Author Archive
Can Matt Cain Sustain His Low HR/FB Rate?
Any time a general theory that applies to most people is advanced, people naturally begin to look for the outliers, and they often use the examples at the ends of the spectrum to cast validity on the theory. Or, they just dismiss the theory as not being applicable to that specific case, which may or may not be true. We see this quite a bit with metrics like xFIP and Matt Cain, who has become the poster child for the part of our readership who thinks that stat isn’t worth all that much. For years, Cain’s ERA has been better than his xFIP would suggest, largely because he has sustained one of the lowest HR/FB rates in all of baseball.
Rodrigo Lopez: Better Than You Think
In honor or Rob Neyer announcing himself as one of us, I’m going to pull out one of his favorite toys, the Player A/B comparison. The numbers are from 2010.
Player A: 215 IP, 2.46 BB/9, 5.05 K/9, 43.4% GB%, 4.60 xFIP, 88.0 MPH FBv
Player B: 200 IP, 2.52 BB/9, 5.22 K/9, 37.6% GB%, 4.70 xFIP, 88.2 MPH FBv
Pretty similar, yeah? Let’s go with career numbers, for more context.
Career:
Player A: 1,675 IP, 2.73 BB/9, 6.01 K/9, 40.2% GB%, 4.49 xFIP, 88.5 MPH FBv
Player B: 1,246 IP, 2.76 BB/9, 5.84 K/9, 41.9% GB%, 4.42 xFIP, 89.3 MPH FBv
I’m going to go with Still Very Similar for $200, Alex. They certainly weren’t treated as equals this winter, though.
Alexei Ramirez Is Underrated No More
This piece has been updated since the original version hit the site to reflect new information gathered about the terms of Ramirez’s deal.
Ever since Jayson Stark released his All-Underrated Team, and it didn’t include Alexei Ramirez, I’ve been working on a post about the White Sox shortstop. Ramirez was the first name that came to my mind when I read the introduction to the column, and it seems he’s so underrated he couldn’t even make an All Underrated team.
Yesterday, however, the White Sox screwed up my post by giving Ramirez a four year, $32 million contract extension. It’s hard to argue that he’s an unappreciated asset who doesn’t get the recognition he deserves right as he’s signing a deal that makes him one of the highest paid shortstops in baseball.
Thanks Rob
While I generally prefer to write about baseball rather than baseball writers, today, I’m making an exception, because as you may have heard by now, today is Rob Neyer’s last day with ESPN. And, in many ways, we owe Rob a huge debt of gratitude.
For myself and those in the 30 and under category, Rob Neyer was our Bill James. When my family got AOL in the mid-1990s, one of the first places I headed for was ESPNet SportsZone. It took forever to load, but it was a place devoted solely to sports, and far more interesting than anything I could get from the local papers, especially on the baseball side. They even had a column called Chin Muzak, written by some guy I’d never heard of, and he said crazy things.
Do We Need More Home Field Advantage In MLB?
Yesterday, I was perusing Rob Neyer’s blog, and he did a post about a part of the new book Scorecasting. In the interview Rob linked to, Jon Wertheim discusses part of his findings on home field advantage, and how he believes they are mostly related to the subconscious desire of referees and umpires to avoid getting booed. Now, I don’t know if he’s right or wrong, but thinking about the ramifications if it were true led me down a thought path that I found interesting.
Unequal officiating is inherently not fair, and on the surface is a problem we would like to see resolved. But would any of us actually enjoy baseball – or any sport, really – more if there were no home field advantage?
I went to a lot of games in Seattle when I was a kid – mostly baseball, but also some basketball and a few football games. I remember having a distinctly different level of excitement about attending a Sonics game, both because the team was good and because the home team in basketball is a huge favorite, meaning I was far more likely to go home happy. The higher prices kept NBA games from being a family staple, but if that had not been a factor, I could have easily become infatuated with hoops instead of baseball.
What is the benefit in having more equality for the road team? While some fans certainly go for the experience, many go for the chance to see their team win, and leave disappointed when that doesn’t end up as the final result. If we were able to identify and alleviate any officiating biases that caused the home team to win more regularly, wouldn’t we just be degrading the enjoyment of the product for most of the people in attendance?
The Angels Should Sign Vladimir Guerrero
If we ran a poll on what team has had the worst off-season to date, I’m certain that the Angels would win in a landslide. From losing out on Carl Crawford and Adrian Beltre – including watching him go to the division rival they’re trying to chase down – to the inexplicable Vernon Wells trade, the Angels have just swung and missed this winter. But they don’t have to be done just yet, and there’s a player on the market who could help them both in 2011 and beyond, and if they signed him, he could end up earning his entire salary back and then some.
That player is Vladimir Guerrero, who looks to be the last DH still standing around when the music stops and all the chairs are gone. Guerrero originally wanted to parlay his rebound season into a multi-year contract, but now he’s just looking for a job. With Bobby Abreu likely to shift to DH after the Wells acquisition, the Angels might not have a full-time spot for him, but Abreu is actually the reason they should make a strong run at Guerrero to begin with.
Introducing The FanGraphs Library
While we’ve always been very proud of the quality and quantity of the statistics offered here on FanGraphs, we have never had a proper place to explain exactly what they all are, what they mean, how they’re calculated, and how they are best used. That’s why we’re extremely excited to announce the newest section of FanGraphs – The FanGraphs Library.
Steve Slowinski, creator of the excellent SABR Library, has agreed to come on staff and maintain the Library here on the site going forward. He’s created an in-depth resource that will serve as a place for explanation and education on all of the metrics we have here on the site, as well as many of the principles that we often refer to. He’s added some extremely fun tools to the pages, including calculators which will let you reproduce the metrics on your own, charts that show not only league averages for each metric but also the spread of those metrics from best to worst, and links to various explanations of how these metrics were conceived.
It’s really a fantastic resource, and one we’re thrilled to have on the site. Steve will be blogging both over at the Library and here on FanGraphs, and we’ll continue to update the Library going forward. We hope you enjoy using this resource as much as we’ve enjoyed bringing it to the site.
How Could Wells Earn His Contract?
One final post on Vernon Wells from me today, and then tomorrow we’ll move on to something else. However, I wanted to tackle one last angle before we dismiss this as just one of the worst trades ever – namely by asking, what would Wells have to do to earn the remainder of his deal?
Let’s start with a few assumptions. The cost of a win has been about $5 million this winter, even on four-year deals such as the ones given to Adam Dunn and Victor Martinez. This was not the only way the Angels could have chosen to spend the money and avoid a longer term commitment to a player like Carl Crawford or Adrian Beltre, and we have to account for the opportunity cost – those players that the Angels could have signed instead of acquiring Wells’ deal.