Ben and Sam answer listener emails about park effects, player development, hitting .400, and more.
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Episode 354
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he analyzes baseball, but also analyzes other things.
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.
You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.
Audio after the jump. (Approximately 39 min play time.)
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| 6:29 |
: Hi everybody!
Join me, and possibly Chris and Jeff, tonight. The Rockies are in town, but Will Middlebrooks is not. Other things are happening too. Maybe Ricky Nolasco will be on the move tonight. Who knows. Come back and join me tonight at 9 pm ET and we’ll find out together. Until then, get in your questions, and I’ll get up some polls! (see polls at bottom of transcript) |
| 9:01 |
: Let’s light this candle!
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| 9:01 |
Obviously he is considered a great player but do you think David Wright is underdiscussed for a player that was 5th in fWAR last year and is top 10 this year (3rd in rWAR)? |
| 9:02 |
: I think it’s pretty rare for a NY-based player to be under-talked about, and I don’t think that David Wright qualifies. Sorry, Sam.
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| 9:02 |
: Possibly, it would help if the Mets were winning.
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| 9:02 |
Currently have Gyorko, Kemp, Reyes, & Bucholz on the DL. These guys should all be back fairly soon and I have some tough decisions. Will need to drop two of the following: MMontero Grandal Andrus Profar(in a keeper league) Lester or Leake. Gracias! |
Zoilo is — to put it lightly — not a popular name. So when Zoilo Almonte madness happened over the weekend, it was only natural to think of the other Zoilo in major league history: Zoilo Versalles. One of just 13 shortstops to be voted the most valuable player by the Baseball Writers Association of America, Versalles didn’t have a very long career. But in 1965, he commanded the nation’s attention.
Gerardo Parra is probably one of the most underrated players in baseball. He’s been on the Diamondbacks roster since 2009, but they never saw fit to give him a regular job, keeping him as a part-time reserve and injury fill-in, despite the fact that his production suggested he was good enough for a starting role. Finally, this year, a series of injuries to Adam Eaton, Cody Ross, and Jason Kubel have forced Kirk Gibson to put Parra in the line-up everyday, and he’s responded with his best performance to date. Through 335 plate appearances, he has a 133 wRC+ and UZR continues to rate him as an elite defensive outfielder, so he’s already at +3.1 WAR with half a season left to play.
However, in the midst of Parra’s excellent overall performance, there’s one glaring problem; he’s threatening to post one of the worst base stealing seasons in recent history.
Sort relievers backwards by velocity, and only four closers are in the bottom 30. Sergio Romo and Huston Street live on their sliders, Koji Uehara has his splitter, and then there’s Casey Janssen, humming along with his cutter and a 90 mph fastball. I asked him how he does it, and he graciously answered without resorting to fisticuffs.
| 9:03 |
: Hey guys, late as usual, this time for traveling reasons. We’ll get started as soon as I put in my contacts!
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| 9:03 |
: They are in another room!
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| 9:06 |
: All right, no better time than the present for sports.
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| 9:07 |
do you see Bruce Rondon getting chance to close in Detroit this year? |
| 9:07 |
: Not for very long
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| 9:07 |
A bit late, so right on time! |
Defensive errors have been a part of baseball history forever, but we seldom ever talk about them now. We’ve come to better understand the importance of range, and so we look beyond errors for our defensive evaluations. A guy might make an extra error or two simply because he’s covering a lot more ground than a peer. There’s also the matter of errors being subjective, some being obvious calls and some being coin flips. As for hitters, errors are mistakes by the other team. When a hitter smacks a ball in play and the defense makes an error, we tend to think of the hitter as lucky, because that shouldn’t have happened. So hitters don’t get a lot of credit.
But errors do happen, and they’re factored into some wOBA formulas, and there’s a line of thinking that faster runners can force more defensive errors, giving them a mostly unseen advantage. There’s the idea, then, that there’s indirectly some skill involved, which might mean a few extra runs. I, personally, have seen Ichiro reach a bunch of times on misplays, which might’ve had to do with his speed. The more a defender has to hurry, the more prone he might be to screwing up, which could be a thing worth talking about. We’re about to focus on Norichika Aoki.
Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of the Daily Notes.
1. SCOUT Leaderboards for Double-A
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule
SCOUT Leaderboards for Double-A
A Brief Introduction
Featured in this edition of the Notes are the SCOUT leaderboards for Double-A. Briefly stated, SCOUT represents an attempt to use our knowledge of certain metrics, and at what sample sizes they become reliable, to measure run production/prevention in instances where small samples are all that’s available. Stated less briefly, is the explanation available here.
Other recent editions: Triple-A.
This story has been updated to reflect some information provided by a source about the Norberto case after publication. We apologize for any mistakes in the original post.
We’ve focused a great deal of attention lately on MLB’s power to suspend players involved with Biogenesis and the grievance procedure available to those players who are suspended for violation of the Joint Drug Program. But the collective bargaining agreement provides for a separate and distinct grievance process for all sorts of non-disciplinary matters — namely, disputes between between a player and his club. That grievance procedure isn’t often in the news, but it is this week, and therefore, worth discussing.
Relief pitcher Jordan Norberto filed a grievance late last week against the Oakland A’s. Norberto told Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle that the A’s shouldn’t have released because he was injured at the time.
