This is part three of a six-part series looking back at the pre-season Top 10 prospect lists for each organization, which were published at FanGraphs between November and January. Previously, we’ve reflected back on the National League West and Central lists. Let’s see now the East has fared.
It’s trade rumor season. It’s time for fans of contenders to lust after the best players on lesser teams. The airways of AM radio are already full of trade ideas, many of them ridiculous. Their most valuable player for your least valuable prospects is no way to build a trade, and those rumors are easy to dismiss.
The problem is, even if we set the filter higher, and listen only to rumors that come from reputable sources and concern acquirable names, we are still going to hear a decent amount of hogwash. Let’s just take a couple tasty morsels and examine why the rumored swap makes little sense for one team in the dance. Even a real rumor from a real source can be a real silly idea.
Hidden statistics are the bread-and-butter of any good analysis, but most DIPS models rarely go beyond the obvious to find a player’s true value. FIP can take you most of the way by looking at the three true outcomes (home runs, walks and strikeouts) and xFIP adjusts FIP to what it would be with a league-average HR/FB rate. But neither of those systems considers how well pitchers control more volatile statistics — the ones that take up the other 70% of plate appearances. Now, with the new SIERA here at FanGraphs, we’re finally gathering the kernels that’ll help all of us figure out the small things that make good pitchers, well, so good.
A year after its release, SIERA has undergone some important changes, which we’re highlighting this week. I think you’ll like what you see. FanGraphs’ new-and-improved ERA estimation system now uses different proprietary data, takes more interactions and quadratic terms into account when reaching its conclusions, treats starters and relievers differently and adjusts for run environment. In other words, the new SIERA does an even better job analyzing pitching skills.
The attentive reader will note that FanGraphs Dark Overlord David Appelman has recently descended from atop his inlaid throne and made some changes to the way that strikeouts are presented in these pages. For batters now, strikeout percentage (K%) uses plate appearances, and not at-bats, in the denominator. While this creates pretty substantial (ca. 6%) movement for Three True Outcome-ist Adam Dunn, most players exhibit a fairly uniform decrease of about 2%, meaning that readers are able to mentally convert to the new format with some ease.
The addition of strikeout percentage (also K%) for pitchers, however — while glorious as the sunset over Quetena Chico — makes for a slightly more challenging mental covnersion, as readers will undoubtedly have become quite accustomed to assessing pitchers using strikeouts per nine innings (K/9).
Many considered J.J. Hardy as the potential silver medal to Jose Reyes in the shortstop trade market this summer. The Orioles put an end to such talk over the weekend, as they locked up the 28-year-old to a three year, $22.5 million deal. The deal appears to be a simple $7.5 million per year contract without any options, although it does include a limited no-trade clause, allowing Hardy to block trades to eight different teams each season. The price tag is high for a player who has struggled to stay on the field, but Hardy is also of a quality to warrant it.
Moving the Needle: Russell Martin draws a walk to bring in the go-ahead run, +.324 WPA. A.J. Burnett had nothing, and it appeared that the Rays would get to him. But after scoring four in the first two innings they failed to score the rest of the way, giving the Yankees a chance to come back, which they did in the eighth and ninth. In the eighth they rallied to load the bases and brought home two runs to tie, and in the ninth they again loaded the bases. It started with an intentional walk to Nick Swisher, but that led to earned walks by Andruw Jones and Martin to give the Yanks a lead. Mariano Rivera finished off the Rays in the ninth and gave the Yanks the victory.
Notables
Evan Longoria: 1 for 3, 1 2B, 2 BB. He drove in two in the first.
Curtis Granderson: 2 for 3, 2 BB, 2 SB. Even when he’s not homering he’s getting things done.
For a pitcher who has thrown 21.1 innings of mediocre baseball this season, Phil Hughes‘ return to the majors has garnered quite a bit of media coverage. It’s not entirely undeserved either. Hughes hasn’t pitched well this season, but his performance going forward may impact the Yankees more than any other player on their roster. If Hughes can pitch effectively after missing nearly three months with a mystery injury, the Yankees will have strengthened their biggest weakness without having to surrender future prospects. While Hughes’ two starts since returning from the disabled list have been far from dominating, there are some signs that indicate Hughes could be the answer to the Yankees’ prayers. Read the rest of this entry »
When you talk about great discoveries, you talk some of the time about the discovery of King Tut’s tomb by Howard Carter and George Herbert in 1922. Other of the time, you maybe talk about the first polio vaccine, first developed by Jonas Salk in 1952. Most of the time, though, when you talk about great discoveries, what you talk about is the Leaderboards of Pleasure at FanGraphs.
What are the Leaderboards of Pleasure? They’re the thing that Winston Churchill has described as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside the internet.” They’re also the thing that the present author has himself described as “an attempt to isolate those traits which most appeal to the learned baseballing fan and to identify which players, teams, etc possess them most bountifully.”
In this edition, reader, prepare to learn that:
• Something is brewing in Milwaukee.*
• The Twins maybe aren’t the most depressing team in all of baseball.
• Anaheim is home to the two most underrated players in the majors, according to science!
• Cory Luebke is good in a bunch of different ways.
• Endy Chavez won’t stop to the tick-tock — or any other kind of signal, either.
In the Power Rankings’ third week, the Texas Rangers’ TOTAL % had dipped to .511, and their rank was a middle-of-the-pack 15th. In other words, they were starting to look like a one-and-doner, a team that might get branded for being lucky that Joe Girardi forgot how to manage his bullpen for a few days last October. Since then, they have turned it around in a big way, particularly in the past four weeks. They have currently logged 11 straight wins, and after a pivotal three-game set this week with the Angels, the schedule gets awfully easy for the Rangers. For nearly a month — July 22 to August 14 — they don’t play one team currently residing in the top half of the rankings. Aside from a series with the Yankees, the Angels path doesn’t appear to be much more difficult in terms of where teams are in the rankings, but the Rangers — who own the best home record in the American League — will play 14 of the 22 games at home. The Angels meanwhile, will have to play 16 of their 22 on the road, and all 16 will be played in the eastern time zone. The Rangers, with a .608 WAR% and a .574 TOTAL%, have pulled away from the AL West competition in the rankings, and during this upcoming stretch, they have an opportunity to run away and hide from the Angels and the rest of the west in the standings as well. (As always click here to check out the methodology behind the rankings.)
