In the last month, the Cubs have played 27 games. 15 of those have been started by Geovany Soto, while 12 have been started by Koyie Hill.

Soto is hitting .268/.409/.458, good for a .387 wOBA.
Hill is hitting .236/.267/.292, good for a .245 wOBA.

It gets worse. We’re over halfway through the month of June, and Soto has 22 plate appearances. Hill has 27. As the Cubs season slips away, Lou Piniella has decided that one of the ways he can get his team to win games is to change catchers, despite the fact that Soto is one of the best hitting catchers in the game while Hill is one of the worst.

The reason, of course, is the old manager crutch: handling pitchers. Since Hill can’t hit, he’s earned the reputation as a good defender. Piniella believes he’s simply exchanging offense for defense by putting Hill in the lineup. The problem is that there is absolutely nothing in the record that he could possibly lean on to support playing Hill with such frequency.

Soto is poor at throwing out basestealers. He is just 8 for 41 this year, a 20 percent success rate. Hill? 3 for 16, a 19 percent success rate.

Lou doesn’t like the way Soto handles a pitching staff, and believes the guys on the mound perform better with Hill behind the plate. Opponents are hitting .253/.324/.392 when Soto catchers, and .236/.308/.383 when Hill catches. The difference is tiny, and is entirely wrapped up in BABIP – the team’s BB/K rate is actually slightly better when Soto catches.

In fact, if you look back over the last three years, the Cubs have allowed 4.18 runs per game when Hill starts and 4.27 runs per game when Soto starts. Even if you believe in something like catchers ERA (you shouldn’t, but that’s another story), the observed difference between Hill and Soto is less than a tenth of a run per game.

The observed difference between Soto and Hill at the plate is much, much larger. Even using a regressed projection like the rest-of-season ZiPS, we would see a .362 wOBA for Soto and a .289 wOBA for Hill, which translates to about .25 runs per four plate appearances.

Plain and simple: Piniella is screwing up. He’s playing a bad player over a good player in an effort to win more games. It’s not like the team is responding to the move, either. On May 17th, the Cubs were 17-22, 5 1/2 games out of first place. Today, they are 29-36, 6 1/2 games out of first place. They’ve gone 12-14 since Piniella decided to make Soto a part-time player.

The Cubs are almost certainly going to have a house cleaning at some point in the near future. In the best interest of the organization, their manager should probably be part of that, and the franchise should make “Is Geovany Soto a better catcher than Koyie Hill?” the first question they ask in the interview process.

The Angels are 36-32, in second place in the AL West, and two games behind first place Texas. They are in that position despite having a below average offense (-10 wRAA), a below average defense (-19.3 UZR), and a below average pitching staff (4.33 FIP). How are they winning games? The Angel way – clutchness.

If it seems like we write about this every year, well, we do. I mentioned the Angels penchant for clutch hitting two years ago, showing that they were consistently among the league leaders in our metric that shows the gap in wins added that comes from hitting well in high leverage situations. Matt Klaassen wrote about it earlier this spring.

And here we are today, talking about it again, because once again the Angels are clutching their way to victories. They have +1.34 clutch wins from their hitting and +2.48 clutch wins from their pitchers, totaling just under four wins added by coming through when it counts. Not surprisingly, they lead the league in clutch wins added.

It isn’t surprising because they do this every single year. Last year, they added seven wins to their total through clutch performance. In 2008, they had fifteen clutch wins. As noted in the first linked post above, this is basically an annual trend. The Angels are consistently among the league leaders in clutch wins, and have been for the better part of the last decade.

There are all kinds of explanations for why they are able do to this year in and year out. Generally, Mike Scioscia gets the credit for getting the most out of his team. The Angels minor league development staff is lauded as teaching their players how to play the game the right way. But the explanations are never very specific, nor are the players who put up the crazy clutch seasons consistent.

In 2008, the monster clutch Angels were Maicer Izturis (+1.46), Mark Teixeira (+1.21), and Howie Kendrick (+1.15) on offense, and Jason Bulger (+1.20), John Lackey (+1.11), and Joe Saunders (+1.03) on the mound. Last year, it was Gary Matthews Jr (+2.11, seriously) , Jeff Mathis (+1.05), and Chone Figgins (+0.95) carrying the clutch load. This year, it’s Kendry Morales (+0.91), Hideki Matsui (+0.77), and Bobby Abreu (+0.57) doing it with the bats, while Ervin Santana (+0.96), Jason Bulger (+0.55), and Fernando Rodney (+0.45) have done it on the mound.

Seriously, what do those guys have in common, besides being Angels at the time? Teixeira was a rental player who came up through the Rangers organization. It’s hard to argue that the Angels had much influence on the development of Matthews, Matsui, Abreu, or Rodney. If it’s good coaching, why did Santana have a negative clutch rating before this season, when he’s a home grown kid who has been on the roster for five years?

I’m not asking these questions to insinuate that the Angels have nothing to do with these performances – I’m genuinely curious what they could possibly be doing to extract such performances from wildly different players, but do so almost every single year? At this point, the odds of it just being luck are pretty slim, so it seems reasonable to suspect that the Angels are doing something right. But none of the theories advanced so far seem to have any kind of evidence to support them, and there does not seem to be any discernable trail we can follow that will lead us to the answer.

Until someone figures out just what the Angels are doing, all we can really do is sit and stare in amazement. Right now, there’s no explanation. The Angels are a phenomenon.

Join Patrick Newman and myself for an hour of baseball conversation.

The other day someone asked me what happened to Joe Blanton this year. He’s gotten torched this year after being a pretty solid pitcher for the Phillies a year ago, and his demise has been a big reason why the Phillies currently find themselves in third place in the NL East. The big factor in Blanton’s new found suckitude has been a dramatic drop-off in his strikeout rate, which has fallen from 7.51 K/9 a year ago to 4.98 K/9 this year.

However, perhaps the question shouldn’t be what’s changed about Blanton this year, as much as it should be what changed with Blanton last year? Here’s his career K/9 in graph form:

When seen over the course of his career, his current strikeout rate seems pretty normal. It’s last year’s performance that looks like the massive outlier, and rather than the product of a breakout, it looks more like just a fluke. How did a pitch-to-contact guy with no outpitch suddenly post an above-average strikeout rate?

Certainly, the change in leagues had something to do with it. Blanton faced #9 hitters 78 times last season, and he racked up 26 strikeouts in those at-bats. Blanton took full advantage of getting to face the opposing pitcher several times a game, and was able to pad his strikeout total against guys who don’t hit for a living. But that doesn’t begin to explain all of the change in his strikeout rate.

His velocity didn’t jump. He didn’t add a new pitch. From a big picture standpoint, not much changed. So how was Blanton able to get so many strikeouts last year, and why has he crashed back to earth this year?

Pitch selection looks like one possible suspect. With the caveat that we’re dealing with really small samples here, the glaring change in his performance from last year to this year is how well he’s done on the 2-2 count. A year ago, he threw 125 pitches when the count was even at two balls and two strikes and managed a whopping 44 strikeouts (35 percent), holding opposing batters to a .189/.194/.320 line against him.

This year, he’s thrown 27 pitches in a 2-2 count, but only racked up 5 strikeouts (19 percent), and opposing hitters are knocking him around at a .444/.444/.852 clip on that pitch. The 2-2 count is a very good one for pitchers to be in, as National League hitters are putting up an average .191/.197/.305 line in that situation this year, but Blanton has not been able to take advantage and put hitters away.

In looking at his pitch selection, we can see that he’s curiously decided to throw mostly fastballs on this count, despite it being a strikeout situation. On 2-2 this year, he’s throwing 60 percent fastballs, 6 percent sliders, 15 percent curves, and 19 percent change-ups. Last year on a 2-2 count, he threw 48 percent fastballs, 23 percent sliders, 13 percent curves, and 16 percent change-ups.

Essentially, on 2-2 counts this year, he has replaced the slider – a-swing-and-miss pitch – with the fastball. Hitters have been appreciative, and instead of going down flailing at a breaking ball, they’re driving his fastball with authority.

Maybe he has a good reason for why he’s decided to start throwing 89 MPH meatballs in a pitcher’s count, but regardless, it’s not working, and perhaps he should consider trying something else.

Over the next six weeks, most of the General Managers of contending teams will ask themselves the same question – what am I willing to give up to get Cliff Lee? Lee is the big fish in the upcoming trade season, as he is arguably the best left-handed pitcher in baseball right now, and is just a year removed from one of the most impressive post-season performances we’ve ever seen.

Each team will come to a different conclusion about what to offer based on their own team’s circumstances and how they value different players, but let’s try to offer a helping hand by quantifying Lee’s trade value as of today.

If a team traded for him tomorrow, they’d likely be able to extract 20 starts from Lee the rest of the season, as most teams have about 100 games left on their schedule. No one is going to be able to put together a deal that quickly, however, so we’ll estimate 18 starts in order to give them enough time to make a trade.

Over the last three years, Lee has made 74 starts and has been worth +16.8 wins over a replacement level starter, or about .23 wins per outing. Multiply that rate out over 18 starts and you come up with just over +4 wins for the rest of 2010. His performance has been so good the last few years that you don’t have to regress the projection that much. To account for the chance of injury or some kind of unexpected performance drop, you probably knock it down to +3.5 wins, or something in that range.

The marginal value of a win last winter was about $4 million. Using that figure, we’d estimate that the remainder of Lee’s 2010 regular season to be worth about $14 million. But teams are now operating with more information than they had over the winter.

Contenders and pretenders have been sorted out to a degree, and teams that actually have a chance to play in October have a better likelihood of seeing that come to pass than they did before the season began. Thus, while teams do factor post-season performance into their off-season pricing, it becomes more valuable at the trade deadline, as teams adjust their rosters for the playoffs. In reality, the marginal value of a win in July is almost certainly higher than it is in December, due to the increased certainty with which GMs can project their playoff chances.

I would estimate the marginal value of a win in July to be closer to $5 million than $4 million, which would put Lee’s value at $18 million instead of $14, but it’s in the same general range. A team that trades for Lee doesn’t just get his 2010 season, however, but also is basically guaranteed two draft picks when he leaves via free agency (or they get to re-sign him, which is a value in and of itself), since he’s a lock for Type A free agency.

If we use the numbers that Victor Wang concluded, the value of the compensation picks is about $6 million, a significant figure. Given that 2011 is projected as an exceptionally strong draft class, it might even be a little bit higher, but we’ll stick with that value for now.

That would make the asset that is Cliff Lee worth between $20 and $26 million. He’s due about $5 million left of his 2010 salary, so we’ll subtract that amount from the overall total, and get $15 to $21 million in surplus value.

What does that look like in terms of prospects? According to the values Wang came up with, that’s a hitting prospect in the 25-75 range or a top 10 pitching prospect, plus maybe another lesser piece or two in order to win the bidding. Historically, that is basically what we see. The Indians obtained Matt LaPorta and change for CC Sabathia two years ago. The A’s got Brett Wallace and change for Matt Holliday last year. That is basically the established return for a rent-a-star.

If you’re a GM shopping for Cliff Lee this summer, that looks to be the price – $15 to $20 million worth of value, which translates into one high quality prospect and a few fillers.

Overview

The D’Backs came into 2010 with some hopes of contention. With some quality players forming what should be a decent core, the hoped-for-return of Brandon Webb, and some decent off-season additions, Arizona fans had some reason for optimism. It has not, however, turned out in their favor: Dan Haren has struggled; Webb remains on the DL; and the bullpen has imploded. The team sits 11 1/2 games out of first place in the National League West, and at 26-38, their playoff chances are practically nil.

Buy Or Sell?

There’s no doubt which way the D’Backs should go at the deadline, and they have enough chips to make a sell-off interesting.

Adam LaRoche is the most obvious name from the roster who will likely be moved, as he’s both productive and cheap enough to be enticing to other clubs. The Diamondbacks could hold onto him and exercise their side of the mutual option for 2011, but there’s no guarantee LaRoche would pick up his part of it, and $7.5 million for a league average first baseman isn’t exactly a bargain anyway. They’re best off moving him this summer.

Another popular target should be catcher Chris Snyder. While he’s a good enough player to be part of Arizona’s future, they also have Miguel Montero as an option behind the plate, and having two good catchers is a bit redundant. Snyder’s contract isn’t so cheap as to be a huge bargain, but he’s underpaid relative to his value, and teams looking for a several year solution to their backstop problems could be interested.

On the pitching side of things, don’t be surprised if a contender with sabermetric leanings makes a run at Chad Qualls. With an 8.46 ERA, you’d think he’d been a total disaster, but his xFIP is a respectable 3.55, and he’s been one of the best relievers in the league the last few years. His .474 BABIP will regress, and he could be a quality bullpen piece for another team down the stretch. A free agent at the end of the year, you have to think that his days in Arizona are numbered whether he’s traded or not, so Arizona will likely be happy to move him. Don’t be surprised if he’s involved in a “change of scenery” trade.

On The Farm

The presence of Brandon Allen in Triple-A makes letting go of LaRoche easier. He’s probably not going to be a star, but he could fill the job at first base well enough and do so for the league minimum once the position is opened up. Most of the rest of the talent on the farm is further away, however, and the D’Backs probably won’t be able to plug their holes internally. Expect them to target close to the majors pitching help in nearly every deal they make.

Budget

The D’Backs will have some money to play with this winter, especially if they move guys with 2011 commitments this summer. They are on the hook for about $45 million in salary for next year and have some arbitration cases with players like Stephen Drew, Miguel Montero, and Kelly Johnson that should push that number to closer to $60 million. But if they move Snyder and non-tender Conor Jackson, they’d be able to spend somewhere between $15 and $20 million while maintaining the 2010 budget number. Whether ownership will agree to spend that much again following a season where the team was a large disappointment remains to be seen.

Chris Resop knew that last night was going to be his last in Triple-A. Signed to a minor league contract by the Braves this spring, his agent included an unusual out clause in the deal; if he is not in the major leagues by June 15th, he is free to contact other major league clubs and ask for a job. If any of them are willing to put him on the major league roster, the Braves surrender his rights. If multiple teams are willing to roster him, then the Braves will select where he goes. In some ways, it’s like Resop has to be put through waivers on Tuesday.

Given how well he’s pitched for Gwinnett and the velocity on his fastball, it was a near certainty that he would find a team that would be more than happy to give him a shot next week. However, he erased any doubts last night, and may have created enough demand to allow the Braves to trade him for something of value before next week rolls around.
His performance last night – 9 innings, 1 hit, 0 runs, 0 walks, 8 strikeouts. The one blemish on his otherwise perfect evening was promptly doubled off on the next play, allowing Resop to face the minimum in his complete game shutout. He faced 27 hitters and recorded 27 outs. Hard to do much better than that.

So now, an interesting question arises – what’s the market value for a 27-year-old with a good arm who is pitching well in Triple-A but has little history of success, and is in his first year as a starting pitcher? Originally drafted as an outfielder by the Marlins in 2001, he was converted to the bullpen in 2003, and made his way to the majors as a power reliever. The last few years have brought elbow surgery and some not-overly-impressive time with the Hanshin Tigers in Japan. There were few things less expected than Resop dominating as a starting pitcher, but dominate he has.

Posting 9.9 strikeouts per nine innings while simultaneously running a GB% of nearly 50 percent – those are the kinds of numbers that open eyes. The walks are a little high at 3.3 BB/9, and the big platoon splits should give us pause before we project him for stardom, but Resop has shown enough to be worth a flyer for a team that can afford to gamble on the 5th starter job.

In all likelihood, more than one team will “claim” Resop next Tuesday, so the Braves will have some bargaining power to trade him before then. They could theoretically use him in relief, displacing Jesse Chavez, but the rest of their bullpen has been so good that he wouldn’t log many important innings and would generally not have much of an impact. But regardless of what Atlanta decides to do, Resop will certainly be in the majors next Tuesday. He’s earned his shot.

On Monday, the Los Angeles Dodgers used their first round selection on Zach Lee, a right-handed high school pitcher. For an organization that has drafted and developed Clayton Kershaw and Chad Billingsley, this wouldn’t appear to be an odd decision, but Lee comes with a pretty big asterisk – the perception of the strong commitment to college of any player in the draft.

Lee, a two-sport star, is signed on to attend Louisiana State University to play quarterback, and he’s one of Les Miles’ top football recruits. After the selection, Miles saw fit to release a statement to dissuade fear among his team’s fans, saying:

“Zach wants to come to LSU, get a degree and play football and baseball for the Tigers. I met with Zach and his parents today and I think that they are looking at LSU as a great opportunity both academically and athletically. Zach is an outstanding student and he’s excited about the college experience.”

Before the draft, rumors were swirling that Lee had put his price tag to sign at over $6 million, a figure generally reserved for the top two or three prospects in a draft. While Lee is seen as a good pitching prospect, no one thought of him as a potential top-three pick, and no one was lining up to pay the kid six million dollars.

The Dodgers can deny it all they want, and they can even prove us wrong if they get him under contract before the mid-August deadline, but everyone strongly suspects that the Dodgers took Lee knowing that they wouldn’t be able to sign him. If Lee goes to LSU, the Dodgers will simply get the 29th pick in the 2011 draft as compensation, one widely seen as much better and deeper than the pool of players they were selecting from on Monday.

In essence, the Dodgers traded their first round pick this year – a year in which they’re under significant financial constraints given their ownership situation – for an equivalent or better selection in a year from now. Because trading picks in baseball is not allowed, they simply used Lee as the pawn to get around the rules, much like the Reds did with Jeremy Sowers back in 2001.

For some, this situation will support a rule change to allow the trading of draft picks, where teams like the Dodgers could trade down or out of drafts if they so chose. For me, though, this simply represents another reason to abolish the draft entirely. Marc suggests that we move to two drafts – I counter that we shouldn’t have any at all.

There are better ways to disperse talent among teams. I laid out my thoughts for such a plan last year, and won’t rehash all the details, but I think the Zach Lee situation gives us yet another reason to doubt the ability of the draft to accomplish the goal of why it was instituted in the first place.

Rather than forcing teams to make sham picks to get around strange rules, or allowing talented players to end up with teams that have the resources to go over slot recommendations in later rounds, let’s just get rid of the whole system and start over. There’s a better way.

A lot of you are pretty passionate about Bryce Harper’s future position. In Tuesday’s post, where I suggest that moving Harper to the outfield is in the best interests of the game, people raised the question of whether every catcher who can hit should be moved to another position to preserve their offensive abilities. Given that I’ve argued that the Twins have made the right decision to keep Joe Mauer behind the plate for now, I figured I should clarify my position on just who should catch at the big league level.

I believe that most players have, at any given time, a natural position that is the best fit for their overall skillset. Long striders who can cover ground and throw should play center fielder, where their physical abilities can be maximized. Stocky left-handed throwers with limited speed should play first base. None of this is revolutionary. Players should be, and usually are, put at positions where their strengths are magnified and their weaknesses hidden.

Using Mauer as an example, his physical skills include below average speed, a rocket arm, and good footwork. Additionally, he’s generally given off-the-charts reviews for his leadership abilities and communication skills. Regardless of how much offensive ability Mauer had, those abilities profile perfectly behind the plate. It is not just the position where he has the most offensive value, but the position where his defensive abilities are maximized as well. It’s a natural fit for his skills. He should be a catcher, not just because his bat makes him a rare commodity, but because his defensive profile fits the position.

It’s not always so cut and dry, of course. Take Jayson Werth, for example. Coming up through Baltimore’s farm system, he offered potential as an offensive minded catcher with a bat that would have been well above average for the position. However, he was not very good behind the plate, as his footwork left a lot to be desired. At best, he would have been below average defensively as a catcher. His athleticism, however, plays very well in the outfield, where he’s become one of the better defensive corner guys in the game. He has the physical skillset of an outfielder, and the Blue Jays made the right decision to move him out from behind the plate in 2003.

Harper is much more Werth than Mauer as an athlete. He runs well and has the abilities to become a plus defensive corner outfielder. He would need a lot of work to be even average behind the plate, and the time and effort required for him to get to that level would take away from the development of the rest of his game. Like Werth, Harper has a chance to be an asset defensively in the outfield, while few project him to be anything more than a liability behind the plate. The difference in defensive performance could easily make up for the scarcity issue, and that’s without getting into the benefit that his offense would receive from not catching.

I am not arguing that every single good hitting catcher should be moved. Mauer belongs behind the plate (for now). Brian McCann is playing the correct position for his skills. Matt Wieters should stay behind the plate, as should Kurt Suzuki. Bryce Harper, though, profiles better in the outfield.

Well, that was quite a show, eh? Seven innings of just unbelievable, dominating stuff. Even the four hits felt like flukes as the opposing hitters just played self defense and hoped to slap the ball the other way. Pitch F/x doesn’t give out many legit 100 MPH readings, but it did it on multiple occasions, and the fastball averaged over 97 MPH for the night. Contrast that with a nasty change-up around 90 MPH and a knee buckling 82 MPH curveball, and you have major league hitters looking foolish with regularity.

Yes, that May 3rd start by Ubaldo Jimenez, where he just shut down the San Diego Padres, was a thing of beauty. Wait, were you thinking of something more recent?

Hey, look, I was as impressed by Stephen Strasburg as anyone else last night. But, in the rush to hyperbole, I noticed that it’s become common to talk about how Strasburg’s stuff is just so much better than anyone we’ve ever seen. That would be true if Ubaldo wasn’t walking around the planet right now.

Here’s his velocity graph from Brooks Baseball from that game against the Padres.

There’s 120 pitches in there. He hit 99.8 on the 117th pitch of the night. He struck out 13 hitters on the evening, by the way. While he issued three walks, he was also not facing the Pirates Triple-A line-up, so we’ll call that even. All in all, it was a very similar start to the one that went down in D.C. last night.

This isn’t to diminish Strasburg’s debut in any way, shape, or form. He was remarkably good, and will continue to be, I’m sure. But I think that it’s important that we recognize that the stuff isn’t once in a lifetime. It’s not even once in 2010. Strasburg has a great arm, but so does the Rockies ace, even if he comes with just a wee bit less hype.