I want to be clear about my intentions in this series. Simply put, I believe that prospect evaluation has improved by a radical margin during the information era, and we’re doing it better than we ever have. But I believe that the type of analysis being done does inherently underrate players, and that we can always be better. The writers can be better, the farm directors can be better, the General Managers can be better. One of those steps, in my estimation, is giving sinkerball pitchers a different route of analysis. These are not players that follow a typical path of progression and improvement.

In this belief, on Tuesday I laid out my method for creating a sample of 22 sinkerballers that have made it to the Major Leagues, and succeeded enough to be causing 50% of their batters faced to hit the ball in the ground. I crunched the numbers on these players, and below, I believe their Minor League performance speaks for itself. If defense is beginning to matter more and more, than the way we understand pitchers that rely on defense needs to change. Here is my sample’s aggregate Minor League statistics (note: “Yrs” is the player seasons in the study, and “2009” was their aggregate 2009 Major League performance):

Level   Yrs   Age    ERA    H/9    K/9    BB/9   HR/9
Low-A   20    21.2   3.91   9.16   6.46   2.41   0.58
HighA   23    22.0   3.68   9.43   6.55   2.70   0.47
DoubA   35    23.5   3.76   8.97   6.73   2.96   0.59
TripA   44    25.8   4.01   9.26   6.27   2.97   0.82
2009    22    28.4   4.33   9.65   5.64   3.40   0.85

If nothing else, I am immediately struck by the uniformity of the numbers. Obviously, Major League hitters are responsible for the decline in strikeouts (which, unsurprisingly, leads to the small jump in H/9) and the increase of walks. The power that Minor League hitters are developing seems to come to fruition in Triple-A, and certainly sustains itself in the Major Leagues. Of course, we could micro-analyze the changes in peripherals all over the place. But at the end of the day, the difference in ERA between this group of sinkerballer pitchers in Low-A, and in their average age-28 season in the Major Leagues is 42 ERA points (and it’s even closer if you discount two players that were WAY too old for the Midwest League). I doubt there’s another subset of players that shows such consistency from the lowest rung of the minors to the bigs.

Best Undervalued Low-A Pitcher: Jamey Wright, Asheville. A first round pick in 1993, Wright made his debut the next season, and was one of the worst starting pitchers in the league. His 11.8 H/9 led to a 5.97 ERA, and would have been worse had he not allowed just six home runs in 143 innings. The next year, Wright was promoted, and though his strikeout and walk rates worsened, his H/9 dropped to 8.4, his ERA to 2.47, and he was all over the prospect map again.

Best Undervalued High-A Pitcher: Chris Sampson, Salem. A former shortstop, Sampson didn’t make his conversion to pitching until age 25, when he dominated Low-A hitters in Lexington (1.39 ERA in 84 IP). The next season, some began to question Sampson as his hit rate ballooned to 10.1. However, his walk rate had dropped, and the difference in strikeout and home run rates were insignificant. It was merely the Salem defense, as Sampson proved by dominating the Minor Leagues for the next two seasons. If history repeats itself, Sampson should have a better 2010 after a strange .342 BABIP last year.

Best Undervalued Double-A Pitcher: Chad Qualls, Round Rock. Baseball America did have Qualls as a top ten prospect following his 2002 first run at Double-A. But ninth just wasn’t high enough, as this was a guy that had a 0.5 HR/9, 7.8 K/9, and plenty of groundball outs. His 9.6 H/9 was the hold-up, and when it regulated itself the next season, BA moved him up in the Astros rankings. (Also note: They left him off the 2005 top ten list when his H/9 ballooned in Triple-A. The next year, he had a 3.28 ERA in the Astros bullpen.)

Best Undervalued Triple-A Pitcher: Clay Condrey, Everywhere. This guy pitched from 2002-2007 in the Triple-A, never sniffing more than 30 innings in a big league bullpen. But in 2003, when Condrey improved everything but his hit rate in his second go-around, the Padres should have known what they had. Instead, they sold him to the Phillies, who certainly got more than they paid for in 2008-2009.

So I want to repeat what I have been saying throughout this series: the wonderful thing about sinkerballer pitchers is that they just don’t change very much. Yes, they have to work on their out pitch to left-handed batters. And everything needs to be harnessed and tweaked. But what you see is what you get, and with every promotion, they simply strike a balance between the difficulty of facing harder hitters with the ease of better fielders. No one better personifies this notion than Doug Mathis:

Year   Level   H/9    ERA    K/9   BB/9   HR/9
2006   HighA   9.6    4.18   6.5   2.8    0.8
2007   DoubA   9.6    3.76   6.3   2.7    0.5
2008   TripA   8.6    3.35   6.0   2.3    1.2
2009     MLB   8.2    3.16   5.3   2.1    0.8

See what a good defense does? Imagine how much worse the Brandon McCarthy trade would have been for Texas if the White Sox insisted on Mathis instead of Jake Rasner. Note: Tomorrow’s article will be looking into the minors for the next crop of sinkerballers. After the jump, a little clarification on what I’m looking for from that group.

Read the rest of this entry »

Rumors have been floating around for most of the offseason that former Milwaukee Brewer Ben Sheets is looking for a contract that would eclipse 10 million dollars before incentives were included. Unfortunately for Ben – I’m a big fan, as he was the first true ace pitcher for whom I watched nearly ever start – he (or more likely, his agent) is likely not going to get what he’s seeking.

Ben Sheets, during his prime with the Brewers, was inarguably an excellent pitcher. After a rough rookie year, Sheets settled in as the Brewers ace for the next 7 years. Injuries were an issue, but he still put up at least 140 IP in all but one season, and when he was on the field, he was great. He has a career 3.56 FIP and totaled a whopping 29.8 wins from 2002-2008, an average of 4.3 wins per season.

Unfortunately, just as the Brewers were making a playoff run that will be remembered for ages in Milwaukee, Sheets injured his elbow, and ended up missing the 2008 playoffs and all of the 2009 season. Now, he’s ready to return, but given his injury history and the fact that he missed a year, what kind of performance can we expect from him?

Every time Sheets has returned from injury (every year since 2005, basically), he’s pitched well the next season. His worst year since was 2007, where he still posted a 4.11 FIP and was worth 2.2 wins. He’s going to strike guys out – a 7 K/9 is probably the lower bound for him, and his control is excellent – a 3 BB/9 is probably the upper bound. The question mark for Sheets isn’t so much performance, but how many innings he can pitch.

Fan projections have him at 132 IP for 2010. CHONE has him at 114. These two projections have him at 2.7 WAR and 2.0 WAR respectively. Even if you generously project him for 150, you get something in the 2.6-3.1 WAR range as a projection for Sheets. Given the roughly $3.5M/WAR figure we’ve seen this offseason, a fair range for a dollar amount would be 9-11 million dollars, and that’s at the very top end of the projections.

A more likely range for Sheets’s production is 2.0-2.5 WAR, and based on how the offseason has gone for Rich Harden – better and more recent production, actually pitched last year – and Erik Bedard – no contract yet and limited rumors surrounding him – he’d be lucky to get that $3.5M/WAR rate. Harden’s contract – 1 year, $7.5M – came in at
roughly 3M/WAR by CHONE, and that’s only projecting 132 innings for Harden. Based on this, Sheets could be looking at something closer to a contract worth $5M or $6M.

Sheets could get something in the 9 million dollar range, but that’s only after incentives are included. With the number of openings for expensive starting pitchers closing as clubs inch closer and closer to their maximum payrolls, Sheets will have to face the realities of the new market and settle for closer to half of what he’s looking for.

Pitchers and catchers are reporting soon, and we’ve got plenty of players who need more Fan Projections! Are you keeping up your end?

Today’s projection targets are from the most neglected group of Fan Projectees: relievers.

The Rangers’ C.J. Wilson inexplicably turns up in the press fairly frequently.

The Padres’ closer, Heath Bell recently settled to avoid arbitration.

The As’ Brad Ziegler was the ground-balling surprise story of 2008, but was even better in 2009.

Click here to enter your 2010 projections for Wilson, Bell, and Ziegler.

For whatever reason, John Sickels’ final sentence of his prospect retro for Brooks Kieschnick has stuck with me since I first read it: “In an alternate universe somewhere, the Cubs let [Kieschnick] play in ’96 and ’97 and he ended up having a decent career.”

I suppose you could make a similar statement about a number of players. One of them is Tuffy Rhodes, who got a longer look from the Cubs than Kieschnick did, but wound up spending most of his career in the alternate universe of the Rising Sun.

Rhodes is in the Japanese news a bit as he doesn’t have an employer for 2010. His team for the last three years, Orix, offered him a substantial pay cut for 2010, and has reportedly been waiting two months to hear back from him. I don’t blame Rhodes for having a bad taste in his mouth; despite missing about 60 games in 2009 he still hit 22 home runs with a .308/.402/.583 slash line. I don’t buy it, but there is some speculation that he could call it a career.

If this is the end of the line for Rhodes, has he done enough to get into the NPB Hall of Fame? Conventional wisdom says yes. It’s tempting to compare Rhodes to other foreign-born NPB hitters, but his numbers hold up against the top Japanese sluggers. Forgive the lack of advanced metrics here, but Rhodes is 12th all time in home runs (464), 23rd in runs (1100), 54th in hits (1792), 16th in RBI (1269), 16th in walks (958), 22nd in total bases (3509), and 4th in slg pct (.559). Most of the players that are ahead of Rhodes in the power categories have put up their numbers in 20+ seasons; Rhodes has played 13 so far in Japan, and another productive season would move him a couple of notches up the chart in each category.

But the rub is that the Japanese universe Hall of Fame is tougher to get into than its American counterpart. Players who would be considered first-ballot material in the US often wait years in Japan, and three-time Triple Crown winner Hiromitsu Ochiai’s demeanor with the media still overshadows his on-field credentials. It’s possible that when the time comes, voters will look at Rhodes’ acrimonious departure from the Yomiuri Giants in 2005 and his sub-par glove work, and decide to leave him off their ballots.

Regardless of what happens next, it’s been quite a run in the alternate universe for Rhodes.

I was having a debate a few days ago across twitter with some folks and figured it worth bringing up here. Evan Longoria is likely the best contract in baseball. It’s just obscene, in a good way, for the Rays. But who is the worst? Not talking about ever, or worst at the time, just worst as it stands right now in January of 2010. Which player would you least like on your team going forward, or who do you think would be the most difficult to trade?

I would have nominated Carlos Silva, but apparently he wasn’t that difficult to trade, thank you Cubs, and it would have been more of a biased suggestion than a real one. It’s an awful contract, but it does only have two years left on it. No, I think in the debate for worst contract left in baseball, it comes down to three contenders.

Barry Zito has four guaranteed years left on his contract with a total payout of $76 million and then either an $18 million club option or a $7 million buyout for a minimum for $83 million left to be paid. He also comes with a full no-trade clause. Zito, as mentioned yesterday, has produced 5.3 WAR so far for San Francisco. At least he is sort of trending upwards?

Going back to the Cubs, Alfonso Soriano has five years, a full no-trade clause and $90 million left on his deal. He started off promising with a 5.6 win season in 2007 but fell to 3.1 wins in 2008 and then a horrendous -0.7 last year. The defense has taken about a 15-run hit each consecutive year and the offense has been trending downward as well.

Vernon Wells also has the benefit of a full no-trade clause and due to his protracted signing bonus, is actually owed a whopping $107 million over the remaining five years of his contract. Since his 5.8 win 2006 season, after which his extension was signed, Wells has been worth 0.9, 1.3 and -0.1 wins. His offense has always been sporadic, but his fielding has really taken a hit lately, being well below average the last two seasons.

So, weighing those, who is worst, Zito, Wells or Soriano? Or is there someone else that you think is even more of a dead weight?

I’m sure there are more than a few FanGraphs readers qualified for this job:

Major League organization is looking for a motivated individual with significant (5+ years) experience in both web development and database application design/maintenance for a full-time position. Must have experience or working knowledge in all of the following areas: Linux (Ubuntu a plus), PHP, PostgreSQL, HTML, CSS, Unix Shell Scripting, Python, Ruby, and XML data importing. Understanding baseball statistics and player evaluation methodologies is also required. Love of baseball will definitely help but is not strictly required.

Please send your resume and a brief explanation of your experience to mlbprogrammer@gmail.com.

The embattled executive liked the older performer. He’d done well for them in the past. Sure, the “critics” were getting sick of the older guy’s schtick, but the executive appreciated all that he’d done for the organization. Still, it was clearly time to move on. After all, they had a much more talented younger guy waiting in the wings as a replacement.

Once the younger guy did get his chance, onlookers (and the younger guy himself) probably thought it was a permanent arrangement. The older guy seemed resigned to his fate and was moving on. Sure, his new spot seemed like it was going to be a total disaster, but you take what you can get, and the money certainly didn’t look too bad. While some older fans might have wanted to old guy back, the younger, hipper crowd certainly understood that the younger performer was the wave of the future. Maybe the executive, who had squandered his resources so often in the past, was finally getting it.

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, the executive decided to bring the older guy back in a way that could only mean a demotion for the younger guy. And the hipper crowd was understandably up in arms. The once-proud organization quickly became a laughingstock (again).

At least NBC and Jeff Zucker could point to the ratings. What is Brian Sabean’s excuse?

While the rough analogy to the Late Night situation could apply to the Giant’ whole Ryan Garko–Adam LaRoche–Aubrey Huff fiasco, it is more apt with regard to the decision to bring catcher Bengie Molina back for a reported one-year, $4.5 million, months after Giants General Manager announced that the ‘ship has sailed‘,” thus (apparently) paving the way for the promising young catching prospect Buster Posey to be the starter in 2010. It was not to be.

It’s not as if Molina is without his uses. CHONE’s context-neutral projection for Molina is .259/.286/.419, or 15 runs below average per 150 games in context-neutral linear-weights. That seems to be the general consensus: ZiPS projects Molina at .271/.298/.424, and I have him at .259/.287/.417. The line is ugly, but not that unusual for a catcher. CHONE’s projection for Molina’s defense is also below average at -3. Altogether: -15 offense -3 defense + 12 positional adjustment +20/150 replacement = 1.4 WAR, adjusted for 130 games to account for a catcher’s playing time, we get 1.2 WAR. After removing the replacement salary (about $400,000), the contract implies about $3.5 million per marginal win, pretty much in line with the market this off-season. So, in a vacuum, this is a decent signing.

The problem is, of course, that Molina is projected to be worth the money… but only if he gets about 130 starts in 2010. And the Giants already have someone in the 11:30 slot: Buster Posey, the fifth overall pick of the 2008 draft. Based on impressive minor league performances, CHONE’s 2010 projection for Posey at is .265/.341/.402 (ZiPS has Posey roughly the same at .263/.343/.398), or -5/150. Defensively, CHONE projects him at -1. Over the same 130 games as Molina: -5 offense, -1 defense + 12 position +20/150 positional = 2.6 WAR, over 130 games that’s about 2.3 WAR.

In other words, San Francisco can get their (projected) money’s worth out of Bengie Molina, but only at the cost of giving him the majority of starts and blocking the younger, more talented, and, yes, less expensive player.

Maybe this makes sense of a level I haven’t explored: given the average age of the 2010 Giants’ starting position players, perhaps Brian Sabean simply prefers Jay Leno’s demographic.

I’ve made a few updates as requested for the Fan Projections.

– The Fan Projections now only require 15 votes to be eligible. This added an additional 200 or so players into the mix and I imagine that most MLB regulars and some not so regulars should have Fan Projections now.

– There’s now an UZR column in the sortable projections.

– You can now export the Fan Projections to either Excel or CSV files in the projections page.

Back in late July, R.J. noted that Derek Jeter was having a resurgent offensive season and on his way to an excellent year. Jeter did not let up after that, either. He finished the season with a wRC+ of 142, his best since 2006 and second best since 1999. Combine that with excellent defense at short and Jeter had a 7.5-win season, his best year in the Fangraphs-WAR era and fifth-best among position players in 2009.

Jeter’s game at the plate combines excellent contact skills, a good number of walks, and a high BABIP. The 2009 performance increase was driven by more walks, a handful more HRs and a jump in BABIP. Here I wanted to look at that increase in BABIP in a spatially explicit batted-ball manner. Jeter’s hits are mostly GBs and LDs where the angle of the hit is more important than the distance. So I dissected the field into slices, rather than zone as I did in earlier posts. The number in each slice is the percentage of Jeter’s GBs and LDs in that slice, and the color shows the slugging percentage for those hits, ranging from 0.250ish for gray to 0.800ish for dark blue.

The worst places to hit a grounder are straight at the second basemen or shortstop. Those are the grayest slices, and in 2009 Jeter, cut down the the percentage of his hits to those two slices by 4% (2B) and 2% (SS). He had more hits right up the middle (25% versus 21%), which are singles and doubles more often than outs. I don’t think this is a shift in true talent: I don’t think Jeter is any better at “aiming” his grounders. My guess is he was just on the right side of luck more often in 2009.

That is not to say Jeter is not a wildly talented baseball player. After an average defensive season in 2008 and great one in 2009, we should reevaluate our perception of him from two years ago (in 2007 he was coming off three horrible defensive season) to being probably just -5 runs at short rather than the worst defensive shortstop ever. Add that to his good offense — although not as good as 2009 — and a safe projection is 3.5 to 4 wins in 2010. After that the Yankees have a tricky negotiation, as they will probably look to re-sign the aging, (although his skills should age gracefully) face of their franchise.

Since Eric Byrnes was designated for assignment last week, a variety of writers have noticed that his offensive downturn the last couple of years is entirely driven by tremendously low BABIPs – .226 in 2008 and .229 last year. His performance in the numbers that are usually more indicative of talent level (BB%, K%, ISO) are basically in line with his career marks. And while BABIP is certainly more in the control of a hitter than the pitcher, it still can vary significantly from year to year. So, if the core skills are still in place and BABIP can be driven by luck, it’s feasible that Byrnes could bounce back and become a solid offensive contributor again.

Maybe. But he is an example of why you can’t just look at a hitters BABIP and regress to a league average mean, because Byrnes has one particular skill that destroys his ability to get hits on balls in play; he is the master of the infield fly.

Since 2002, Byrnes has hit 244 infield flies, more than anyone else in baseball. Vernon Wells is second on the list with 222, but he has 1,300 more plate appearances than Byrnes over that time frame. Steve Finley is third on the list with 161, almost 100 pop-ups behind Byrnes in only 200 fewer trips to the plate.

7.67% of all of Byrnes’ plate appearances since 2002 have ended with an infield fly. Tony Batista is the only other player in that span with greater than seven percent of his PAs resulting in a pop-up. Not surprisingly, his BABIP since 2002 was just .244.

In fact, these numbers actually understate how pop-up crazy Byrnes has been of late. In 2002 and 2003, just 15% of his total fly balls stayed on the infield. His final full season in Oakland in 2004 saw the rate jump to 20 percent, finishing with the 3rd highest rate in baseball that year (behind Batista and Juan Uribe). But after leaving the A’s, he took it to another level.

2005 – 23.9% infield fly percentage – #3 in baseball.
2006 – 24.8% infield fly percentage – #1 in baseball.
2007 – 26.7% infield fly percentage – #1 in baseball.
2008 – 22.2% infield fly percentage – #3 in baseball.
2009 – 25.3% infield fly percentage – #1 in baseball.

Over the last three years, among players with at least 500 PA (total, not per season), Byrnes is #1 in IFFB% by a mile. His 25.6% mark is followed by Jeff Mathis at 21.1%. Eric Chavez and Chris Burke are just over 20%, and then there’s Mark Ellis at 18.4%. No one else in baseball is over over 18%.

We cannot look at Byrnes’ low BABIP and conclude that he’s gotten unlucky. His BABIP is a reflection of the fact that he is constantly hitting 100 foot flies that are easily grabbed by an infielder and have no real possibility of becoming a hit. He’s not hitting lasers at people. This isn’t bad luck. This is bad hitting.

Byrnes may have another good year or two left in him if he can get healthy again, but do not project him back to anything close to a league average BABIP. Given his proclivity for the pop fly, he’d be lucky to crack .260 or .270.