Back in December, the Reds signed Jason LaRue to a 2 year, 9.1 million dollar contract and then in January signed Javier Valentin to a one year 1.15 million dollar contract assuring that the surprising catcher tandem would stay intact for the 2006 season. The two combined for 28 home runs and batted .268 with 110 RBI’s which made them offensively, the most productive catchers in the National League. It’s really too bad they aren’t one person. Let’s take a closer look and see if they’ll continue to be the dynamo combination that they were in 2005.

LaRue will be entering his 8th major league season and for the past 5 years has been pretty consistent hitting no less than 12 home runs and no more than 16. Last year he had a career high batting average of .260, which dipped as low as .230 back in 2003.

His real problem is making contact with pitches and only does so 68% of the time when he swings the bat. That puts him among the 20 worst in baseball for the 2005 season. Naturally, his strikeout percentage (K%) sits at an ugly 28%. He did however show consistent signs of improvement after striking out a horrible 37% of the time during the first two months of the season; he managed to consistently stay around 24% the rest of the season. Still not great, but it is improvement.

With his decreasing strikeout rate, perhaps he’ll be able to keep his batting average near the .260 mark, but you pretty much know what you’re going to get with LaRue and I wouldn’t expect 2006 to be any different. Valentin on the other hand is a completely different case.

Last season, Valentin exploded with 14 home runs in 221 at-bats after hitting just 6 the previous season. He also had a career high .281 batting average along with career highs in just about everything else. He’s always been a part-time player at the major league level and the last time he played a full season was back in 2002 for AAA-Edmonton where he hit 21 home runs in 455 at-bats.

His plate discipline is actually quite similar to LaRue‘s since they both swing at pitches outside the strike zone about 20% of the time and they both see a similar percentage of pitches inside the strike zone, but there is one major difference. Valentin can actually make contact with the ball and does so around 81% of the time which makes his strikeout percentage (K%) more than 10 points lower than LaRue’s.

His one big problem is left-handed pitchers. He bat .186 against lefties last season compared to the .301 he bat against righties. In 2004 he bat just .109 against lefties. Actually, in 2004 he was the worst and in 2005, he was in the bottom 20 against left-handed pitchers. Despite his inability to hit lefties, his on-base-percentage splits look pretty good and he’s actually better against both righties and lefties than LaRue.

Bottom line with Valentin is he hasn’t been given much of a chance in the majors and often Catchers are considered late bloomers offensively so it seems to me that his breakout season was indeed for real. He’s also a better batter than LaRue, but it’s doubtful he’ll be able to avoid the platoon at catcher unless LaRue is injured or performs horribly (which seems unlikely considering his consistency). That being the case, the two of them should once again give the Reds top offensive production from the catcher position. If Valentin does get a chance at 400 at bats, look for him to improve on his 2005 season.

Since Byung-Hyun Kim in 2003 decided he wanted to fulfill his life long dream of being a starting pitcher, the Arizona Diamondbacks have gone through five different closers. Matt Mantei took over for Kim in 2003 and managed to keep the job the whole year. He entered the 2004 season as the closer but after a rocky start (11.81 ERA) he ended up spending the rest of the year on the disabled list. Jose Valverde was next in line and after saving 8 games in 10 chances, he too was forced to go on the disabled list for the remainder of the season.

In steps Greg Aquino who converted 16 of 19 save opportunities to finish the 2004 season, but a combination of injury and being out pitched by Brandon Lyon lost him the closers job to start the 2005 season. Lyon converted 13 of 14 saves but was derailed by an elbow injury that cost him nearly the rest of the season. Brian Bruney was asked to fill in and two months later with an ERA over 9 and Bob Melvin had seen enough, opening the door for a healthy Valverde.

Valverde pitched masterfully after taking over the closers job in August and converted all 13 of his save chances with an incredibly low ERA of 1.37. For the entire month of September he gave up zero runs and allowed only 6 hits and 2 walks in 16 innings of work. Let’s see if he really is the answer to the Diamondbacks closer woes.

Taking a look at a closer’s most important stat, strikeouts per 9 innings (K/9), he’s has never had a problem striking anyone out. His career K/9 is the 6th highest among all active pitchers. Batters have a lot of trouble making clean contact with his pitches in the strike zone, fouling them off 56% of the time which is nearly the most in baseball.

One of his main pitfalls in the past has been his lack of control as he walked over 5 batters per 9 innings (BB/9) in 2004. In 2005 he almost cut that number in half bringing his BB/9 down to a career low 2.17. His other problem in 2004 was his off the charts home runs per 9 innings (HR/9) which resulted in an incredibly high home runs-per-fly ball of 25%! He managed to bring that back down to an excellent 6.9% in 2005. Talk about your extremes.

Valverde’s strikeouts and walks look like they’re just about everything you’ve ever wanted in a closer. Health is really the key here since he’s been on the disabled list for long periods of time twice in his three year career. He’s apparently improved his delivery which should make him less injury prone. Assuming he stays injury free next year, it looks like the Diamondbacks have potentially found one of the better closers in baseball.

After winning game 7 of the World Series in 2002, John Lackey had two very mediocre seasons for the Angels. It was looking like 2005 might not be any different as he had an 8.27 ERA after his first three starts, but he managed to do a complete 180 and went 13-4 with 3.06 ERA the rest of the season. Despite his great season, not everyone seems to be in agreement on what the future holds for Lackey. Let’s take a closer look and see if there’s any reason to think he’ll revert to his pre-2005 form.

Starting with his strikeouts per 9 innings (K/9), you’ll see that he was already laying the groundwork for a breakout season back in 2004 when his strikeouts slowly climbed towards elite territory. In 2005 he picked up right where he left off and by mid-season he had reached some pretty insane strikeout levels. It’s worth noting he did slow down a bit towards the end of the season, but overall he had the 5th highest K/9 of any starting pitching in the American League.

His control has always been decent as his walks per 9 innings (BB/9) have remained pretty flat his entire career. However, his home runs per 9 innings (HR/9) are a completely different story. In 2005 he allowed only 13 home runs which made for an extremely low home run-per-fly ball of 6.6%. Typically the league average is near 11% and it’s almost a certainty he’ll regress back towards the average. On the other hand, he did have a batting average on balls in play (BABIP) of .333 which was a bit high, so chances are that will also regress a bit back towards the league average.

When you take everything into account, it seems clear that Lackey’s breakout season wasn’t a fluke. I could see his home runs being more of a problem if he didn’t pitch in Anaheim and if he wasn’t a ground ball pitcher. Hopefully any decrease in BABIP will counter any increase in home runs. His late season decline in strikeouts will be something to keep an eye on, but I honestly don’t think there’s much to be alarmed about here. I fully expect him to repeat his 2005 season.

Last year at this same time I was trying to snag Kelvim Escobar in as many fantasy leagues as possible due to his solid run at the end of the 2004 season. In the final two months he went 6-4 with a 3.20 ERA and had a tantalizing 79 strikeouts in 78 plus innings of work. Two months into the season, Escobar was looking like a fine selection at 2-2 with an ERA just under 3, but he elected to have surgery on bone spurs in his elbow that kept him out until September. When he finally returned he was limited to bullpen duty, but he’ll be back in the starting rotation for the 2006 season. Let’s see if he’s worth taking a chance on again.

Looking at his strikeouts per 9 innings (K/9), he has absolutely no problem striking batters out. In his one month back from surgery he continued to mow batters down with a K/9 just over 8. In 2005, swinging batters failed to make contact with his pitches a whopping 28% of the time which was the second highest in baseball among starting pitchers. Batters clearly have problems with his five pitch repertoire.

Back in 2002 and early 2003 when he was closing for the Blue Jays, he struggled mightily with his control, but since then he’s been able to bring his walks per 9 innings (BB/9) down to a career low of 3.17. Furthermore, he’s never had much of a problem in the home run department, keeping his home runs per 9 innings (HR/9) below the league average in all but 2 of his 9 seasons. His ground ball tendencies certainly help him out.

When you get right down to it, Escobar strikes out a ton of batters, has a declining walk rate, doesn’t give up many home runs, and oh yeah… he’s a ground ball pitcher too. Seriously, what’s not to like about this guy? Sure he may be a bit of an injury risk, but who isn’t these days and if he wasn’t 100%, he wouldn’t be pitching for Team Venezuela in the World Baseball Classic. I for one will certainly be looking to snag him again this year and he should pick up right where he left off before undergoing the knife.

In Part 1 of Dissecting Plate, I took a look at three stats which I felt dug a little deeper into a player’s plate discipline and I showed how they correlated with either walks, strikeouts or home runs. Since the correlations are fairly high, we should be able to come up with an expected number of walks, strikeouts and home runs based on the components of a player’s plate discipline.

Let’s start with expected walk percentage (xBB%), you’ll remember that there were two stats that have a high correlation with walks. The first is ZRatio, which also has some correlation with home runs, and the second was OSwing which only correlated well with walks. If you multiply a batter’s ZRatio and OSwing, you essentially come up with a proxy for how often a player should be walking.

What I find most interesting about xBB% is when you see large discrepancies with actual BB%. Looking at the players who walk more than their xBB% implies, you’ll see highly skilled players like Jason Giambi, Jim Thome, and Todd Helton. Our good friend Russel Branyan also shows up in the top 10. Perhaps behind his monster swing there lays some potential.

Walked More than xBB%		Walked Less than xBB%	
Jason Giambi	7.19%		Todd Linden	-3.35%
Jim Thome	6.92%		Carlos Baerga	-3.37%
Jose Valentin	5.70%		Chris Magruder	-3.45%
Adam Dunn	5.34%		Oscar Robles	-3.46%
Russell Branyan	5.10%		John Olerud	-3.59%
Todd Helton	5.05%		Alex Cora	-3.71%
Angel Berroa	4.58%		N. Garciaparra	-3.81%
John Rodriguez	4.49%		Orlando Hudson	-4.17%
Jim Edmonds	4.44%		Kenny Lofton	-4.18%
Craig Wilson	4.33%		Tike Redman	-4.38%

The players who walk less than their xBB% suggests are mostly contact hitters, but notice how Nomar Garciappara shows up on the list. Is that a sign that he was just unfortunate in 2005 and we can expect a rebound in walks? Since I only have one season of data, it’d be silly to draw multi-season conclusions, but it certainly makes you wonder.

Moving on, the one stat which correlated extremely well with strikeouts was Contact, so we’ll use that to calculate a player’s expected strikeout percentage (xK%). Since striking out and walking appear to be two entirely different skills, I’m not going to use ZRatio in calculating xK%.

Struckout More than xK%		Struckout Less than xK%
Jayson Werth	9.90%		Brian Schneider	-5.38%
Frank Menechino	9.84%		Rondell White	-5.39%
Todd Linden	9.24%		Garret Anderson	-5.49%
Chip Ambres	9.23%		Sammy Sosa	-5.74%
Nick Punto	9.15%		Jorge Cantu	-5.86%
Mark Bellhorn	7.76%		Sal Fasano	-6.02%
Jason Dubois	6.96%		Mike Sweeney	-6.54%
Jamey Carroll	6.84%		Andruw Jones	-7.07%
Jason Giambi	6.83%		Moises Alou	-7.28%
Chris Woodward	6.38%		V. Guerrero	-7.29%

Once again, the large discrepancies are the most interesting. Vladimir Guerrero’s xK% suggests he should strike out a lot more than he does. Most of the best players in baseball are better than their xK% suggests. Looking at the top 10 players that strike out more than their xK% indicates, there are a bunch of not so high profile players except for Jason Giambi. Perhaps he was swinging a little harder than he usually would to prove he could still hit home runs?

Finally, there’s expected Home Runs (xHR), which we’ll calculate using both Contact and ZRatio, which both correlated with home runs-per-fly ball. Multiply the two, and the correlation becomes much stronger. From that we can calculate a player’s expected home runs per fly ball, and then finally actual expected Home Runs.

Looking at the players who hit more home runs than expected, these are obviously many of the power hitters in baseball. What I find more interesting are those who hit less home runs than their xHR suggests. Brad Wilkerson (-13) and Vinny Castilla (-9) were definitely not helped by R.F.K. Stadium’s spacious outfield. It will be interesting to see if these player’s home run totals will rebound this coming season.

More Home Runs than xHR		Less Home Runs than xHR	
Alex Rodriguez	20		Brian Giles	-9
Derrek Lee	19		Marcus Giles	-9
Manny Ramirez	19		Vinny Castilla	-9
Andruw Jones	16		Mike Lowell	-9
Albert Pujols	16		Darin Erstad	-9
Tony Clark	15		J.T. Snow	-9
Mark Teixeira	14		Jeremy Reed	-11
Paul Konerko	14		Adam Kennedy	-11
Ken Griffey Jr.	14		Alex Gonzalez	-12
Jermaine Dye	14		Brad Wilkerson	-13

I honestly don’t know whether these differences in expected versus actual walks, strikeouts, and home runs will hold up from season to season, but all of these stats surely have some element of chance in them. The correlations were too close in my opinion to not do this exercise. Hopefully looking at baseball data on a more granular level will help us better weed out the fluke season.

If you’ve been reading the recent Daily Graphing columns, you’ll notice that I’ve been talking about some not so common stats such as, the percent a player swings at pitches outside the strike zone and actual contact rate. These oddball stats are derived from Baseball Info Solution’s “pitch data” which contains the location and result of each and every pitch, among other things. I’ve decided it’s probably a good idea to go over a bunch of these stats and examine why I think they’re meaningful.

When a pitcher throws the ball, it can land either in or out of the strike zone. Not all batters receive the same amount of pitches in and out of the strike zone and this does make a difference. Batters will see anywhere from 45% to as high as 60% of pitches inside the strike zone. I’ve found it most useful to express this as a ratio. Let’s call this Zone Ratio.

Zone Ratio (ZRatio) – the ratio of pitches inside the strike zone to pitches outside the strike zone

ZRatio correlates quite well with two stats that are frequently used: walks and home runs. It makes a lot of sense that batters who see more pitches outside the strike zone would walk more. Finding it correlated well with home runs was slightly surprising, but also made sense because pitchers would want to be more cautious with batters that can generate more power.

Top 5 ZRatio			Bottom 5 ZRatio
Aaron Miles	1.54		Ryan Klesko	0.89
W. Bloomquist	1.53		Carlos Pena	0.88
Tony Womack	1.49		Chipper Jones	0.86
Tike Redman	1.48		Russell Branyan	0.81
David Eckstein	1.46		V. Guerrero	0.80

If you look at the top and bottom 5 batters in ZRatio, it’s probably no surprise to see Vladimir Guerrero receives the least amount of balls in the strike zone. On the high end, you don’t just have guys like Willie Bloomquist (0 HRs) and Tony Womack (0 HRs), but also David Eckstein (8 HRs). I wonder if David Eckstein will remain in the top 5 in 2006. Quickly shifting back to players that have a low ZRatio you’ll notice Russell Branyan who strikes out more than pretty much anyone in baseball. Unlike Vladimir Guerrero, it’s more likely pitchers are exploiting a weakness instead of respecting his power.

Moving along, after the pitch is thrown, there are two things a batter can do: take the pitch or swing at it. I’ve found that it doesn’t seem to matter how often a batter will swing at pitches inside the strike zone, but how often they’ll swing at pitches outside the strike zone. I’m going to call this stat Outside Swing Percentage.

Outside Swing Percentage (OSwing) – The percentage of pitches outside the strike zone a batter swings at.

Probably to no one’s surprise, OSwing correlates quite well with walks. Batters will swing at pitches outside the strike zone as low as 8% of the time to as high as 37% of the time. Looking at the top and bottom 5 lists, you’ll see that batters that you typically consider having great discipline such as Chipper Jones and Jason Giambi round out the bottom of the list. At the top of the list you have batters that really like to swing the bat such as Ivan Rodriguez and Jeff Francouer.

Top 5 OSwing			Bottom 5 OSwing
Ivan Rodriguez	37.69%		Jason Giambi	10.03
Bradley Eldred	37.50%		Dave Roberts	9.39
Angel Berroa	37.01%		Chipper Jones	9.33
Jeff Francoeur	34.91%		Eric Young	9.09
Johnny Estrada	33.22%		Brian Giles	8.33%

Finally, if you do decide to swing the bat, one of two things can happen: you either hit the ball or miss the ball. Batters made contact with the ball anywhere between 54% and 94% of the time. Let’s call this stat simply Contact Percentage.

Contact Percentage (Contact) – The percentage of times a batter hits the ball when he swings the bat.

There are two things that Contact correlates well with: strikeouts and home runs. The correlation with Strikeouts isn’t a shock. If you can’t lay wood on the baseball, you’re going to be striking out a lot. The correlation with home runs, just like with ZRatio was a little surprising, but once again this also made sense. Typically players who are swinging for the fences are going to swing and miss more often.

Top 5 Contact			Bottom 5 Contact	
David Eckstein	94.26%		Craig Wilson	63.23%
Luis Castillo	94.01%		Carlos Pena	63.02%
Oscar Robles	93.51%		Wily Mo Pena	59.83%
Chris Gomez	93.43%		Russell Branyan	59.21%
Kenny Lofton	92.66%		Bradley Eldred	54.57%

Once again, if we look at the top and bottom 5 players in Contact, you’ll see players like David Eckstein and Kenny Lofton at the top of the list. Just outside the top 5 are players you’d expect to see because they’re considered great contact hitters such as Juan Pierre and Placido Polanco. Remember how Russell Branyan had a very low ZRatio? Being one of the worst contact hitters in baseball, this pretty much confirms that pitchers are indeed exploiting his deficiencies.

So for each of these three stats, I talked about how they correlate well with other more mainstream stats. Based on that, we should be able to come up with the expected number of strikeouts, walks, and home runs for each player based on the components of their actual plate discipline. Later this week in Part 2, I’ll be exploring the discrepancies between what a batter is expected to do based on his plate discipline and what he actually does.

After batting .296 with 59 stolen bases and 11 home runs in 2004, it was looking like Carl Crawford was well on his way to becoming one of the best offensive players in baseball. During the first two months of the 2005 season he bat only .266, but for the remaining four months of the season he bat .320 with 32 stolen bases and 12 home runs giving him his best major league season to date. Now that the cat’s totally out of the bag, let’s see if there’s any reason doubt him.

If it isn’t the old walks per 9 innings (BB/9) graph. With only 27 walks in just under 700 plate appearances, it’s safe to say that he really likes to swing the bat. He swings at about 30% out of the strike zone, which is really getting up there. This is where I’d usually go into a rant about how he needs to walk more to continue his success, but not today.

It’s tough to take a walk when you don’t see many pitches outside the strike zone. About 58% of the pitches Crawford saw were strikes, which ranks him in the top 10% in percentage of strikes seen. In games where he saw less than 50% strikes he walked a healthy 10% of the time and bat .293. When he saw more than 50% strikes, he only walked 2% of the time and bat .310. He can clearly make adjustments if necessary.

With that sorted out, it’s also worth mentioning he rarely strikes out, but doesn’t make great contact with the ball either. It’d really be a mistake to call him a contact hitter. Combine that with his two year rise in isolated power (ISO) and you’re looking at player that could definitely hit an additional 5 or so home runs.

It will be interesting to see if pitchers decided to keep the ball out of the strike zone a little more with Carl Crawford. He certainly poses a dilemma for most pitchers since you don’t want to walk him because of his speed, but it’s clear that if you hang around the strike zone, he’s going to get on base anyway. If pitchers do become a little more cautious with him, he should see a rise in walks, with a slight decrease in batting average. Either way, I wouldn’t doubt him.

Does anyone remember when Mike Mussina went 3-1 with a 2.14 ERA in his final 6 starts of the 2004 season after posting a 5.42 ERA in his previous 21 starts? He had just come back from an elbow injury requiring he spend over a month on the disabled list and it looked like the old Mussina, who had a career 3.54 ERA (instead of an ERA over 5) had returned!

There were high hopes going into the 2005 season, but they quickly faded as he went 1-2 with an ERA just under 5 in the first month of the season. In May, June and July he pulled things together, posting a 9-4 record with a 3.49 ERA, but was plagued with elbow tendonitis the final two months of the season. Let’s see if Mussina’s roller coaster ride will continue in 2006.

For the second year in a row his strikeouts per 9 innings (K/9) slowly climbed out of the gutter to finish the year at a respectable 7.1. While this is certainly adequate for most starting pitchers, it’s worth noting that this is an 11 year low for Mussina. In his poor first month of the 2005 season, his K/9 was a mere 5.5 which was mainly due to a lack of velocity on his fastball.

He could barely get his fastball up to 90 mph, often throwing it below 85 mph during the first month of the season. During his good stretch in the middle of the season he was throwing it consistently just under 90 with it topping out around 92. Needless to say, his decreased velocity early on made him much more hittable.

Even while not at his best, Mussina is still a lot better than many starters out there, but it looks as though these past two seasons were the beginning of the end. At 37 years old and with his recent injury history, I doubt he’ll be able to pitch a consistent season. He’ll have his moments, maybe even a great month or two, but I suspect the roller coaster ride we’ve become accustom to the past two years will continue.

Last season Devil Ray’s prospect Jorge Cantu broke through in a big way by batting .286 with 28 home runs in just under 600 at-bats. That’s a considerable amount of power for a second-baseman as only Alfonso Soriano and Jeff Kent bested him in 2005. Let’s see if he’ll be able to repeat his breakout season and solidify himself as one of the top second-basemen.

Starting off with his walk percentage (BB%), he pretty much never walks. He actually had the 6th worst walk percentage of any player in baseball for the 2005 season. He swings at over 30% of the pitches out of the strike zone and 57% of all pitches which makes him one of the most prolific swingers in all of baseball. Fortunately he doesn’t strike out all that much.

Most of his home runs came after the first two months of the season. In April and May he hit 6 home runs and in the following 4 months of the season he hit his other 22 home runs. His home runs per fly ball (HR/FB) stayed pretty steady the entire season which means his new found power was the result of hitting more fly balls.

It looks like Cantu’s power is for real, but it’s not all good news. When he started hitting more fly balls he became a more aggressive hitter. By the end of the season he was swinging at a whopping 37% of all balls out of the strike zone, a totally unacceptable number. If he wants to keep his batting average anywhere near the .286 it was last year, he must learn to lay off pitches he shouldn’t be swinging at. If he doesn’t, not only will his batting average dip, but I suspect his power will also take a hit as pitchers key in on his inability or unwillingness to differentiate strikes from balls.

With B.J. Ryan and Jorge Julio’s departure from the Orioles, it looks like Chris Ray will get a shot at closing games. Ryan saved 36 games last year, blowing only 5 saves with an 2.43 ERA. Those are some pretty big shoes for Ray to fill in his sophomore season. After being called up from AA in mid-June, he had an excellent rookie season, throwing just over 40 innings with a 2.66 ERA. Let’s see if he has the stuff to handle full time closer duties.

He has an excellent strikeouts per 9 innings (K/9) of 9.52 which is certainly closer worthy. He relies heavily on his mid-90’s fastball which tops out at 99 mph. Occasionally he’ll mix in his slider and he also has an 85 mph changeup which he doesn’t throw all that often. He started off the year with some excellent control, but as the season wore on, his walks per 9 innings (BB/9) crept up to unacceptable levels.

In his brief minor league career, his highest BB/9 was 3.06 which is quite good and with his K/9 as high as it is, he can afford to have a slightly higher walk rate. He did experience a bit of trouble with left-handed batters as they batted .298 against him opposed to .177 of right-handed batters.

In all honestly, it probably wouldn’t hurt if he waited another season before taking over as a full time closer, but it looks like he’s the Orioles best option at this point. He certainly appears to have the right stuff to close out games and if he can recapture his minor league walk rate he should be primed for a good season. I’m sure there will be a few bumps in the road, but with a little leeway, he should be able to hang onto the job all year long. I can certainly think of a few higher profile closers who will probably be out of a job before Chris Ray.