Don’t worry Cactus and Grapefruit Leagues; you have not been forgotten. 2007 Spring Training stats are now included in the FanGraphs player stats pages. Unfortunately, the stats are very basic. But, at least you can get a feel for how your favorite players are doing.
These will be updated nightly and Spring Training leaderboards should be up sometime tomorrow.
There was an excellent study done by Dave Studeman in the 2007 Hardball Times: Annual that looked at the run value of each event in baseball using linear weights. I thought it might be fun to look at your typical splits by batted ball type instead of by run value:
Type AB H 2B 3B HR RBI AVG SLG OPS FB 43439 11512 3434 483 5127 11734 .265 .720 0.978 GB 59246 13996 1212 67 0 4300 .236 .259 0.495 IFFB 5083 15 4 0 0 1 .003 .004 0.007 LD 26447 19005 4485 402 259 6028 .719 .948 1.663
And a few more stats:
Type ISO BABIP HR/Type RC RC/G FB .455 .167 11.47% 8227 6.70 GB .023 .236 0.00% 2614 1.44 IFFB .001 .003 0.00% 0 0.00 LD .229 .716 0.97% 17947 63.62
Clearly line-drives are the cream of the crop. Oddly enough, about 1% of line drives turn out being home runs, which means about 10.5% of all fly balls (including infield fly balls) end up being home runs.
Fly balls are a tricky one because as long as you’re hitting 11.5% of them out of the park, you’re better off hitting them than groundballs. But if you’re hitting them in the park, then it’s a completely different story. Fly-balls that aren’t home runs have a mere .167 batting average compared to groundballs that have a .236 batting average.
Infield fly-balls or pop-ups are completely worthless. Of all 5000 of them in 2006, only 15 landed for hits. Pretty amazing 4 of them were doubles. I’m not sure how that’s even possible. If you’re going to hit pop-ups all day long you’re better of just not swinging the bat and hope for a walk.
Anyway, that’s just a quick look at the aggregates. Not all players hit line-drives, fly balls, and ground balls the same as you’ll soon see. Let’s look at the best and worst fly ball batters first.
Name AVG SLG OPS ISO BABIP RC HR/FB RC/27 FB% Ryan Howard .507 1.824 2.309 1.316 .173 122 38.7% 45.1 36.2% Travis Hafner .448 1.425 1.873 0.978 .237 86 27.6% 31.2 40.3% Chris Duncan .418 1.463 1.868 1.045 .133 40 31.9% 26.5 35.2% Lance Berkman .435 1.367 1.780 0.932 .210 85 27.1% 25.1 41.8% Jim Thome .415 1.400 1.803 0.985 .160 77 29.5% 25.0 43.1% Manny Ramirez .406 1.256 1.639 0.850 .194 66 24.8% 20.3 42.0% Wilson Betemit .404 1.096 1.500 0.691 .273 42 18.1% 20.1 36.6% Adam LaRoche .396 1.245 1.624 0.849 .215 67 22.1% 20.0 40.9% Preston Wilson .414 1.103 1.503 0.690 .282 39 17.8% 19.5 26.7% Jacque Jones .388 1.155 1.540 0.767 .213 46 22.1% 19.4 25.5% David Ortiz .366 1.274 1.632 0.909 .119 86 27.4% 18.9 46.8% Alex Rodriguez .385 1.142 1.517 0.757 .202 64 22.4% 18.2 39.6% Carlos Beltran .376 1.194 1.554 0.818 .183 72 22.7% 17.8 46.6% Jermaine Dye .376 1.178 1.540 0.803 .176 68 23.3% 17.7 40.4% Derek Jeter .393 1.056 1.433 0.663 .280 36 15.1% 16.8 18.3% Richie Sexson .366 1.131 1.487 0.765 .192 62 21.0% 16.7 39.9% Andruw Jones .356 1.228 1.564 0.872 .111 63 26.0% 16.2 41.6% Nick Johnson .372 1.047 1.410 0.674 .243 50 16.7% 16.0 35.6% Vlad. Guerrero .377 1.017 1.386 0.640 .243 66 17.3% 15.9 37.2% Jason Bay .371 1.106 1.458 0.735 .219 68 18.4% 15.8 44.0%
On this list, four names really stand out to me: Preston Wilson, Jacque Jones and Derek Jeter. Even though Jeter hit fly-balls an extremely low 18.3% of the time, he really did make the most of them. I’ve written several times about Jacque Jones’ “hidden power”, and clearly when he gets the ball in the air he’s really quite successful. Same goes for Preston Wilson. Let’s have a look at the worst fly-ball batters.
Name AVG SLG OPS ISO BABIP RC HR/FB RC/27 FB% D. Eckstein .123 0.211 0.331 0.088 .107 3 1.7% 0.8 29.1% P. Polanco .119 0.284 0.402 0.165 .086 4 3.6% 1.0 27.9% Joey Gathright .114 0.314 0.417 0.200 .088 1 2.6% 1.0 16.9% Jason Kendall .148 0.235 0.376 0.087 .140 4 0.8% 1.1 25.9% Neifi Perez .133 0.267 0.396 0.133 .114 3 2.2% 1.1 41.0% Abraham Nunez .130 0.296 0.426 0.167 .096 2 3.7% 1.2 23.1% So Taguchi .145 0.303 0.444 0.158 .122 3 2.6% 1.4 30.5% Kenny Lofton .152 0.333 0.483 0.182 .132 7 2.2% 1.6 33.4% Nick Punto .168 0.307 0.467 0.139 .160 5 0.9% 1.6 30.1% Jack Wilson .139 0.391 0.525 0.252 .083 6 5.8% 1.7 30.3% Mark Loretta .167 0.312 0.475 0.145 .144 10 2.6% 1.7 37.6% Juan Pierre .153 0.343 0.496 0.190 .134 7 2.2% 1.7 23.8% Alf. Amezaga .156 0.377 0.530 0.221 .122 5 3.9% 1.9 32.6% Yadier Molina .159 0.373 0.530 0.214 .117 7 4.7% 1.9 39.1% Luis Castillo .163 0.370 0.531 0.207 .135 6 3.2% 1.9 20.8% Y. Betancourt .162 0.372 0.533 0.209 .121 9 4.7% 1.9 35.7% Clint Barmes .173 0.358 0.524 0.185 .141 10 3.6% 2.0 47.9% Brian Roberts .155 0.423 0.573 0.268 .101 11 5.8% 2.0 35.5% Aaron Miles .177 0.367 0.538 0.190 .156 5 2.4% 2.1 24.5% Brad Ausmus .179 0.358 0.533 0.179 .161 6 2.1% 2.1 28.1%
No surprises here really. These guys are not your power hitters and as mentioned before, if you’re not a power hitter, you’re better off hitting groundballs. Maybe Clint Barmes and Neifi Perez are trying to be something they’re not. Moving on to groundballs, here are the best groundball batters:
Name AVG SLG OPS ISO BABIP RC IFH% RC/27 GB% Rocco Baldelli .342 0.389 0.732 0.047 .342 19 10.1% 5.2 50.5% Carl Crawford .321 0.366 0.687 0.045 .321 28 10.6% 4.1 52.2% Hanley Ramirez .303 0.376 0.679 0.073 .303 23 10.6% 3.9 43.8% Esteban German .338 0.369 0.708 0.031 .338 13 7.7% 3.8 58.0% S. Victorino .316 0.354 0.671 0.038 .316 16 8.2% 3.8 44.5% Wily Mo Pena .355 0.382 0.737 0.026 .355 8 11.8% 3.7 39.8% Ichiro Suzuki .307 0.316 0.623 0.009 .307 30 13.0% 3.7 50.7% Ryan Freel .312 0.351 0.662 0.039 .312 15 12.3% 3.7 43.9% Daniel Uggla .310 0.330 0.640 0.020 .310 19 9.5% 3.6 41.0% Rickie Weeks .320 0.352 0.672 0.033 .320 12 9.8% 3.5 46.2% Ben Broussard .328 0.351 0.679 0.022 .328 13 3.7% 3.5 40.2% Chris Burke .324 0.353 0.676 0.029 .324 10 5.9% 3.4 36.0% Marcus Thames .273 0.333 0.606 0.061 .273 6 7.6% 3.4 25.7% Mike Lamb .328 0.351 0.679 0.022 .328 12 3.7% 3.2 40.5% Y. Betancourt .303 0.333 0.637 0.030 .303 20 6.8% 3.2 46.4% Chris Duffy .284 0.306 0.590 0.022 .284 11 10.5% 3.2 58.0% Alf. Amezaga .298 0.319 0.617 0.021 .298 12 11.4% 3.1 50.5% Mike Cameron .299 0.344 0.643 0.045 .299 13 12.3% 3.0 37.6% G. Matthews .284 0.321 0.604 0.037 .284 22 7.1% 3.0 51.0% Rafael Furcal .285 0.311 0.596 0.026 .285 21 6.4% 2.9 49.9%
The one name that really stands out for me here is Wily Mo Pena. He just hits the ball hard, so chances are it makes his groundballs just that much more difficult to field. The rest of these guys are pretty much groundball batters, many of them quite fast. And now the worst groundball batters:
Name AVG SLG OPS ISO BABIP RC IFH% RC/27 GB% Barry Bonds .135 0.135 0.271 0.000 .135 1 1.0% 0.2 30.3% Adam Dunn .136 0.146 0.282 0.010 .136 1 1.0% 0.2 27.8% Bengie Molina .153 0.153 0.307 0.000 .153 1 2.0% 0.3 38.7% Adam Kennedy .161 0.168 0.329 0.006 .161 2 2.6% 0.3 40.7% Yadier Molina .156 0.181 0.338 0.025 .156 2 3.7% 0.3 42.5% Gregg Zaun .168 0.189 0.358 0.021 .168 1 2.1% 0.3 37.6% Phil Nevin .168 0.192 0.360 0.024 .168 2 4.8% 0.4 42.7% Alex Cintron .157 0.165 0.322 0.009 .157 1 3.5% 0.4 46.0% Damian Miller .173 0.182 0.355 0.009 .173 1 5.5% 0.4 44.2% Dd. Navarro .171 0.184 0.355 0.013 .171 1 4.0% 0.4 35.0% B. Schneider .172 0.172 0.344 0.000 .172 2 3.1% 0.4 47.3% Brad Ausmus .183 0.198 0.381 0.015 .183 3 4.1% 0.4 53.2% Jason Giambi .171 0.200 0.371 0.029 .171 2 2.9% 0.5 30.3% Adr. Gonzalez .194 0.219 0.413 0.025 .194 3 1.0% 0.5 43.8% Khalil Greene .204 0.239 0.442 0.035 .204 2 0.9% 0.5 34.6% Kevin Millar .189 0.220 0.409 0.031 .189 2 3.9% 0.5 35.5% Russell Martin .187 0.192 0.379 0.005 .187 3 2.2% 0.5 50.4% Mike Lowell .194 0.230 0.423 0.036 .194 4 5.6% 0.6 37.8% Brian Giles .183 0.188 0.372 0.005 .183 4 4.1% 0.6 39.8% Eric Chavez .212 0.232 0.444 0.020 .212 3 2.7% 0.6 38.6%
It’s not often you find out that Barry Bonds is the worst at something. All in all, I find this a rather bizarre mix of players and I’m really not sure what to make of it. Let’s look at the best line-drive batters:
Name AVG SLG OPS ISO BABIP RC HR/LD RC/27 LD% Eric Hinske .875 1.188 2.063 0.313 .875 33 0.0% 224.4 16.2% J.D. Drew .865 1.216 2.081 0.351 .865 78 0.0% 210.2 18.8% Wily Mo Pena .872 1.179 2.029 0.308 .868 40 2.5% 177.9 20.9% Mig. Cabrera .842 1.123 1.965 0.281 .841 108 0.9% 161.7 24.2% Jason Bay .848 1.045 1.894 0.197 .844 59 3.0% 158.1 15.6% Austin Kearns .833 1.154 1.987 0.321 .831 75 1.3% 155.8 19.2% Brad Hawpe .829 1.134 1.963 0.305 .829 77 0.0% 148.7 21.7% G. Sizemore .810 1.170 1.980 0.360 .806 95 2.0% 134.7 19.8% Scott Spiezio .805 1.171 1.976 0.366 .800 39 2.4% 130.4 19.9% Russ. Martin .817 1.169 1.975 0.352 .814 67 1.4% 129.8 19.9% Matt Stairs .826 1.000 1.826 0.174 .826 38 0.0% 128.3 17.4% Jay Gibbons .809 1.085 1.894 0.277 .809 41 0.0% 123.7 15.9% Reed Johnson .808 1.055 1.863 0.247 .808 62 0.0% 120.0 19.7% G. Matthews .788 1.192 1.980 0.404 .781 93 3.0% 119.5 18.8% Jose Valentin .796 1.122 1.918 0.327 .796 44 0.0% 118.2 15.6% Chase Utley .804 1.118 1.914 0.314 .798 91 2.9% 117.2 19.5% Todd Helton .807 1.088 1.888 0.281 .805 100 0.9% 116.9 23.6% Matt Holliday .788 1.144 1.933 0.356 .780 94 3.9% 115.2 21.0% David Wright .824 1.033 1.839 0.209 .822 77 1.1% 115.0 19.5% Bill Hall .789 1.225 2.003 0.437 .783 68 2.8% 114.9 19.2%
Obviously there are a lot of solid to excellent players on this list, but nothing especially noteworthy. And last but not least, the worst line-drive batters:
Name AVG SLG OPS ISO BABIP RC HR/LD RC/27 LD% Cliff Floyd .540 0.740 1.280 0.200 .540 20 0.0% 23.5 18.1% David Bell .600 0.730 1.313 0.130 .596 43 1.0% 27.3 23.4% Endy Chavez .593 0.780 1.373 0.186 .593 27 0.0% 28.6 20.1% Juan Uribe .585 0.862 1.437 0.277 .578 32 1.5% 29.5 17.2% Rondell White .600 0.767 1.357 0.167 .593 27 1.6% 29.7 21.3% Alf. Amezaga .617 0.702 1.319 0.085 .617 20 0.0% 30.5 16.9% Ronny Cedeno .594 0.841 1.435 0.246 .594 34 0.0% 33.2 16.4% Chone Figgins .627 0.745 1.373 0.118 .627 48 0.0% 33.9 20.7% Carl Crawford .609 0.848 1.450 0.239 .609 47 0.0% 34.5 18.3% Moises Alou .594 0.906 1.500 0.313 .587 34 1.6% 35.8 20.1% Damon Hollins .600 0.940 1.528 0.340 .583 28 3.9% 35.9 19.0% Willy Taveras .620 0.817 1.437 0.197 .620 36 0.0% 35.9 17.5% B. Phillips .635 0.800 1.428 0.165 .635 43 0.0% 36.3 19.2% Chris Duncan .622 0.822 1.444 0.200 .622 23 0.0% 36.6 21.1% Jason Kendall .642 0.758 1.400 0.117 .642 58 0.0% 36.7 23.9% Aaron Boone .639 0.778 1.417 0.139 .639 36 0.0% 37.2 24.7% W. Betemit .643 0.857 1.478 0.214 .636 30 1.7% 37.4 21.3% Cory Sullivan .651 0.831 1.459 0.181 .651 44 0.0% 37.4 31.5% Joey Gathright .622 0.844 1.467 0.222 .622 24 0.0% 37.6 16.2% S.Hatteberg .651 0.779 1.423 0.128 .651 43 0.0% 37.9 20.8%
Line-drive percentage will fluctuate from year to year, but I wonder if how a player hits line-drives changes much from year to year. I suppose you could ask that question for any of the batted ball types. When I get the data I’ll be sure to take a look at that, but just thinking off the top of my head, I’ll bet the fly-balls and groundballs remain fairly constant, while line-drives do not.
Furthermore, at some point this season, we’re hoping to have batted ball splits available for all players for 2002 onward.
Just thought some of you might be interested in an article I did for SI.com about the four different projection systems available on FanGraphs.
It looks at which players the systems are in agreement with and which one’s they’re at odds on using OPS and ERA.
“Everyone expects [Ryan Howard] to be very good, but there’s certainly some question about how great he’ll actually be. At least CHONE and ZiPS seem to think Carlos Delgado is in for a rather steep decline next year, while the other two think he’ll keep chugging along at his .900+ OPS.”
Anyway, take a look if you get a chance; I thought some of the differences and similarities were quite interesting. You can find the article here.
There’s been a ton of news about Carlos Zambrano’s contract recently, and how the Cubs may or may not give him a five year deal and how he deserves more money than Barry Zito, etc…. Now it’s true that Zambrano has been a rock in the ERA department the past 4 years, never posting an ERA above 3.50, not to mention he’s thrown 861 innings; the 5th most in baseball since 2003. So it seems that everything has gone swimmingly for Zambrano the past 4 years, with no cause for concern, right?
Well, his walks per 9 innings (BB/9) hasn’t exactly been the model of consistency that his ERA has been. Actually, it shot through the roof last year to a poor 4.84. You know who has a 4.84 BB/9? Daniel Cabrera in 2005. Oddly enough, they had similar strikeout rates (if you compare 2005 and 2006). Now, I’m not saying Carlos Zambrano is Daniel Cabrera because, well, Daniel Cabrera’s BB/9 hasn’t seen been on the right side of “4”, ever.
But doesn’t it make you wonder where his control went and if this is something that’s going to rear it’s ugly head again in 2007? It’s not like he had an isolated spot in 2006 where he was completely awful and then returned to his usual 3-something BB/9. He was not so wonderful all season long.
I guess the question is, was it just an off season for walks, or is there something else going on? Perhaps he’s wearing down from his rather crazy workload? He has thrown over 14,000 pitches (the third most in baseball) since the 2003 season. He also has the second most 100 pitch games with 107 during that same time period. Only Barry Zito had more.
So, we have a sky-rocketing walk rate and a pretty incredible workload to tag to Carlos Zambrano going into the 2007 season. Maybe it’s nothing and he’ll post another sub-4 ERA with workhorse numbers, but I’d say these are two warning signs of a potentially disappointing 2007.
As promised, the Minor League Leaderboards are up! It’s worth noting that instead of the actual minor league team, the leaderboards show the affiliated team in their respective league. Also, qualified batters are 2.7 plate appearances per game and pitchers 0.8 innings per game. Other than that, just pick a league and sort/filter away!
If you have any ideas or suggestions on how to make these better, just send us a note and we’ll throw it on the to-do list.
After some painfully annoying work, we’ve managed to integrate the full set of 2006 Minor League stats into FanGraphs. Our plan is to eventually backfill minor league stats for all major league and minor league players. We’ll also have nightly updates for Minor League stats during the 2007 season.
Our plan is to have Minor League leaderboards (in the usual FanGraphs style) up and running by the end of the week. Additionally, we’ll be figuring out the best way to include the Minor League stats in the season graphs.
As always, please let us know if you have any problems, comments, or suggestions!
Dan Szymborski was kind enough to let us post the ZiPS projections he provides to Baseball Think Factory. Here’s a bit about ZiPS:
“Disclaimer: ZiPS projections are computer-based projections of performance. Performances have not been allocated to predicted playing time in the majors – many of the players listed above are unlikely to play in the majors at all in 2007. ZiPS is projecting equivalent production – a .240 ZiPS projection may end up being .280 in AAA or .300 in AA, for example. Whether or not a player will play is one of many non-statistical factors one has to take into account when predicting the future. “
Just like with the Bill James projections, we’ve used the Batting Average, On-Base Percentage, Slugging Percentage, Runs Created, Runs Created/27 and ERA supplied in the original file instead of calculating it ourselves.
I’m fairly certain this will be the last addition to the projections this season, which leaves us with a grand total of four projections (Bill James, CHONE, Marcels, and ZiPS) to choose from.
As always, if you notice any problems or errors, please let us know and we’ll do our best to fix the problem immediately.
In addition to the Marcel & CHONE projections, the projections from the Bill James Handbook are now available in the stats pages courtesy of Baseball Info Solutions. They will not be available in the leaderboard format on FanGraphs, but you can purchase them from Baseball Info Solutions here.
Just a quick note about how the projections are integrated: Batting Average, On-Base Percentage, Slugging Percentage, ERA, Runs Created, and Runs Created/27 were left as-is from the Bill James Handbook and were not calculated using the projected raw statistics; unlike the Marcel and CHONE projections.
This will probably be the last set of projections we add, unless someone else volunteers to throw their hat in the ring.
The 2007 Marcel & CHONE projections are now available in the regular stat pages. They will remain there until the 2007 regular season starts and will then be hidden to make way for the real 2007 stats. You’ll still be able to use the “Show Projections” button to see the stats after they are hidden; they just won’t be visible by default.
We’ve also added Balls and Strikes for batters, and corrected a bug in the daily split graphs.
Hopefully you won’t find the projections intrusive to your usual stat browsing. Please let us know what you think, especially if you don’t like it.
Both Tom Tango and Chone Smith were both kind enough to let me post their 2007 player projections.
The Marcel (the Monkey) Forecasts are “the minimum level of competence that you should expect from any forecaster.” You can read exactly how they’re computed here: Marcel Methodology.
Chone Smith, on the other hand, has put a great deal of time and effort into his CHONE Projections. You can read more about his projection system and efforts here: Chone Projections.
There are two things I should make note of: I have used the FanGraphs positions for filtering by position where we have the player in our database. There are a number of minor league players in CHONE that aren’t in our database (yet) and for their positions we use those supplied in CHONE’s original file. And for the Marcels, we took the average of projected earned runs and base runs-earned runs and used that to display ER. This was how ERA was calculated in the original file anyway.
While I’m at it, there have been a few excellent discussions of projection systems recently:
The Hardball Times’ David Gassko did five part, Projection Roundtable, II, III, IV, V.
And Tom Tango recently asked “Who’s Smarter Than a Monkey?” followed by an insightful discussion in the comments.