The addition of Matt Garza to the Cubs rotation looks like an upgrade in a vacuum. On the surface, Garza appears to be a decent pitcher, holding a sub-4.00 ERA with a healthy 200+ innings each of the past two seasons. A young pitcher heading into his prime years, Garza does sport a varied pitch repertoire while relying mostly on his mid-90s four-seam fastball. Yet, though Garza may be a staple in the Cubs rotation and more reliable than the enigmatic Carlos Silva, he is anything but a potential ace in a rotation absent of aces.

As Dave Cameron explained, Garza’s approach in relying heavily on four-seam fastballs comes at the risk of surrendering home runs, and his relatively low home-run to fly-ball ratio for a fly-ball pitcher is one factor for his sub-4.00 ERA seasons. What I am concerned about is what I feel some optimistic Cubs fans (yes, they exist) are ignoring: Garza’s fly-ball tendencies are ill-suited for Wrigley Field, and his Tropicana-depressed HR/FB ratio will be exposed in 2011.

Read the rest of this entry »

Every year, it seems, there is a reliever whose market is hampered by the Type A free agency tag. In the 2008-2009 off-season it was Juan Cruz. Last year it was Rafael Betancourt. This year it was Grant Balfour. Signing relievers to multi-year deals is a dicey proposition to begin with, and draft-pick compensation just amplifies the cost. The risk and the cost weren’t too great for the A’s, though, as they signed Balfour to a two-year, $8.1 million deal this morning.

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, Cardinals owner Bill Dewitt told Jon Paul Morosi that he was “hopeful” that his team would be able to come to terms on a contract extension with Albert Pujols, who is scheduled to become The Free Agent To End All Free Agents next winter. The obvious question that looms over everything is just what kind of contract is fair for one of the best hitters to ever live.

It is easy to forget just how great Pujols is, but to put it in perspective, he’s on an entirely different plane than the rest of the league. For instance, the Red Sox gave up a significant chunk of their farm system for the right to pay Adrian Gonzalez about $150 million dollars (whenever that deal becomes official, anyway), and yet, Gonzalez’s best year is only marginally better than Pujols’ worst year. I think this graph kind of tells the story.

Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball Prehistory | Deadball Era | Liveball Era | Post-War
Expansion | Free Agency | Modern Era

Last week we covered the position players of the 19th century. Our next stop is the Deadball Era. In 1901, the American League was formed, making it the second major league along with the National League. That is the beginning of the two-league system we still enjoy today.

As we know, the game itself has changed over the last century. Originally, foul balls were not counted as strikes. Intrepid batters (like King Kelly) would foul off pitches until they could draw a walk. In 1894, the rules were changed to call fouled-off bunts as strikes. In 1901, all fouls became strikes in the National League, followed by 1903 for the American league. That year would also see the first World Series, held every year (except 1904, and other strike years).

Read the rest of this entry »

Bill Baer of Crashburn Alley yesterday wrote an article titled, “FanGraphs Fan Projections Are Craaaaazy”. And there certainly was something crazy going on with some players on the Braves.

Long story short: I’ve made some updates and the Braves projections have returned to sanity and now look like this:

Player       Fans   CarAvg    Diff
Heyward, J   .393   .376      .017
McCannn, B   .360   .364     -.004
Uggla, D     .365   .359      .006
McLouth, N   .337   .343     -.006
Prado, M     .351   .352     -.001
Freeman, F   .332   .213      .119
Gonzalez, A  .294   .298     -.004

Player        Fans    CarAvg    Diff
Hanson, T     3.25     3.38    -0.13
Lowe, D       3.94     3.80     0.14
Minor, M      3.83     3.77     0.06
Jurrjens, J   4.02     3.85     0.17
Hudson, T     3.98     3.82     0.16

Thought to be the best closer on the market this off-season, Rafael Soriano was supposed to be a hot commodity in free agency. After weeks of waiting and watching other relievers grab inflated deals, many began to wonder whether Soriano’s lack of urgency would prevent him from receiving a lucrative contract. That all changed on Thursday, as the New York Yankees signed Soriano to a three year deal worth $35 million. The Yankees have made Soriano one of the highest paid set-up men in the league, but was it a smart decision?

Read the rest of this entry »

The last post introduced the topic at hand and looked at the San Francisco Giants as they were the team with the biggest overall spread between their team FSR and UZR ratings. They happened to have much higher UZRs than FSRs in both years.

The two other highly outlying dots on the same side as the Giants are the 2009 Mariners and 2010 Diamondbacks. On the other side of the disagreement line are the Colorado Rockies. Read the rest of this entry »

When attempting to judge a player’s defensive skills, I prefer to look at a couple different metrics. Chief among them is the Fans’ Scouting Report (FSR) and Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR). Both are on the same scale, runs relative to average, but come to their conclusions in disparate ways. The FSR ratings come from surveys filled out by fans while UZR is entirely algorithm-driven. They take such different paths, but how close do they come to arriving in the same place?

Read the rest of this entry »

The San Diego Padres have reportedly signed Chad Qualls to a one-year contract for about two million dollars in an effort to restore some of the bullpen depth they’ve traded away this winter. In signing Qualls, they are making a pretty big bet against the predictive power of ERA, considering he posted an atrocious 7.32 mark last year.

However, the Padres understand how to build a bullpen on the cheap, and they also realize that ERA is a pretty lousy way to evaluate relief pitchers. To illustrate the point, let’s compare Qualls’ season to that of another free agent, Kevin Millwood.

Qualls had the following miserable line last year: 59 innings, 85 hits, 56 runs, seven home runs, 21 walks, 49 strikeouts. That’s just not good, no matter how you slice it.

Millwood had the following miserable line last year: 51 innings, 86 hits, 54 runs, 11 home runs, 25 walks, 36 strikeouts. That’s even worse than Qualls’ performance.

Read the rest of this entry »

There has been a small flurry of retirement announcements recently, with Kris Benson and Trevor Hoffman announcing their retirements this week. Billy Wagner already announced that 2010 was his last year, and Andy Pettitte just admitted that he wouldn’t be suited up for the beginning of the year, at least, though he wasn’t certain about the rest of the season. With their retirements in mind, as well as the work of Tom Tango and others on the current and increasing Hall of Fame logjam, I started to wonder how many good players tend to retire in any given year.

Read the rest of this entry »