During his years in Philadelphia, Bobby Abreu was a monster offensive player. From the time he became a full-time player, in 1998, until 2005 he posted a wOBA of .380 or better. His walk rate, normally in the 15 percent range, consistently ranked near the top of the league. He even had some power in those days, with an ISO that peaked at .253 in 2001. Phillies fans might not have fully appreciated him, but he was not only one of the best players on the team, but also one of the best hitters in the league during his prime.

In 2006, though, the Phillies gave up on Abreu. They fell out of contention and had a number of big contracts on the books. As they shopped Abreu they insisted that any potential move would not be a salary dump. Then, just before the trade deadline, they traded him, along with Cory Lidle, to the Yankees for an underperforming former first-round pick and three other marginal players (though one, Jesus Sanchez, has converted to pitching and is taking well to his new role). Abreu hit well in his new uniform, though his power strike, which had been declining since 2004, picked up only slightly at Yankee Stadium.

In 2007, however, it appeared that Abreu was no longer the player that the Phillies signed to a five-year, $64 million contract. His walk rate dropped considerably, to 12 percent. That represented his lowest walk rate since 1997, when he was still with the Astros. He still hadn’t rediscovered his power swing, despite the short porch in right field at Yankee Stadium, posting a .162 ISO, nearly identical to his 2006 mark.

In 2008 Abreu’s power recovered a bit. He slugged .471 with an ISO of .176. That’s only slightly higher than his ISOs from the past two seasons, but an improvement nonetheless. In terms of patience, Abreu’s bread and butter during his previous 10 full-time seasons, fell even further. His walk rate hit 10.7 percent. Then, in 2009, after heading west to Anaheim, his walk rate recovered a bit, to 14.1 percent, which, while not quite the 18.1 percent rate he posted in 2006, was still an improvement over the previous two years. Yet his ISO fell again, this time to .142, his lowest mark since, again, 1997.

We can’t glean much from this three-year trend, where Abreu’s ISO rose then fell while his walk rate fell then rose. It’s not worth much at this point, considering he’s played in only eight games, but Abreu’s ISO on the young season is .235 while his walk rate is just 2.9 percent. Clearly, those numbers will change as the season progresses. It will be interesting, though, to see where Abreu ends up this season. Will he hit for more power at the sacrifice of his walk rate? Or will his power drop to its 2009 level while his walk rate picks up a bit? I doubt we’ll see either increase over the past few seasons, but a player like Abreu might be able to draw walks in 14.1 percent of his plate appearances while slugging somewhere around .450. That, I think, would make the Angels feel good about handing him that new contract in November.

The opening day chat was pretty successful, so we’ve decided to add a weekly live chat into the schedule. Every Wednesday at noon, I’ll be answering questions from you guys for an hour, and some of our authors may swing by as well. Feel free to leave questions in the queue, and we’ll get to as many as we can.

Episode Nineteen
In which the panel gets trapped in a neural net.

Headlines
Pitchf/x: Yesterday, Today, and (Maybe) Tomorrow
C.J. Wilson and the New Pitch Brigade
Matt Klaassen’s Very Squeaky Chair
… and other spirited flights!

Featuring
Dave Allen, Pitchf/x Wise Man
Mike Fast, Other Pitchf/x Wise Man
Matt Klaassen, Philosophizer

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Audio on the flip-flop.

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Comings and Goings

Three of the 83 players that started the season on the disabled list have returned to playing in the majors:

Gil Meche – He was roughed up in his start on Sunday. 3.1 innings 7 runs on 8 hits and 3 walks. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was rushed coming back and will see more DL this season.

Jose Reyes – Just 2 for 8 with one extra base hit and a walk since he has returned. At least one of the Met’s walking wounded has come back.

Joel Hanrahan – Kinda a meh outing: 1.0 IP, 2 BB, 2 SO. I like him as a super dark horse to take over the Pirates closer role.

A few players joined the official ranks of the DL recently:

Brian Roberts – Strained abdominal muscle – The strain has been bothering him for a couple of days. Initial reports sound like it will take longer than the minimum 15 days to recover

Chris Young – Strained right shoulder – This is the same shoulder that he had surgery on this off season. The team currently plans on having him back after the required 15 days are up.

Aaron Hill – Tender right hamstring – Aaron hasn’t played since April 8th and isn’t 100%. He thinks he could play through the pain if needed, but there is no reason to jeopardize the rest of the season.

Miguel Montero – Sprained right knee – The true extent of injury is unknown and Chris Snyder will take over the full time catching duties.

Sean Green – Right intercostal muscle strain – Minor injury for the last man chosen for the Met’s Opening Day pen.

Brad Ausmus – Pinch nerve in lower back – Full extent of injury unknown.

Extending the Roster with the DL

Two players, Fred Lewis and Josh Fields, look like they are being kept on the DL because they are out of options. The Giants and the Royals would have to expose them to the waiver wire in order for them to be sent to the minors.

Andrew Baggarly of the Mercury News reports that Lewis is healthy, but being held at his rehab assignment as the team looks to move him. San Francisco has 6 outfielders currently on the roster so there is no need for him there. He has 20 days to rehab with a team, so he could be rehabbing for a couple more weeks as the team tries to move him.

Josh Fields of the Royals came away with a mystery injury at the end of Spring Training that no knew about until it was posted. After talking to several people close to the team, no one knows what is going on with Fields. As someone noted, he seems to have a case of “Notverygoodandoutofoptions-iatis”

Just a little manipulation by teams to extend the rosters.

Grading Calf Sprains

Jimmy Rollins went down with a Grade 2 calf sprain on Monday while warming up. I had to look up the extents myself, so I figured I would pass on this information from Dr. Nathan Wei. I looked at several websites and they all generally agree on extent and time frame.

Grade 1
• Stretching with some micro-tearing of muscle fibers.
• Recovery can be complete in about 2-3 weeks.

Grade 2
• Partial tearing of muscle fibers.
• Recovery can take up to 1-2 months.

Grade 3
• Complete tearing (rupture) of muscle fibers.
• Complete recovery can take more than 3 months.

If the initial reports are true, it looks like Rollins is out four to eight weeks. He under went an MRI on Tuesday to find out the exact damage. Some unsubstantiated reports say he is only going to be out 2 weeks, nothing official yet. I will post more data as it become officially available.

Rehabs Taking Longer

Ian Kinsler and Ted Lilly were to be coming off the DL soon, but both are not making much progress. Ian is finally able to take some fielding practice, while Ted was scratched from a rehab start on 4/11.

After Brian Matusz struck out Willy Aybar in the 8th inning of last night’s Rays-Orioles game, Matusz was probably feeling pretty confident about leaving the game with a win. At the time, the Orioles led the Rays 3-0, and with only 5 outs remaining in the game, the Rays’ chances of winning were slim – 5.5%, to be exact.

Similarly, Brian Bannister had to feel good after recording the first out of the seventh inning. At the time, Bannister’s Royals led the Tigers 5-0 with only 8 outs remaining for Detroit. The Tigers’ chances at the time sat at a mere 2.9%. Even though Bannister allowed a run at the hands of Gerald Laird before exiting the game, the Royals’ win probability was still over 90% when he was replaced by Roman Colon.

Naturally, I wouldn’t be mentioning either of these situations if the improbable hadn’t occurred – neither Bannister or Matusz recorded a win, and in both cases their teams lost.

The Royals’ bullpen worked with remarkable efficiency to blow the lead. Colon gave up two doubles to only one out in the three batters he faced, allowing the Tigers to close the gap to 5-3. Dustin Hughes gave up a single and a walk to load the bases, setting the table for Juan Cruz. After a walk to Miguel Cabrera closed the gap to 5-4, Cruz finished the job by allowing a two run double to Carlos Guillen. By that point, the Tigers’ win probability had skyrocketed to 79.2%, a gain of 76.3% in merely 8 batters. The Tigers managed to hold the lead, and the game finished with a score of 6-5.

The collapse of the Orioles in the 8th was also quite rapid – Jim Johnson immediately recorded an out after replacing Matusz, but then combined with Will Ohman to allow 3 straight run scoring hits to Evan Longoria, Carlos Pena, and B.J. Upton. The hits combined for 4 runs, and put the Rays up by a score of 5-3, boosting the Rays win probability up to 85.3%. The Orioles hitters nearly reclaimed the game, however, as Luke Scott tied the game with a two run shot in the bottom half of the inning. Ohman and Cla Meredith combined for a quiet 9th inning, and a Nick Markakis single brought Baltimore back to a 72.4% chance to win, but the Orioles bullpen just wasn’t deep enough to handle the Rays in the 10th. Carlos Pena sealed the game for Tampa Bay with a 3 run shot off of Matt Albers. Rafael Soriano managed to save the game, despite a solo home run by Ty Wigginton, and the Rays won 8-6.

After dominating the majority of the game, both the Orioles and Royals were let down by their bullpens. The odds of both comebacks happening on the same night are a mere 0.16% chance – we would expect two comebacks of this magnitude to happen on the same night only about 0.25 times per season. Tuesday’s heroic comebacks (or unbelievable choke jobs, depending on your perspective) certainly provided us with some entertaining baseball, possibly on a level we won’t see again this season.

Brian Matusz is not a fan of the baseball scheduler makers. Or, maybe he is. He’s gotten the call to face the Tampa Bay Rays twice, and his combined line to date is:

12.3 IP, 15 SO, 6 BB, 0 HR

That works out to something like a 2.22 FIP despite facing one of the better offenses in baseball, one that loads their lineup with batters who have made a living hitting left-handed pitching. Matusz’ ERA won’t look quite that good since his bullpen allowed a few leftover runners to score last night. Also worth noting is that five of those walks came in his first start. In that sense, I suppose this has been a continuation of Matusz’ brief 2009 introduction to the majors. He threw in 44 innings, striking out nearly 8 per nine, walking fewer than three, en route to a 4.08 FIP, but with a 4.63 ERA.

The only thing that one can find fault with about Matusz’ game is his batted ball-profile. In his first start, he allowed five fly balls and three liners while failing to get a grounder. Last night, he did get a grounder – four of them actually – but, between both games, allowed 15 fly balls and liners to be put in play as well. Unlike his first start, which he exited after five innings and 97 pitches, Matusz didn’t lose command of the strike zone for the entire stretch.

Obviously, it’s only two starts. But it’s two good starts from a supposedly good prospect against a supposedly good division foe. He’s going to take some knocks eventually. Until then, though, Baltimore fans may continue to gaze upon Matusz with a sense of anticipation and excitement.

The Astros’ offense has been bad. Really bad. That doesn’t mean they’ll continue to be this bad (and they shouldn’t be, with Lance Berkman coming back to replace someone who most certainly is not Lance Berkman), but still, have you realized how bad they’ve been?

If, for whatever reason, Houston were to continue this pace, they would be expected to score about 300 runs. Since 1980, two teams have scored fewer than 350 runs during a season, but both occurred in 1981 (the Jays and the Mets), which was a strike shortened season. The worst offense since 1990 scored 466 runs. The Astros can add an entire run to their per game average and still fall shy of topping that team, which happened to be the 1994 Pirates, who, as you probably aware, had the whole ‘league on strike’ thing to deal with.

Add a run and a half to the Astros’ per game average and they score 544 runs. That total would make them the worst offense of the 2000s, with the 2003 Dodgers, 2002 Tigers, and 2003 Tigers representing the only other teams to score fewer than 600 runs.

This is supposed to be about the Astros and inappropriately using prorating techniques to make something out of nothing, but I cannot mention the 2003 Dodgers without talking about them a little more. They won 85 games despite barely crossing the plate more times than a gluttonous atheist. How unusual is the Dodgers’ feat? Here are the win totals of the next nine lowest scoring teams of the 2000s:

2002 Tigers 55
2003 Tigers 43
2004 Diamondbacks 51
2002 Brewers 56
2004 Brewers 67
2004 Expos 67
2008 Padres 63
2005 Nationals 81
2008 Giants 72
2002 Pirates 72

Only the 2001 Mets, 2005 Padres, 2005 Twins, and 2005 Astros scored fewer than 700 – not 600 – runs and finished above .500. The 2009 Astros won’t be joining those teams, but at least Berkman is due back soon.

Watching the Braves’ game on Sunday, I think, the announcer noted that Jason Heyward was having trouble laying-off breaking pitches in the dirt, and that is what it looked like to me in the couple of at-bats I have seen from him. I turned to the pitchf/x data to see whether that was the case. Here I plot all non-fastballs Heyward has seen so far: the pitches are color-coded with the FanGraphs PitchF/X section’s color scheme: whiffed pitches are encircled and contacted ones ex-ed. The graph is from the catcher’s perspective, so Heyward, a lefty, stands to the right of the zone, and the location indicated is where the pitch crosses the plate.

That is a striking trend. Of the 18 non-fastballs below the zone, he has swung at 12 of them and not made contact with one. On non-fastballs in the zone, on the other hand, he has 16 swings and just one whiff — and actually swings at a smaller percentage of non-fastballs in the zone than below the zone. So it does look like Heyward is having quite a problem laying off those pitches, and that results in tons of swinging strikes.

At just twenty years old, even a player as phenomenal as Heyward is going to have a transition period — Dave C. talked a little bit about this in yesterday’s podcast. In 31 PAs so far Heyward has an encouraging three HRs and five walks, but also ten strikeouts. So it looks like a big part of this transition period might be these low breaking balls and changeups that will result in a number of swinging strikes. And he will only see more of these pitches going forward if he continues to struggle with them.

Colin Wyers wrote a post today about potential bias in batted ball data. While I don’t have anything in particular to say about the results of his bias study, I have to disagree with his conclusion and debunk some of the information provided about the differences between Stat Corner tRA and FanGraphs tRA, which he uses to illustrate his point:

For starters, the difference in tRA between FanGraphs and Stat Corner is a poor stat to illustrate GB/FB/LD bias because there are other differences in the way both sites calculate the stat. Let’s take Felix Hernandez this year, for whom BIS and Gameday have very, very similar batted ball profiles for 2010.

         GB      LD     FB 
BIS     67.6    13.5   16.6 
GD      65.8    13.2   15.8

Now, here’s the difference in FanGraphs tRA vs StatCorner tRA

FG – 4.62
SC – 5.05

Almost a half a run difference. Why are they so different? It’s probably the component park factors, mainly on LD% and HR%, I would imagine.

Actually, I’ll plug both of those stat lines into the FanGraphs tRA calculator and see what I get: 4.62 and 4.70. So, about .08 of the differences is because of GB/FB/LD differences and the other .35 is park factors (or potentially slightly different weights).

Furthermore, if you look at individual player GB% correlation from 2003 to 2008 between BIS and Retrosheet data, you get .94. That’s among all players, whether they pitched 1 inning or 200 innings. Here’s the others:

GB% – .94
FB% – .85
LD% – .72

It’s not like the two data sources are telling you completely different things. For the most part, they agree, especially on GB%.

Baseball Info Solutions also rotates their scorers, to try and avoid any scorer bias as Ben Jedlovec stated here:

BIS Scorers are assigned “randomly”. We’re not using a random number generator, but it’s almost as effective. Scorers have a designated number (Ex. Scorer #11) which are then rotated through different slots in the schedule. If scorers 7 and 8 are scoring the late (west coast) games one day, they’ll be rotated to early games the next time around. There’s some miscellaneous switching to accommodate vacation, etc. too. In the end, everyone’s getting a good mix of every team in every park.

We also have several different quality control methods in place to make sure that scorers are consistent with their hit locations and types. We added some new tests this season using the hit timer to flag the batted ball data, so the 2009 data is better than ever.

Ben continues with:

BIS gets an almost entirely new set of video scouts each season. If you’re seeing the same “bias” in the same parks year after year, I can’t see how it would be related to the individual scorer.

It’s also important to note that BIS has an additional classification of batted ball data, Fliners, which is not displayed on FanGraphs and lumped in with Line Drives and Fly Balls. Fliners come in two varieties, Fliner-Line Drives and Fliner-Fly Balls.

Colin tackled the line drive issue before on the Hardball Times, in which Cory Schwartz of MLBAM responded:

our trajectory data is indeed validated as thoroughly as all of our other data: not just once, but three times: first, by a game-night manager who monitors the data entered by the stringer, second by a next-day editor who reviews trajectories against video, and third by Elias Sports Bureau. We take great care in the accuracy of all our data, including trajectories.

None of this is to say that your original premise is not true: line drive vs. fly ball is indeed a somewhat subjective distinction that may be influenced by a number of factors, not just press box height. But I disagree with your assertion that the accuracy of our quality is inferior in this (or any other) regard.

Now we know that there is subjectivity in batted ball stats, but in Colin’s conclusion he writes:

In the meantime, consider this my sabermetric crisis of faith. It’s not that I don’t believe in the objective study of baseball. I’m just not convinced at this point that something dealing with batted-ball data is, at least wholly, an objective study. And where does this leave us with existing metrics that utilize batted-ball data? Again, I’m not sure.

For me, this is a bit of an extreme conclusion to make. For stats like GB% I think there is little to be concerned about, but once you get to LD%, I think you should realize there is some subjectivity involved. Is it worth disregarding entirely or having a “sabermetric crisis of faith” over? In my opinion, probably not.

We all want best data possible and there are some exciting projects underway to collect more granular and precise data, but in the meantime, I don’t see any reason to dismiss the data that is currently available. Better batted ball data will certainly lead to more accurate results; I don’t think it will show completely different results.

Authors Note: This was an expansion on my thoughts from a comment I posted on insidethebook.com

We’ve got a little more than a week of baseball in the books, and while the samples are too small to make any meaningful conclusions, we’ve still seen some interesting things in the last seven days. So, let’s cover what we learned in week one.

The Astros are terribly impatient.

I don’t think anyone thought Houston would be good this year when they saw the roster that had been put together. We placed them dead last in the organization rankings for a reason, after all. But in their seven games, they’ve been a total and utter disaster.

It’s bad enough that their offense isn’t hitting, but perhaps most shocking is their remarkable insistence on swinging at everything. Through seven games, Houston has drawn just six walks while striking out 50 times. The Angels have drawn the second fewest walks, but they have 17. The Astros are in a class by themselves in terms of hacking away.

They’ve swung at 33.4 percent of pitches outside the strike, easily leading the league. They’re tied with the Rangers for the highest overall swing percentage, except that Texas’ hitters are actually, you know, talented. Houston won’t have much of an offensive threat until Lance Berkman returns from the disabled list, but at least they could make pitchers throw strikes. The current approach is obviously not working.

The Orioles outfielders are going to get a workout this year.

Here are the GB% for Baltimore starters so far:

Kevin Millwood: 37.5%
Jeremy Guthrie: 34.1%
Brad Bergesen: 42.1%
Brian Matusz: 0.0%
David Hernandez: 11.8%

Matusz and Hernandez continued their trend established in 2009 of being extreme flyball pitchers in their 2010 debuts. Chris Tillman is also an extreme flyball guy, so interestingly, the Orioles crop of young arms is made up almost entirely of guys who ptich up in the zone and give up balls in the air. Millwood and Guthrie are about average groundball guys for their careers, so the outfield will only get to rest on days when Bergsen takes the hill.

Kelly Johnson should have gathered more interest this winter.

Not that we should overreact to his hot start, but Johnson settled for just a one year, $2.35 million contract from Arizona after he was non-tendered by the Braves. He’s quickly reminding the rest of the National League that he’s a pretty good offensive second baseman, showing both power (five extra base hits) and bat control (four walks, one strikeout) in his first 23 plate appearances. But this isn’t anything new, really – ZIPS had Johnson projected to hit .279/.352/.472 before the season even started, and his career wOBA is .343.

He’s not a great defender at second base, but a 28-year-old who can hit like that and at least fake it at a middle infield spot should not be settling for the contract that Johnson got. Even better for Arizona is that they retain his rights beyond 2010, because he’s not going to have enough service time to qualify for free agency until after the 2011 season.

The cutback in winter spending led to some necessary market corrections, but it also led to Arizona getting a new second baseman for a fraction of what he’s worth. Kudos to the D’Backs for taking advantage of a market that failed to realize that Johnson is still a quality player.