When Mark Buehrle was ejected from Wednesday afternoon’s game against the Cleveland Indians in the third inning, the outlook was poor for the Chicago White Sox. The Sox were forced to go to their bullpen early, and with a runner on 2nd base and only 1 out, the win expectancy was 62.5% for the Indians. However, Buehrle’s replacement, Randy Williams, worked around an infield single to get out of the inning via a double play ball off the bat of Shin-Soo Choo.

The White Sox would go on to win the game, despite Buehrle’s quick hook. The reason for Buehrle’s ejection wasn’t immediately clear. It occurred after a questionable balk call – the second of the game called against Buehrle. We can’t hear if anything was said, but the offense that seems to have agitated Joe West is Buehrle lightly tossing his glove in frustration. Here’s a video of the ejection, from The Sporting Blog.

West Ejects Buehrle

The ejection of a starting pitcher early in the game is nothing to take lightly. The starting pitcher drastically impacts the run environment of the game, as we account for in our pitcher win values. The relief picher that comes in is typically the long reliever, one of the worst pitchers on the staff.

More importantly, however, is how the additional workload forced upon the bullpen can impact a team’s relievers. Today was the 9th game day in a row for the White Sox. They will not have a day off until May 31st. The White Sox bullpen had already thrown 23.2 innings in the 8 day stretch preceding this game. The early ejection of Buehrle forced another 6.1 innings onto that bullpen. That includes four innings thrown by Tony Pena, the longest outing of his major league career. Pena has recorded two 3.0 IP outings so far this year, and has required four days and two days of rest after those appearances. There’s a good chance the Pena will not be able to be used in the four game series that Chicago will open up against Tampa Bay tomorrow.

Rule 9.01 (d) spells out the rules for ejections in MLB:

Each umpire has authority to disqualify any player, coach, manager or substitute for objecting to decisions or for unsportsmanlike conduct or language, and to eject such disqualified person from the playing field. If an umpire disqualifies a player while a play is in progress, the disqualification shall not take effect until no further action is possible in that play.

Purely going by the book, Joe West wasn’t out of line with his ejection. That glove toss can certainly be called unsportsmanlike. Still, the ejection of a starting pitcher has a serious impact on a MLB game, and West’s actions seem overly sensitive given how umpires are generally treated. Umpires need to have thick skins, and it is irresponsible to potentially decide a game because one feels slighted. Luckily for Chicago, West’s ejection of Buehrle and manager Ozzie Guillen (who called Joe West a very nasty name after the game) didn’t cost them the game today. Unfortunately, it is almost certain that they will feel its effects throughout the entirety of their next series.

With Carl Crawford set for a large raise when he becomes eligible for free agency this winter, there has been a school of thought that the Rays might deal their star left fielder this summer in order to extract value for him before he leaves this winter. However, with the team atop the AL East, it seems unlikely (to say the least) that the Rays would deal one of their best players, and the team has publicly stated that they’ll do whatever they can to keep him, though they obviously can’t compete with the big payroll teams if one comes calling with a few barrels of cash.

However, I wonder whether we’ve been speculating about the wrong outfielder that the Rays may put on the block this summer. With B.J. Upton struggling once again, perhaps he’s the toolsy OF that Tampa Bay will dangle this summer.

While he’s always possessed star potential, Upton’s disappointing 2009 season was one of the reasons the Rays weren’t able to repeat as a playoff team last year. He’s shown no improvement this year, as he continues to get himself out by chasing pitches out of the strike zone. The result – a .210/.285/.370 line that gives him a well below average .301 wOBA, not that different from the .310 wOBA he posted a year ago. After drawing walks in 15 percent of his at-bats in 2008, that number fell to 9 percent last year and has remained there this year. While Upton does have power and speed, he doesn’t use either well enough to compensate for a poor approach at the plate. After what looked like real improvement in pitch selection two years ago, it’s been nothing but regression ever since.

For the last year and a half, Upton has essentially been an average baseball player, with his value mostly coming from his glove in center field. However, with his second trip through arbitration coming up at the end of the season, he’s no longer cheap enough for the Rays to sit around and hope he lives up to his talent level. They’re paying him $3 million this year, and that will likely go to $5 or $6 million next winter. For the Rays, that’s a significant amount of the budget, and money that could potentially be offered to Carl Crawford if Upton wasn’t around.

While trading a guy who was a +4 win player in both 2007 and 2008, and doesn’t turn 26 until August, is certainly a pretty big risk, the Rays may have to decide whether they’d have rather have Crawford or Upton going forward. They almost certainly can’t have both, and Crawford’s the one that is actually making them a good team right now. Instead of shipping off the star player who does everything well, perhaps Andrew Friedman and company should consider shopping the underachiever who is reaching the point of his career where he’s no longer cheap or all that young. There would certainly be a market for Upton, as teams will always take chances on that kind of talent, and the Rays would be able to replace him far easier than they could replace Crawford.

Given their budget, Tampa Bay won’t have that many chances to win it all. If it costs them the potential of B.J. Upton to keep the present of Carl Crawford, that may very well be a trade worth making.

In an injury-depleted Phillies bullpen Jose Contreras’s surprising performance has been a huge help. He has pitched 14 innings and allowed just one run (on a solo home run) while striking out 20 and walking two. That performance has earned him some save opportunities while Brad Lidge and Ryan Madson are on the DL.

Last September I noted that Jose Contreras had stopped using two different arm slots in mid-August of 2009. In light of Contreras’s recent performance I was curious to see whether he was still going with the one arm angle or had gone back to two.

As I did with Brett Anderson, here I plotted small histograms for each of Contreras’s appearances going back to the beginning of 2009. The x-axis is the horizontal release position in feet (0 is the middle of the rubber) and I separate the data by batter handedness.

Here the difference in horizontal release position is not from shifting on the rubber, but from different arm slots. When pitching to lefties he throw with a standard delivery, so he releases the ball closer to the center of the rubber. To RHBs he, sometimes, uses a lower arm angle so he releases the ball closer to 3B (further from the middle of the rubber). In mid-August of 2009 he gave up the lower arm angle and started pitching to both RHBs and LHBs from the standard slot.

But since the start of 2010 he has recovered the lower arm slot. It also looks like his release point is more consistent, but I think this is because he has fewer pitches per appearance now, as a reliever, than he did in early 2009, as a starter. But I could be wrong.

Contreras’s excellent performance cannot be fully attributed to his re-adoption of the lower arm slot — luck has played a huge role. But I would bet that it doesn’t hurt. It is harder for RHBs to pick up pitches coming from that lower arm slot, so if Contreras can effectively pitch from there it should be a help against them compared to the couple months last year when he was pitching just from the one arm slot.

Dateline: April 9, 2010. Carson Cistulli leads Dave Cameron and me in a discussion of pre-season predictions. Dave goes out on a limb and predicts James Shields to win the AL Cy Young and Josh Hamilton to win the AL MVP. I have a hearty laugh, compose myself, and offer safer, saner alternatives. Miguel Cabrera for MVP, Jon Lester for Cy Young. Apparently the latter prediction became the equivalent of the Sports Illustrated cover jinx. Lester, who had already struggled through five innings in his season debut against the Yankees, faced equal, if not worse, troubles in his next two starts against the Twins and the Rays. His line after three starts:

16 IP, 21 H, 15 R, 15 ER, 9 BB, 15 K, 2 HR

After the third start, against the Rays, clearly Lester’s worst of the season, I had to smack myself upside the head. Lester had been an attractive pre-season pick for Cy Young. He actually underperformed his peripherals last season, posting a 3.41 ERA against a 3.15 FIP and 3.13 xFIP. His career-high .323 BABIP was sure to decline. If he could replicate his walk and strikeout rates, 9.96 per nine and 2.83 per nine, he’d be on his way to one stellar season. In fact, if his luck completely turned on BABIP and it dipped below his career norm in 2010, he might have ended the Cy Young discussion before it even started.

Then came those three games. The strikeouts were still there, which was about the only positive for Lester during that period. His walk rate resembled that of his minor league career. Opponents were hitting .313/.405/.478 against him, hitting the ball on a line 24 percent of the time. His BABIP, the one point on which I thought his season could turn, sat at an ugly .352. It was just three starts, hardly something on which we can judge a season. But they were three ugly starts.

There was still plenty of hope for young Lester. Last season he started off even worse, allowing 34 runs in his first 47 IP. That situation was even worse. He had allowed 10 home runs in those 47 innings, and his BABIP sat at an ugly .391. But then from May 21 through the end of the season he allowed just 43 runs in 156.1 innings, including just 10 home runs with a .298 BABIP. His June through September performance might have gotten him into the Cy discussion, but the voters tend to count those April and May starts, too.

This year Lester’s turnaround occurred after just three starts, so he has more than enough time to bring his season numbers into line with his true talent. In fact, with his performance last night he might have done just that. It took him 111 pitches to get through six innings, but when you strike out nine and walk five your pitch count tends to rise quickly. Regardless, he allowed just one hit and no runs, bringing his season ERA down to 3.15. That is right in line with his FIP, 3.17, and xFIP, 3.25. The slight bump in xFIP is due to his 9.5 percent HR/FB ratio, but that seems also relate to his increased ground ball percentage, 54.6, compared to his career average of 45.8.

What makes me even more optimistic about Lester’s chances to put together a league-best season is how he described his effort last night.

“I had a hard time getting into a rhythm,” he told reporters after the game. “It was just kind of a battle from the beginning. I was just not in a rhythm, not in a flow of the game, just kind of had a think feeling.” (from MLB.com)

I’m not quite sure what Lester considers a “thick feeling,” but if it results in one hit and nine strikeouts I’m sure he’ll take it on most nights. In any case, on a night where he clearly wasn’t feeling his best he managed to completely shut down the team that has scored the second most runs per game in the AL. Just imagine, then, what the game will look like over the summer, when Lester has his A game and is facing the Royals lineup. Fun times should lie ahead for the Red Sox and their ace.

Come hang out with Patrick Newman and myself for a fun filled hour of baseball talk, both domestic and foreign. Also, a reminder that RotoGraphs hosts the fantasy chat every Friday, and Marc Hulet’s gang is far smarter than I when it comes to all things fantasy baseball, so your questions in that vein will be better answered over there.

This is a continuation from a series that began last week with catchers.

From 1988-2002, sixty-eight shortstops were drafted in the first round (and supplemental first round) of the June Amateur Draft. Twenty-two of these players would never play in the Major Leagues, a group that includes a whopping 19 high school picks, two college players, and one Puerto Rico draftee. Twenty-three other players were Major League busts, with less than 2 career WAR to their name. This group includes 14 more high school picks, eight college guys, and another player taken out of Puerto Rico.

This leaves 23 shortstops, about 34%, that made some good on their bonus money at the Major League level. However, just eight players (11.8%) were good enough to produce more than 12 WAR in the big leagues (Note: I think this number will rise by at least two before Kelly Johnson and B.J. Upton finish their careers). Here are all 23 players:

Name                   WAR     From 
Alex Rodriguez        105.2      HS
Chipper Jones          83.2      HS
Derek Jeter            69.5      HS
Nomar Garciaparra      43.1       U
Chuck Knoblauch        42.7       U
Brian Roberts          27.5       U
Royce Clayton          20.4      HS
Adam Kennedy           18.4       U
Felipe Lopez           12.5      HS
Preston Wilson         12.3      HS
Michael Tucker         11.7       U
B.J. Upton             10.8      HS
Mike Cuddyer           10.6      HS
Kelly Johnson           9.8      HS
Adam Everett            9.7       U
Khalil Greene           9.1       U
Pokey Reese             7.3      HS
Bobby Crosby            6.6       U
Willie Greene           5.0      HS
Brent Gates             4.5       U
Kevin Orie              3.6       U
Russ Johnson            3.3       U
Benji Gil               2.5      HS

To recap a little bit, this means that the 68 shortstops drafted over 15 years were distributed like this: 45 high school players, 21 college players and two Puerto Ricans. While the latter two didn’t work out, the college shortstops had a 52% success rate (if we define success as eventually producing 2 WAR, which is a dubious distinction at best), while high school players “succeeded” at just a 25% level. But, if you want to know why scouting directors continue to fall for the toolsy prep shortstop, take a look at that leaderboard again: Alex Rodriguez, Chipper Jones and Derek Jeter have passed a combined 250 Wins Above Replacement, handily outpacing the other 65 players combined.

You would be astute to point out that Rodriguez, Jones and Jeter weren’t like all the other high school shortstops, as these were elite guys. Rodriguez was a consensus #1 guy in his draft class, Jones was a consensus top two pick, and Jeter easily in the top ten. But, if we limited ourself just to shortstops drafted in the top ten, we have 16 data points, and eight of them produced 5 WAR in the big leagues, drafted in this position: first, first, second, sixth, eighth, ninth, ninth, tenth. Only one player didn’t reach the big leagues (1999 draft’s #4 pick, Corey Myers), though six others have a negative before their career WAR number. And if you’re scoring at home, that means the first-round shortstops drafted after 10th overall consist of 52 players, and just 10 of them would reach the 5 WAR watermark.

Like I did with catchers, I want to look at the success stories, and see what their minor league production looked like. To keep the number of players palatable, I limited the group to only the 17 players that produced seven or more WAR, in other words, everyone above Bobby Crosby in the previous table. And then, because I don’t think we learn much from them, I removed Royce Clayton, Adam Everett and Pokey Reese. These were guys whose offensive identity really didn’t matter a whole lot, so we can sum up their path to the big leagues like this: “really impressed scouts with their defense.”

Builds

All over the map, but I do want to use this space to talk about ultimate position. Of the 13 players we’re looking at, just Derek Jeter, Nomar Garciaparra, Khalil Greene and Felipe Lopez were primary shortstops during their career. We can probably throw A-Rod into this group, too, but still, it’s certainly not rare for these guys not to last long at shortstop. Michael Tucker never played a game at shortstop, and just a year at second base, while Mike Cuddyer was there just a year. Four players would make second base their home, and then five split between third base and the outfield. But with heights ranging from 5-9 to 6-3, and with weights from 165-210, I don’t think we need to put a lot of stock in that.

Low-A Production

This was actually more impressive than I would have guessed. I have 10 players show up with Low-A experience, and really only Brian Roberts wasn’t young for the level (201 PA’s at age 21). And, to boot, Roberts .240/.347/.323 line was the second worst of the bunch. The worst belongs to Preston Wilson, who was the only high school draftee to post a Low-A OBP below .350. Of the other seven teenage performances, the worst OBP is Felipe Lopez at .351, and the worst slugging is Jeter at .394. Honors for top prize are between Alex Rodriguez (.319/.379/.605) and Kelly Johnson (.289/.404/.513).

High-A Production

This was usually a step down for the players, as even Chipper Jones hit a paltry .277/.353/.413. The better guys didn’t end up as the better players down the road in the Major Leagues, so I’m inclined to really look at High-A performances and just wait and see until we get a nice sample in Double-A. But props to Michael Tucker (.305/.391/.456) and Mike Cuddyer (.298/.403/.470) for what they did.

Double-A Production

I can remember now that when the B.J. Upton hype machine was in full swing, we compared his .301/.391/.426 line in AA (at ages 18 and 19) to Alex Rodriguez (at age 18) hitting .288/.391/.441. But what should be noted is that the best guys didn’t last long at this level, and they hit it well. It took a guy like Cuddyer two years to figure it out, and Nomar wasn’t very good (.267/.338/.384), but a quick move to Triple-A and onto the Majors was a good sign.

Triple-A Production

I like this. The best performances were by Alex Rodriguez and Nomar Garciaparra, with Chipper Jones not far behind. Derek Jeter posted his best minor league numbers in Triple-A, and Khalil Greene looked pretty human. It’s hard in prospect analysis to wait to decide on a player until Triple-A, but with first round shortstops, it seems hard to make a definitive opinion much before then.

Bust Production

As I look at each player that failed, and his minor league path before then, it quickly jumped out at me that Low-A is a really important barometer for shortstops. I said above that the good players had .350 OBP’s in Low-A, where that was pretty rare for the failed prospects. I think of guys like Jason Repko and Aaron Herr, who would go on to tease scouts with some pretty solid performances in Double-A and Triple-A as they moved up the ladder. But Repko had hit .220/.257/.329 in Low-A, and Herr was .248/.283/.366. The fact is, for the most part, these highly athletic players tend to do a good job hitting mediocre Low-A pitching.

And for the players that teased in the low minors, a guy like Josh Burrus for example, then Double-A was usually a harsh reminder of reality. I continue to think that High-A is a weird unimportant stop in the development of first round shortstops — I don’t really have a hypothesis why this is true — but it’s clear that Low-A and Double-A are better barometers of how a player will mature. I’m trying to be careful making blanket statements, lest I’d have thought Nomar Garciaparra or Preston Wilson were busts prematurely, but I think we all understand the point.

High school shortstops are dangerous, dangerous uses of first round picks. The college variety is safer, but you really are just looking for a 5-20 WAR player in the end. And, with everyone, the best way to tell a fraud from a prospect is to see how they do out of the gate, and then check back in when they get to Double-A. And, for what it’s worth, the chance the player stays at shortstop is almost non existent.

New York Yankees right-hander A.J. Burnett was rolling along last night against the Minnesota Twins, whiffing five batters, walking two and trading zeros with Scott Baker through five innings. And then, for the first time in the short history of Target Field, the rains came and delayed the action. The game was eventually suspended and will be picked up today.

Burnett pounded the zone with his fastball, tossing 35 of his 50 heaters for strikes (70 percent). But while Mother Nature threw a nasty curveball last night, Burnett missed the mark with his hammer — just 10 of 23 curves garnered a strike (43 percent).

According to our Pitch Type Values going back to the 2002 season, Burnett’s deuce has been one of the best offerings in the game. Per 100 pitches thrown, the low-80’s breaking pitch has been worth +1.6 runs above average. Over the 2007-2009 seasons, Burnett’s curve had runs/100 values of +2.03, +1.23 and +1.47, respectively. And he went to the pitch often. Never known for his changeup, Burnett used his curve 26.3 percent in ’07, 29.2 percent in ’08 and 31.1 percent last season.

In 2010, however, A.J. can’t seem to find his plus curveball. The pitch has a -0.14 runs/100 value. According to Pitch F/X data from texasleaguers.com, Burnett’s curve has been thrown for a strike only 47.9 percent of the time this year, compared to 56.4 percent in 2009 (the MLB average is about 58 percent). Batters have whiffed at 12.1 percent of curveballs thrown in 2010, a significant decline from last season’s 16.7 percent whiff rate (11.6 percent MLB average).

Not getting results with the curve, Burnett appears to have lost confidence in the pitch. He has thrown his breaking ball 23.5 percent of the time, preferring to go to his 93-94 MPH fastball on nearly three-quarters of his pitches. Burnett has typically tossed his fastball about two-thirds of the time, but his 2010 heater usage has few peers — among starting pitchers logging at least 50 innings pitched, Burnett trails only Colorado’s Aaron Cook and Seattle’s Doug Fister in fastball percentage.

Burnett’s four-seamer and sinker have been decent, with a combined run value right around the big league average. But those pitches don’t induce nearly as many swings and misses as breaking stuff. Burnett’s four-seamer has been whiffed at 6.4 percent (6 percent MLB average) and the sinker has a 5.2 whiff percentage (5.4 percent MLB average).

As a result, A.J. isn’t getting K’s like he usually does. Burnett has 6.39 K/9, his lowest mark since 2000 with the Marlins and nearly two punch outs per nine frames lower than his career average (8.3 K/9). The 33-year-old’s swinging strike rate is just seven percent, compared to the 8.3 percent MLB average and Burnett’s 10.2 percent mark since 2002. A.J.’s 83.2 percent contact rate sits well above the 80-81 percent big league average and his 76.5 percent clip dating back to ’02. Since inking a five-year, $82.5 million deal with the Yankees prior to 2009, Burnett hasn’t fooled batters near as much.

His 2010 xFIP (4.35) is similar to his 2009 mark (4.29), as Burnett has walked fewer batters and induced more ground balls compared to last season. But he isn’t pitching like the high-octane starter we came to know in Florida and Toronto. For A.J. to start getting more K’s, he’s going to have to rediscover his curveball.

Andy LaRoche is currently the only player the Pirates received in the Jason Bay trade on the active roster. Craig Hansen hasn’t pitched in 2010, Bryan Morris is in hi-A, and Brandon Moss has a .676 OPS in AAA. Right now, Andy LaRoche is the best hope for the Pirates to get a productive player out of that deal. This year, however, results have been disappointing. LaRoche only has a .311 wOBA this year, down from .324 in 2009.

Much of this decrease in performance can be attributed to a .278 BABIP. Throughout his career, LaRoche has had BABIP issues, most notably in 2008, when he carried a .190 BABIP through a relatively large sample of 186 balls in play. The key to these issues appears to be a penchant for hitting infield fly balls. In 1100 career plate appearances, LaRoche has an IFFB% of 14.5%. That would rank in the top 10 marks among qualified players in 2009.

It should be obvious that infield flies are a bad result. The BABIP on infield flies is right around .010. Even though LaRoche’s 35.0% career fly ball rate is below average, his high IFFB rate still means that 5% of his batted balls are almost guaranteed to be outs.

That problem has only been exacerbated in 2010. LaRoche’s infield fly fate has expanded to 25%. With a quarter of his fly balls going for outs, and his fly ball rate up to 36%, that means that 9% of his batted balls are guaranteed outs. That’s put a major damper on his slugging percentage this season – his SLG has fallen from .401 to .364, and his ISO has seen an equivalent drop. His ground ball BABIP has increased to .233 from .218 (and a bewildering .111 in 2008), which has offset the damage to his batting average and on-base percentage.

Really, the only major difference between LaRoche’s 2010 and 2009 is this increase in infield flies. His walk rate is within 0.1%, his HR/FB rate is within 0.5%, and his strikeout rate is actually down 2%. It’s nearly impossible for an infield fly rate this high to be sustainable – no qualified player in 2010 hit more than 17.6% of his fly balls in the infield. Expect LaRoche to start hitting more of his fly balls out of the infield. Both his power and batting average will increase as a result, and his line should approach, if not eclipse, last year’s 97 wRC+, 2.6 WAR season.

What follows marks the fifth installment in this absurd experiment, which has already seen Bryan Smith, Craig Calcaterra, Tommy Bennett, and Will Leitch bring the lyrical pain.

Today’s willing participant is Jesse Spector. Mr. Spector serves not only as a copy editor for the New York Daily News, but also as the keeper of that paper’s Touching Base blog, from which post he’s able to proselytize the gospel of sabermetrics to one of the widest readerships in the fifty nifty.

Please note that this installment of the series is packaged in two unsullied parts: Spector’s initial response and then his answers to my follow-up questions.

For an answer to your series’ titular question, I write for the same reason that Tim Lincecum pitches. He’s a pitcher. Not to put myself on his level, but I’m a writer. The difference is that “writer” is not really my job. Seven years ago, I was working part-time at the Daily News, and the full-time job that opened was on the desk — as a copy editor, I edit stories and write headlines. That job brings with it a lot of downtime over the course of an evening (I work from 6 p.m. until 1:30 a.m., with the “crown jewels of the week,” Tuesday and Wednesday, as my days off). I mostly use mine to either watch games or work on writing ideas — since a lot of my ideas come from things I notice while watching games, I guess that’s really one and the same.

Read the rest of this entry »

Needs explaining by folks who watch Gil Meche more often than myself.

Meche allowed 29 steals between 1999 and 2007. Those 29 gave opposing baserunners a 45% success rate. Running on Meche was a chore rather than a pleasure. Since 2008, though, Meche has allowed 42 steals at an 88% success rate. The basepath between first and second has essentially become a runway.

Three hypothesizes came to mind:

1) The Royals changed his delivery

Maybe they did, but teams didn’t start abusing Meche until the 2008 season, his second in Kansas City. That means either teams sat on the change for a full season or Meche didn’t make a change until 2008. This would seemingly be where the Royals fandom that regulates the site can chime in. Did Meche start taking longer? Did he work out of the windup with runners on? Did he add a hitch to his delivery? Anything, nothing, something?

2) Quality of catcher/runner

The stealing rates by Meche and then the rest of the pitching staff in each of his seasons since 2005:

SB%	Meche	Team
2005	50	70
2006	42	68
2007	44	76
2008	86	73
2009	94	72
2010	83	71

Suffice to say that’s not it. The quality of runner argument is dampened by this too. If the runners really were more talented, then either the team’s catchers are elite or it’s just not true.

3) The injuries

Meche has had numerous shoulder and back injuries, but they all came in 2009 and later … which doesn’t explain his 2008 numbers unless he was hurt then too.

So, Royals fans, I ask, what’s changed with Meche?