Cliff Lee is having a season for the ages. His prodigious strikeout to walk ratio this year has been well documented, but it practically deserves a note after every one of his starts. I am going to bring it up again, but in my own way. I don’t particularly fancy walks as the ideal denominator in this ratio.

For one, it includes intentional walks and I don’t like that. Though it is less of an issue for starting pitchers than it is for relievers it is still a relevant distinction to make for National League pitchers who might see more intentional walks given to the hitter in front of the pitcher. Secondly, it leaves out hit batsmen, which I think should be included. After all the result is the same, a free base to the hitter. I have mentioned previously that I favor a number that I deemed “free passes” and someone else offered “net walks” which is unintentional walks and hit batsmen. Not coincidentally, that is the number used in the FIP formula and others.

After Cliff Lee’s recent 11 strikeout, no walk performance against the Yankees, I decided to see where he was currently stacking up against the history books. Now I already knew that his traditional strikeout to walk rate was among the best baseball has ever seen, a remarkable feat in and of itself. Pundits owe it to the public to discuss frequently anytime anyone in baseball manages to best an all time record. With so many years of history behind it, breaking any baseball record is a difficult task. Cliff Lee’s 15.2 strikeout to walk ratio is on that pace with the current best mark (minimum 160 innings pitched) being Bret Saberhagen’s strike-shortened 1994 season where he struck out 143 and walked 13 for an 11.0 ratio.

15.2 is a whole lot better than 11.0 but it gets even more impressive. Cliff Lee has two intentional walks and just one hit batter. By contrast, Saberhagen had no intentional walks in 1994 and plunked four batters. Utilizing net walks, Cliff Lee’s ratio increases to an overwhelming 17.1 strikeouts per free pass issued while Saberhagen drops all the way to 8.4.

Saberhagen is not the only one to experience a sharp change in ratio with this tweak in the walk number. Pedro Martinez hit 14 batters in 2000 (and 15 in 2002) and including those drops his rate from 8.9 to 6.2. That is still impressive, but is no longer one of history’s best. On the other side, Greg Maddux had 11 intentional walks (witness that pesky NL factor) and just three hit batters so his ratio jumped from 6.1 to 8.6, turning an otherwise ordinary Maddux season into the fourth best mark in baseball history.

Just in case you were wondering, the projected top spot on this revised list doesn’t change. Cliff Lee is still dominating the records, but now he is doing so by a bigger margin, a seemingly impossible accomplishment. While before there was Saberhagen at 11 and a couple other pitchers above the 9.0 threshold, take a look at the top ten when using net walks:

Two things jump out to me. Fergie Jenkies was really ahead of his time and Cliff Lee is nearly doubling the greatest mark ever. That’s dominance on an incredible scale.

One of the benefits of never walking anyone is that you generally throw fewer pitches per batter and get to last deeper in games. With Cliff Lee running 1910-like walk rates his bullpen can figuratively safely go get smashed the night before any of his starts. Lee’s last start lasting just 6.1 innings was his shortest outing since equaling that total on May 21. Those two are the shortest he has worked all season long.

It’s not just that Lee has consistently gotten into the 7th inning, it’s that he’s consistently gotten into the 9th. 15 of his 20 starts so far have gone at least eight innings. Seven of those have gone a full nine. That sort of efficiency puts Cliff Lee in some rarefied air. With 161.1 innings pitched over those 20 starts, Lee is averaging 8.1 innings for every start the he makes.

I do not have historical numbers on how that exactly ranks, but I can use the slightly more general number of innings pitched per game to put Lee’s performance thus far into greater context. Since 1950 (a rather arbitrary year chosen to get past the early years and the World War II years), there have been just 49 pitchers to hurl at least 160 innings and average at least eight innings per appearance. Lee currently sits 40th on that list nestled between Tom Seaver’s 1973 season and Alex Kellner’s 1953 campaign.

Obviously, pitchers threw more innings the further back we go in history. Complete games used to be the norm instead of the exception. To get a sense of this one just needs to look at those 49 pitchers arranged in chronological order. Aside from Lee, the last pitcher to cross that eight-inning barrier was Greg Maddux in 1994. And before him, the last time it occurred was in 1983 when both Ron Guidry and Mario Soto did it.

Over the last 27 baseball seasons, only Greg Maddux has done what Cliff Lee is currently doing in terms of eating innings.

Expanded Four Factors links:
Austin Jackson
Aaron Hill
Ryan Howard
Average Player
Math/Reference

Last time, we took a look at Austin Jackson, and in particular, his outlandish .422 BABIP. With the help of the Four Factors, we came to the conclusion without such fantastic success on balls in play, Jackson is not likely to be an impact hitter and, without his stellar center field defense, might have trouble reaching replacement level with his bat. Today, we’ll take a look at a hitter who is having similar success on balls in play, but is also succeeding in other aspects of the game as well.

That player would be Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers. Hamilton is putting together an utterly ridiculous .357/.405/.622 line this season, good for a .440 wOBA. After posting a meager 1.4 WAR up in an injury riddled season last season, Hamilton has already posted 6.0 WAR this season in only 470 plate appearances.

Unless you’re Barry Bonds, it’s difficult to put up a line like this without a giant BABIP, and Hamilton certainly has that. His .396 BABIP ranks second in the majors to only the aforementioned Jackson. However, Hamilton has also improved his contact this year, striking out in a career low 17.2% of plate appearances. Most important, however, is the fact that Hamilton is showing great power, with an ISO of .265 and a POWH (XB/H) of .742. It’s not like this power is anything particularly new, however – his career POWH is a nearly identical .743.

Hamilton is a line drive hitter (23% LD this year, 23% career) and avoids the fly ball (35% career), so a high BABIP is natural. However, we would expect something closer to his career BABIP of .343 as opposed to the near-.400 mark he is currently running. Let’s take a look at what would happen to Hamilton with a lower BABIP.

With a drop in BABIP back to .340, Hamilton’s looking like a .383 wOBA hitter, which is still quite good. Even if it drops all the way back to .300, Hamilton’s still a comfortably above average hitter, at .346. Any BABIP above .360 projects Hamilton as a .400+ wOBA hitter. To be exact, every 10 points of BABIP is worth just over 9 points of wOBA.

What does this tell us? Not much that we didn’t already know, really. First, Hamilton’s having an insanely good year, even though there’s very little chance that he maintains his .440 wOBA. Second, Hamilton’s power and contact skills make him an above average hitter regardless of his BABIP, and even with some regression he should remain on of the better hitting outfielders in the league. Third, it would take some very poor luck to push Hamilton to anywhere near or below average. Hamilton is a very good hitter having a tremendous season, and right now, he certainly looks like a candidate, if not the front runner, for the Most Valuable Player award in the American League.

To celebrate the return of minor league stats to the site, let’s spend a few minutes looking at a guy who is having one of the most interesting seasons in AAA, and has put himself on the map as a guy who has earned another shot in the big leagues – Luis Rodriguez.

You may remember Rodriguez from his time with the Twins and Padres, where he served as the quintessential utility infielder for the last five years. He fit the cliche perfectly – little guy, played multiple positions, put the bat on the ball, no power. He was exactly what you thought of when the terms “backup shortstop” came to mind. After a miserable season at the plate with the Padres last year, where he hit .209/.319/.260, San Diego released him. He hooked on with the Indians over the winter, but was released at the end of spring training. He took a minor league deal with the White Sox and has spent this season with Triple-A Charlotte.

And what a season it has been.

In 354 plate appearances, Rodriguez is hitting .296/.360/.502. That is not a typo – the diminutive middle infielder is outslugging Jesus Montero. A guy who has slapped the ball on the ground for most of his career, he’s already launched 15 home runs in the International League, and 31 of his 90 hits have gone for extra bases. He’s done this while maintaining his excellent bat control, as he again has more walks (34) than strikeouts (30).

His Isolated Slugging (.202) is double what it was previously in his minor league career, and his next home run will give him twice as many longballs as he’s ever had in a single season before.

There’s a pretty good chance that this is a career year. Rodriguez is 30, and it is Triple-A baseball. Stuff like this happens sometimes, and most guys can’t carry it over to the big leagues. However, there’s a contemporary example of this exact same development path currently having a monster year in the majors – Andres Torres.

Like Rodriguez, Torres was a no-power slap hitter who had never really done much offensively in the majors or minors. In 2007, at age 28 and back in Double-A, he started driving the baseball, and carried that over to Triple-A when the Tigers promoted him. It didn’t earn him a big league shot, though, so he signed with the Cubs in 2008 and went back to Triple-A to prove himself. He slugged .501, continuing the power outburst, and the San Francisco Giants took a shot on him as a reserve outfielder for the 2009 season.

Good thing, too – he’s hit .285/.366/.512 in 602 plate appearances over the last two years, and he’s currently one of the few players in baseball having a +5 WAR season in 2010. Torres is the biggest reason that the Giants are still in playoff contention, as his mid-career power surge in the minors turned him into a pretty good player.

Don’t bet on Rodriguez putting up a +5 win season in the big leagues next year. Torres is the exception, not the rule. However, given the success that the Giants have had with their surprisingly strong small outfielder (he’s listed at 5’10, 190, the same size as Rodriguez), expect some Major League team to give Rodriguez another shot in the big leagues.

If by chance the power surge is even somewhat sustainable, Rodriguez could be a nice player for a lot of teams. Switch-hitting infielders who can make contact and drive the ball are not very easy to find. The White Sox may have lucked into one. If they aren’t going to give him a shot, someone else will.

The Toronto Blue Jays have had a fun year for a team many picked to be among the worst in baseball before the season started — a short burst of pseudo-contention to start the season, tons of home runs, and they are still above .500. However, given where the team is at in the “success cycle,” most assumed that before the deadline they’d trade away some of their veteran relievers who will be free agents after the season: Jason Frasor, Scott Downs, and Kevin Gregg (the Jays hold a club option on Gregg). Surprisingly, all three relievers are still with the team. Jayson Stark reports that Toronto GM Alex Anthopoulos decided that relative the offers they were getting for these pitchers, Toronto would be better off offering the relievers arbitration (which Anthopolous is confident they’ll turn down) and getting compensation draft picks in return.

In the cited article, Anthopolous sounds confident that the relievers would turn down arbitration if it was offered to them, thus netting the Jays compensation picks if they were signed by another team. Assuming that the Jays would have made a fair trade for both sides, and the players will turn down arbitration, is Anthopolous right that the draft picks are likely to be worth more than the prospects in return? My seven longtime readers will know I’m about to refer to Victor Wang’s research on the trade value of prospects and draft pick compensation as summarize by Sky Kalkman. The average surplus value of Type A compensation picks (meaning this takes into account the average of all the players who “made it” and “busted”) is around six million dollars. The average value for Type B picks is about three million dollars. How does that compare to what the relievers would have brought back in a fair trade?*

* Calculating pitcher WAR is a bit involved, so I won’t be going through each step (see Dave Cameron’s primer here), I’ll simply cite each Pitchers ZiPS RoS FIP and then their projected “true talent” WAR assume that.

Gregg, who is currently projected to be a Type B free agent in the offseason (assuming the Jays decline his option) has a ZiPS RoS FIP of 4.01. Over a full “relief season” of about 65 innings and with decent “setup” leverage, that’s not quite a 0.5 WAR player, or at best about $2.5M worth of value over a full season. Gregg is getting paid $2M this season, and has a $750,000 buyout on his contract (all quoted salaries are according to Cot’s). Assuming the Jays didn’t throw any money in, there really isn’t any surplus value to be had here, so they shouldn’t have received any prospect of note. The draft pick would certainly be better, although I must say that Gregg would be crazy to turn down arbitration of the Jays offered it to him.

Jason Frasor has a ZiPS RoS projected FIP of 3.22, which comes to between 1 and 1.5 WAR over a full season, or between four and six million sollars of value. His 2010 salary is $2.65 million. Over a the half-season after the deadline, a team would project to get (again assuming the Jays don’t send any money along) between about one or two million dollars in surplus value. Frasor also projects as a Type B free agent (with a projected value of three million on the compensation picks), so so even at best the C prospect the Jays would get in a fair trade wouldn’t be as potentially valuable as the compensation pick.

Scott Downs is even more interesting, as he looks as if he will qualify for Type A status. (I highly recommend reading Mike Axisa’s piece on the implications of Type A status for Down’s free agent prospects). Downs actually doesn’t project as that much better than Frasor (both are good relievers): 3.17 FIP, between 1 and 1.5 WAR over a full season. Downs is making four million dollars this season, however, so he actually had less surplus value than Frasor. Over half a season, that’s probably one million dollars of surplus at most, which Wang shows to be about the value of a younger C propsect, and not worth nearly as much as even Type B compensation, and certainly not Type A compensation (as Axisa discusses, the Jays will still get a decent pick the team that signs Downs doesn’t have to give up a first rounder).

On this rough outline, it appears that the Blue Jays are making the right choice. The picks project as more valuable the Jays would have received in fair trade return. That’s a good sign for Jays fans. It might also show that the league is getting smarter about what they are willing to give up for half a season of a reliever.

Mark Teixeira, for whatever reason, typically gets off to slow starts. Maybe it’s because he’s a switch hitter and has to fine-tune two different swings. This is the explanation he offered when the Yankees introduced him. That might not be true of switch hitters in general, but it still might be something Teixeira personally struggles with. As he explains, he’s a “power hitter that relies on timing,” so it might take him a game or 25 to get in sync. But whatever the reason, the results are clear.

Teixeira has a career .389 wOBA, but in April it is just .329. That does mean that he’s producing at an even higher level in the following five months, but those first 25 or so games still put him in a hole. This year he started off quite a bit worse, a .271 wOBA in April. He came back in May with a .365 wOBA, though that was still lower than his career .386 wOBA in May. Things got even worse in June, where he dropped to a .352 wOBA. By the end of the month it was certain that he would not reach his numbers from 2009. The chances that he’d even reach his career numbers even looked bleak.

On Monday I wrote about Raul Ibanez and the rock bottom point of his season. Not only did Teixeira have one of them, but it came at the same time. Ibanez hit his low point on June 6. Teixeira hit his on June 5 when he struck out five times in a 14-inning game against the Blue Jays, one the Yankees lost 3-2. Since then he’s been on a tear, outpacing even his 2009 season with a .299/.399/.626 line. It has come with steady improvement in both his OBP and ISO, as the following graph shows.

Click for larger

The vertical line is the five-strikeout game. Before then he was up and down, though that’s to be expected of early season numbers. But since then he has steadily increased his output. What this makes me wonder is where we’ll see these lines level off. Clearly they can’t keep going up — and the OBP line has leveled off a bit already. At some point he just won’t be able to hit for any more power, or raise his OBP above a certain point. Will that come at the end of the season? Or will he level off at some point before that?

This leads me to the further question of whether Teixeira can reach his career numbers this season. Reproducing his 2009 season is essentially out of the question. He’d have to hit .380 the rest of the way to accomplish that. But if he reaches the same 707 PA he did last year, could we see him get back to his career line of .287/.377/.540?

Teixeira has 198 PA before he hits 707. At his current 13 percent walk rate, he’d take a free pass about 25 times. He’ll also probably get hit by three more pitches (1.5 percent of his PA) and will hit maybe one more sac fly. That’s 29 PA, leaving him with 169 AB, or 602 on the season. In order to hit .287 he’d need 173 hits on the season, 62 more, so he’d have to hit .367 the rest of the way. To reach his career .540 SLG he’d need 325 total bases, or 110 more than he has now. That would mean a .651 SLG the rest of the way.

His OBP throws off the situation because of his higher than normal walk rate. For his career that rate is 11.5 percent, but to change that would throw off all the other calculations. But, just for fun, if he walked in 11.5 percent of his remaining 198 PA he’d have 23 walks, which we could make, say, 26 because of HBP and SF. That gives him 172 AB the rest of the way, so he would need a .360 BA and .651 SLG to reach his .287/.540 career marks. At the 11.5 percent walk rate he’d then reach a .386 OBP, which outpaces his career (because of the walks he took earlier in the season, I guess).

Can Teixeira hit .360/.444/.651 the rest of the way? Almost certainly not. Even at his currently torrid pace that’s an unrealistic expectation. It seems, then, that Teixeira will end the season with numbers considerably below his career marks. It happens to the best of them. But at this point his season numbers mean very little. If he continues to hit .299/.399/.626 the rest of the way I don’t think anyone in New York will complain.

Javier Vazquez’s problems this year have been well documented – his velocity is down, his performance isn’t good, and he’s been less than what New York hoped when they acquired him. However, hidden by the downturn of their newest starter is the fact that two other Yankee starters have also seen pretty dramatic drops in their strikeout rates this year, and are also different pitchers now than they were when the Yankees acquired them – CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett.

Take a look at the three graphs below.

From top to bottom, those are the K/9 rates for Burnett, Sabathia, and Vazquez. If you’re not sure when they joined the Yankees, just look for the year in which their strikeout rate tumbles. In all three cases, the players have become far more contact oriented upon arriving in New York, and for Burnett and Sabathia, its continued on for a second year.

This isn’t to say all three are the same. Sabathia has traded strikeouts for groundballs, as he’s posting the best GB% of his career, so his overall effectiveness hasn’t changed much. While he’s a different pitcher this year, he’s not demonstrably worse. The same cannot be said of Burnett or Vazquez, who have both failed to adjust to their inability to miss bats, and are having seasons far worse than their most recent ones.

There is one commonality between them, though – all three are using their fastball a little bit more often than last year. Sabathia has gone from 61.6% to 64.5%, Burnett from 65.9% to 70.7%, and Vazquez from 49.9% to 53.4%. These are not major changes, but they’re different enough across the board that, combined with the lack of strikeouts from all three, it may be time for the Yankees front office to sit down with their pitching coaches and say “hey, what exactly are you telling these guys?”

It could just be a coincidence. It might not have anything to do with what these guys are being taught. But if I worked for the Yankees, I’d certainly want to make sure that there wasn’t something going on at the field level that was changing all these high priced pitchers that we kept bringing in, and in several cases, making them worse.

On Wednesday, Dave Cameron ended his piece entitled “Halladay and Verlander” with this note, seemingly fired at those of us in the prospect business:

It might not be as sexy, but getting groundball outs and limiting walks is a far more efficient way of pitching than trying to blow every hitter away. Strikeout rate is nice, but don’t let it be the only tool you use to evaluate a young pitcher – not only are Ks not the only way to succeed, they aren’t even the best way.

This is a belief system that isn’t new to me, as it was essentially the premise for my offseason Staring Down the Sinkerballers series. But, that piece was limited to discussing one type of player: the two-seamer/slider pitcher that often flies under the radar. The fact is, we need to do a better job understanding how all pitchers will see their batted balls translate from minor league baseball to the Bigs. This is a case study of just that.

I created a list of pitchers that debuted in 2009, have had 150 innings over the span of two years, and at least 150 batters faced in each season. If I did my search at the B-Ref Play Index right, and I whittle it down to players with minor league experience, there are 18 pitchers left. It’s a diverse list, with lefties and righties, groundballers and flyballers, good pitchers and bad. It’s also a group that had their entire minor league career in the MinorLeagueSplits era. Now, I’ll tell you this: there are flaws with the mLS data. We all know that. But, like anything else, until we have something better, I’m going with that. I’ll probably follow this post up at a later time using GB/FB ratios — which I have official data for — but that seems just as flawed.

So, I looked at all 18 players, and I compiled a list at the levels where they faced 150 batters (this number I keep using is important: it’s when groundball rate stabilizes for a pitcher, at least at the big league level). Let’s start, both as an introduction to my sample group and as an entryway into the data, with the career minor league (mLGB) and Major League groundball rates of each player. I have ranked them in the order of those that dropped most from the minors to Majors:

Name                MLGB      mLGB      Diff
Brett Cecil         43.2      59.7      -16.5
Brian Matusz        34.7      48.1      -13.4
Rick Porcello       51.6      63.7      -12.1
Vin Mazzaro         41.9      52.8      -10.9
David Hernandez     28.5      37.9      -9.4
Trevor Cahill       51.2      58.6      -7.4
Jason Berken        41.3      48.6      -7.3
David Huff          37.2      44.3      -7.1
Craig Stammen       48.4      54.1      -5.7
Wade Davis          40.5      45.7      -5.2
Kris Medlen         42.2      47.2      -5.0
Mat Latos           43.1      47.7      -4.6
Brad Bergesen       49.0      52.6      -3.6
Brett Anderson      52.4      55.5      -3.1
Brian Duensing      48.5      50.3      -1.8
Doug Fister         47.8      47.9      -0.1
Tommy Hanson        40.2      39.1      +1.1
Ricky Romero        54.0      48.6      +5.4

It’s interesting, of course, that a different Blue Jays lefty is on both the top and bottom of this list. But also interesting that half the players dropped their groundball rate between 3 and 7.5 percent between the minor and Major leagues. Those who attended FanGraphs Live heard the problems I have with using MLEs to project minor leaguers. While it would be easy to do this study with everyone in the MinorLeagueSplits era, create an average drop that we apply for everyone, I just don’t find it all that informative. If you want to assume a player drops about 5-5.5 percent when he reaches the Majors, you’ll probably be about right as often as you’re about wrong.

But, let’s take it a step further. I next brought the 18 into four quadrants, ranked by their MLB GB%. Here are the five least groundball-ing pitchers, and their groundball rates at each level they registered 150 batters faced at (Note: The ~ symbol appears when they did so at that level in multiple seasons. I’m eyeballing there. Again, there are error bars around this data that are unavoidable).

Name       Low-A   HighA   DoubA   TripA   MLB
Hernandez  36.8    37.6    36.7    38.8    28.5
Matusz      N/A    49.5    45.8     N/A    34.7
Huff        N/A    42.0    49.5    ~44.0   37.2
Hanson     41.6    38.6    40.7    36.5    40.2
Davis      49.5    47.5    ~46.5   ~39.6   40.5

I find this far more explanatory. If we broke this group into guys with similar stuff profiles, you’d certainly group Hanson and Davis together as hard-throwing right-handers, with similar velocities on their fastballs, sliders and curveballs. Hanson was always the flyball pitcher he’s proven to be, but Davis took some trending down before showing his true colors in Triple-A. Hernandez is close to that caliber, but his stuff was never viewed in the same light. Like Hanson, he was always a flyball pitcher, but has taken it to a new level in the Major Leagues. He’s ditched his slider, and has problematic command, which I think might be to blame for the sub-30 GB%.

I’d also group Matusz and Huff together — college lefties with good command that start their arsenal with a 90 mph fastball and an 82 mph changeup. Neither had dependable Double-A numbers in the slightest, and with their stuff, shouldn’t have been trusted as 45% guys. I could see looking at all similarly-profiled lefties and searching for something similar. But for now, we look at our next quadrant, the flyball-leaning pitchers:

Name       Low-A   HighA   DoubA   TripA   MLB
Berken      N/A    52.0    47.6     N/A    41.3
Mazzaro    56.4    53.9    52.7    ~49.2   41.9
Medlen      N/A     N/A    43.4     N/A    42.2
Latos       N/A     N/A    41.3     N/A    43.1
Cecil       N/A     N/A    59.2    59.8    43.2

Wait, there’s another college lefty with good command, a fastball around 90, and a changeup at 82, also posting some misleading Double-A numbers! Brett Cecil, come on down! Cecil throws a sinker more often than Matusz and (especially) Huff, and it really worked in the minors. Whether it’s an issue of command, or just not enough sink, it hasn’t in the bigs. Latos probably fits in with Tommy Hanson, never really hiding that he’d be a flyball guy. Medlen is just outside of that category, smaller than those pitchers, with less velocity, and a change-up as his go-to pitch. In a small sample, he was getting a ton of groundballs in the low minors, but in Double-A, showed the tendencies he’s settled into with Atlanta.

Finally, I think we have to compare Jason Berken and Vin Mazzaro, similarly sized fastball-slider guys. Mazzaro throws more sinkers, and thus, has always had higher groundball rates. But ultimately, I think this is a sign of the quality of Major League hitters: neither pitcher has stuff that’s considered particularly world-beating. Next, we have four guys that have induced better-than-average groundball rates:

Name       Low-A   HighA   DoubA   TripA   MLB
Fister      N/A     N/A    ~48.0   44.1    47.8
Stammen    55.9    ~53.5    N/A    ~54.0   48.4
Duensing    N/A    48.8    ~48.8   ~50.2   48.5
Bergesen   ~48.5   54.7    53.1     N/A    49.0

Having introduced Mazzaro and Berken, smallish sinkerballers, gives us a nice frame of reference with Brad Bergesen and Craig Stammen. Both of them are of a similar ilk, though maybe Stammen’s cutter separates him a bit, and maybe explains his greater success than Mazzaro in maintaining an above-average GB%. Bergesen is explained, I think, simply by having a better sinker. But the fact is, with all four, we do see a noticeable drop from even Double-A to the Majors. Fister is a bit of a weird duck, and hard to explain — you have to think his size, more than anything else, leads to a good groundball rate. But that’s sort of always been the case, I guess. Part of you wants to compare Duensing to the other college lefties above, but he throws a little harder, has spent most of his Major League time in relief, and his go-to offspeed pitch is a slider. And he hasn’t wavered much in terms of groundball rates.

Finally, here are the guys getting a ton of groundballs:

Name       Low-A   HighA   DoubA   TripA   MLB
Cahill     56.4    61.4    61.8     N/A    51.2
Porcello    N/A    64.1     N/A     N/A    51.6
Anderson   57.9    ~54.8    N/A     N/A    52.4
Romero      N/A    41.9    ~48.7   55.9    54.0

Ricky Romero is obviously the guy that stands out, but I hesitate to make many assumptions from his numbers. It’s pretty clear that he didn’t become interested in inducing grounders until 2008. This probably sounds like a cop-out, but it’s true: go back and read Baseball America’s scouting report of Romero from the 2005 draft — the movement on his fastball isn’t lauded at all. Fast forward three years, and they are praising the “good life” on his fastball, and referencing a new “vulcan change, which behaves like a splitter.” He’s just a different guy.

I would not hesitate to compare Cahill and Porcello, two lauded high school pitchers that are big, throw sinkers 50% of the time, and were 60% groundball guys in the minors. They are ridiculously similar, and I think tell us a lot about their type of pitcher. Finally, we have Cahill’s teammate Brett Anderson, who might be too unique to comp. His combination of movement, velocity and offspeed stuff is pretty unmatched among Major League lefties. It should be no surprise that the truly unique can sustain +50% ratios at the highest level.

That’s where we’ll leave things today. But there are some interesting groups that I think we can extrapolate and further investigate: the fastball-change lefty, the prospect-y hard-throwing righty, the smallish sinkerballer, among others. If we can understand players in the context of their own stuff, then we might be getting to a place where we can evaluate young pitchers using the tool that Mr. Cameron hopes.

Actually, the title is a misnomer. This is a post about what Ned Yost thinks about his catcher position, and maybe about how baseball works in general. Yesterday, Ned Yost told the Kansas City Star that he was going to try and get Brayan Pena about 15 starts between now and the end of the season. That’s 15 of the final 49 games, or just a tiny bit more than a regular backup catcher might get.

This is on a team that features Jason Kendall as the first catcher. Kendall, who has lost all of his non-existent power (.091 career ISO, .044 this year) and is putting up a stellar 71 wRC+, for his whopping sixth year in a row with a sub-100 wRC+. He’s also 36 years old (or old as dirt in catcher years), and on a team with a 47-68 record that should be looking to next year, and yet the catcher is somehow on pace for 575 plate appearances.

Who knows how much promise Pena actually has. His .241/.285/.360 career line and 68 career wRC+ don’t scream ‘play me’ and do a lot to dampen the snark storm that would normally arise on a statement like Yost’s (a storm that is doing its best to permeate this column despite our best efforts to the contrary). But Pena does have a BABIP of .231 and an ISO of .038 right now, and those two numbers take much, much longer than 59 plate appearances to stabilize. In fact, those two stats would take longer than his 373 career plate appearances to become predictive. All we really have are his minor league numbers, and a catcher that can put up 180 walks to his 239 career minor league strikeouts deserves a little more attention from these Royals than he has gotten to date.

So we have a young catcher who is under team control for the next three years, and an old catcher obviously in decline who is under control just for next year. If we take current levels of production going forward, and use the math shown by Dave Cameron here, the old catcher would cost his team 4.7 batting runs above replacement assuming 34 games and 136 plate appearances while the young guy would cost his team 11.1 runs with the same playing time. Perhaps a team trying to create a ‘winning feeling’ in the clubhouse would care about those seven runs above replacement.

But there’s Pena’s BABIP. And his ISO. And his contact rate. If those returned (even mostly) to career levels – say, if we used the ZiPs projections from here on out – then Pena would cost the team only 2.4 runs in 34 starts. Since Kendall’s production right now is so in the norm for him, he would cost the team 4.5 runs going forward – he might actually be worse than Pena.

The worst part of this whole thing is – even if Kendall wasn’t worse than the youngster, wouldn’t a good organization pay a possible win in the standings to find out what they might have at a key position? Wouldn’t a coach that would like to stick around for next year want to know if the young guy could do more than just ‘work real hard?’ The fact that it’s not Pena taking the 34 starts, and Kendall the 15, is yet another reason why the snark storm always seems to settle around Kauffman Stadium.

Good news everyone!

Minor league stats are updated for 2010 and will continue to be updated throughout whatever’s left of the season. We also have added the 2010 Mexican League, Venezuelan Summer League, and Dominican Summer League and plan to have the the winter leagues as well.

There’s still a little bit of cleanup that needs to be done in terms of player matching (Strasburg for instance has 2 pages still), but that should be completed this weekend.