Ben and Sam discuss the latest injury to Brian Roberts, Evan Longoria running by Ben Zobrist, and the speculation about a Profar-for-Taveras trade.
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All offseason long, the Detroit Tigers denied interest in re-signing free-agent closer Jose Valverde. Every other team in baseball also effectively denied interest in signing Valverde. The Tigers did next to nothing to address their closer situation, and on Wednesday, Phil Coke blew a save against the Twins. Thursday, the Tigers signed Valverde, albeit to a minor-league contract with an early-May opt out. There have been, I think, two primary responses:
(1) It’s a minor-league contract so it’s utterly risk-free — if Valverde doesn’t earn a big-league job, he won’t be given a big-league job. What’s the harm?
(2) The Tigers won’t be able to help themselves. Valverde isn’t what he was, but it won’t be long before he’s closing again for Detroit, and possibly costing them games. He’s “proven”, he’s familiar, he’s still thought of as a closer despite everything. This is how it starts.
We know we’re going to strike out. That’s just a given with guys who have power. And we have a lot of guys who can hit the ball out of the park. And that kind of goes hand in hand. But you look at some of the studies — and our guys have looked at them — and there’s not a direct correlation with strikeouts and offense.
— Atlanta general manager Frank Wren, interviewed by Jayson Stark on 2/18/13
Through their first two games, Braves hitters have 24 Ks in 75 PAs. But they also hit six HRs, they scored 16 runs in two games, and they’re 2-0. They’re living up to expectations. Unfortunately, so are the Astros. They have 43 Ks in 97 PAs through their first three games, becoming just the fifth team in history to strike out at least 10 times in the first three games of the season. The team is 1-2 with just 8 total runs scored. So how relevant are strikeouts to a team’s success?
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There are, I imagine, several questions one could ask about Roy Halladay. Does he eat breakfast? does he eat granola for breakfast? Which is his favorite breakfast granola? But, regarding Halladay as a baseball pitcher, there is one particularly pressing question: will he ever get back to being what he was? It would’ve been nearly impossible for Halladay to conclusively answer that question on Wednesday in Atlanta, and indeed, in the aftermath of Halladay’s start, the question remains unanswered, conclusively.
The good news, if you missed it: Halladay finished with nine strikeouts. The bad news, if you missed it: the rest. Halladay allowed five runs in 3.1 innings, and he became the first pitcher in recorded baseball history to record nine strikeouts in so brief an outing. Of course, we know better than to look at innings thrown — more meaningful is the number of batters faced, and in that regard Halladay’s start was not unprecedented. Four times before, pitchers have struck out nine of 15 batters, while Halladay faced 19 Braves. Dan Osinski once struck out ten of 16 batters. Just last April, Marco Estrada struck out nine of 17 batters. But anyway, this isn’t about establishing an historical context — this is about Halladay, and what he is, and what just happened.
The Texas Rangers have two good middle infielders, so the best prospect in baseball is starting the season in Triple-A. The St. Louis Cardinals have three good outfielders, so the second best prospect in baseball is starting the season in Triple-A. The Cardinals one glaring weakness is at shortstop. The Rangers spent all winter trying to trade for a young power hitting outfielder, only to fall short at the end.
So, naturally, there’s seemingly constant speculation about a possible trade between the two franchises. This speculation got pushed to the forefront on Tuesday, when Cardinals GM John Mozeliak was asked about the idea by Jim Bowden:
Mozeliak Cards GM just told us on Sirius 209/XM 89that if Jon Daniels calls him & offers him Profar for Tavares he would think about it
— JIM BOWDEN (@JimBowdenESPNxm) April 1, 2013
Mozeliak’s comment essentially boils down to “yes, I’d consider acquiring a 20-year-old potential superstar shortstop if I had the chance”, which, well, of course he would. There’s nothing there to suggest that the deal has been actually discussed by either organization, or that this hypothetical trade has any chance of happening. Even with Elvis Andrus signing his long term extension today, the Rangers still have plenty of options to keep Profar, and the Cardinals have other shortstop options that won’t require them to give up Taveras.
There’s a reason the #1 prospect in baseball — per Baseball America’s rankings, anyway — has never been traded in the season that he was considered be the best overall prospect in the game. A swap of the #1 and #2 prospects — technically, BA rated Taveras #3 this year, but given that Dylan Bundy is starting the season on the DL with elbow issues, we’ll just give them credit for flipping those two to better account for pitcher attrition — would be historically unique. It’s probably not going to happen. But, let’s just say it was on the table… does either side say no?
Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of the Daily Notes.
1. Batting Stats with Live and Yesterday Splits
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Game Odds, Translated into Winning Percentages
Batting Stats with Live and Yesterday Splits
With the addition recently of both the Live and Yesterday splits to the site’s leaderboards, it’s possible now to get a sense of how players are performing in real time by certain advanced metrics in a way that wasn’t before.
What the author has found himself wondering, though, is how best to adjudge the day’s Champions of Hitting and Pitching using the metrics available at the site. As is the case even with larger samples, there are actually multiple ways of doing so — it’s a matter always, as Dave Cameron suggests, of the particular question one is attempting to answer.
Below are four metrics, all of which answer slightly different questions about a player’s single-game batting performance. I’ll looking at some pitching metrics tomorrow.
wOBA
Weighted On-Base Average, or wOBA, is a record of a hitter’s batting production for the day scaled to on-base percentage. As such, it’s the best way to determine offensive output per plate appearance. That’s its strength. It’s less useful for reporting cumulative production, however. So, a batter with one home run in a single plate appearance will have a higher single-game wOBA than another hitter who’s hit three home runs in four plate appearances — even though we might say that the latter has been “more productive.”
Drafted 10th overall about nine months after some little-known guy named Peyton Manning unseated him as the starting quarterback at the University of Tennessee, Todd Helton has seen it all during his time in Colorado. He has not, however, aged very gracefully. At the age of 39 — and coming off a year in which he hit .238 in 69 games — he is once again tasked with proving there is still life in his aging bat. It will probably be his final season in a major league uniform.
Ben and Sam share their thoughts on Roy Halladay, Tim Lincecum, Yu Darvish, Fernando Rodney, the Royals, Tom Milone, Shaun Marcum, and more.
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Know first that this began as a far more ambitious project. But the ambitious project didn’t pan out, and though ambition is noble, it isn’t something to be celebrated on its own. One cannot succeed without ambition, but at the same time, one cannot succeed without more than just ambition. What we’ve been left with, in the ruins of my attempt, is a little grab-bag of fun facts. I still find this stuff interesting, and it isn’t stuff you run across every day, but this could’ve been more. It probably never will be more.
In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t make a huge difference how quickly a player can run from home to first. It does make some difference, but most hits will be hits no matter what. Yet it’s better to have speed than to not have speed, and one can’t really improve how quickly he runs. Not by the time he’s a professional baseball player, not when he’s trying to go 90 feet. I’ve recently become somewhat interested in timing players from the moment of contact to the first-base bag. More specifically, I was interested in timing Jesus Montero, but it turns out this isn’t very complicated to do. And we shouldn’t need a big sample size, because a player should run somewhere around his “true talent”, so to speak. The key is to isolate close plays. There will always be some variation, depending on any stumbles and on where the pitch was located and on so many things, but, scouts time players to the base. Why don’t we share in the fun? (The fun of knowledge)
