Archive for October, 2012

Daily Notes: Contract Crowdsourcing, DH Types

Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.

1. Best Possible Michael Bourn-Related Headlines
2. World Series Game One Event
3. Contract Crowdsourcing: DH Types

Best Possible Michael Bourn-Related Headlines
In yesterday’s edition of the Notes, dedicated largely to contract crowdsourcing for center-field free agents, I asked readers to submit the best possible Michael Bourn-related headlines. Below are seven notable contributions, with varying degrees of absurdity:

Bourn Again (if signed by Atlanta or Philadelphia)

Bourn-ography! (TMZ headline for when compromising Michael Bourn pics surface)

Bourn Supremacy: Red Sox Take Lead in Sweepstakes for Center Fielder

Bourn to Fly with Blue Jays

Hope ReBourn

Michael Bourn Eaten by Prince Fielder

Michael Bourn Receives 5-Year, $85 million deal, Daily Notes Commenter Praised for Astute Assessment

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Aubrey Huff: Championship Factor

The Washington Nationals had under contract one of the very best starting pitchers in baseball, and they decided against using him in the playoffs, where they lost. The decision was talked about for weeks and months in advance. It’s probably still being talked about somewhere, and it’ll be a topic for years. Meanwhile, the San Francisco Giants have under contract one of the better hitting outfielders in baseball, and they’ve decided against using him in the playoffs, where they’ve advanced to the World Series. With the stakes at their absolute highest, the Giants are still committed to going forward without Melky Cabrera. The Cabrera situation and the Stephen Strasburg situation are very different, with little to do with one another, but I needed an intro and I feel like this served the purpose.

So here’s where we are: the Giants are in the Series, and while they have home-field advantage — in part thanks to Melky Cabrera’s performance in the All-Star Game! — they need to identify a designated hitter for Games 3 through 5 in Detroit. Were Cabrera on the active roster, this decision would be pretty easy. He’s not, so it isn’t, because the Giants’ bench is bad. Still, there has to be a best of the worst, so let us discuss in some depth.

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If And When The Giants Should Trade Tim Lincecum

The following sentence was buried at the bottom of Nick Cafardo’s Sunday notes column in the Boston Globe:

Tim Lincecum, RHP, Giants — He will be available in trade, and it will be interesting to see who bites on the two-time Cy Young winner.

Next season will be the last under Lincecum’s current contract with the Giants. Last winter, he signed a 2-year/$40.5 million deal with the team, taking him through the end of his arbitration-eligibility.

Cafardo’s column had no quote from a Giants’ official, off or on the record. No source. Just a declaration that Lincecum “will be available in trade.”  No matter, Cafardo’s comment was picked up by all the trade rumor blogs and then the Twitterverse. All on the eve of Game 6 of the National League Championship Series, which had Giants fans in a tizzy about the truth and timing of Cafardo’s comments.

Later in the day, San Francisco Chronicle baseball writer John Shea asked Giants GM Brian Sabean about Lincecum’s future with the team:

Timmy’s going to be a Giant,” said Sabean, reminding that his contract has one year remaining.

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Mike Matheny’s Rookie Mistake

First, let’s start off with caveats. The Cardinals offense didn’t score a single run last night, so there was probably nothing Mike Matheny could have done to change the final result. The Giants rally from the point of contention consisted of a broken bat base hit that no one had ever really seen before, an infield single, and a pair of ground balls to shortstop that weren’t handled properly. From a retrospective point of view, it’s impossible to look back at the third inning and think that the decisions made by the Cardinal manager were the cause of the team’s downfall.

At the same time, however, the way Matheny handled the third inning is a mistake he needs to learn from.

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The Legality and Physics of Pence’s Triple-Hit

The score was still within a manageable two runs when Hunter Pence “settled” into the box with the bases loaded in the third inning of last nights’ game seven win for the Giants. Joe Kelly, just in the game for Kyle Lohse, threw him a 94.5 mph two-seamer that bored in on the bat handle — just your typical bat-breaking, weak-ground-ball inducing heat in on the hands. Of course, you might have seen the slow-motion replay of what happened:

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Jeff Sullivan FanGraphs Chat – 12/23/12


Velocity Trends and Pitchers to Watch in 2013

I’ve written quite a bit this year about pitcher aging — specifically, trends in velocity loss for pitchers. There are two general findings that I want to revisit today and apply to pitchers from 2012; the predictive power of velocity loss in July and end of season velocity, and the impact of losing velocity in one season on next season’s velocity.

First, a pitcher’s velocity will tend to vary throughout the year. Trying to get a read on whether a pitcher is having trouble velocity-wise during a season is difficult if you simply compare to last year’s overall velocity. So I compared a pitcher’s velocity in each month to their velocity the previous year in that same month and found that pitchers who lose at least 1 mph of velocity in July are 13.7 times more likely to finish the entire year down at least 1 mph.

Second, 91% of pitchers that do finish a season down at least 1 mph compared to the previous season will lose additional velocity the following season (average decline of 1.6 mph), with only 7% regaining some (but, likely, not all) of that velocity back.

With the close of the 2012 season, I checked back on how well July-over-July velocity trends predicted full season declines as well as which pitchers ended the season losing over 1 mph off of their fastball.

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Daily Notes: Contract Crowdsourcing, Center Fielders

Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.

1. Contract Crowdsourcing: Center Fielders
2. SCOUT Leaderboards: Arizona Fall League
3. Video: Jonathan Singleton’s Almost Identical Home Runs

Contract Crowdsourcing: Center Fielders
Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. FanGraphs is asking readers to estimate the years and average annual dollar values likely to be received by certain notable free agents. We continue today with corner outfielders. (Click here for more on the contract crowdsourcing project.)

Other positions: Catchers / First Basemen / Second Basemen / Third Basemen / Shortstops / Corner Outfielders.

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The A’s Have A Mr. Potato Head Offense

Over the weekend, the Oakland A’s traded for Chris Young, paying very little for an undervalued asset that gives them a leg up on the offseason. It also gives them an interesting set of permutations with which to arrange their lineup next season, given their current roster configuration.

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Q&A: Ernesto Frieri, Colombian Closer

Ernesto Frieri was a bright spot for a Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim team that fell short of expectations. The 27-year-old right-hander stepped into the closer role after being acquired in a May 3 trade with San Diego Padres. In 56 games, he had 23 saves, a 2.32 ERA and a 13.3 K/9. He also didn’t allow a hit in his first 13 innings in an Angels uniform.

Frieri talked about his journey from South America to big-league stardom during a late-summer visit to Fenway Park.

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Frieri: “I come from Colombia and the number one sport there is soccer. We don’t play baseball in all of the country. We only play it in four or five main cities, on the coast of Colombia. I’m from Cartagena, the same city as Orlando Cabrera. Cartagena is a bigger city for baseball. The best baseball players come from there. Edgar Renteria is from Barranquilla, which is two hours from Cartagena.

“Why I got in love with baseball is because my family are baseball fans. It was also hard for me to get any opportunity in soccer, because everybody played soccer and if you are going to play you have to be really good. That’s why I stopped practicing soccer.

“I got in love with baseball when I was 12 years old. I was watching the 1997 World Series — the Marlins against the Indians — and Edgar Renteria was playing for the Marlins. It was Game 7, the bases were loaded with two out, and Edgar Renteria was at bat. He got the base hit to win the World Series. I see my family jumping around and the everybody was talking about it. Edgar Renteria was all the news. Everybody was excited and happy about what he did, and I was like, ‘Wow! I like baseball now. I want to practice baseball and be like Edgar Renteria. I want to make it to the big leagues and make my family feel proud of me.’ Now, here I am, playing the best baseball in the world.

“At that time, my grandma made tamales. This is going to sound like crazy, but my grandma was making tamales and she made it with corn. Read the rest of this entry »