Well, actually I have no idea if Carlos Gonzalez loves the mountains or if Chase Headley hates the beach, but if my home/road splits looked like their’s, I would certainly start to appreciate/blame the topography.

Many have pointed out how dramatic a split young Carlos Gonzalez possess — at home in Colorado, he’s an elite swing sultan; away from where the beer flows like wins, he is a pedestrian, league-average bat-swinger. Yeah, we get it. Everyone knows, right?

Well, the split is perhaps more dramatic than initially anticipated. Looking at players in the last decade (from 2001 through 2011) with a minimum of 500 home and 500 away PAs, we see CarGo has hit a wRC+ 74 points higher at home than away — more than anyone else in the period:

In other words, no one compares to Carlos Gonzalez… Okay, well, actually one guy does.

And it makes a world of difference.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s been quite a bit of chatter on blogs and Twitter about Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington’s decision to bat Mike Napoli seventh in World Series Games 1, 2 and 3 — and eighth in Games 4 and 5. This author has been a part of the chatter, going so far as to start a Napoli Support Group with the Twitter hashtag #BatNapoliHigher.

So why the hubbub?

Napoli has been the Rangers best hitter in the postseason. In 51 at bats, he has 16 hits, including one (game-winning) double and three home runs. His postseason slash through 16 games is .314/.383/.570. Napoli’s playoff run comes on the heels of his superb regular season: .320/.414/.631 in 432 at-bats with a wOBA of .444 and a wRC+ of 178. He led the Rangers in every one of those offensive categories.

It’s not every day that you see a manager bat his best offensive player seventh or eighth in the lineup — especially in the World Series.

Read the rest of this entry »

White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, seen here enjoying his vast wealth.

Assorted Headlines
Cardinals Exercise Wainwright’s 2012 and ’13 Options
During this postseason run, the Cardinals officially notified Adam Wainwright and his agent that his options for 2012 and 2013 have been exercised, Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. Wainwright will make $9 million in 2012 and $12 million in 2013. He’s scheduled to throw his final side session of the year today, and plans to do so at maximum effort.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ron Washington isn’t going to panic. After a rainout pushed Game 6 to Thursday — and a potential Game 7 to Friday — Washington announced he will not alter his pitching rotation. While it was clear Washington wasn’t going to move Colby Lewis from his slot, Washington could have elected to start Derek Holland over Matt Harrison if the Series goes to seven games. Despite Holland’s masterful start in Game 4, Washington is sticking to his guns and keeping his rotation stable. Will the decision come back to haunt him?

Read the rest of this entry »

In three years scouting prospects, the instances in which a highly touted prospect is even better than advertised are few and far between. In the case of Texas Rangers prospect Jurickson Profar, I arrived in Greenville expecting to see a talented, but maybe not elite shortstop prospect and left with a firm belief Profar was the best true shortstop prospect in all of baseball.

As a person who’s much more conservative in my approach to scouting than political leanings, the terms “elite”, “franchise”, “all-star”, “gold glove” rarely find their way into my scouting reports. In actuality, most critiques thrown my way involve my being too critical. In the case of Jurickson Profar, I’ve scoured my notes and video to identify problem areas in his all-around game, but I simply can’t find any. At present, the young shortstop is as complete a position prospect as one could hope to find at any level of the minor leagues.

Video after the Jump Read the rest of this entry »

Last off season, I looked at the chances of a SP going on the DL. I have finally had time to go back and look at how my predictions fared.

The predictions used logistic regression to find the percentage chance that a pitcher would end up on the DL. I used age, games started in the previous 3 years and how many of the previous 3 years did the pitcher go on the DL. The equation I ended up with was:

1/(1+e^(-z))
where:
z = (.2209)(Years with Trips to DL)+(-0.0040)(GS in last 3 year)+(0.0509)(Age in previous season)-1.7692

Using the equation, I projected the chance that a starter would go on the DL and here is a list of those projections.

Read the rest of this entry »

How wonderfully awkward.

The last time Colby Lewis and Jaime Garcia faced off, we were treated to one of the best pitcher’s duels of the World Series. Jaime Garcia shut down the Rangers for seven innings while striking out seven hitters, and Colby Lewis very nearly kept pace by lasting 6.2 inning and allowing one run.

How did Lewis and Garcia attack hitters in that start? What can we expect from them tonight? Let’s find out.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am no fan of the intentional walk. Not only is it usually poor strategy (there are very few situations when it is even a good play to give Albert Pujols a free pass), but I also tend to agree with those who think that the intentional walk is contrary to the “spirit of the game.” There are some interesting suggestions out there on how it might be “banned” — for example, any 4-0 walk gives the walked player two bases, and makes corresponding adjustments for any base runners. My own opinion on whether or not intentional walks should be “punished” (and if so, how) is not fully-formed. However, for the sake of argument, I have tried to think about why we might not want to change the rules with regard to intentional walks (as defined above). I am not a firm traditionalist who believes that “this is the way the game is played and forever shall it be,” as that is neither true nor rational. Rather, as a devil’s advocate, let me propose that how we might view intentional walks as a enjoyable part of the game.

Read the rest of this entry »

Perhaps the greatest right-handed hitter in the history of Major League Baseball, Albert Pujols inspires fear into the hearts of opposing pitchers and managers alike. In the past 10 years, he has led baseball in intentional walks, and not by a small margin either — he has 72 more intentional walks than second place (Vladimir Guerrero). This is not an insignificant sum. Because the value of an intentional walk is about a 10th of a run, Pujols’ 251 career intentional walks are equivalent to about 2.5 wins. That means on average, Pujols gains about 2.3 runs per season purely out of managerial fear.

This postseason has fared no differently for the Cardinal’s legendary first baseman; he’s already gotten  seven intentional walks. But this tells us nothing about how pitchers approach Pujols — intentional walks don’t contain information about instances where pitchers simply pitch around him. To gain a greater grasp of the Pujols fear dynamic, we should visually examine how pitchers approach him:

Read the rest of this entry »

It has become almost second nature this postseason for sarcastic Twitterists such as myself to mock certain mainstream writers who have seemingly used each plate appearance to tell us how much impending free agents have gained or lost on their upcoming contracts. And while I don’t think that postseason play has positively or negatively affected the financial standing (at least from a contract perspective) of any the players in this postseason, it will undoubtedly effect the reputations and/or legacies of some players. While there is still baseball left to be played, I thought we could take a look at six players in this World Series whose postseason performance has served to highlight the excellent, but underrated performance they put up throughout 2011, and how it may help them moving forward.

Read the rest of this entry »