Earlier this offseason I penned a couple of posts discussing the similarities and differences of both Andy Pettitte and Derek Lowe. At those stages, both pitchers were being heavily pursued by the Yankees and it seemed more than likely that only one of them would don pinstripes. Many were calling for Lowe to join a “super-rotation” already featuring CC Sabathia, Chien-Ming Wang, A.J. Burnett, and Joba Chamberlain. A few commenters aptly asked what the big difference was between Lowe and Pettitte.

In fact, some outright claimed that Pettitte was the better decision because a) his stats and projection were not unsimilar to those of Lowe, and b) Pettitte would only require a 1-yr deal. Lowe eventually signed a 4-yr/$60 mil deal with the Braves that came very close to properly valuing his projected contributions.

Over the last three seasons, Lowe has averaged +4.4 wins, with Pettitte at +4.2. Factoring in a bit of decline, both appear to be capable of 3.6-4.0 wins next season. At +3.8 wins, Pettitte’s fair market value is $17.1 mil. At +3.4, $15.3 mil. And, at +2.8, $12.6. Why those numbers? Well, Pettitte signed yesterday for $5.5 mil guaranteed with incentives potentially bumping the deal up to $12 mil. Those different win calculations were examples of my own thinking out loud to see how the Yankees are valuing his contributions.

I would venture a guess that the incentives are very easily reachable for someone with Pettitte’s track record. Otherwise, I’m sure he would have worked harder to increase the guaranteed portion of the contract. The Yankees are adding someone with similar win value to that of Lowe, for one year, and a lower average annual value. And, they are apparently paying a +3.7 or so win player as a +2.6 win player, assuming the incentives kick in.

Many are claiming that Pettitte is the “fifth” starter. Well, for all intents and purposes, that is one extremely good fifth starter given his likely #2 or #3 spot on 70% of the remaining teams out there. His signing isn’t blocking anyone outside of, say, Phil Hughes, but perhaps the team feels he needs another year split between the bullpen and rotation before he is deemed ready. Either way, Pettitte’s contract is up after this year, so the roadblock will go away. Overall, a great contract for the Yankees. Many people underestimate how effective Pettitte can be.

Add another quality arm to a bullpen chocked full of them. Russ Springer appears close to signing a one-year, 3 million dollar deal (with incentives) and joining the Oakland Athletics. The Athletics relief corps contributed roughly 5 wins, that’s more than the Cubs, Diamondbacks, Twins, and Rays bullpens and more than the Pirates, Brewers, Cardinals, Mets, Orioles, Astros, Giants, Marlins, Nationals, and Padres combined. and only have two notable members to replace – Alan Embree (4.53 FIP) and Huston Street (3.47 FIP).

Over the last three years Springer has recorded win values of -0.1, 1.1, and 0.6, or an average of ~0.5, which puts him worth just under 2.5 million. Springer could very well see an increase in leverage situations, and thus an increase in value. Springer had a 3.51 FIP last season and moving forward CHONE projects 3.97 while Marcels spits out 4.01. We’ll say a 4 FIP and 50 innings, that puts him pretty close to being worth 3 million. It’s important to remember that Springer is going to a pitchers paradise, meaning his out-by-air methods will play better, but it’s a bit hard to imagine Springer having a sub-6% homerun per flyball percentage for the third consecutive year.

Given the current personnel in the A’s pen, we can probably expect the construction to involve Joey Devine or Brad Ziegler in the 8th and 9th, Jerry Blevins as the LOOGY – although he can face righties with more success than most left-handed pitchers – and Springer pitching in the 7th. I’m curious if Billy Beane would attempt to “build a closer” using Springer, and then potentially spin him off if the Athletics were out of contention in July.

Since the Cardinals chose against offering Springer arbitration, this move won’t signal the loss of a draft pick, leaving the Athletics in position to add Orlando Cabrera if they so choose. Such an addition would leave the Athletics creeping even closer into contention for the American League West.

I spent the last week on my newest tool, which analyzes play by play in order to rate catchers on their throwing.

The task is to seperate the catcher’s ability to throw out base stealers from that of the pitchers they are teamed with. My initial table, extracted from the RetroSheet events for 2003-2008, contains IDs for the catcher, pitcher, baserunner, the hand of the pitcher and batter, natural or artificial turf, and the the number of steal opportunities and total of each type of result for each combination of these factors. For each catcher, for each season and base, there is how he did with each pitcher (the observed values). In a WOWY fashion, that is compared to the results for each of those pitchers, over the past six seasons, with every other catcher (the expected values). The sum of all players forms the mean values. Using a variation of the Odds Ratio I’ve called the Inverse James Function, I then calculate what true talent level would give us that observed value, given the expected and the mean.

The mean CS% for the past six seasons is .243. If a player’s observed value is the same as his expected, then his normal value is equal to the league mean. If the observed is higher (or lower) than expected, then the normal will be higher (or lower) than the mean, with the normal value limited to between 0 and 1.

Check out the top 5. What’s on that gene pool? Bengie, who’s always been a little better than average, had a great season despite adverse expectations, and jumped to the head of the list ahead of his brothers. Jason Kendall has been on a roller coaster, being average, average, poor, average, poor and very good the past six years. Despite the fluctations, averaging all that together, he projects as league average for next year. Most of the values are consistent from year to year.

Henry Blanco is the “career” leader of the six year period, with a normal CS% of .445, and a runs allowed above average (RAA) of 10.1 per 1800 base stealing opportunities. He’s followed by Yadier Molina at .442 and Gerald Laird at .406. The worst rates are Gary Bennett .139, Michael Barrett .152 and Mike Piazza .160, with Piazza having the worst R/1800 at -12.1. At age 36, Blanco has shown no signs of slowing down, having a normal CS% over .500 in 3 of the past 4 seasons.

On the other hand, Jason Varitek and Brad Ausmus, two catchers with a past record of defensive accolades, have both shown sharp downward trends. Varitek’s normal CS% has been .419, .255, .211, .160, .139 and .118, dropping from very good to very bad. Ausmus similarly has marks of .308, .222, .180, .169, .103 and .136.

Despite four consecutive years of poor throwing, the rate of steal attempts versus Ausmus has been at or below average, likely based on his past reputation and the ability of his pitchers to hold runners. Ivan Rodriguez, who in the 1990’s routinely had observed CS% of over .500, has the past two seasons only been slightly better than average at .273 and .275. Although the rate attempt rate against Rodriguez has risen to .040 (average=.047), over the last six years he has the lowest rate at .029, followed by Rod Barajas at .036, Joe Maurer .037, Toby Hall .038, Chris Snyder .038 and Ausmus .040. The catchers run against most often have been Mike Piazza .074, Brandon Inge .066, Victor Martinez .060, Paul LoDuca .058 and Michael Barrett .055.

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For the sake of transparency, there was a bug on the team totals page for pitchers values only where some pitchers who switched teams mid-season were not being included in the team totals.

This did not effect any of the individual pitcher values, only the team totals.

Update: There’s been one additional change made where relievers are now not as highly influenced by leveraged. This change was made to properly align positional player win values with pitcher win values. Only pitchers who pitched in extremely low leverage, or extremely high leverage situations will be effected, and at most by about 1 win.

Alternate title: Exalt to the heavens! The Royals got one right.

The news broke early today that Zack Greinke had signed to a four-year extension, buying out a pair of arbitration and free agency years each. Unsure of when the financial details would be leaked, I went ahead and started out sketching out the projection for Greinke’s value.

The first, and hardest step, in pitcher evaluation is settling on a projection for him. As per my usual course of action, I sampled a couple different systems, notably CHONE and Marcel and then threw in some looks on his past xFIPs and tRA* values. Greinke is one of the more rather difficult cases to project because his playing time has been all over the map, but not completely due to physical injuries. How do we project his innings pitched going forward? Do we apply the same sort of emotional/mental risk as we normally do with physical injuries for other pitchers?

Luckily, CHONE and Marcel provide, based on the couple other areas that I surveyed as well, perfect bookends to what I consider the reasonable projections for Greinke going forward; Marcel being the most optimistic and CHONE the most pessimistic. The league average FIP was right near 4.40 in 2008, so assuming that the projection systems maintain that the league will repeat itself, I plugged the FIP and innings pitched estimates from CHONE (3.97 over 137 IP) and Marcel (3.67 over 160 IP) into the winning percentage formula that I noted in my review of Brian Fuentes.

The resulting win totals were 3.5 wins out of Marcel and 2.5 out of CHONE. My own projection system for pitchers pegged Greinke at a tad over 3.0 wins itself so I feel pretty comfortable about the 2.5-3.5 range as a projection. Granted, I think that’s a projection with more possible room for upside than downside so the dollar figures are going to be a touch on the conservative side given that most systems are going to be skeptical about Greinke’s ability to log high-quality innings based on his years prior to 2008.

Salaries have stagnated this offseason and so I have been maintaining the use of $4.5 million per win as the general cost to teams on the open market. It might turn out to be a bit higher or lower once the market wraps up, but I don’t think it’s hitting the $5 million market that many thought at the onset of the offseason. With those parameters, plus the known 40/60/80 breakdown for arbitration values, I arrived at a fair market payout of $34 million to $48 million.

That is a pretty big range, but remarkably the Royals came in close to the bottom rung of that, with the AP reporting that the contract is worth $38 million guaranteed. The Royals are paying Greinke like a sub-3 WAR pitcher and for someone of Greinke’s capability, that’s a steal. The trend continues of extensions through arbitration years being a boon for teams and free gent signings being a mostly bust.

At just 23 years of age, Joba Chamberlain has already proven himself to be an incredibly dominating force. In 124.1 big-league innings, the Nebraska native has posted a 2.49 FIP exceeded by a 2.17 ERA. He has been fanning batters at a rate of 11 per nine innings while keeping his BB/9 right around 3.2. Despite these gaudy numbers, where he belongs is actually discussed much more than what he has done.

The Joba camp is split: some want him in the rotation while others feel he best serves the team in a setup man capacity. As RJ showed not too long ago, outside of closers, most other relievers simply are not worth that many wins. Ryan Madson had a very solid season and produced no more than +1.3 wins. It’s tough to surpass the production of Hong-Chih Kuo, and he managed +2.4 wins.

Last season, Kuo posted a 2.28 FIP in 80 innings. Is Joba’s projection as a reliever really that much better than Kuo’s 2008 performance, even with the added leverage taken into account? Unless the level of important in his innings are absolutely off the charts, I cannot see Joba as anything north of +2.6 wins as a reliever.

For his best utilization to come as a reliever, his projection as a starter would need to be below that output. The projections on our site are quite low for Joba, but a compromise of 150 IP at a 3.68 FIPRA, in his 9.35 run environment, pegs him at +3.8 wins. In other words, if he suffers a vast decline in FIP with the added workload, Chamberlain still ends up over a full win more productive as a member of the rotation.

How would he produce below +2.6 wins as a starter in 150 IP? He would need approximately a 4.40 FIPRA in 150 innings, which translates to a 4.10 FIP, to be exactly +2.6 wins. Basically, the only way it makes any sense to use him out of the bullpen is if the Yankees think Chamberlain can really surpass Kuo’s 2008 season or if, for whatever reason, they feel his numbers will sharply dropoff to a 4.10 FIP. In other words, it would take an awful lot for his usage in the bullpen to make sense.

Just like Johan Santana in 2003, Joba is much too good to be used as a one-inning reliever. If he fails as a starter, fine, put him in during the eighth inning, but do not waste the electric stuff of this 23-yr old phenom without at least trying.

As we mentioned this afternoon, adding up our individual win values for an entire team correlates very well with a team’s pythag win%, which should be expected since both are based on runs scored and runs allowed. However, while RS/RA does not account for the inning/score part of leverage, it does include the base/out portion of leverage. When looking at how many teams a run scores, a single with a runner on third will add to the total while a single with no one on will not. However, in our context neutral win values, all singles are treated the same – we do not account for the base/out context or the inning/score context.

Thus, you will still see some variation between team win values and team pythag wins. The Boston Red Sox are the best example of this from 2008. They won 95 games, had a pythag win expecation of 96 games, and had a team win value of 106 games. Their pythag matched their actual wins very well, but their win values had them as the best team in baseball, bar none.

Where does the difference lie? Performance in the base/out contexts. For instance, here’s how the Red Sox performed offensively in various base/out states, and their rank within that base/out split.

Overall OPS: .805 OPS, #2 in MLB
Bases Empty: .797 OPS, T-#1 in MLB
Men On Base: .814 OPS, #4 in MLB
Bases Loaded: .854 OPS, #7 in MLB

Only the Chicago Cubs could match the Red Sox in bases-empty hitting. Those two clubs started rallies more often than anyone else. However, Boston wasn’t as good at clearing the bases and capitalizing on their opportunities to score runs in bunches. The average MLB team had an OPS 18% higher with the bases loaded than with the bases empty – Boston’s OPS only rose 7% with the bases juiced.

This should actually be a bit scary for the rest of the AL East. What we’re saying, essentially, is that the Red Sox offense should have scored more than the 854 runs they actually compiled last year. On a context-neutral talent level, they performed even better than their 96 pythag wins would suggest. Their results suggest they were very good – the process behind those results suggest they were great.

Very few teams strayed as far from their win values in terms of their pythag wins as Boston. Almost all of a team’s RS/RA can be predicted by their context-neutral performance – the remainder is pretty marginal. That’s why win values correlate so well with pythag wins, and why they’re a pretty good estimator of team talent levels.

The Oliver projection system for batters is now available in the player pages, projections pages, and you can get a customized player list using the my projections feature.

Huge thanks to Brian Cartwright for allowing us to use his projections and you can read all about them at Statistically Speaking.

The Pittsburgh Pirates organization is considering Ross Ohlendorf for one of the club’s vacant starting pitcher slots. The Pirates’ best starter in 2008 – Paul Maholm – managed just nine wins on the year but amassed a club-leading 206.1 innings with 201 hits allowed. The next closest innings total was 185, by Zach Duke (who also gave up 230 hits). Ian Snell also contributed a disappointing season, as did Tom Gorzelanny.

Ohlendorf spent the majority of the 2008 season at the Major League level in the bullpen with the New York Yankees. He was then inserted into the starting rotation for five starts with the Pirates after coming over in the Xavier Nady/Jose Tabata swap. The right-handed pitcher was originally selected out of Princeton University by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the fourth round of the 2004 amateur draft. He was sent to New York in a deal for Randy Johnson prior to the 2007 season.

In 2008, Ohlendorf made 12 minor league starts – five for the Yankees and seven for the Pirates. He also made 25 relief appearances in New York and allowed 50 hits in 40 innings (more than 11 hits per nine innings). His strikeout rate was good at 8.1 K/9 but he struggled with his control and posted a walk rate of 4.3 BB/9.

In five starts with Pittsburgh, Ohlendorf allowed 36 hits in 22.2 innings of work. His rates were even worse in the starting rotation, as his strikeout rate plummeted to 5.2 K/9 and his walk rate rose to 4.8 BB/9. Combined on the season, he allowed a BABIP of .373 and a line-drive rate of 23.5%.

Given that it was Ohlendorf’s first significant season in the Majors, he could be given a bit of a break. A lot of players struggle in their first MLB season and then go on to have great careers. But the truth of the matter is that Ohlendorf’s minor league numbers were never that great. He’s shown good control with a walk rate of 2.3 BB/9, but he’s allowed 562 hits in 520.2 minor league innings. The 6’4” hurler has not allowed fewer hits than innings pitched in a single season since his debut in short-season ball in 2004.

Ohlendorf has good stuff – his fastball averages out around 93.5 mph and he throws a good slider and an occasional change-up – but he is still learning how to pitch and he’ll turn 27 in 2009. Working in his favor for 2009 is that the Pirates don’t have any clear help in the upper minors, aside from Daniel McCutchen, who also came over from the Yankees in the Nady trade. The biggest threats to his starting aspirations, with MLB experience, are Phil Dumatrait and Jeff Karstens. Dumatrait, a southpaw, spent the 2008 season acting as a swingman for Pittsburgh and was not effective. He allowed 82 hits in 78.2 innings and posted rates of 4.81 BB/9 and 5.95 K/9. Karsten, another acquisition from the Yankees, pitched OK for the Pirates in nine starts but his success came from smoke and mirrors. He is also suffering from elbow soreness, which could delay his 2009 season.

Ohlendorf is as deserving of a shot at starting as any other pitcher in the Pirates system. But that speaks more to how poor the other options are, than it does about his chances of success.

Here on Fangraphs there have been a lot of posts on the relative value of different positions. I agree with the idea that position adjustments should be based on relative defensive skill and player scarcity (as the infield positions draw talent from a smaller pool; lefthanders can’t play there) as opposed to the inverse of batting production.

Using my TotalZone defensive data (based on retrosheet play by play files) I looked at defensive differentials by decade, from the 1950’s (actually starting with 1953) to the 2000’s. I look at players who played two different positions in the same year, and aggregate all such player-seasons grouped by decade. With grouping by decade, I’ve increased the sample size of players. I’m also limiting my sample size by only looking at players who played multiple positions in one season, but this is necessary to avoid distortion caused by aging – such as a player who was a shortstop in 1961 and a third baseman in 1968. I’m leaving out catchers and first basemen and focusing on the relative value of outfielders, second and third basemen, and shortstops.

For the most recent time period, I use Tango Tiger’s position adjustments, which are also used here on Fangraphs on the player valuation sections. They are:

SS +7.5
2B, 3B, CF +2.5
LF, RF –7.5

The TotalZone data is reasonably close to this. Center fielders are 8.7 runs per full season better than corner outfielders. Shortstops are 4.7 runs better than third basemen and 4.2 runs better than second basemen. Second basemen are 1.4 runs better than third basemen. The results are not identical, but close enough that I don’t see value in arguing about them. You could make 2B +3 and 3B +2, and still be in balance, but it’s only half a run.

Tango’s adjustments show an average gap of 8.3 runs between the three infield positions and the 3 outfield positions. TotalZone shows only a 3.2 run difference when looking at players who played both infield and outfield in the same season. Are we overvaluing infielders?

There are two problems here. One is handedness, all players can potentially play the outfield, but only right-handed throwers play the infield. In addition, movement between the positions is almost entirely one-way. Teams have no trouble taking an infielder and asking him to play the outfield. Some examples off the top of my head are Jerry Hairston, Willie Bloomquist, Ryan Freel, and Chone Figgins. How many outfielders are sent to play second, third, and short? Very, very few, mostly in emergency situations, such as when multiple players get hurt or the game goes deep into extra innings. I’m not forgetting Juan Rivera’s second base appearance last year, but I doubt the Angels plan on him doing it again.

I think that in the case of infielders vs. outfielders it is appropriate to look at the relative offense at the positions. I don’t think this is appropriate to compare center fielders to left fielders, if center fielders outhit left fielders and outfield them, then they are better players, period, and we should not artificially set the positions as equal in value. For 2000 to 2008, outfielders hit better than infielders to the tune of 11.3 runs per season. Average this with the observed defensive difference and we get 7.3 runs, just one off from what Tango’s adjustments imply. For previous decades, I will use the average offensive and defensive adjustments between the infield and outfield groups. Within the groups, my adjustments will be completely based on the defensive differences.

1990’s:

The gap between infield and outfield is very similar- 12.7 on offense, 3.5 on defense, an average of 8.1. Center fielders were 10.6 runs better than corner outfielders. So far, it looks pretty similar. Shortstops, however, were 7.6 runs better than third basemen and 6.3 runs better than second basemen. There was only a 0.2 gap between second and third, in favor of the second basemen. For this decade, I’ll change things a bit by giving more credit to the shortstops. The 1990s adjustments:

SS +9
2B +2
3B +1.5
CF +2.5
RF, LF –7.5

The 1980’s

Here we have a larger gap between infield and outfield, 15.8 on offense, 5.1 on defense, for a 10.5 average. There is only a 7.5 run gap between corner outfielders and center, and this should not be a surprise. In recent years we’ve seen Adam Dunn, Manny Ramirez, Raul Ibanez, Josh Willingham, Carlos Lee, Hideki Matsui, Pat Burrell, and Jack Cust play left field. That lumbering group represents more than 25% of starting left fielders. In the 1980’s we had Rickey!, Tim Raines, Vince Coleman, Willie Wilson, and Gary Redus playing left field. I’m sure there were some terrible left fielders back then as well, and guys like Carl Crawford, Eric Byrnes, and Dave Roberts buck the trend, but I think that on average the left fielder of 1985 was faster than his 2005 counterpart.

Shortstops were 6.6 runs better than third basemen and 3.3 better than second basemen. Second basemen were 4.7 runs ahead of third basemen.

For the 1980’s I use these adjustments:

SS + 9, 2B +5, 3B +1
CF +0, RF, LF –7.5

The 1970’s

The infield/outfield gap keeps getting bigger as we go back in time, for this decade it’s 20.2 on offense and 8.6 on defense. Center fielders had only a 5.6 run advantage on the corners. Second basemen were 7.6 runs worse than shortstops, but 3.4 run better than third basemen. So if we add that up, shortstops must have been 10 or more runs better than third basemen, right?

If only it was that easy. In fact, players who played both third and short in the 1970’s were 1.1 runs worse as third basemen. Sometimes the pieces of this data puzzle do not fit very well together. In every other decade, shortstops were at least 4.7 runs better than third basemen and at least 6.6 runs excluding the 2000’s. For the 1970’s the other pieces – shortstop to 2B, 2B to 3B, show the normal pattern. Chalk this one up to a fluke, and I’ll try to make the adjustments make sense.

The adjustments:

SS +10
2B, 3B +4
CF –2
LF, RF –8

The 1960’s

The infield/outfield gap was the same as the 1970’s on offense, 20.2 runs, and 3.7 runs on defense. Center fielders were 8.7 runs ahead of corner outfielders. Shortstops had a 7.2 run advantage on third and 5.1 on second. 2B and 3B were essentially even with a 0.2 run difference (2B slightly better). Since those two were equal, I kept them as equals in the adjustments, and averaged their gap with shortstop to make the shortstops 6 runs better than other infielders.

The adjustments:

SS +10
2B, 3B +4
CF +0
RF, LF -9

And finally the 1950’s

Outfielders out-hit infielders by 19.9 runs, while infielders had an 8.7 run defensive advantage. Center fielders were 7.2 runs better than corner outfielders. Shortstops were 7.5 runs ahead of third base, and 5.3 runs ahead of second. Those last two figures are similar to the 1960’s, but since second baseman had a 3 run advantage on third base, I changed their relative value a bit in the adjustments:

SS +10
2B +5
3B +2
CF –1
LF, RF –8

Using these position adjustments will lead to conclusions that not all positions are created equal. Sometimes we might find that center fielders hit as well or better than corner outfielders. Or else shortstops hit the same or equal as second basemen. Their defensive value is still superior, and in such situations we’ll find that one position has a better collection of baseball talent than another has. Most likely you’ll find that teams recognize this, and pay the positions differently as well.