Archive for January, 2010

The Contact Tales: 2008

Starting Pitchers (Min IP: 100)

The Best:
Rich Harden 69.6%
CC Sabathia 72%
Edinson Volquez 73.7%
Tim Lincecum 73.9%
Ryan Dempster 74.7%

Wonder why folks are so gung-ho on an oft-injured starter like Harden? Because of this, and because of what he did in 2009. The guy may not be able to stay healthy for full seasons at a time, but he can miss bats, and on the off-chance he does stick around for 30-35 starts, he figures to be a pretty nice asset.

The Worst:
Livan Hernandez 91.3%
Sidney Ponson/Kyle Kendrick 89.9%
Carlos Silva 89.2%
Aaron Cook 88.8%

It is with great regret that I remind everyone how Silva fell well shy of the 100 innings plateau in 2009. That means this is his final mention throughout the series. Go solemnly into the night, sweet prince.

Relief Pitchers (Min IP: 40)

The Best:
Brad Lidge 63.6%
Juan Cruz 66%
Ramon Ramirez 68.7%
Francisco Rodriguez 69.3%
Robinson Tejeda 69.5%

Give the Royals credit for something: over the last two years they’ve held three of the least hittable relievers in baseball during the 2008 season. Cruz hasn’t worked out, Ramirez was traded for Coco Crisp, but Tejeda stepped up. Now back to thrashing the Royals on every move, as is noted in the Creed of Sabermetrics.

The Worst:
Todd Jones 89.7%
Chad Bradford 88.6%
Eddie Guardado 87%
Jim Johnson 86.7%
Luis Ayala 86.5%

Bradford made a career out of generating weak contact, yet 88.6% was on the extreme side, even for him. His career contact rate remains 83.1% despite falling off a wagon in 2009 and having a few uncharacteristic seasons near the presumable end of his career. It’s too bad, that delivery is one that needs to be viewed for generations to come.


The 2010 Marcel Projections

Yesterday, Tangotiger released the 2010 Marcel projections and now they’re available on all the player pages and in the sortable projection pages.

Couple things of note about the Marcel projections.

– About Marcel, Tango himself writes, “it is the most basic forecasting system you can have, that uses as little intelligence as possible. It uses 3 years of MLB data, with the most recent data weighted heavier. It regresses towards the mean. And it has an age factor.”

– The wOBA calculation I’m using for FanGraphs is going to be different than the ones included in the projections. To keep things consistent, I’m including SB and CS and using the 2009 weights, just like all the other projections.


A Logical Landing Spot for Lowell?

… because alliteration = good writing.

Just before Christmas, Mike Lowell was almost traded to the Rangers for three million dollars and Max Ramirez (a C+ Prospect according to John Sickels) . The trade didn’t go through because Lowell ended up needing thumb surgery. He is expected to be ready around Spring Training.

In any case, the trade never made much sense for the Rangers, even at the relatively minimal cost. Michael Young is set at third, and first baseman Chris Davis projects as a good hitter for 2010. I suppose Texas could have moved Davis to DH and had Lowell play first, but it isn’t clear how Lowell’s defense would translate to first base, and that ship has sailed anyway with the Rangers signing of Vladimir Guerrero to be their full-time DH.

Lowell is still a decent player. Despite his poor 2009 (in which he still produced 1.2 wins above replacement in 119 games), CHONE projects Lowell as a .273/.328/.429 hitter, or 3 runs above average per 150 games. My projection is similar: .275/.327/.451, +1/150. Lowell had the worst-fielding season of his career in 2009 according to UZR, but this has to be weighed against his excellent fieldin in the past. Jeff Z. (no relation to Jack) projects Lowell’s 2010 UZR/150 as +1/150. Rally’s TotalZone projection has him at +3/150. Naturally, playing time is a concern due to Lowell’s injury issues and age. The Fans project him for 116 games in 2010. Taking a rough average of the projections and prorating: +2 offense +2 fielding + 2 position + 20 replacement = 26 runs above replacement times 116/150 = about a 2 WAR player for 2010. Even if you bump him down to 100 games, he’s still a 1.7 WAR player.

Boston clearly wants to trade Lowell, particularly after signing Adrian Beltre. But it’s not clear who a good trade partner would be. Lowell’s age makes him a poor fit for a rebuilding team, and most potential contenders have third base filled. Even in cases where Lowell might improve a contender, even for just the three million dollars, he would need to be an upgrade big enough to make a significant difference in their win curve. For example, Texas does have a shot in the West next season, but without a place to play Lowell regularly, he probably doesn’t add enough to their significantly increase their chances of making the playoffs. So we need to look for a team that 1) is a potential 2010 contender; and 2) would get a decent upgrade by acquiring Lowell.

Last week I spent some time plugging projections into a big spreadsheet to get a crude sense of what 2010 might hold. It’s nothing definitive, of course, but is of interest here. Without going through every team and division, a possible fit for Lowell might be Minnesota. At the moment, the Twins look like the favorites to win the AL Central, but they aren’t running away with it. While the 2010 Tigers and Royals are among the worst teams in the AL, Minnesota’s “lead” over Chicago and Cleveland isn’t dominating. It’s also fair to say that the AL Wildcard will be coming out of the East. If Minnesota wants to go to the playoffs, they need to win the Central.

While there are questions around every team, Minnesota’s biggest hole at the moment appears to be third base. Perhaps they could slide Nick Punto’s terrible bat and great glove to third, but that may create another hole with the near-replacement level Alexi Casilla as a full-timer at second. At the moment, the Twins’ other options at third base are Matt Tolbert and Brendan Harris. Tolbert projects as about a -13 hitter and -4 defender — a 0.5 WAR player over a full season. Harris is better, but not much. CHONE has his bat at -5/150, I have it at -7. His glove is terrible — probably about -7/150. Harris is about a 0.8 WAR player.

Boston didn’t ask for much from Texas, and in the wake of his surgery the asking price for Lowell will be even lower this spring. The Twins are right at the spot on the win curve where even one marginal win can make a big difference, and Lowell is enough of an upgrade to give them additional marginal win (hardly trivial given the Twins situation) even if he only plays 100 games. They also have a new stadium opening this season, and, yes, probably want to impress Joe Mauer a bit. Minnesota seems like a logical landing spot for Lowell.


Regression in LA?

A year ago, the Angels won 97 games and ran away with the AL West, once again defying critics who expected a downturn in performance. For most of the decade, the Angels maintained their excellence despite yearly forecasts that this was the year they were in trouble. It’s a credit to their organization that they have been able to continually plug holes from within, often even upgrading when an established veteran leaves.

This winter, they’ve watched John Lackey, Chone Figgins, and Vladimir Guerrero head elsewhere. All three are big names who have had substantial hands in helping the Angels win, but Los Angeles is confident they can replace those three with Scott Kazmir, Brandon Wood, and Hideki Matsui. And, there’s a pretty decent chance that they’re right about that.

However, it may be that the players the Angels should worry about are the ones that are still in LA. Based on the projections for 2010, it’s the holdovers who may be the problem this year.

Let’s look at Torii Hunter, Kendry Morales, Juan Rivera, and Erick Aybar. A year ago, those four combined for +15.2 wins, one of the main reasons the Angels were able to surge ahead of the rest of the division. These four outperformed every expectation, and created a strong nucleus of talent for an offense that racked up runs in bunches.

The CHONE projections don’t think they can do it again, or even really come close. Here’s their 2009 WAR and 2010 projected WAR by CHONE side by side.

Aybar: +3.8, +1.5
Hunter: +3.8, +2.4
Rivera: +3.4, +1.1
Morales: +4.2, +1.7

Total: +15.2, +6.7

CHONE is projecting an 8.5 win drop-off from just those four players. That’s rough. Part of that is playing time, as both Morales and Aybar have lower projected PA totals due to their inconsistent usage before 2009, so you can bump their totals up by half a win or so if you think they’re going to play everyday. But even still, with that adjustment, the regression is huge.

If this is finally the year that the Angels struggle, playing to their projection rather than beating it by 10 games or more, you will hear a lot of stories about how they miss the spark of Figgins at the top of the order, Lackey’s presence in the rotation, or Vlad’s intimidation of opposing pitchers. In reality, though, what they may actually miss the most are the career years of the guys who stuck around.

The threat to the Angels’ dominance isn’t the guys they lost – it’s the guys they kept. Mike Scioscia better be hoping that those breakouts were real and sustainable, or else there’s going to be some problems in Disneyland this year.


Pirates Add Church

The Pirates added Ryan Church on a one-year contract on Tuesday that will pay the outfielder a 1.5 million dollar base salary which could reach up to 2.8 million if all plate appearance-based incentives are reached. Church should become the team’s 4th outfielder and could compete for an outfield starting spot, depending on the status of Garrett Jones and Brandon Moss. Church has shown potential, as he posted a 3-win season in 2007 as a member of the Nationals, with a 116 wRC+ and plus defense in the outfield. His loss of power and injuries made him only a one-win player last year, with time split between Atlanta and the New York Mets.

Church was one of the more interesting non-tender candidates of this offseason. He’s always been a decent on-base player, but his power has fallen off the map since a stellar 2006 season in which he posted a .250 ISO. Now, he’s coming off a .111 ISO season and injuries have been a major problem. Luckily, the Pirates don’t need Church to be even an average player for this deal to work – Church is a virtual lock to be worth 1.5 million dollars, and on a one-year deal, it would be hard for this move to make any sort of dent into the Pirates’ future.

Church is a perfect fit for a a rebuilding team like the Pirates. He’s not going to steal time from a prospect – Jose Tabata certainly isn’t ready for a major league role. Also, he does have some upside if his power returns – his HR/FB rate was 4.0% last year, unsustainable for a player with a career rate around 12%. Church won’t be a star – he is already 31 and improvement from him at this point in his career isn’t terribly likely – but at worst he’s a useful role player. He projects as roughly average as a hitter and as a corner outfielder, so worth roughly 1.2 wins per 150 games. It is also important to note that the Pirates also hold control over one more arbitration year, as Church only has roughly 4.1 years of MLB service time, according to Cot’s Contracts.

Finally, the addition of Church should make Rick Ankiel unnecessary. Ankiel’s name has been linked to the Pirates on multiple occasions, and Ankiel does not make sense for Pittsburgh. He’s not as good a hitter as he showed in 2008 nor as bad as he showed in 2009 – he’s probably somewhere near an average hitter, much like Church – but Ankiel is over five years of MLB service and thus will have no more arbitration years. Not only that, but Ankiel’s power reputation (47 HR in the last 3 years, including one year with 26) would likely garner him a larger payday than Church. All in all, Ankiel is a similar player to Church, but Ankiel is likely to be overvalued by this market while the Pirates got a steal on Church.

Ryan Church has been unlucky in recent years, to say the least. The aftereffects of concussions have nearly derailed his career. Personally, as somebody who has suffered from post-concussion syndrome, it makes me happy to see Church get another major league opportunity with Pittsburgh, and it’s likely that Neal Huntington and the Pirates will be happy with their investment as well.


Fan Projection Targets – 01/13/10

Today’s projection targets are all either living free or dying: Chris Carpenter, Brian Wilson, and Sam Fuld

Carpenter overcame injury concerns to make 28 starts en route to a 17-4 record and 2.24 ERA. His 3.38 xFIP was almost exactly in line with his career numbers.

Wilson overcame regrettable facial hair and an unseemly faux-hawk to post a 3.23 xFIP and 2.4 WAR over 72.1 mostly high-leverage innings.

Fuld overcame, uh… Okay, Sam Fuld is a stretch, but it was either him or Chad Paronto basically everything, it turns out. And let the record show that he posted a 122 wRC+ in limited time with the Cubs last year!

[Thanks to readers Jon and JoeR43 for setting the record straight on Fuld.]


The Contact Tales: 2007

Starting Pitchers (Min IP: 100)

The Best:
John Smoltz 72.4%
Johan Santana 73.2%
Cole Hamels 73.9%
Scott Kazmir 74.5%
Erik Bedard 75.3%

Bedard was pretty good in 2007, completing a wee bit over 180 innings with a FIP of 3.19. Even more impressive is that his xFIP was even lower at 3.00. Of course this degree of awesomeness was uncharacteristic, even for a good pitcher, and a pair of disappointing – due to injury more so than performance – seasons in Seattle have caused some to forget that Bedard was one of the better American League hurlers late into the last decade.

The Worst:
Mike Bacsik 89.2%
Woody Williams 88.6%
Carlos Silva 88.2%
Chris Sampson/Aaron Cook 88%

You’ll never guess who finishes fourth in 2008. Not ever.

Relief Pitchers (Min IP: 40)

The Best:
Brad Lidge 62.8%
Francisco Cordero 64.5%
Mike Wuertz 65.8%
Francisco Rodriguez 66.1%
Justin Miller 66.3%

Miller is probably best-known – is he even known? – for the amount of ink on his arms, which reaches the overkill threshold. Because of the tats, MLB required him to wear sleeves at all times so as not to distract the hitters. During 2007, his pitches did that on their own. Miller has never cooked with gas, but his slider held a run value per-100 of 2.15 and unlike the other time he topped that number (2002), this time his fastball wasn’t being obliterated left and right.

The Worst:
Aaron Sele 89.8%
Jay Marshall 88.8%
Todd Jones 88.2%
LaTroy Hawkins 87.5%
Mike Myers 86.8%

I’m not sure there’s anything mildly compelling about any of these five guys. Three are retired, one just signed a decent free agent deal with Milwaukee, and the other is the Mets’ newest bullpen piece. There’s a joke about Ed Wade being interested in Todd Jones somewhere in there, but I won’t make it.


Batters Faced Over Time

A tweet from Jeff Sullivan this afternoon sparked my curiosity into batters faced totals and I headed to Baseball-Reference to dig around. I enjoy using batters faced rather than innings pitched for two main reasons. One, because I think it’s a better measure for durability. Number of pitches is actually even better, in my opinion. Secondly, I think it makes for a much better denominator in rate stats than the more standard per nine innings.

On the subject of the tweet itself, how many people know or remember that Tanyon Sturtze led the American League in batters faced in 2002? He also led the league in losses, hits allowed, earned runs allowed and walks. Not all sunshine for Tanyon down in Tampa that season.

Less surprising is that Livan Hernandez led the National League in batters faced multiple times. Three straight seasons, from 2003 through 2005, in fact. Livan faced 3,085 batters during those three years, logging 734.2 innings pitched. The next highest for that same time period was Greg Maddux at 2,709 batters faced (over 300 fewer than Livan) and 656 innings pitched (nearly 80 fewer). Maddux’s achievement was possibly more impressive given that he was between 37 and 39 years old at the time while Livan was in his late 20s/early 30s.

It pales a bit in comparison to Phil Niekro between 1977 and 1979, however, as Niekro’s 4,253 batters faced was 847 more than second place J.R. Richard. Some of the other names on the 2003-5 combined National League list are a hoot. Brian Lawrence, 5th most batters faced. 11th through 15th were Jason Schmidt, Dontrelle Willis, Woody Williams, Matt Morris and Russ Ortiz.

2005 marked the last year so far that a pitcher has repeated an appearance atop the batters faced leader board, and it happened in both leagues as Mark Buehrle in the AL joined Livan Hernandez. Since then it’s been Barry Zito, CC Sabathia, Roy Halladay and Justin Verlander in the American League and Aaron Harang, Brandon Webb, Johan Santana (he never led while with Minnesota, weird) and Adam Wainwright in the National League. So who takes over in 2010?


The Contact Tales: 2006

Starting Pitchers (Min IP: 100)

The Best:
Cole Hamels 72.3%
Scott Kazmir 73.9%
Johan Santana 74.8%
Aaron Harang 75%
Jeremy Bonderman/Jake Peavy 75.2%

Santana has appeared on the last few lists and while there’s not much to say about him that most don’t already know, it is worthwhile to acknowledge his relevance and greatness. Since 2002, Johan’s career high contact% against is 78.4% — which coincidentally came in 2009 – the lowest league average in that same frame has been 78.5% and that came in 2002. That is to say that Johan has always been better than average at missing bats. Most of the credit goes to Johan’s outstanding change-up, although don’t forget, he could still dial up a decent fastball.

The Worst:
Carlos Silva 90.2%
Scott Elarton 87.9%
Paul Byrd 87.5%
Jason Marquis 87.5%
Aaron Cook 87.4%

I’ve pondered labeling Silva as the new Kirk Rueter – one who finds himself amongst the leaders in contact against annually. Elarton is more interesting. I don’t know how he stuck around for 170 career starts. From 2002 onward, Elarton threw 559 innings, which is more than half of his career total. During that span he holds a tRA of 6.79 and xFIP of 5.45. It wasn’t with one team either, as he spent time with Colorado, Cleveland, and Kansas City. Good on his agent for being a smooth-talker.

Relief Pitchers (Min IP: 40)

The Best:
Mike Wuertz 64%
Brad Lidge 64%
Fernando Cabrera 66.6%
Dennys Reyes 67.2%
Francisco Rodriguez 68.2%

These were the times where Cabrera was outstanding at striking batters out (10.53 per nine) as well as putting them on (4.75 per nine) and letting them jog (1.78 per nine) and it all resulted in a 5.01 FIP. He followed this up with an even worse season and in the process was released from Cleveland. His last few seasons have come with the Orioles and Red Sox, where he’s spent the majority of his time in Triple-A.

The Worst:
Willie Eyre 88.4%
Brian Meadows 88.3%
Rick Bauer 88.1%
Todd Jones 87.9%
Dan Kolb 87.6%

I feel fortunate to have experienced 80% of Meadows’ career saves during 2006. Here’s how you know save percentage doesn’t work as a statistic representative of performance: Meadows converted on 80% of his attempts yet had a 5.40 FIP. Oh, he wasn’t just bad through FIP; he was horrible through ERA too, with a 5.17 ERA. During one outing, Meadows threw 2.1 innings with six batters reaching base (five via hit) and striking out only one. Somehow nobody scored and somehow he was credited with a save.


Sabermetric Blogging and the Oinoanda Inscription

Note: Oinoanda is pronounced oy-NAN-da. Or, at least, it’s probably pronounced that way.

In my darker moments — that is, chiefly, between my last cup of coffee and first glass of the good stuff — I sometimes find myself asking the most ridiculous questions. Questions like: “What does it all mean?” or “What’s the point of life?” and other sorts of open-ended queries that are probably best left to the Russians of our species.

It’s not something about which I’m proud, but I mention it here because (a) it’s true, and (b) I’m not so special as to have something even remotely like original thoughts or experiences. Translation: The chance that you and/or you and/or you have had similar pangs of existential angst is pretty high.

Like just last week, I stopped while reading something at FanGraphs — Cameron’s piece about Casey Kotchman, I think it was — I stopped and wondered, “Why? Why read about this journeyman first baseman? Is this the most important thing I could be doing? Isn’t there some sort of cancer I could be curing?”

The questions had nothing to do with the merit of Cameron’s article itself — Dave Cameron, as everyone knows, is a sabermetric cyborg with no flaws — but rather the nature of the exercise. In other words, Why should I think about baseball in a time like this?

My guess is, if you asked a reader of FanGraphs or Hardball Times or Beyond the Box Score or any of those places why he reads them, he’d probably say something like, “Because it helps with my fantasy team” or “To read analysis about my team and my team’s rivals” or even just “Beats working.”

Those are fine reasons, but I don’t think they hold up to closer scrutiny. For me, personally, were I stripped of my fantasy teams, were I to possess nothing in the way of team allegiance, were I, in fact, to wake up in a roadside ditch, I would very probably wake up thinking about baseball. And depending on exactly how long I’d been in said ditch — that, and the extent of my injuries (had I any) — I’d most likely try to find a decent wireless signal so’s I could see what the Dave Camerons and Rob Neyers of the world were writing about baseball. In short, thinking about baseball is something I do with great frequency and urgency. And understanding the sabermetric implications of baseballing current events is important to me.

But why?

My guess is it has a lot to do with the Oinoanda Inscription. Not familiar? Neither was I till like a week ago, so don’t sweat it.

The Oinoanda Inscription, according to Epicurus Wiki, was

an inscribed limestone wall conspicuously located in an open marketplace… in the ancient city of Oinoanda. The inscription, commissioned by Diogenes of Oinoanda, proclaimed the wisdom of Epicurus, then deceased for five centuries.

Basically, it was a wall erected by this wealthy guy named Diogenes. Diogenes was a great follower of Epicurus’s doctrine of happiness, and it was owing to this love of Epiciurus that he erected this wall, onto which was inscribed the entirety of the latter’s ethical philosophy.

About the wall and its purpose, philosopher Alain de Botton says in the second of these videos

In order to live wisely, it isn’t enough just ro read a philosophical argument once or twice. We need constant reminders of it, or we’ll forget… We have to counteract the influence of advertising by creating advertisements that say we we really do want. And that’s why Diogenes put up his wall.

Of course, de Botton is using the term “advertisement” quite broadly here. Really an advertisement can be anything that takes your eyes off the figurative prize. For Epicurus, that prize was happiness, and the means by which you attained it was through friendship, freedom, and contemplation.

But, as you might agree, it’s sometimes hard to think about friendship and freedom and contemplation when Beyonce is shaking it and asking you to upgrade. So it’s important to have other “advertisements” that promote right thinking.

I submit that sabermetric blogging represents one such version of these advertisements. No, there are no walls set up in our city centers warning us against the baleful effects of excessive consumption or the pursuit of vain pleasures, but there are blogs — like this one, like a lot of others — designed constantly to remind us of the merits of reason, of the scientific method. The baseballing world provides lots of material to be analyzed and we are able — by virtue of sabermetrics and an army of dedicated, if poorly compensated, authors — to examine how a particular trade or free agent signing or breakout performance ought to be regarded in light of what we know about statistics. And it’s by virtue of these constant reminders that we are, essentially, philosophizing every frigging day.