Japan Crowdsourcing Follow up Part Two – Your Picks
Two weeks ago, I asked you to suggest players who could do well in Japan, and you exceeded my expectations by coming up with 37 names. Here they are, with a few notes thrown in by me.
Archive for November, 2010
Pitcher Pace (Time Between Pitches)
I’ve added a new stat to the PitchF/x section, “Pace”, inspired by this post over at Beyond the Box Score, which shows how much time each pitcher takes in between his pitches.
The way I calculate Pace, is by taking the difference between the start time of the first pitch in the plate appearance, and the end time of the last pitch in the plate appearance. I then divide by the number of pitches in that plate appearance (minus 1). Pickoff attempts are considered just another pitch, since they don’t have time stamps of their own. Anything that looks like a game delay between pitches is thrown out. The average pace is about 21.5 seconds.
The Jays Acquire Rajai Davis
The offseason is still in its infancy, but rest assured: this deal will involve the most unique names of any completed ever. The Oakland Athletics just acquired David DeJesus and cleared a piece of their outfield logjam by sending Rajai Davis to the Toronto Blue Jays for a pair of arms (with bodies attached!) named Trystan Magnuson and Daniel Farquhar.
An Upton Trade Would Be Unique
This afternoon’s chat was dominated by one subject – Justin Upton trade speculation. Roughly 90 percent of the questions submitted were queries about what he’s worth, why the Diamondbacks would even want to trade him to begin with, and – most popularly – what it would take for a particular team to get him. In fact, I’d say that most of the questions asked today followed some kind of “would Propects A, B, and C get Upton to Team X” pattern. In general, my feeling was that almost every suggestion underestimated Upton’s value. Here’s why.
Doubled Up 2010 Final Count: The Worst
Earlier this season, I posted about measuring how much a hitter costs his team by grounding into double plays, and ranked the best and the worst at doing so at that point in the season. You can look at those posts for methodological details; in short, each double play grounded into (or avoided) is worth about .35 runs, so by looking at a player’s double play rate on this table and comparing it to the league average (about 11% in 2010), and multiplying by .35, we can get the number of runs the hitter cost his team above or below average. Today, we’ll take a look at the five players who cost their teams the most by grounding into double plays in 2011. [Edit ~11:00 PM EST: Some observant readers found that I had mistakenly published only from the AL leaderboards. My apologies for the stupid mistake on my part. This should be the corrected version; for those craving the {inadvertant} AL-only version, I’m sure some web archive has recorded my “brilliance.”]
Negative WAR: 2010 Team Data
Each team every year doesn’t make perfect personnel decisions and ends up playing several players that produce at below replacement level. The reasons for playing these players are many (i.e. a player’s talent has degraded since they last played, injuries devastating the team, inability to evaluate talent, etc). Today, I will look at team totals for negative WAR players (I ignored any negative WAR generated by pitchers hitting).
Offseason Notes: Home to Mariginally Important News
November 17, 2010
This edition of Offseason Notes contains:
1. SCOUT leaderboards — now with organizational names!
2. Some pretty serious LOL-type writing situations.
and
3. The antidote to all life’s worries.
Tigers Invest Heavily in Joaquin Benoit
How can a team best build a bullpen? We’ve seen different teams try different methods, with varying degrees of success. For the past five days the Marlins have tried one tactic. They’ve made three trades and have received a reliever in each. This resembles the Padres’ bullpen building philosophy, which involves gathering a ton of arms and finding the few that stick. Earlier today we saw the Tigers try a method that more resembles the Yankees’ philosophy. They signed Joaquin Benoit to a three-year, $16.5 million deal that can be worth up to $19.5 million.
Given Benoit’s 2010 numbers, that might appear to be a good deal. Read the rest of this entry »
Inside Salary Arbitration
NOTE: There was an error in the salary arbitration details around Sean Marshall and Carlos Villanueva as it pertains to settlement contracts in advance of salary arbitration (some of the figures were flipped). That has now been corrected. — Maury Brown
Before Curt Flood’s landmark case, and before Messersmith and McNally held out in a contract year, thus allowing for the reserve clause to be challenged and overturned, Marvin Miller and the MLBPA got the players salary arbitration. What was initially seen as a win by the owners – the thwarting of free agency – was a huge win for players.
Since 1973 the process has been in place, and since that time it’s been largely misunderstood. The process is based largely on three factors:
- Major League Service Time;
- Comparable statistics with like players by position, and;
- Comparable salaries with like players by position;
Along the way, MLB’s calendar ticks away with deadlines for certain milestones to be met – when players and clubs exchange figures; when all players in the process have settled on contracts or had hearings, etc.