The baseball world lost its oldest former player yesterday, when 100-yr old Bill Werber passed away. Last summer, and practically up until September, Bill and I shared several conversations. The last living teammate of Babe Ruth, and member of the great 1939-40 Cincinnati Reds teams, Werber had been helping me with research for a book on Bucky Walters. I quickly learned that, despite his age, Werber’s memory surpassed many of those not even one-third of his age.

Bill received his first major league callup in 1927 as a member of the Yankees. He didn’t see any playing time but was told it would benefit him greatly to sit on the bench and learn from the likes of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and skipper Miller Huggins. The boys largely ignored him, though, as the callup came in the midst of a pennant race, and he felt very alone. His official career would not begin until 1930, three years later, when he played a mere four games with the Bronx Bombers.

Three more years later, as a 25-yr old, Werber found himself traded to the arch-nemesis Red Sox after just three games in Yankees pinstripes. In 108 games with Boston, Bill hit .259/.312/.379, a .323 wOBA worth -2.6 runs below average. Perhaps the experience was all he needed, because Werber went on a tear from 1934-1940, putting together a very impressive 7-yr run. In that 1934 season, his best, he hit .321/.397/.472, an .868 OPS and .400 wOBA that produced +34 runs above average.

From 1935-1940, even though he failed to match the .400 wOBA, the same metric ranged from .358-.375. Never much of a slugger, the bulk of Werber’s success came in the ability to get on base. In the same 7-yr span, his OBP ranged from .357-.397. In 1934, as you will soon hear below, Werber injured his toe and was never the same player again. His statistics do not suggest anything of the sort. As an interesting sidenote, he is also the first batter to ever appear on a televised major league game, a fact he had no idea about for quite some time.

He retired twice, once after the 1941 season, and once more after the 1942 season. How he was coaxed back into the major leagues after the first retirement will be left to Mr. Werber himself to explain. All told, Werber finished his 11-yr career with a .357 wOBA and +86.8 batting runs above average.

To honor the former three-time stolen base champion and igniter of the 1939-40 dynamic Reds teams, I have pieced together eight minutes of one of the recorded interviews I have with him. He will explain how he injured his toe, which happens to be one of those zany injuries, as well as how his career ended on two different occasions. Lastly, he will explain how the Reds infield of Frank McCormick, Lonny Frey, Billy Meyers, and himself came to be known as “The Jungle Club.” In advance, let me apologize for the quality, as this interview was conducted more for research purposes and I didn’t expect to publish any of it.

Today, moving on from yesterday where we looked how Felix’s overall fastball percentage moved as the game wore on. This time, I drop the overall view and instead treat each pitch number separately to get a sense of when (besides early in the game) that Felix dials up the heater. Included in this graph is a red bar marking his overall average for all pitches and a rolling 5-pitch average to give you a more smoothed sense of the trend.

We see that Felix reaches his overall average at about the 20-pitch mark into a game and then hovers around that mark for the remainder of the start, with some obvious variation. It is still a clear downward trend over time.

I decided to zoom in on those first 20 pitches, where Felix throws a fastball just under 80% of the time. Take a breath and soak that in first; on average, 16 of the first 20 pitches that Hernandez offers at the beginning of a game are a fastball. That’s predictability to an extreme and if I can spot it, you better be sure that opposing advanced scouts can spot it.

Here I made a time line of Felix’s 2008 season and in blue you will see the percentage of fastballs thrown in the first 20 pitches for each start. Again the horizontal red line marks Felix’s overall fastball ratio and I have included a horizontal green line to mark Felix’s average fastball ratio amongst this sample.

Next time, I will take a look at the games where Felix does exhibit some differences in pitch selection at the onset.

Philadelphia Phillies GM Ruben Amaro, Jr has had his hands full this offseason. Not a ton has been done with regards to the free agent market, but seemingly half the team was eligible for arbitration this year and only one player, Ryan Howard, may actually go to court. Amaro managed to settle with the likes of Joe Blanton, Shane Victorino, Chad Durbin, Eric Bruntlett, and Clay Condrey. He also signed Greg Dobbs, Cole Hamels, and Ryan Madson to contract extensions.

The most recent player to sign such an extension was Jayson Werth, a rightfielder who soared under the radar to produce a +4.7 win season in 2008.

Now, some of Werth’s worth may have been inflated due to facing predominantly lefthanded pitching to start the season. He feasts on lefties (as evidenced by his MLB-leading 16 HR against southpaws) and didn’t have to face righties while platooning with Geoff Jenkins. Had he faced righties more often, his value may have diminished a bit. No matter how you slice it, though, he was one of the most valuable Phillies last season, combining 20 HR/20 SB offense with a +16 UZR rating.

The 2-yr deal will pay Werth $10 mil. He will earn $3 mil in 2009, a third of which comes as a signing bonus. The remaining $7 mil will become his salary in 2010. With the signing, both sides were able to avoid arbitration, where their figures differed by only $1 mil — $4 mil from Werth, $3 mil from the team. The deal buys out his final arbitration year as well as his first free agent season.

Next season, Werth projects to about +15 runs with the bat and +8 in the field. He will be the full-time starter meaning his adjustments for value above replacement and position will rise. Assuming 140 GP and 600 PA, Werth projects to +3.6 wins. At fair market value, that is $16.2 mil. Since he was eligible for arbitration, however, the 40/60/80 modifier comes into play. Even if we took 20% of his fair market value, $3.2 mil, the Phillies still walk away as big winners here.

At around +3.2 wins in 2010, assuming a slight decline, Werth’s fair market value would command around $15 mil. The Phillies have a player likely to produce close to +7 wins and $31 mil for one-third of the price.

One of the truisms in sports is that whenever an organization emerges as a new success story by doing things unconventionally, other teams often try to copy the pattern. In football, we’ve seen this with the rise of the west coast offense after the 49’ers rose to power in the 1980s, and in basketball, we’ve seen teams get away from big line-ups after the Phoenix Suns won a lot of games with their seven seconds or less philosophy. Last year, the Tampa Bay Rays were the new success story, one of the foundations of that success was their outfield defense.

Carl Crawford is, for all intents and purposes, a center fielder. He’s just been assigned to left field for the Rays. B.J. Upton is the prototypical center fielder with long strides and blazing speed. And, while Gabe Gross might not look like a center fielder, he’s performed like one during his major league career. These three spent the majority of the time in the outfield for the Rays last year, and were the reason why Tampa racked up a +45 UZR from their outfield in 2008.

Based on what we’re seeing in Baltimore and Seattle, it appears that the Three CF model of outfields that Tampa made en vogue is catching on in other cities as well.

The Orioles just completed a trade for Felix Pie, an outstanding defensive outfielder who has struggled to hit major league pitching so far in his career. Those struggles haven’t carried over to the outfield, though, where Pie’s UZR/150 in limited playing time is +11.2. Based on the scouting reports, his physical skills, and even the limited data we have, there’s significant evidence to suggest that Pie is a well above average defensive center fielder. The Orioles, however, have tapped him to play left field, where he’ll roam alongside Adam Jones (+4.6 UZR/150 as a CF last year) and Nick Markakis (+3.6 UZR/150 as an RF last year).

With Pie and Jones, the O’s have two above average center fielders. Markakis, the least rangy of the three, is still above average for a corner OF and is better defensively than some players masquerading as center fielders (Josh Hamilton, I’m looking at you). With an outfield of Pie/Jones/Markakis, the Orioles should expect something like a +15 to +25 UZR from that trio, which would almost certainly give them one of the best defensive outfields in baseball.

However, depending on how Jack Zduriencik fills out his roster in Seattle, it probably won’t be the best. Right now, the Mariners are looking at a potential outfield of Endy Chavez in LF, Franklin Gutierrez in CF, and Ichiro Suzuki in RF.

Chavez is, without question, an outstanding defensive outfielder. In nearly 3,000 innings in CF, he’s racked up a +2.8 UZR/150, but that doesn’t even compare to his staggering +20.2 UZR/150 in 1,600 innings in LF/RF. The scouting reports agree – his defense is off the charts good.

He might not even be the best defensive outfielder in Seattle, though. Franklin Gutierrez has drawn raves from scouts for years for his jumps, range, and arm strength, and his defensive performances in Cleveland back up all the superlatives you could throw at him. He only got 159 innings in CF for the Indians due to some guy named Sizemore, so you have to take his +17.7 UZR/150 in center with a lot of salt due to the small sample size. However, it becomes a little easier to ingest when you see his +21.9 UZR/150 in LF/RF. Gutierrez is just a defensive monster.

That leaves Ichiro, the forgotten guy over in RF. For his career, he’s been +7 UZR/150 in right, making him a well above average corner outfielder. He’s been basically average while playing CF as well, confirming the belief that he’s going to look very good when compared to less rangy right fielders.

If they go with a regular OF of Chavez, Gutierrez, and Ichiro, it’s not hard to project the M’s as a +30 to +40 outfield in 2008. No one else in baseball – not even the Rays with newly added Matt Joyce in the mix – project to have that kind of outfield defense in 2009.

It will be interesting to see how these Three CF outfields turn out. All of them lack the traditional slugging corner outfielder, but if you see the Orioles, Mariners, and Rays once again exceeding national expectations, don’t be surprised if even more teams start copying the Three CF model.

The Florida Marlins organization will rely heavily on inexperienced catchers in 2009. The depth at the position is nothing to write home about, either. Matt Treanor, who appeared in 65 games for Florida in 2008 (and spent parts of the past five seasons guiding the pitching staff) was allowed to leave as a free agent. Currently the organization has just two players with more than 50 games of Major League experience – Mike Rabelo (86 games, 278 at-bats) and John Baker (61 games, 197 at-bats). The other catcher on the 40-man roster is B-level prospect Brett Hayes, who has yet to appear in a Major League game.

Rabelo was supposed to see significant playing time in the Majors in 2008 after coming over from the Detroit Tigers in the Miguel Cabrera/Dontrelle Willis swap. He was generally ineffective and missed time with knee and wrist injuries. Overall in 2008, he hit .202/.256/.294 in 109 at-bats. Already 29 years old, Rabelo has yet to prove he can consistently hit Major League pitching and his defense is not good enough on its own to justify a big league paycheck.

Baker, a former A’s farmhand, benefited from Rabelo’s poor season. The left-handed hitting catcher took full advantage of his first Major League opportunity and hit .299/.392/.447 with an ISO of .147 in 61 games. The 28-year-old was originally selected in the fourth round of the 2002 draft out of the University of California and kicked around the minors for parts of seven seasons. He has the best shot at playing everyday among the three catchers on the 40-man roster.

Hayes, 24, was selected in the second round of the 2005 draft out of the University of Nevada. He has moved through the system relatively quickly despite uninspired minor league numbers, which include a career line of .253/.311/.381 in 1,042 at-bats. He did hit .293/.331/.466 in 2008 during his first taste of Triple-A (116 at-bats). Hayes has a solid reputation as a good defensive backstop, excellent receiver and also displays leadership skills.

The club has also invited three non-roster catchers to spring training in 2009: Kyle Skipworth, Miguel Fermin, and Brad Davis. Skipworth, 18, was the Marlins’ 2008 first round draft pick out of high school and is in camp to gain experience. He will be headed down to A-ball for the 2009 season after hitting just .208 in his debut. Fermin had a breakout 2008 season by hitting .347/.374/.628 with 17 homers in 242 at-bats. However, he was 23 and playing in short-season ball. He also walked just 3.6 percent of the time. Davis, 26, spent last season in Double-A and hit just .205/.306/.345 in 249 at-bats. Other catching prospects Chris Hatcher, Torre Langley, and Jameson Smith all disappointed with the bat.

Like a lot of free agents, Ivan Rodriguez is looking for a job. However, while most of the big names will eventually find work, even if it’s for less than they had hoped, it appears at least somewhat likely that Pudge might be on the Kenny Lofton/Sammy Sosa forced retirement path. David Samson, president of the Marlins, recently stated that there is zero chance that Florida will sign Pudge, and the other teams with catching needs simply don’t sound interested.

I find this pretty strange, honestly. Over the last four years, Pudge has been worth 2.2, 2.5, 1.6, and 1.9 wins, if you assume that he’s been average defensively. I know pitchers have reported having problems with his pitch calling, but he’s still generally regarded as one of the best defensive catchers of all time – it’s hard to imagine that he could have declined so much that his defense would take away all of his offensive value.

This is, after all, a catcher who hasn’t posted a wOBA below .300 since 1992. Those aren’t exactly laying around on the waiver wire. Brad Ausmus, who just signed for $1 million with the Dodgers yesterday, has had a wOBA of greater than .300 only one time this decade. His career wOBA is .298, compared to Pudge’s .350. Ausmus found two suitors, and when the Padres lost him to LA, they turned to Henry Blanco, who has a career .282 wOBA.

Both of those guys have good reputations for their work with pitchers, but that is apparently the only criteria teams are using when choosing which catchers to sign. You’d have to believe that Pudge was the worst handler of pitchers of all time to make up for the offensive gap between him and guys like Ausmus or Blanco.

Clearly, there’s something about Pudge that teams don’t like. Much like with Kenny Lofton, though, he’s definitely still a major league caliber player who wants to keep playing. He may not get that chance, however.

I’ll be honest, folks, I haven’t been able to get enough of MLB TV. I love the instructional demonstrations the analysts provide, and when nothing but Rock of Love Bus or whatever barely heard of National Lampoon’s movie on Comedy Central is playing, nothing beats some good ‘ole fashioned baseball television. Unfortunately, something has bothered me quite a bit recently: the cast and crew seemingly have it in their heads that the Kansas City Royals are vastly improved and have a shot at competing for the division next season.

The analysts have been praising Dayton Moore’s offseason moves, stating that Mike Jacobs and his 32 HR, Kyle Farnsworth and his blazing fastball, and Coco Crisp will all help turn the team around. Jacobs was replacement level last season after steadily declining in value since 2005. Farnsworth is not a bullpen savior and no explanation on my part should be needed to back that up. And Crisp, while he may be a nice player, is not going to turn any team around. This is before even discussing the additions of Horacio Ramirez and Willie Bloomquist.

The show ‘Hot Stove’ even had a discussion last night pertaining to whether or not the 2009 Royals can be the 2008 Rays. Seriously? Their reasoning dealt with both being small market teams with plenty of young talent. I can unequivocally say that the 2009 Royals will not be the 2008 Rays. The 2008 Rays were a well-oiled machine with incredible defense, great starting pitching, and a solid, interchangeable bullpen. The 2009 Royals have little in their bullpen outside of Joakim Soria, are going to be dependent on another solid season from Gil Meche and a breakout campaign from Zack Greinke to make even their 1-2 pitchers effective, and despite a solid defensive output last season, are well behind the Rays in that category.

The interviewer talking to Dayton Moore and Trey Hillman asked both if they watched the Rays, another small market team, and thought, “why not us?” Both said yes, but the major difference is that the Rays farm system was constructed in much better fashion. And, their GM, in a short amount of time, has shown a knack for acquiring the right veterans and role players. Dayton Moore has not.

Royals fans, I am not writing this to bash your team or drown your hopes. It just really bugs me when analysts who get paid a heck of a lot more than I do, who simultaneously receive a ton of national recognition, mistake acquiring new players with acquiring good players. Dayton Moore has been very active this offseason but he realistically has not done anything to seriously improve his team.

Colleague Matthew Carruth said it best: The 2009 Royals may actually be the Rays… the 1998-2007 Rays.

(I know I already have another Part 1 out there without resolution, I’ll get to that eventually, but for the moment this has captured my attention)

Near the end of June in 2007, Dave Cameron wrote an open letter to then-Mariners Pitching Coach Rafael Chaves pleading with him to modify the game plan for Felix Hernandez when it came to starting out games. Namely, Dave pointed out the predictability of Felix throwing a high percentage of fastballs at the start of games. A year and a half later and has anything changed? I decided to take a look at Felix’s 2008 through the perspective of Dave’s letter and his intent.

Frankly if you followed any of Felix’s starts and were paying attention (or happened to participate in the game threads at Lookout Landing where I was constantly harping about it), you already know the answer to the posited question above. The answer is no. Now, I could leave it at that, but a 75-word post is not going to get anyone’s attention and besides which, I love making graphs.

Let us jump right into those graphs then. Here is a chart of Felix Hernandez’s fastball frequency over time; time, for the purposes of a baseball game, being measured in pitches. until it reaches his overall average frequency, about 67%.

If you find a pitch count number along the bottom (x) axis and move upward (y) until you reach the trend line, that value will give you the percentage of pitches, on an average start, that were categorized as fastballs up to that point in the game. So, after 11 pitches, roughly 84% of them had been fastballs. By the time Felix has thrown 40 pitches in a game, that ratio is down to around 74% and it continues to fall

It’s obviously not uniformly descending, but it’s really close and it paints a stark and unmistakable pattern. Felix starts out a game gung-ho about his fastball and slowly begins to work in his other pitches as the game wears on. It’s not even a gentle downward slope, but a rather dramatic curve, suggesting that the set of pitches one through about 20 and 20 through rest of game are rather disparate. Next, we’ll dive a little further into how Felix’s fastball percentage varies on a per pitch basis.

Only two players who may be headed to arbitration submitted salary figures at least $2 mil more than what their team’s offered: Ryan Howard ($4 mil) and Prince Fielder ($2 mil). Earlier today, we discussed Howard’s case and how he really does not follow the 40/60/80 fair market value modifier for arbitration deals. Howard set a record last season by winning his case and jumping from $900K to $10 mil, so does Prince have a shot to do something similar? Fielder had his deal renewed to $670K last season, which infuriated the portly first baseman.

Prince submitted an $8 mil figure while the Brewers felt a more appropriate salary would be $6 mil. Granted, with such a small discrepancy, relatively speaking, it should be much easier to settle with Fielder than Howard, but, alliteration aside what does Prince’s projected production portend?

The projection systems suggest Fielder’s wOBA will come between .380 and .400. At .390, he would be worth right around +32 runs with the bat. His fielding has never been a strong suit, ranging from -7 to -10 with the glove. Prince has been very durable, however, so 160 games and 680 PA are not a stretch. Based on these numbers, Fielder would be worth approximately +33.5 runs above replacement. We will round this off to +3.4 wins.

At fair market value, Prince commands $15.3 mil. Entering his first season, his value can be calculated by multiplying the fair market value by 40%. 0.40 * $15.3 mil = $6.1 mil. Essentially, the Brewers proposed salary is exactly 40% of Prince’s fair market value. Fielder’s figure would value around 52% of his fair market value, potentially setting up a 50/70/90 modifier as opposed to 40/60/80.

GM Doug Melvin has hinted that a settlement may well be reached prior to the court date, regardless of the fact that Scott Boras represents Prince. Whether Fielder gets $6 mil or $8 mil, the eventual contract makes sense given his production level and service time, especially considering he isn’t immediately jumping to 75-80% of his market value.

This afternoon, I showed that the pitcher win values are actually fairly decent predictors of the next year’s win values, with an average year to year correlation of around .63 for the last four years. How does this compare to the hitter win values we publish here on the site? They’re pretty comparable. How comparable?

2004 to 2005: .59
2005 to 2006: .63
2006 to 2007: .64
2007 to 2008: .66

That’s also an average year to year correlation of .63 – the same as we found for pitchers. Just knowing a player’s prior year win value, you’ll have a rough idea of what his following year’s win value may be. Now, a the advanced projection systems (CHONE, PECOTA, etc…) will do a better job of incorporating more data and weighting it appropriately, so we’re not suggesting that single year win values replace those systems for projecting future performance. However, it’s a good sign that the win values correlate fairly well from year to year.

So, hopefully, the posts we’ve done the last few weeks have helped you understand what the win values system is telling you, and the transparency we’ve tried to apply to the system should allow you to trust the results. The win values system captures player value very well, and predicts future win values for both batters and pitchers with solid reliability.

We’re not claiming this system is perfect. This isn’t the perfect single number metric that sums up all player value with no error that people seem to want. But, it’s pretty darn good, and as good or better than anything else out there. Right now, if you want to know how much a player is worth to his team, Win Values are your best bet.