Last season, the Rockies had what was arguably the worst season in their 20 as a franchise. There were plenty of culprits — a porous defense and Troy Tulowitzki getting hurt yet again were two large factors. But the chief culprit for Colorado’s 98-loss season was the worst starting rotation in franchise history. In response to this, the Rockies have gone out and signed Jeff Francis, Miguel Batista and Chris Volstad. These signings probably will have no material effect on the team’s rotation, but if they do, they won’t be signings that push the Rockies toward contention, but rather mediocrity.

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With Stan Musial passing away over the weekend, Jesse did a nice workup of his career numbers, noting that Musial stands as one of the best hitters to ever play Major League Baseball. But, the more I looked at his player page, the harder I found it to wrap my head around his combination of power and contact rates.

Musial struck out 696 times in his entire career, spanning nearly 11,000 plate appearances, and his strikeout rate was nearly half of his career average (5.5%) during his peak years. In 1943, Musial struck out 18 times in 701 trips to the plate, a strikeout rate of just 2.6%, the third lowest mark of the year. In that same season, Musial racked up 81 extra base hits, and he posted a .206 ISO, good for fifth best in baseball. We just don’t see guys who are elite power hitters and elite contact hitters much anymore.

Of course, the game has changed a lot over the last 70 years, with a drastic increase in strikeouts being one of the most prominent changes. A 5% strikeout rate today is more impressive than that would have been during Musial’s day, but while we have things like wRC+ that adjust for historical offensive levels, I didn’t have a great feel for what context adjusted metrics for the individual strikeout and power numbers would be. So, in order to get a better sense of what Musial’s numbers would look like if we brought them into the modern game, I decided to scale his numbers to the norms of 2012.

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FanGraphs keeps track of pitcher Pace, which you already knew. Here’s a definition of what pitcher Pace is, in case you need to brush up. The data comes from PITCHf/x timestamps, and while Pace doesn’t have any meaningful correlation with wins and losses — that is, it doesn’t make you better to speed up or slow down — it does have a meaningful correlation with what we might call “watchability”. While we’re all ultimately in it for the baseball, it’s a lot more fun to watch a game with a fast tempo than a game with a slower tempo. A game with a fast tempo makes the baseball more concentrated. Somebody just signed Miguel Batista the other day, and I’m not interested in looking up who, but that was a bad move as far as watchability is concerned. Batista, like other slow pitchers, can be dreadful to watch.

Pace is interesting, because it describes part of the viewing experience. So Pace can be fun to play around with. In late September, I decided to look at opposite extremes. What Pace tell us is that Mark Buehrle is the fastest-working pitcher, and Carlos Pena is the slowest-working hitter, because Pena has a whole routine he gets into. I was curious to see what the Pace would be in their head-to-head matchups. The results basically split the middle between Buehrle’s Pace and Pena’s Pace. Buehrle made Pena speed up, but Pena also made Buehrle slow down. Science!

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

1. Nerds Stats for the United States’ Provisional WBC Team
2. Video: Craig Kimbrel Doing Whatever

Nerds Stats for the United States’ Provisional WBC Team
This past Thursday, all 16 participants in this year’s World Baseball Classic announced their provisional rosters for that same tournament (which itself begins in early March). Over the course of this week, we’ll consider the nerds stats for some of the notable WBC’s rosters, where notable is defined as “those which most interest the author on that particular morning.”

Below are the members of the United States team, accompanied by various nerd stats from the last three seasons of major-league play.

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You know who don’t steal a lot of bases? Pitchers. Also big guys, but specifically, for our purposes here, pitchers. For one thing, pitchers are infrequently on base. For another thing, pitchers are infrequently well-trained at running the bases. For still another thing, there’s an injury risk, as attempted base-stealers can hurt their hands or their shoulders. In short, the potential costs are determined to outweigh the potential benefits, so pitchers stay put. We’ve written about this a little before.

National League pitchers bat somewhat often, but their steals are few and far between. Last year, three NL pitchers successfully stole bases. The year before, three again. The year before, three again. The year before, three again. NL pitchers haven’t accrued double-digit stolen bases in a season since 1989, when they combined to steal ten. American League pitchers bat far less often, and so their steals are even fewer and farther between. Last year, zero AL pitchers successfully stole bases. The year before, zero again. The year before, zero again. The year before, zero again. As a matter of fact, the last stolen base by an AL pitcher came in the summer of 2002.

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In this week’s edition of “As the Upton Waits”, the Mets and Braves inquire, while the Rangers continue to lurk in the periphery.

Maybe the Texas Rangers are employing a brilliant strategy of waiting out the Arizona Diamondbacks before swooping in and acquiring 25-year old Justin Upton. Or, maybe the Rangers lucked out when Upton rejected a trade to the Mariners for Taijuan Walker, Nick Franklin and a pair of relievers. Regardless, the Rangers still find themselves in the best position to land the young right-fielder. Read the rest of this entry »

Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, are being released at FanGraphs this year. Below are the projections for the Cincinnati Reds. Szymborski can be found on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other 2013 Projections: Angels / Astros / Athletics / Blue Jays / Brewers / Cubs / Giants / Mets / Nationals / Phillies / Pirates / Rangers / Rockies / Royals / White Sox.

Batters
Something of which people never tire is to learn that there is both good news and also that there’s bad news. The bad news, in the case of the Cincinnati Reds, appears to be — at least so far as Dan Szymborski’s finely calibrated ZiPS projection system is concerned — appears to be that newly acquired Shin-Soo Choo is probably a pretty bad defensive center fielder. The good news, though, is that he’s still expected to be worth about three wins in 2013 — i.e. more than he produced in either 2011 or -12.

Otherwise, of some note — beyond the simple fact that the club’s offense is generally talented — is the not particularly optimistic projection for 34-year-old Ryan Ludwick, whom the Reds signed to a two-year, $15 million contract this offseason. In the present market, that’s not a horrible deal for a starting outfielder; however, Cincinnati will be looking to compete for the NL Central title this season, and will want at least average production from the position.

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On Saturday night, baseball lost one of its all-time greats. Stan “The Man” Musial, a Hall-of-Fame inductee who played 22 seasons for the St. Louis Cardinals, passed away at the age of 92.

I’ll leave the descriptions of Musial’s unique swing and the stories of contributions to the community to writers more eloquent and knowledgeable than I. FanGraphs is all about statistics, so let’s look at Musial’s career though his numbers.

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This is a post that necessarily begins with an embarrassing story. Friday afternoon, I was doing some research into strike zones called against individual hitters, and full teams. I was comparing actual strikes against expected strikes, just as I’ve done with pitchers in the past. I didn’t know if I would find anything, but that was the whole purpose — it was statistical exploration. After some time, I gathered all my results in a spreadsheet, and then I remembered I already did this in October. Like the exact same thing, for this very website.

Memory jogged, I read the old post, and I read the old comments underneath the old post. Everything looked fine; I didn’t know what I was checking. All the results agreed, with the only difference being that this time I used a denominator of 1,000 called pitches instead of 1,000 general pitches. Hardly worth an updated post. But part of one comment did stand out to me, both because it was interesting, and because it meant I might not have to throw away all my data:

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