 28.4 K%
2007: 19.5 BB%, 25.4 K%
2008: 20.3 BB%, 23.2 K%

This has led to a BB/K increase from 0.51 in 2003 to 1.09 right now. Back on April 14th I called for the Phillies to sign Pat the Bat to a short extension, in large part due to his consistent production, love for the city and willingness to offer a hometown discount sorts; it is not very likely this will happen due to the financial situation/obligations of the team and the fact that Burrell has essentially become an AL-type player. If this is indeed Burrell’s last year with the Phillies, fans really need to appreciate the offense he provides so as to avoid generalizing an entire tenure—a quite productive one, might I add—based on one very poor year and a bad barometer such as batting average.

There is no doubt that the Detroit Tigers organization has had a disappointing season up to this point. However, there is good news in the minor league system.

After purging most of its top prospects from the system this past winter to acquire such names as Miguel Cabrera, Edgar Renteria, and Dontrelle Willis, the Tigers organization was rated as having one of the worst systems in the game. But a number of the mid-level prospects in the system have improved their games. As well, top pitching prospect and 2007 first-round pick Rick Porcello made his much-anticipated pro debut.

Porcello, who was drafted out of a New Jersey high school, was considered a Top 10 talent but he fell to the 27th overall pick due to signability concerns. Every team in the league who passed him up now regrets it, as he is holding his own in High-A ball as a 19-year-old. He throws in the mid-90s and has a four-pitch mix that includes a fastball, curve, slider and change-up.

So far this season, Porcello has a 2.94 ERA in 67.1 innings. He has allowed 67 hits and only 19 walks, to go along with 41 strikeouts. Although he is not striking out a ton of batters, Porcello is inducing more than 2.2 ground balls for every fly ball out and only four balls have left the yard. He is actually having better luck against left-handed batters (.222 batting average), than righties (.283).

His worst game of the season came on June 1 when he faced the Dunedin Blue Jays for the fourth time in a month. He allowed four earned runs on nine hits and three walks over 4.2 innings. Porcello was been excellent so far in his pro career despite skipping over both short season ball and low A-ball. He could end up being one of the first pitchers from the 2007 draft to make it to the majors, which is good news for the Detroit Tigers.

A lot has gone right so far this year for the Chicago Cubs – they have the best record in baseball led by an offense that scores runs in a hurry. It takes more than one breakthrough performance to create this kind of improvement in one winter, and so while the credit has to be passed around, no player’s surge has been more unexpected or helpful than that of Ryan Dempster.

Dempster was a rather pedestrian reliever the last few years with Chicago, missing bats but also having problems finding the strike zone on a consistent basis. Like a lot of right-handed pitchers who use a fastball/slider combination as their two main pitches, he also struggled significantly against left-handers. His career splits vs batter handedness are below:

Vs RHB: .246/.324/.379, 2.09 K/BB, 1 HR per 40 AB
Vs LHB: .280/.386/.456, 1.23 K/BB, 1 HR per 28 AB

With significant platoon splits, relief work seemed the best fit for Dempster, so he could be used primarily against same handed hitters. As a starter, the opposing manager would have the ability to load up the line-up with lefties and let the offense go nuts. There wasn’t much there to suggest that Dempster was going to be a quality starting pitcher.

However, Dempster has taken the challenge of facing more left-handed bats and answered it with gusto. His 2008 splits:

Vs RHB: .193/.295/.289, 1.54 K/BB, 1 HR per 55 AB
Vs LHB: .177/.247/.304, 3.15 K/BB, 1 HR per 32 AB

He has more strikeouts against lefties than he does against righties, and he’s putting them on with the free pass far less often than in years past. His pitch selection doesn’t appear to have changed much, mixing in a change-up (that Lou Piniella calls a splitter and has similar downward movement) about 1/3 of the time against lefties and keeping the slider as a weapon against right-handed hitters.

Whether his change/split has really improved or, more likely, this is just an unsustainable excellent performance, the Cubs have to be thrilled with how the Dempster-to-the-rotation move has worked. He’s not going to post a 2.81 ERA this year, but even a regression to his 3.78 FIP would make him a quality starting pitcher. If he can continue to keep left-handed hitters in check, the Cubs will have found themselves another strong arm to slot in behind Carlos Zambrano in their chase to end the curse of the billy goat.

The biggest move this offseason saw Johan Santana heading to the Mets in exchange for Carlos Gomez and some more prospects. The former two-time (should be three-time) Cy Young Award winner looked to solidify a pitching rotation that seemed more than capable of making fans forget all about last year’s end of season breakdown. Coming off of a relative down year—a down year for him was still better than the up year of most others—there were some who questioned whether or not Johan would be able to regain whatever made him successful pre-2007.

One of the biggest reasons his performance suffered last year came in the form of home run balls. From 2003-2006 his HR/9 ranged from 0.85-0.97; in 2007 it jumped to 1.36 as he allowed 33 dingers. I recently took a look at his Pitch F/X data over the last year and a half to see if he had done anything differently on hits as compared to fouls or swinging strikes. The results also showed that his home run balls—or other hard hit balls—generally came from pitches not just with lesser velocity and/or movement but also very poor location: Most of his home run balls came on pitches right down the middle.

In Johan’s first 60 innings this season he surrendered 11 HR; over his last 34.2 he has surrendered just one.

First 9: 60.0 IP, 52 H, 11 HR, 15 BB, 57 K
Last 5: 34.2 IP, 36 H, 1 HR, 9 BB, 29 K

Of course it is too small of a sample to generate definitive conclusions but we can still investigate and make observations pertaining to whether or not any discrepancies in relevant Pitch F/X data exist in this split. For starters, here are the velocity and movement data for his first nine starts:

FA: 90.54 mph, 5.63 horiz/9.22 vert
SL: 84.18 mph, -0.98 horiz/4.53 vert
CH: 79.69 mph, 5.51 horiz/8.13 vert

And here is the same data in his last five starts:

FA: 92.39 mph, 6.68 horiz/9.64 vert
SL: 84.89 mph, -0.57 horiz/4.64 vert
CH: 79.94 mph, 6.48 horiz/7.54 vert

He has thrown harder and with more movement lately. One of the problems with his hard hit balls, as mentioned above, dealt with the percentage of pitches he threw down the middle. Here are his splits of pitches thrown down the middle:

First 9: 11.5%
Last 5: 11.9%

Though it appears he has thrown slightly more down the middle recently the small sample detracts from any real discrepancy. How about his accuracy? Here is his Ball/Strike/In Play breakdown for the first nine starts, followed by the last five:

K: 46.8%, 45.1%
B: 35.1%, 34.5%
X: 18.1%, 20.4%

Speaking of balls put in play, have any less fallen in for hits lately?

Outs In Play: 67.5%, 64.2%
Hits In Play: 32.5%, 35.8%

Despite sustaining a similar level of accuracy and balls put in play he has actually allowed a slightly higher percentage of those in play to fall in for hits. Looking at his WHIP in these two different spans (1.12 compared to 1.25) it seems that he was hit less in the early going though those hits were of a higher value than recently, despite the increase in hits given up lately. Lastly, has he gotten ahead of hitters any more or less lately? Here is his first-pitch strike split:

First 9: 51.2%
Last 5: 44.8%

All told, not much can truly be garnered in terms of data discrepancies but Johan has gotten ahead of hitters less as of late, has essentially sustained his patterns of accuracy, is throwing virtually the same percentage of pitches down the middle, and is allowing more hits. All of these signs would intuitively point toward similar or worse performance and yet he has thrown better lately. Perhaps his increase in velocity and movement over his last five starts has prevented hitters from getting the fat part of the bat on the ball quite as often. Definitely something to look out for as the season progresses.