With large market teams represented fourfold in the league championship series, some have seen fit to reminiscence and kick dirt on the dead horse known as Moneyball. A tired topic, to be sure, it is one that deserves more attention to detail and logic than offered elsewhere. The question that must be answered is whether Billy Beane’s player evaluation methods have failed him and his organization.

Yes, when it comes to amateur talent.

In the famed Moneyball draft of 2002, Beane selected 15 of the first 300 players in the draft, nine of whom have since reached the majors. This includes Nick Swisher, Joe Blanton, Mark Teahen, John Baker, and Jared Burton. In the 2003 draft Beane selected 11 of the first 300 players and only two – Omar Quintanilla and Andre Ethier – reached the majors; neither played large roles with the Athletics and were instead used to acquire Milton Bradley and the deceased Joe Kennedy. Beane once more had 13 of the top 300 picks in 2004 and while a handful reached the majors only Huston Street and Kurt Suzuki are worth writing home about. The year 2005 saw Cliff Pennington, Travis Buck and Vin Mazzaro taken, and in 2006, the A’s tabbed Trevor Cahill and Andrew Bailey. That’s roughly five at-least major league average talents in 2002 and roughly eight in the four drafts thereafter.*

The lack of impact talent extends beyond (and in large part) because of the prospect classes. Drafting and expecting a handful to routinely turn into average players is unrealistic. This is why teams complement draft classes with international talent and trades.

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Sam Fuld is unique.

Quite a few ballplayers have gone to Stanford University, and more than a few are known to be fans of numbers, but how many can say they interned with Stats Inc.? A somewhat recent ESPN.com piece told of Fuld’s duties for the numbers-tracking giant:

“I was one of their reporters, which meant that I looked at game video and plotted the ‘TVL’ — type, velocity and location — of every pitch,” Fuld said. “They have this grid where you click on exactly where the ball crosses the plate. Play the tape, pause and repeat.” A monotonous job, no? “It sounds tedious, and it was, but for whatever reason I handled it,” Fuld says. “I guess there’s a lot of baseball nerds out there.”

Coincidentally, Fuld nearly pulled a feat this season that his previous employer would’ve found amusing. Despite receiving more than 115 plate appearances, Fuld entered the final game of the 2009 season without a single run batted in. The odds of going that long are pretty miniscule; after all, a simple home run notches a RBI, yet until his fifth inning homer, Fuld had a clean sheet.

As it turns out, using Baseball-Reference’s Play Index tool, Fuld actually held the second longest RBI-less streak to begin a career since 1954. Cleveland’s Lou Camilli went 73 games and 135 at-bats without an RBI in a streak that lasted over three seasons. Fuld’s streak is more implausible because (a) he actually hit pretty well (.270/.397/.340) and (b) the entirety of his drought took place in just over 12 months.

The next highest OPS to go more than 30 games shares something in common with Fuld as he too was a member of the Cubs. Jesus Figueroa started his career on the 22nd of April and didn’t record his first RBI until June 15th of the same year. That’s a span of 32 games in which he hit .313/.371/.344. Cubs are all over the place when you limit the search from the year 2000 onwards and take away the caveat that it must be at the beginning of a player’s career. Tom Goodwin went 56 games back in 2004 and 45 games for Juan Pierre in 2006. Again though, neither hit quite as well as Fuld.

There may not be a prototypical player for such a trivial pursuit, but Fuld’s skill set does lend to this record, consider that a player must bat low in the lineup, not have great slugging abilities, and have weak batters ahead of him.

I just wonder whether Fuld was aware.

George Orwell once wrote, “When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.” Orwell was hardly writing about baseball and the bench players who come to bat only in place of a pitcher or weaker hitter, but that doesn’t stop us from appreciating the guys who do so more often than anyone else in the game.

Above is a table of the 20 players with the most pinch hit appearances along with some other pivotal information about them, such as their team, phLI (which is the average leverage index of their pinch hit plate appearances), plate appearances as a pinch hitter, and their OPS. While your eyes scan the chart looking for tidbits, allow me to outline some of the more notable ones:

– Yes, Greg Norton lead the league in pinch hit appearances and yes his OPS is quite poor. However, Norton’s line is pretty magic itself: 89 plate appearances, 20 walks, 18 strikeouts, and 11 hits. That works out to a slash line of .162/.360/.191. Only two of Norton’s hits went for extra bases – both doubles – and somehow he managed to walk more than he struck out. That’s incredible.

– Delwyn Young possesses the highest phLI, which means he was called upon to hit in situations with higher leverage than the rest of the guys on the list. On the flip side, there’s Darin Erstad who partook in a bunch of snoozers.

– Worth noting is how liberally some teams used multiple pinch hitters this much. The Astros, Dodgers, Marlins, Mets, Padres, Phillies, and Pirates are each represented once, while three National League teams aren’t represented at all: the Diamondbacks, Cardinals, and Nationals. This doesn’t mean those teams fail in using the pinch hitter or anything that telling; it could simply mean they use a number of players in lower doses.

– Also worth noting, the American League pinch hitting appearance leaders: Gabe Gross, Nomar Garciaparra, Hideki Matsui, Willy Aybar, and Ryan Raburn have the top five most appearances, and Gross is actually the only American League player with more than 30. His platoon counterpart, Gabe Kapler, appeared as a pinch hitter 15 times.

Franklin Gutierrez lead the American League in Clutch this season. That seems like an upset. Perception would lead me to believe most of the people who read this site likely read sites like USS Mariner, which has boasted about Gutierrez since he was acquired. That means he’s not exactly an unknown to this particularly community. He actually hit pretty well this season too; a .283/.339/.425 line from a centerfielder who plays most of his games in Safeco isn’t too bad.

Still, the idea of Gutierrez as the clutch-est lead me to wonder who else would qualify for the biggest upset in recent Clutch history. I narrowed it down to a pair of choices, they are as follows:

Jay Payton 2006, Oakland Athletics

Somehow he finished with a 2.55 Clutch rating; “somehow” because Payton hit .296/.306/.444 overall, which translated to a .320 wOBA – a figure below league average. This seems like a strong case of getting your hits in the right situations. With men on, Payton hit .319/.354/.426. With nobody on he hit .276/.297/.412. In high-leverage situations he possessed a .863 OPS – a number which descended to .772 in medium-leverage situations and .661 in low-leverage situations – and all of this despite batting mostly in the 5th-7th slots in the order. Billy Beane probably didn’t envision this scenario playing out when he dealt Chad Bradford for Payton in July of 2005, but those are the breaks.

Troy O’Leary 1996, Boston Red Sox

Speaking of Boston, O’Leary had a down season in 1996. His wOBA was a mere .328 and he failed to flash the power of previous and future years. So naturally, O’Leary would post the highest Clutch rating of his career at 3.23. He never even topped one again despite playing through 2003. O’Leary just loved coming to the plate with runners on; his OPS was .938 with someone on, 1.035 with at least one person in scoring position, and a flat .597 with nobody on. As you can imagine, this lead to some funky looking splits by leverage, such as: 1.004/.764/.628. Run of the mill, really.

Unless there’s a glaring oversight, I think it’s safe to crown one of these two years as the most unlikely “clutch” campaign in recent history.

In a few weeks LaTroy Hawkins will hit the free agent market coming off a rather impressive looking season. He threw 63 innings, boasted 11 saves, and posted a 2.13 ERA. Thanks to the strong season, Hawkins’ career ERA with the Astros is sub-2.00 in fewer than 85 innings. Dig beyond the surface and Hawkins is what everyone thought he was; which is to say: not quite that good. His 3.97 FIP and 5.25 tRA contrast thanks to an unusually high line drive rate.

Way back when Hawkins was a Twin, he posted similar numbers, which led way to signing a handsome free agent contract with the Cubs. Fans jeered him with every mistake and that experiment ended quickly as he was shipped to San Francisco. Since, he’s bounced around with Colorado – making two World Series appearances even – and then went to New York. Yankee fans were relentless on the fact that he wore the same number as Paul O’Neil and actually chanted O’Neil’s name during one of Hawkins’ appearances. Hawkins then moved on to Houston and that’s where we sit now.

Hawkins has essentially lived off one-year deals since that Cubs contract – which he finished with the Orioles in 2006 — and his free agency is going to be fun to watch for one reason in particular: will any club give him a multiple-year contract? If one does, I would have to assume it’s going to because of his shiny ERA and closer potential. This seems like a very bad idea. Hawkins’ tRA has finished above 5 two of the last three years and his FIP will likely be near 4. That’s not to say Hawkins is unserviceable, just that he’s not as valuable as his ERA suggests.

The antithesis of Hawkins’ situation might be Kevin Gregg. Another guy who knows what it’s like to be scorned by the north side’s most loyal fans, he’s coming off an atrocious season and may very well be undervalued based on it. Unlike Hawkins, Gregg has shown the ability to post decent tRA and FIP figures in three consecutive years prior to this one. He too holds the closer potential, but not the shiny ERA. The downed velocity is a bit of a concern and I’m not entirely sure he lands a multiple-year deal either; but he’s the only one of the two who deserves it.

The San Francisco Giants possessed the worst offense in baseball this season. For outstanding efforts in offensive offenses, Brian Sabean was given an extension today. Manager Bruce Bochy was also extended — more on him in a bit.

Sabean’s team-building abilities are hard to get a read on. Sometimes he looks solid, like last off-season when he maneuvered quickly and concisely to land Jeremy Affeldt, Bob Howry, and Randy Johnson. He would also give Edgar Renteria a decent-sized contract which seems to be the lasting impression of those signings. During the season he likely overpaid for both Ryan Garko and Freddy Sanchez. The latter turned out to be injured all along, pouring salt on the open wound known as the collective fan base’s heart. Historically he’s signed some real stinkers: Aaron Rowand, Barry Zito, Dave Roberts, and Matt Morris; made a really poor trade for A.J. Pierzynksi, and also found some nice young talent.

It’s easy to excuse one year of down play, because bad breaks happen, but Sabean has never been able to build a strong lineup, even when he had Barry Bonds carrying the team on his back. Their .305 team wOBA in 2009 is supposed by a .309 wOBA in 2008; .311 wOBA in 2007; .319 wOBA in 2006; and .312 wOBA in 2005. That’s one heck of an ineffective offense despite the presence of the aforementioned Bonds.

The Giants main off-season goal is to eradicate the suck and implement some talent. Odds are, this plan includes Matt Holliday or Jason Bay (or, in the nature of Sabean-loves-old-player jokes: Ken Griffey Jr.) and depending on the contracts given, maybe adding an additional bat. It’s probably going to take more than one incoming talent to improve the lineup, but Pablo Sandoval, Holliday (at least, he should be the main target), and Buster Posey isn’t a bad start. Factor in the likely return of Sanchez and there’s some definite room for improvement.

On to Bochy’s return. It took him nearly half the season to figure out Pablo Sandoval was a better fit in the third slot than Randy Winn and even longer to realize that Aaron Rowand (boasting a .319 OBP for the season) was not the best choice at leadoff. Not that one can place all of the blame on Bochy — after all, he can only work with what he is given — but Carson Cistulli seemingly received more plate appearances for the Giants in September than Posey. Gaining trust in the young backstop is going to be vital to Bochy’s success, because like it or not, Wiki Gonzalez isn’t walking through that door.

If the Giants fail to address their run-scoring issues it would painstakingly represent another missed opportunity during the Tim Lincecum/Matt Cain era. Those guys and baseball as a whole deserve a shot to see what they can do in the post-season.

Remember, way back in the day, when Felipe Lopez was talked about as a future superstar? Shortly after the turn of the decade Lopez became the toast of the Jays’ middle infield prospects*. He would make his major league debut in late 2001 and spend the next 500 plate appearances in Toronto, batting an unimpressive .240/.293/.399. Before turning 23 years old, he would be dealt to Cincinnati in a four-team trade and begin his career as a bit of a journeyman. In 2006, Washington traded for him, then released him in 2008. He landed on his feet with the Cardinals, then became a free agent and signed with Arizona. Earlier this year he was traded to Milwaukee and he’s put up the best line of his career: .310/.383/.427.

You didn’t misread that, Felipe Lopez reached base more than 38% of the time this season in 680 plate appearances. In mid-May he will turn 30-years-old and his defense is usually pretty unremarkable, so what makes Lopez’ second career 4.6 WAR season any different from the first time he accomplished it way back in 2005?

A lot.

In 2005, he walked 8.9%, struck out 19.1%, possessed a .195 ISO, .327 BABIP, and .360 wOBA. Since then his power has gone missing; even this year his ISO is only .118. The biggest difference between 2009 and 2005 is the amount of skill retention you would expect moving forward. His BABIP this season is a robust and almost certainly unsustainable .360. His career average BABIP is .323, and only once before has his seasonal BABIP finished above .330 – last year, .331. He is walking more than 10% of the time and his strikeouts are slightly down, but otherwise this appears to be the same hitter he was last year.

No GM should be silly enough to pay Lopez like a five-win player, but it’ll be interesting just how much some weigh 2009 over 2007 and 2008.

*Seriously, the system was loaded back then. Other names appearing in the system: Michael Young, Cesar Izturis, and Brent Abernathy. That’s not a bad stable of talent at all.

Last weekend, David Appelman posted the year-to-year correlations for UZR and wOBA by chances and plate appearances. The latter had a R^2 value of 0.30 for players with at least 500 plate appearances in both 2008 and 2009. Without a baseline as to how other offensive statistics fare, this seems like a pretty weak correlation. I similarly took all 101 batters with 500+ plate appearances in both seasons and ran the correlations on their batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage to figure out where wOBA’s R^2 ranks. Here are the results:

Batting average: 0.1975 (0.444 R)
On-base percentage: 0.3673 (0.606 R)
Slugging percentage: 0.3653 (0.604 R)

Interestingly, OBP and SLG were nearly identical while BA shows just how volatile it is on a year-to-year basis. wOBA ranks just behind the two slash stats that make up OPS, so why do we use wOBA if it’s presumably less predictive on an individual basis than either of those components? Because it correlates to runs scored better than OPS. I ran the team production numbers versus runs scored and found these relationships (both R):

OPS: .958
wOBA: .960

This is why we use wOBA. It might not have the year-to-year relationship that OBP and SLG do, but it correlates with team runs scored about as well or better than anything else around. Now these numbers are not adjusted for park or league and are in their raw forms.

(For fun I used the equation given to estimate each team’s run totals in 2009. The unluckiest teams: Mets, Yankees, Astros, Mariners, and Nationals; the luckiest: Athletics, Angels, Giants, Dodgers, and Twins. Deeper analysis may or may not reveal something about those teams.)

Entering yesterday’s game, Boston had scored one run through two games and seemingly been dismantled by the Angels combo of John Lackey and Jered Weaver. They would have to get to perennial Red Sox “killer” Scott Kazmir if their championship hopes were to remain plausible. With such, the third inning was a breath of fresh air. A walk, single, double, and another single gave the Sox 3-0 advantage. A J.D. Drew two-run homer in the fourth gave the Sox a 5-1 lead. Kazmir would be lifted after six innings; striking out only one, allowing a homer, walking three, and officially giving up five earned runs.

Consider that you could square then double the total amount of runs scored through the first 20 innings for the Red Sox and it would still be less than they scored in the third inning alone. They would go on to score a run off Kevin Jepsen as well, but for the most part Boston’s offense sputtered at the most important facet of their game: getting on base. Boston only left five runners in game one and six in game two. Minnesota stranded 17 by themselves in game two.

So Boston now enters an off-season with Jason Bay potentially becoming a free agent. They’ll likely address shortstop in more depth as well. The obvious options to fill those holes are Matt Holliday and J.J. Hardy. There’s a chance the Bay versus Holliday arguments never come to fruition, but if they do, Boston needs to go with the latter. Their defense was lacking all season, and just check out the year-by-year WAR comparison of the two:

Year	Bay	Holliday
2007	0.1	7.9
2008	2.9	6.2
2009	3.4	5.6

Of course, it is Boston, so there’s always the probability of them raiding some of the market’s more undervalued talents, too. Expect some turnover, but don’t confuse it with admission of failure. This Sox team was nowhere near as bad as it showed in the playoffs.

Sometimes unlikely results are the sweetest. For Boston, the script played out like so many times in the past. Jonathan Papelbon entered, prevented further damage, and returned in the ninth to finish the game and force at least one more game.

Trailing by two, the Angels were scheduled to send Maicer Izturis (.359 OBP this season), Mike Napoli (.350), and Erick Aybar (.353) to the dish. Mike Scioscia did Boston a favor by pinch-hitting for Napoli with the ever so useless Gary Matthews Jr., who quickly recorded out number two. Aybar then came up and singled on a 0-2 fastball. Keep that pitch type in mind, because it’ll come up again, and again, and once more … well 20-something times more, but you knew that.

Eventually things snowball and Vladimir Guerrero ends up singling in the tying and go-ahead run after an intentional walk to Torii Hunter. Enter Hideki Okajima, exit Boston and Papelbon with his -.797 WPA. It looked like this:

The three main talking points of the ninth inning will be:

1. Jonathan Papelbon’s pitch selection
2. Jacoby Ellsbury’s positioning
3. Terry Francona’s patience

Gameday classifies 28 pitches from Papelbon as fastballs. Those four non-fastballs each came well after a run of 26 straight fastballs. Papelbon didn’t throw a pitch that went slower than 90 miles per hour until pitch 27. His final pitch of the afternoon would of course be a fastball and would result in the lead changing hands. Papelbon used said fastball a career high amount of the time despite the pitch having a career low in run value. It’s fair to say opposing teams should look fastball against Papelbon. To be fair, Guerrero had a negative value against fastballs throughout the regular season as well. It comes down to simple game theory. Eventually Papelbon has to throw a non-fastball; otherwise coaches are going to clue the batters in to only look fastballs. Likewise, he has to throw consecutive fastballs or face a similar fate in predictability. Maybe you can argue 26 in a row was overkill, and from an outcome-based perspective you’re absolutely correct. Honestly, weren’t you a little surprised when he continued pumping fastballs?

This has the early vote for storyline most likely to be overlooked. Guerrero’s single plated two in part because Ellsbury was playing deep. Bobby Abreu isn’t the fastest runner in the world and Ellsbury doesn’t have a rocket launcher, but would the Angels have risked sending Abreu if Ellsbury was playing in his normal spot? Further, do the Sox even gain anything by playing Ellsbury deeper than normal? Maybe he stops a double from turning into a triple, but at this point in the game preserving the lead – or at worst a tie – seems more important than preventing the third run from scoring.

Some might suggest that today goes down as Francona’s Grady Little moment. Hs job is and should be safe, but the stubbornness displayed by sticking with Papelbon will probably be critiqued by hindsight artists. The idea of forecasting starting pitchers and their “sharpness” through the first nine batters faced was summed up by saying you couldn’t tell if a pitcher was on based on the first nine, but you could tell if they were off. Outside of the first batter he faced, Papelbon looked fine, my prediction is that those outs won’t stop people from calling for Okajima to face Abreu.

More analysis on the Sox elimination and next steps tomorrow.