The Florida Marlins’ left fielder Chris Coghlan has received rookie of the year consideration from quite a few sources this year, on the wings of his impressive .372 wOBA rookie season. This puts him at the top of the rookie class this year for the entire major league. Despite poor marks by UZR at an unfamiliar position in LF, Coghlan’s 2.4 WAR still ranks among the best in the league by a rookie.

Another less heralded rookie for the Marlins saw significant time at the other corner outfield position this year. Brett Carroll played 73 games (32 starts) in RF and also saw time in 43 other games (15 starts) in the other outfield positions. His batting line of .306/.383/.689 OBP/SLG/OPS (.302 wOBA) did not elicit the kind of fanfare as Coghlan’s season. However, Carroll played excellently in the field, rating as a +13.8 outfielder between all 3 positions. With positional adjustments, Carroll was worth +10 runs in the field. Overall, Carroll was worth 1.2 wins in a mere 158 PAs and 513 innings in the field. Over a full season, that’s a nearly 3-4 win player.

The Marlins certainly have a pair of talented players here, but each has his downsides. Coghlan’s performance is entirely built on his batting and Carroll’s on his fielding. We know that sample sizes of a single season, for both offense and defense, can lead us astray. What can we say about these two players?

For Coghlan, much of his success was built on a .366 BABIP. Coghlan carried a .326 BABIP through his minor league career, which doesn’t suggest that he will be able to sustain a high number like some players (Ichiro Suzuki, Matt Kemp) have. His ISO is slightly below average and his BB% is right around average. His minor league numbers don’t suggest that his walk rate or ISO should rise, as his minor league ISO sits at an unimpressive .153, and his walk rate at 11.8%. Coghlan’s profile resembles that of a league average hitter, which would struggle to sustain his poor glove in LF.

However, it is unlikely that he will remain in left field. Coghlan’s natural position in the minors was 2B, and his defensive reputation there is far better than in LF. Minor League Splits has his most recent defensive seasons as well above average, but the sample sizes are small and must be taken with a grain of salt. Still, simply moving from LF to 2B adds a full win to his defensive value, and numbers and scouting both suggest his marks should improve there.

Carroll, on the other hand, has a season built almost completely on 530 innings of UZR, a very small sample. However, looking at the Fan’s Scouting Report, ran by Tom Tango, the fans rated him as the 2nd best right fielder in the league, only behind Ichiro Suzuki. Again, due to the low amount of votes for Carroll, there is a high standard deviation on the rating, but it only supplements his UZR in declaring him an excellent fielder.

His batting stats may rise, as well. He was plagued by a .286 BABIP and shows no reason not to expect an average .300 BABIP with his skill set. He’s not going to walk very much, but he provides average to above average power with an ISO of .149 and a minor league ISO of .223, and if the ball bounces his way next season his wOBA will inch closer to average. He won’t outslug guys like Matt Holliday, of course, but his hitting shouldn’t keep him off the field.

Coghlan and Carroll represent two very key pieces in building a young club. Both players should be quite productive in the years to come, and at a minimal cost to the Marlins.

Christmas came early for the Mariners yesterday, as Kenji Johjima has decided to opt out of the remaining two years of his contract and return to Japan. The 33-year-old backstop was due 16 million over the final two years of his extension which he just inked last April.

The Mariners have multiple soon-to-be free agents on their roster. Adrian Beltre and Erik Bedard top the list, but Russell Branyan is also unrestricted. The only safe bet on returning seems to be with Branyan, but stranger things have happened. The Mariners also have a potential arbitration hearing with Felix Hernandez lined up, and given his season, he should see a substantial raise.

Johjima only appeared in 71 games and recorded a career low 258 plate appearances in which he looked more like the morbid 2008 version of himself rather than the solid 2006/2007 editions. He split playing time throughout the year with Rob Johnson – a prototypical backup catcher, right down to the hyperbole about his defensive abilities – and with top prospect Adam Moore not too far off from Safeco, odds are Johjima wasn’t getting 500 plate appearances again anytime soon.

Despite this rather unceremonious exit, Johjima’s initial signing is a bright spot. He combined for 7.4 WAR during his time here in the States – a value of 29.4 million – while receiving around 25 million in salary. That winds up being a net gain, and whatever jerseys or television ratings he gained through the Japan fan base that previously didn’t embrace Ichiro – do such people even exist? – makes his employment a net gain for the M’s.

1,700 plate appearances and a .268/.310/.411 line later, we have likely seen the last of Kenji Johjima in Major League Baseball. Somewhere Jarrod Washburn is ripe with glee.

In the top of the sixth inning, with two outs and the score 4-2, Casey Blake stood at first base with the pitcher Randy Wolf up at the plate. Curiously, Casey Blake would steal second base during the at bat, moving into scoring position fruitlessly as Randy Wolf would proceed to fly out to end the inning.

It was curious because as a general rule of thumb, you want to avoid having your pitcher bat. They are, on average, quite poor at the task. By attempting a steal of second with two outs, Casey Blake was highly increasing the risk of a third out on the base paths. An out that would result in the pitcher’s spot still being up to plate when the seventh inning came around.

Further curiously, the move was praised by the TBS broadcasting crew as a good chance to take by Joe Torre. Ignoring for a moment whose decision it actually was for Blake to attempt second base, I could not help but wonder immediately what that same crew’s reaction would have been had Blake been thrown out. They even mentioned how unusual of a move it was given Wolf at bat, but didn’t go any further than that.

This is a small example, but I think an important one, that illustrates my major beef with broadcasting crews. Where is the attempt to educate the viewer? First of all, taken in a vacuum, this was a terrible play. There was not enough emphasis on that, explaining why it’s such a risk generally. Secondly, there are a couple exceptions to that, and none of those were mentioned either.

Did Torre or Blake or whoever notice, because a steal attempt is so bad a move in that situation, that the Phillies were not paying enough attention to Blake? If Philadelphia were thereby allowing Blake a bigger lead and/or jump, his odds of making it second base successfully would rise, possibly tipping the play into a good risk.

Randy Wolf had thrown 73 pitches at that point in the game. If Torre had determined that the most likely outcome of the bottom of the sixth would be that Wolf would throw enough pitches that his day would be finished, then Torre would be utilizing a pinch hitter in the top of the seventh. With no fear of having the pitcher bad to start the seventh, the risk of the play would be decreased.

Neither of those possible explanations were mentioned — explanations that would help bring to the viewer’s attention some of the tactical considerations that goes into managing a baseball game. Nope, instead the uninformed viewer is left with an increased respect for some nebulous mystique for Joe Torre and his incredible judgment of when to send the running game into motion. Come on, TBS, you are not a representative of either team and you get to pick your best people for this.

Apparently for the past few days we’ve had problems sending out e-mails which would have affected anyone who tried to register, reset their password, or send us a contact form.

I apologize for the problem and it is now fixed. If you were trying to contact us in the past few days through our contact form, we unfortunately didn’t receive the message and would be happy to answer any questions you might have if you resend your inquiry.

Last season, Eric Seidman set out on a quest to find the most extreme mop-up men. Eric has since moved on, but if I may, I would like to keep the tradition of honoring those ill-forsaken heroes by following the same methodology laid out in this post. To quote the most important part:

The LI component, for those unaware, is Leverage Index, developed by the aforementioned TangoTiger. The stat essentially measures the stress level of the situation at hand. An average LI is 1.00, so when dealing with supposed mop up pitchers, of interest are the average LIs for pitchers equal to, or below, the average. Plugging it into the above formula, dividing by innings pitched, and multiplying that quotient by the total number of games pitched should, in theory, help us narrow these mop up guys down. Basically, the lower the number provided by that formula, the more mop-uppy the pitcher.

Pretty straight-forward, no? The bar for qualification was set at 40 innings, which just so happened to give a nice selection of relievers – 176 to be exact – for which we can answer of whom was the most janitorial and of whom was the most executive – or whatever the opposite of the pitching equivalent of a janitor is. The answer to the former question is actually well-known – or at least should be by now. Most of the die-hard readers know more about Luis Perdomo than they should thanks to my obsession with him. His “MOP” score came out to a minuscule 0.163. Only one other pitcher finished within 0.1 points of Perdomo, and that was Josh Fogg at 0.174. The top 10 breaks down as such:

Luis Perdomo Padres	0.163
Josh Fogg Rockies	0.174
Chris Smith Brewers	0.266
R.A. Dickey Twins	0.293
D.J. Carrasco White Sox	0.307
Matt Palmer Angels	0.323
Leo Rosales Diamondbacks	0.344
Carlos Fisher Reds	0.344
Mark Hendrickson Orioles	0.405
Brian Bass Orioles	0.418

Carrasco is the best of the bunch (as judged by FIP) and as such, dethrones Buddy Carlyle as mop-up man of the year.

If you missed the game last night, this pretty much says it all.

The Philadelphia Phillies club took advantage of a Los Angeles starter who was clearly rusty after being activated off the disabled list prior to the start of the National League Championship Series (NLCS). Hiroki Kuroda allowed six runs on six hits in just 1.1 innings of work, for a WPA of -.334. Starter-turned-playoff-reliever Chad Billingsley offered some relief with 3.1 innings of work, but his recent inactivity (it was the first time he’d pitched since Sept. 29) eventually caught up with him.

On the flip side, Phillies starter Cliff Lee (.153 WPA) was magnificent yet again. He pitched eight shutout innings with just three hits allowed. He struck out 10 Dodgers hitters without allowing a walk. Lee also induced nine ground-ball outs (plus five fly balls and two line drives).

This is Mr. October, Cliff Lee:
Oct. 7 – 9.0 IP, 6 H, 1 R, 0-5 BB-K, 37.0 GB%, .397 WPA
Oct. 12 – 7.1 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 3-5 BB-K, 32.0 GB%, .307 WPA
Oct. 18 – 8.0 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0-10 BB-K, 56.0 GB%, .153 WPA

Last night, first baseman Ryan Howard was the Phillies best hitter… again. He drove in three runs and posted a WPA of .155. Outfielder Shane Victorino (.045 WPA) had a good night as well, with three RBI, two runs scored and two hits, including a homer. Catcher Carlos Ruiz (.028) continued his hot hitting with two base knocks. He also scored two runs and drove in one. Outfielder Jayson Werth posted the second highest WPA at .074 and drove in two runs.

Game Four is tonight in Philadelphia with the home team up 2-1 in the NLCS. The Phillies organization will look to take a stranglehold on the series with Joe Blanton on the hill against Randy Wolf. Blanton has made two appearances in the 2009 playoffs so far – and both came out of the bullpen. In 3.2 innings, he’s allowed two runs on four hits and has a 43% ground-ball rate. Blanton struggled with his fastball (-0.80 wFB/C) command during the regular season, but he’ll look to establish the heater well enough to set up his changeup (1.95 wCH/C) and slider (1.22 wSL/C).

Wolf will be looking to bounce back from a poor outing against St. Louis on Oct. 7, his only appearance in the series so far. The left-hander allowed two runs in 3.2 innings. He allowed six hits and five walks. Although it averages out at just 89 mph, Wolf has an effective fastball (1.47 wFB/C) that he backs up with a good curveball (1.66 wCB/C). He also mixes in a slider and changeup.

The Angels have done a lot of things wrong in the first two games of the ALCS. Most of them have been poor reactions on split second decisions that have cost the team in crucial situations. One of them, however, required thought and planning, and the result was still inexplicable.

Saturday night, 8th inning, 2-2, runners at 1st and 2nd, 1 out. The LI for this situation was 3.72. This was a critical juncture of the game, as the Angels needed to simply get a base hit to take the lead, and could give themselves a good chance of winning with an extra base hit that scored both runners.

Staring at that opportunity, Mike Scioscia sent Gary Matthews Jr to the plate to hit for Mike Napoli. Matthews, owner of a .315 wOBA in his three seasons as an Angel, pinch-hit for Napoli, who has a career .364 wOBA. With the game on the line.

I don’t even really know what to say. Matthews is a bad hitter. Napoli is a good hitter. Add in the pinch hitting penalty (players perform below their true talent level when coming off the bench to hit), and the gap just grows to a point where it’s unfathomable to think that Scioscia really believed that Matthews was the better choice to hit in that situation.

Their career batting averages are basically equal. Napoli’s OBP is 25 points higher, thanks to his better walk rate. Napoli’s SLG is 84 points higher, as he’s a legitimate power hitter who can drive the ball with regularity. There’s no way you can slice the numbers to come up with a scenario where this was anything but a downgrade.

As a bonus, by removing Napoli in a tie game, you were then forced to go with Jeff Mathis as the catcher if the game went to extra innings (which, of course, it did). Mathis’ career wOBA is .263. He’s got all the offensive punch of Rey Ordonez, yet because of the decision to hit for Napoli in the 8th, he’d have to finish the game behind the dish.

Matthews struck out, the run didn’t score, and Scioscia later asked Mathis to lay down a bunt in the 10th inning with the go ahead run on base and one out – he popped it up, and the Angels didn’t score that inning either. We won’t even talk about Matthews’ 12th inning strikeout that left two men on base where the Yankees intentionally walked Maicer Izturis to get to Matthews.

Letting an infield fly drop or throwing to the wrong base are mental errors that are frustrating but obviously not intentional. Mike Scioscia, on the other hand, has time to think about what he’s going to do, and he still managed to make a ridiculously bad decision. The Angels are down 0-2 in large part because their manager apparently can’t tell a good hitter from a bad one.

In 1973, the owners of the American League adopted Major League Baseball rule 6.10, which allows any league the option to use the Designated Hitter rule. Ever since, fans of each league have argued the superiority of said league’s rules. National League fans prefer the more strategic, small ball style that stems from the pitcher batting, and AL fans prefer the offense that results from batting nine major league caliber hitters instead of eight.

One question that arises with this difference in rules is how much spread in batting production we see between the two leagues. The natural assumption is that pitcher hitting is relatively even between teams, as most pitchers are generally equally poor at hitting. With DHs, we would assume that we can see the wide variation that we see with all other positions.

Is this true, though? Let’s look at some data. PBWRAA is “pitcher batting weighted runs above average,” given that the average pitcher wOBA in 2009 was .164.

First, with NL pitchers, we see a roughly 20 run difference between the Pirates and the Cubs. This is a significant difference on a team level. Having Carlos Zambrano (.305 wOBA) and Sean Marshall (.242 wOBA) over players like Charlie Morton (.115 wOBA) and Ross Ohlendorf (.071 wOBA) can be a two win swing just with the bat. This is what makes Zambrano so much more valuable in the NL – his 3.95 career FIP isn’t ace quality, but with a .305 in 65 PAs as a pitcher, he contributed eight runs with the bat, nearly a win worth of production.

Similarly, Milwaukee Brewers fans likely will not soon forget how terrible Ben Sheets handled the bat during his tenure with the club. With his .096 wOBA, over that same 65 PA sample with Zambrano, he would have accrued four runs below average, for a difference of nearly 1.2 wins. That essentially offsets the roughly 10 run difference between 180 innings of Sheets (3.56 FIP) and Zambrano (3.95).

Now, let’s take a look at the spread in DH hitting.

Here we see a spread of 45 runs. However, the spread in wOBA is only 80 points vs. 63 points for the pitchers. This is because the DHs see nearly twice as many plate appearances as the pitchers over the course of the season. Taking this into account, the spread between leagues is much lower. We shouldn’t expect the inclusion or exclusion of the DH to result in any more or less parity. In other words, the difference between Hideki Matsui and Jose Guillen is similar to the difference between Cubs pitchers and Pirates pitchers at the plate. It’s also worth noting that only one team this year was below average in their league-specific category and made the playoffs – the Red Sox at -2.23 DHwRAA.

Draw your own conclusions from this data. This is not meant to endorse either rule system as better than the other, but instead to provide a comparison of the two rule systems.

With large market teams represented fourfold in the league championship series, some have seen fit to reminiscence and kick dirt on the dead horse known as Moneyball. A tired topic, to be sure, it is one that deserves more attention to detail and logic than offered elsewhere. The question that must be answered is whether Billy Beane’s player evaluation methods have failed him and his organization.

Yes, when it comes to amateur talent.

In the famed Moneyball draft of 2002, Beane selected 15 of the first 300 players in the draft, nine of whom have since reached the majors. This includes Nick Swisher, Joe Blanton, Mark Teahen, John Baker, and Jared Burton. In the 2003 draft Beane selected 11 of the first 300 players and only two – Omar Quintanilla and Andre Ethier – reached the majors; neither played large roles with the Athletics and were instead used to acquire Milton Bradley and the deceased Joe Kennedy. Beane once more had 13 of the top 300 picks in 2004 and while a handful reached the majors only Huston Street and Kurt Suzuki are worth writing home about. The year 2005 saw Cliff Pennington, Travis Buck and Vin Mazzaro taken, and in 2006, the A’s tabbed Trevor Cahill and Andrew Bailey. That’s roughly five at-least major league average talents in 2002 and roughly eight in the four drafts thereafter.*

The lack of impact talent extends beyond (and in large part) because of the prospect classes. Drafting and expecting a handful to routinely turn into average players is unrealistic. This is why teams complement draft classes with international talent and trades.

Read the rest of this entry »

Wow. (Or as the young women of the Greater Los Angeles area might say: Wowskis.) That was a great baseball game.

One day after I wrote about the rather predictable nature of Game One, this happened:

Some facts you might like to know about the game in question:

* The average Leverage Index (aLI) was 2.07. That’s higher than the Game 163 I used last time as, like, the platonic ideal of excitement. (It occurs to me now — as it should’ve done already — that an extra inning game will almost by definition feature more high-leverage situations. So I ask myself: Are extra inning games better than nine inning ones? Not as a rule. I mean, I’ve definitely seen some dull extra inning games.)

* Alex Rodriguez recorded both the highest and lowest single WPA plays of the evening. His home run off Angels reliever Brian Fuentes in the bottom of the 11th inning was worth .429 WPA. In the very next inning, he recorded a -.165 WPA when he flew out to center off Ervin Santana with two out and the bases loaded.

* Mariano Rivera recorded the highest total WPA: a mark of .393 in 2.1 innings of excellent high-leverage work.

On Kevin Jepsen

I’ve been meaning to set aside some space for Jepsen in this Angels playoff coverage, but’ve failed to do so. Well, some of the things he did in last night’s game made it hard to ignore him any longer.

For example, you might remember that, after Jepsen’s first offering to Jeter in the eighth inning, he (i.e. Jeter) stepped back from the plate, eyes wide and smiling a bit, and said something along the lines of, “Wow.” That pitch was Jepsen’s cutter — his only one of the night, actually. But Jepsen has thrown it about 25% of the time this year and recorded a 1.48 wCT/C on it. It’s been his main complement to the four-seam fastball.

After the cutter, two such four-seamers followed. They were both balls, but both featured about 13.5 inches of upward movement, a little over four inches of horizontal movement (towards Jeter), and were thrown at 96.6 and 96.5 mph, respectively. Not bad.

The last two pitches were excellent. The first (and fourth of the PA) was a fastball very similar to the two that preceded it, except basically right over the plate. It had a little less vertical movement (12.5 inches) than the two before it, a little more tail (-5.2 inches), and came in at 98.5 mph. Jeter swung and missed.

Finally, with the count at 2-2, Jepsen threw a slider. A nasty one. And even though, like many sliders, this one registered what seems like little movement (2.1 inches of x-movement and 1.7 inches z-movement), it makes more sense to look at pitches like these in context, I think. In particular, it makes sense to look at the break of a pitch as compared to its pitcher’s fastball.

In this case, we know the break of the fastball Jepsen had just thrown (12.5 x-inches, -5.2 z-inches). If we take the absolute value of (slider x-movement minus fastball x-movement) and also the absolute value of (slider z-movement minus fastball z-movement), we get something we can call Total Movement Delta (TMD). In this case the TMD of Jepsen’s slider to Jeter as compared to the fastball that immediately preceded it was 18.2 inches — for a pitch that was recorded at 89.9 mph by GameDay. By comparison, among the pitchers who threw at least 50 IP this year and threw the slider at least 2% of the time, the highest average velocity of said pitch was 90.0 mph even, recorded by Angel Guzman. Next on the list is Brandon Lyon at 89.2 mph. So Jepsen’s was up there, is the point.

And the larger point is, of course, is that Jepsen threw a pitch that was both (a) real fast and (b) had a ton of movement. That Jeter swung and missed is hardly surprising.