Archive for October, 2011

Last Call for Contract Crowdsourcing

By a combination of brute force, cunning, and not a little bit of American-made whiskey, we’ve completed the contract crowdsourcing series, reader.

I have it on decent authority that Full-Time Employee Dave Cameron will do some science to the results on either Thursday or Friday. In the meantime, however, there are still a couple hours to enter your, uh, entries.

Below are links to each of the posts, by position. Entries will stop at 4pm ET today. Thanks!

Catcher
First Base (and DH)
Second Base
Third Base
Shortstop
Corner Outfield
Center Field
Starting Pitcher
Relief Pitcher


FanGraphs Chat – 10/26/11


Obstacles in Search for Angels’ General Manager

Theo Epstein has officially joined the Chicago Cubs — which has largely thrown the baseball media into a collective frenzy — but another high-profile GM position remains wide open in Los Angeles.

The Angels’ GM opening is very attractive in many ways. The organization dished out $138.5M in contracts in 2011, ranking ahead of the Cubs as the fourth highest payroll in the majors, so the monetary limitations are relatively non-existent. The farm system also boasts elite prospects — such as Mike Trout, Jean Segura, and Kaleb Cowart — which lays the groundwork for potential sustainable success. The city of Los Angeles also packs a substantial number fans into the stadium, offering a consistent stream of revenue for the organization. The Angels finished the 2011 season with the fifth-highest average home attendance — 39,090 per night.

Despite all of those enticing aspects of the GM position with the Angels, significant drawbacks exist for any potential candidate, and they could deter a current GM from legitimately considering a switch. After all, Theo Epstein actively pursued the Chicago Cubs over the Los Angeles Angels for a reason, and it’s not all about organizational history. Read the rest of this entry »


World Series Elimination Game, Part One?

Following a peculiar fifth game in which each manager engaged in a losing oneupsmanship contest, the Rangers head to St. Louis for a potential deciding Game Six. After splitting the first two games on the road and taking two of three at home, the Rangers are obviously closer to winning the World Series. However, the Cardinals do have home field advantage in their favor once again, and under somewhat comical circumstances given the performances of other playoff teams in the All-Star Game. The Cardinals have home field, after all, due to Prince Fielder (Brewers) belting a mammoth homer off of C.J. Wilson (Rangers) in a game held in Arizona, while two Phillies pitchers did a good job holding the junior circuit at bay for four innings.

The pitching matchup is a repeat of Game Two, with Jaime Garcia opposed by Colby Lewis. The Cardinals took a 1-0 lead in the seventh in that game behind a very strong Garcia performance. He didn’t allow a run over seven innings, surrendering just three hits and a walk to go along with his seven strikeouts. Lewis matched him, giving up just the one run in 6 2/3 innings. The bullpen game was won by the Rangers, though the deciding factor was the Rangers excellent baserunning, with some credit owed to the defensive miscue on Jon Jay’s throw to the plate.

There are a few main storylines to consider heading into what could potentially be the final game of the 2011 postseason and a very exciting World Series. Oddly enough, only one of them deals with actual participating players.

Read the rest of this entry »


Q&A: Zach Britton, Oriole in Progress

Zach Britton’s rookie season was both predictable and surprising. The 23-year-old left-hander went 11-11 and 4.61, in 28 starts — numbers that could reasonably be expected from a highly regarded first-year hurler competing in baseball’s toughest division. How he arrived at them was the unexpected part.

Britton went into the year rated as the Orioles’ top pitching prospect, thanks in part to a power sinker that was lauded as “the best in the minor leagues” and a slider that graded out as plus. His 2.8 GB/FB rate in 2010 complemented his scouting report, and his 2.43 K/BB was rock solid.

In his first season in Baltimore, Britton wasn’t nearly the same pitcher. He more than held his own against big-league hitters, but in a different way. In the future, that’s probably a good thing — but only if he can recapture the worm-killing magic that led to the hype.

——

David Laurila: How would you describe your rookie season?

Read the rest of this entry »


Mike Newman Prospects Chat – 10/25/11


Contract Crowdsourcing 2011-12: Relief Pitcher

We conclude (!) our contract crowdsourcing today with relief pitchers. Noah Isaacs provided a summary of the options available as part of this offseason’s class of free-agent relief pitchers.

While we’ll reserve all contract information until the end of the present series (to avoid bias), data from yesterday’s polling reveals that only 11.8% of respondents know, off the top of their respective heads, how many consecutive 200-inning seasons Mark Buehrle has pitched.

Forms after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »


Free Agent Market: Relief Pitcher

By my count there are about 55 relievers that are set to hit free agency this offseason (depending on how many options are exercised). I’m not sure it makes sense to analyze all 55 relievers so instead I will take a look at a handful of interesting cases.

Over the last five years only two relievers have averaged more than two wins above replacement; one of them is the greatest closer of all time (Mariano Rivera), the other is Jonathan Papelbon. This can be read two ways: 1) Relievers in general are not that valuable (and are often overpaid), and 2) relievers are volatile and struggle to stay significantly above replacement for an extended period.

Read the rest of this entry »


The Untold Story of LaRussa’s Bullpen Management, Part 2

Much will be written today and in the coming days about Tony LaRussa’s pitching changes and strategic moves in the eighth inning of World Series Game 5 on Monday night. Others here at FanGraphs will provide you will the gory details.

This post takes a look back at LaRussa’s bullpen management over the 16 years he’s been the skipper for the St. Louis Cardinals. It’s a follow-up post to the one I wrote last Thursday, aptly titled The Untold Story of LaRussa’s Bullpen Management. In last week’s post, I looked at the number of innings pitched by Cardinals relievers each season between 1996 and 2011 and found only four seasons where Cardinals relievers had pitched more innings than the National League per team average. I also examined the number of pitching changes called for by LaRussa during the 2004, 2006 and 2011 postseasons–the years the Cardinals played in the World Series.

I concluded, based on that information, that LaRussa’s reputation for over-managing the Cardinals’ bullpen was not fully supported by the facts. Several readers noted in the comments that looking only at total innings pitched by relievers didn’t tell the whole story. The issue, the readers noted, wasn’t so much how early LaRussa pulled his starting pitcher to get to the first reliever, but how many relievers he used to get from the starter to the end of the game. Or, to put it another way, what was the average number of innings pitched per Cardinals relief appearance as compared to the average for all National League teams.

I’ve now analyzed that data and agree that it paints a more complete portrait of LaRussa’s bullpen management style. Indeed, it confirms the view that LaRussa has been one of the most–if not the most–aggressive bullpen managers in the National League over the past 16 seasons.

Let’s take a look.

Read the rest of this entry »


Jack Moore FanGraphs Chat – 10/25/11