The conventional wisdom for pitchers is that they want to strike out twice as many batters as they walk. A two to one K/BB rate is seen as the foundation for what a pitcher should aim for, and obviously, the better pitchers will get to three to one or higher. Generally, if a pitcher is striking out three times as many batters as he’s walking, he’s going to succeed, even if he isn’t particularly good at anything else. That kind of strike zone dominance makes it very easy to get hitters out on a regular basis.

Take, for instance, this group of starters, all who have basically identical K/BB rates, just a tick above 3.00: Johan Santana, Zach Greinke, Tim Lincecum, Derek Lowe, Andy Pettitte. That’s an all-star cast of front line starters. But there’s one name missing from the group, a guy with a K/BB that puts him square in the middle of such select company.

Jesse Litsch. You know, the guy Toronto optioned to Triple-A a few weeks ago.

Seriously, go take a look at Litsch’s season numbers. His 4.46 ERA is supported by a 4.58 FIP, showing that he’s been basically as good as advertised. He offsets a lack of strikeouts by pounding the strike zone regularly, not walking anyone (1.49 BB/9) and keeping the ball on the ground (49.8% GB%). However, he struggled in three consecutive starts leading up to his demotion, and a couple of weeks of poor work was enough for the Blue Jays to conclude that he would be better served working on his weaknesses in the minor leagues.

Maybe they’re right – they’re closer to Litsch than we are, and so they’re privy to information that we are not, but it’s hard to come up with a scenario where a guy with a 3.00+ K/BB rate isn’t good enough to pitch in the major leagues right now.

When the Dodgers acquired Manny Ramirez last week, many assumed it was to replace the pair of busted free agents signed the last couple of winters, Juan Pierre and Andruw Jones. They were only half right – while Jones takes his rightful seat on the bench, Joe Torre remains enamored with Juan Pierre, who has been anointed as the team’s center fielder for the remainder of the year. To make room for Ramirez, Andre Ethier heads to the bench.

From an offensive perspective, this is ridiculous. Pierre is hitting .281/.326/.318 compared to Ethier’s .274/.339/.442 mark. Pierre’s abilities on the base paths are canceled out – and then some – by Ethier’s ability to hit the ball out of the infield. In fact, thanks to the Hardball Times newly published rest-of-season Marcel projections and Tom Tango’s Wins Above Replacement calculations, we can quantify the win value differences between the two.

Offensively, Ethier’s expected performance in August and September will be worth about six runs above a replacement level corner outfielder. Not bad for two months. Pierre, on the other hand, pretty much defines replacement level. He’s projected at a whopping half a run over a replacement level center fielder over the next two months. Not impressive, Juan.

So, by giving Pierre a couple hundred at-bats that would have otherwise gone to Ethier, the Dodgers are punting about five runs of offense, which translates to about half a win. Considering how tight most people expect the race to be down the stretch, you don’t just punt several runs for the heck of it.

However, we haven’t taken defense entirely into account yet. Ethier’s five run advantage would only hold if both he and Pierre were average defenders for their respective positions, but the Dodgers clearly believe this isn’t the case, putting Pierre in the line-up for his fly catching ability. John Dewan’s +/- system supports this assertion, having Pierre at +12 plays in CF in 2006 and +9 plays in CF last year. He’s +4 plays in limited time in LF this year. The conclusion for Pierre seems relatively obvious – he’s a better than average defensive CF, probably something like +1.7 runs over the remaining 1/3 of the season.

The picture on Ethier isn’t as clear. Dewan’s +/- loved him in RF last year (+16) but hates him this year (-7), though it has him basically average in each of the last three years in LF. The RF numbers are probably sample size noise, as it’s highly unlikely that Ethier is either good or terrible as a corner OF, given what scouting data and other defensive systems tell us about his abilities. The best assumption is that he’s about average, though we have to make that conclusion with less confidence than with Pierre.

The defensive difference closes the gap, but only partially so. In fact, to balance out the offensive differences over the remaining two months, we’d have to accept that Pierre is both a +10 run defender over a full season in CF and that Ethier is a -13 run defender in RF/LF over a full season. If both of those opinions about their relative defensive abilities were true, they’d be pretty much equal in talent – about 2.5 runs above a replacement level outfielder for the final two months.

The Dodgers obviously believe the defensive difference is large enough to justify giving Pierre at-bats at Ethier’s expense. I doubt they’re right, however. Most likely, they’e punting a couple of runs the rest of the year by choosing the wrong player. But I do think there’s enough vagueness in our ability to evaluate defensive abilities to admit that the Dodgers may not be making the worst decision ever. If they’re right about the defensive difference, it’s not a big deal which one starts.

If they’re not, however, it could cost them the division. Sounds like a high risk, no reward decision to me.

Francisco Liriano is back. Well, literally, at least, if not yet figuratively. Yesterday, Liriano made his return to the Twins rotation after spending May, June, and July in Triple-A and waiting for Minnesota to tire of Livan Hernandez. After they realized that a team on the cusp of first place couldn’t really afford to keep a guy pitching as well as Liriano was off the roster, they finally made the obvious move and gave him his old job back.

Day one went well. 6 innings, 3 hits, 0 runs, 3 walks, 5 strikeouts. His command wasn’t there, throwing 40 of his 96 pitches out of the strike zone, but the Indians didn’t capitalize and he spun his first winning decision of the year. If Liriano can channel his old self, adding him to the team would be the biggest upgrade any team has made all year. But is yesterday’s performance, coupled with his recent destruction of Triple-A, proof that he’s back to the Liriano we saw in 2006?

To answer those kinds of questions, we need to look at what Liriano was throwing, and so we turn to the Pitch F/x data from his start yesterday.

To begin the game, he came after Grady Sizemore with a 91 MPH fastball (called strike), a 92 MPH fastball (ball), an 84 MPH slider (foul), an MPH slider (ball), and an 86 MPH slider (swinging strike). In ’06, his average fastball was 94.7 MPH and his average slider was 87.7, so even though he struck out Sizemore to start off, it wasn’t the Liriano of old. It didn’t get much better, stuff wise.

The fastest pitch Liriano threw all day was 92.3 MPH and his average fastball was 90.9 MPH. He threw 57 fastballs (59%), 19 sliders (20%), and 20 change-ups (21%), showing a significant increase in fastballs thrown at the expense of the slider compared to his 2005 and 2006 seasons.

Liriano is certainly a lot better, and a lot healthier, than he was at the start of the season. And perhaps this incarnation of Liriano can be a big asset that helps carry the team down the stretch, but this is not the same pitcher who was taking the league by storm several years ago. The stuff isn’t back yet.

After losing again last night, the Washington Nationals have now dropped nine straight games, pushing their league worst record to 38-70. They’re on pace to finish 57-105, and while that won’t make them the worst team ever, they’re playing like it.

Or are they? Over the last month, the Nationals are 4-18, which is pretty horrible, but they’ve allowed just 4.4 runs per game over that 22 game stretch. Their offense has still been bad, scoring just 3.6 runs per game, but a 0.8 run per game differential isn’t the kind of thing you expect when a team goes 4-18 and drops nine straight games. Using a pythagorean expectation based on their runs scored and allowed, the Nationals have played more like a .432 team over their last 22 games, which would give them a 10-12 pythag record.

The Nationals aren’t a good team, but they aren’t this bad. For those fans in San Diego and Seattle hoping to out-lose the Nationals in the race for Stephen Strasburg, have a little hope – progression to the mean is on the way. Washington’s the worst team in baseball, but they’re not a .352 club.

I think we can officially put the issue to rest – Joba Chamberlain is a starting pitcher, and a darn good one. After Wednesday’s performance, he’s now made 11 starts since the Yankees converted him back to the rotation from the bullpen, and his performance is basically equal in both roles.

Starter: 60 2/3 IP, 9% BB%, 27% K%, 0.29 HR/9, 2.49 FIP
Reliever: 23 2/3 IP, 11% BB%, 31% K%, 0.38 HR/9, 2.61 FIP

Despite his command issues in his first couple of starts, Joba’s pounding the strike zone with more regularity now that he’s moved into the starting role. Because he’s not throwing max effort on every pitch, his velocity is down, so the strikeout rate declines a bit as well, but it’s offset since he’s throwing more strikes and has a slightly better home run rate.

He won’t be able to keep his home run rate this low, so he’s due for a bit of a regression, but as a guy who gets a lot of ground balls (53.7% GB%), he’s going to allow fewer long balls than the average starter. When you combine a three to one strikeout to walk ratio with a depressed home run rate, you have a front line starting pitcher. It’s still early, but right now, Joba’s profiling as a Jake Peavy type of pitcher.

The rich get richer.

Well, baseball never ceases to surprise – it’s being reported that the Dodgers stepped in at the last minute to win the Manny Ramirez sweepstakes, taking Florida’s spot in the three team deal, and enabling the Red Sox to still end up with Jason Bay.

No final word on who is going where, so it’s tough to provide analysis, but the Red Sox have to be happy to have Bay instead of Ramirez, you have to assume the Pirates got what they wanted in order to move their star outfielder, which means that the Dodgers almost certainly paid a high price.

The Pirates will reportedly receive 3B Andy LaRoche, RHP Bryan Morris, OF Brandon Moss, and RHP Craig Hansen. The Red Sox get Bay and the Dodgers get Ramirez.

So, the Dodgers got Manny, but didn’t give up any outfielders, meaning that they now have two spots available for Kemp/Ethier/Jones/Pierre. That’s going to be fun for Torre to manage. If they can manage to keep Jones and Pierre on the bench most of the time, this is a pretty big upgrade, considering those two are not good at all. If Manny takes time away from Ethier or Kemp, it’s not a good move.

The Red Sox get Bay and rid themselves of the Manny show. They win.

The Pirates don’t get any stars back, but both LaRoche and Moss could be solid players, while Morris is a big arm and Hansen has some value as a reliever salvage project.

So, apparently, this trading deadline won’t be a boring one, with the Red Sox, Pirates, and Marlins engaged in talks that would send Manny Ramirez to Florida, Jeremy Hermida to Pittsburgh, and Jason Bay to Boston, along with various assorted minor leaguers and cash floating around.

There’s a lot of interesting things about this deal, but this morning, I’ll tackle this deal from Florida’s perspective. Depending on how things go this afternoon, we’ll get to the Boston/Pittsburgh perspectives a bit later.

How much does this help the Marlins?

Florida paid a high price for the Hermida/Ramirez upgrade, believing that Manny’s extra offense could push them into the playoffs. But Jeremy Hermida is no slouch himself. The in-seaosn Marcel tool has him at .276/.352/.458 for the rest of the season, compared to it’s .287/.386/.517 projection for the rest of Manny’s 2008. Clearly, Manny’s better, but like with the Teixeira-Kotchman trade, the upgrade isn’t huge.

In fact, over the course of 237 PAs (the projected total for Hermida), Marcel thinks the offensive difference between the two is about seven runs. The offensive difference… seven runs. Manny’s also a pretty horrible fielder (though the Green Monster makes most zone based stats overstate how bad), and the defensive difference between the two is nearly as large as the offensive difference (The Fielding Bible has Hermida as +4 plays so far in 2008 with Ramirez at -15). Even over two months, the defensive difference between the two will almost certainly be worth at least 3 or 4 runs, and that’s being really kind to Manny. It’s certainly possible that Manny is as bad as UZR, +/-, and the rest all think, and the defensive difference over two months is closer to 10 runs.

In fact, it’s arguable that this trade will actually make the Marlins worse for the rest of 2008. Their two best hitters, Hanley Ramirez and Dan Uggla, are both right-handed, and adding Manny to that now makes the middle of their line-up much more susceptible to right-handed specialists. It’s a minor thing, but when they’re not getting a player substantially better than the one they’re giving up, the minor things can make a difference.

When you factor both offense and defense into the equation, this is basically a push for Florida. This wouldn’t make them better by any real margin, and it would cost them significant future assets. As I write this, the deal isn’t complete yet, so hopefully for Marlins fans, someone in Miami will come to their sense.

The New York Yankees made a splash today, acquiring Ivan Rodriguez from the Detroit Tigers to replace the injured Jorge Posada behind the plate. In reality, Pudge will take at-bats from Jose Molina, who had been doing the catching in Posada’s absence. How big of an upgrade is Rodriguez over Molina?

Pudge is a slightly below average hitter, putting up a .295/.338/.417 line that translates into a -0.39 WPA/LI for the season. For a catcher, being a nearly league average hitter is very good, and when combined with his defense behind the plate, makes Pudge something like a +3 win player (compared to a replacement level catcher) over a full season. With 1/3 of the year left, that makes Pudge about +1 win over replacement covering the final two months.

Speaking of replacement level, Molina is basically the poster boy. He’d racked up -1.56 WPA/LI in just 192 at-bats, thanks to his .229/.279/.307 line for the season. While he’s a good defensive catcher, so is Pudge, and the offensive difference is pretty significant.

The Yankees just added a one win upgrade in their line-up in exchange for Kyle Farnsworth. Kinda makes the Angels marginal improvement yesterday look bad in comparison.

Well, that was nice – I laid out four scenarios this morning for the relative value of adding Mark Teixeira, and the Angels go and make a deal that makes the entire post irrelevant a few hours later, trading him for Casey Kotchman and Steven Marek.

So, now that we know the particulars of the deal, I figured I’ll look at it from a slightly different angle. The wins added for the rest of the year is pretty much the same with Kotchman being replaced instead of Rivera, and in reality, those extra runs don’t matter, because the Angels have already made the playoffs. Maybe not officially, but they have a double digit lead on the rest of their division, and Texas is the only other AL West team that isn’t selling off players. The Angels are winning their division with Kotchman, Teixeira, or Carrot Top playing first base. In terms of playoff odds, this trade doesn’t matter.

Instead, the Angels made this trade to try to do better in the playoffs. So, let’s take a look at how much better they’ll be on a per-game basis in October with Teixeira playing first base instead of Casey Kotchman. For this, I turned to Baseball Musing’s Line-Up Analysis Tool, plugging in the Marcel projection for Teixeira in place of Kotchman (and in turn, movie Kendrick up to #2 in the order).

With Teixeira, the Angels offense projects out to 5.023 runs per game.
With Kotchman, the Angels offense projects out to 4.828 runs per game.

Teixeira makes the Angels better, though just like this morning, the moral of the story is that one player simply doesn’t make as big a difference as is commonly believed. Punching the new runs scored/allowed numbers into the pythagorean formula, the Angels with Teixeira are a .591 club and with Kotchman they’re a .569 club. In reality, they’re not quite as good as either of those numbers, as we’ve held their run prevention static, while they’re over-performing by a decent amount in that area.

So, in reality, it’s probably more like they’re a .570 club with Teixeira and a .550 club with Kotchman. They move from good to very good, but overall, it doesn’t move their odds of winning the world series by more than a few points.

In the end, this is the kind of move that the Angels felt they had to make in order to show their fans and the players on the field that they were serious about going for it. As a P.R. move, it will work wonders. As a trade to dramatically improve the teams’s chances of making the playoffs or winning the world series, it’s really a very small step.

With the trade deadline a few days away, there are some pretty obvious buyers and sellers. The Yankees, Mets, and Diamondbacks are trying to add talent and improve their chances of making the playoffs, while the Mariners, Pirates, and Braves are selling off talent and looking to the future. For most clubs, whether to buy or sell is a pretty obvious thing, requiring a glance at the standings and an honest evaluation of their own abilities.

For three teams, however, they are apparently having problems with the honest evaluation part.

Houston Astros, 49-56, 12.5 GB in NL Central, 10.5 GB in Wild Card

Inexplicably, the Astros are apparently looking to add talent for the last two months of the season in an effort to… finish 79-83? I’m not sure. They’ve already acquired Randy Wolf as a rental starting pitcher for the remainder of 2008, and according to the rumor mill, they’re actively looking to pick up another player or two to reinforce their roster.

The Astros have the 10th best record in the NL, and I’m pretty sure they’re aware that only four teams make the playoffs. They’d have to leapfrog over at least six teams (probably seven) currently ahead of them, and all of those teams are better than they are. No matter what kind of playoff odds estimator you want to use, the inevitable conclusion is that Houston has no better than a 1-in-1000 chance of making the playoffs this year. They have about an equal chance of finishing with the worst record in baseball, and yet, somehow, they’ve decided to be buyers. Inexplicable.

Colorado Rockies, 48-59, 6 GB in NL West, 12.5 GB in Wild Card

Yes, the Rockies made a miracle run last year and ended up in the World Series. But you konw why it was a miracle? Because it doesn’t happen two years in a row. Despite the fact that they play in a sad division where .500 puts you in contention, it’s still a massive uphill battle for the Rox in ’08. Consider that, as of this writing, only 3 National League teams have worse records than the Rockies. Yes, two of them happen to be division rivals, but generally speaking, the 13th best team out of 16 isn’t gearing up for a playoff run in August.

They have no shot at the wild card whatsoever, so they’re resting their entire hopes and dreams on the division. And while 6 games back with two months to go might not sound like an obstacle that can’t be overcome, you have to put it in the perspective of having to beat out both Arizona and Los Angeles. With 55 games to go (compared to 57 each for the D’backs and Dodgers), the Rockies would need to see something like this play out for them to take the NL West title:

Colorado, 35-20
Los Angeles: 30-27
Arizona: 29-28

That would put the Rockies at 83-79, a game ahead of both of their rivals. The odds of the Rockies playing .636 baseball for two months while neither Arizona nor Los Angeles can do better than .500 are about 1 in 15. Not nearly as horrible as the Astros odds, but you simply don’t put any significant resource into a 1-in-15 longshot.

Detroit Tigers, 53-52, 6.5 GB in AL Central, 7 GB in Wild Card

Preseason favorites of many, the Tigers fell flat on their face coming out of the gates as their pitching disintegrated and their offense failed to live up to expectations. They’ve rebounded since the slow start, going 30-20 since the beginning of June, and crawling to within sight of the division lead. However, despite their mini-surge, they still stand a significant ways behind both the White Sox and Twins. With Chicago establishing themselves as at least Detroit’s equal in terms of talent level, overcoming a 6.5 game deficit in two months while also hoping that the Twins regress (and don’t promote Francisco Liriano) is a bit much to hope for. Their odds are the best of the bunch we’ve profiled, coming in at about 1-in-9, so they at least have enough of a shot to avoid a firesale. 1-in-9 doesn’t justify continuing a raid of a farm system that has been depleted in a win-now effort, however. At some point, the Tigers have to be willing to say that this is the team they built, and this is the team they’re going to live with. You can’t keep throwing good money after bad.