Earlier this week, Ken Rosenthal reported that the Chicago White Sox are interested in moving Mark Teahen. With rookie Brent Morel seemingly slated to start at third this season, Teahen (last season’s third baseman to start the season) doesn’t have a place to start, and he’s a bit expensive to sit on the bench. However, the question is whether any other team has a place for Teahen to play or the desire to pay him what he is owed.
Time for a classic Neyer-ism. Who are these two players?
From 2008 to 2010
Player A: .315/.372/.542, 139 wRC+, 378 games, 1640 PA, 13.1 WAR
Player B: .292/.350/.555, 139 wRC+, 267 games, 1093 PA, 10.3 WAR
I’m sure at least one or both are pretty easy, given the title of this piece. Player A is The Greatest Hero in American History for Some Reason Josh Hamilton, and Player B is Hamilton’s fellow-outfielder-and-Ranger, the titular Nelson Cruz. On a per-PA basis, one could argue that Cruz has actually been better than Hamilton (2010’s American League Most Valuable Player) over the last three seasons. But if you look through the archives here at FanGraphs, there is little written specifically about Cruz other than some (complimentary) mentions in fantasy positional reviews or in this silly post from about a year ago. Why is that?
After thinking about it, I’ve come to an explanation: the Texas Rangers have become boring.
Every year, it seems like the Tigers are too old and need to rebuild. Yet every year, they refuse to do so. Why should they? Why not go for it in a weak division when they still have the horses to do so in credible fashion? While the piper will eventually have to be paid for some of the less-than-optimal contracts signed during this past off-season, for now, the Tigers are certainly in the hunt for the 2011 American League Central.
The Kansas City Royals have as much optimistic buzz around the franchise as they have in years. Almost all of that buzz, however, has to do with the minor league system, which is the best anyone has seen in a long time. On the major-league level, 2011 looks like it will be another long season, as there is very little talent there and aside from one big 2011 call-up, the farm system probably will not really begin to make its impact felt on the big league team until 2012. In any case, the 2011 major league team does have some players worth watching, and the front office needs to find out which of those players are worth keeping around when the prospects start to come up. Hopefully the front office will stick to that plan. In the meantime, 2011 could get pretty ugly.
Longtime sabermetric favorite Gregg Zaun, the sometime “Practically Perfect Backup Catcher” (who would have made a pretty good starter for many teams), announced (or will announce, depending on the timing relative to this post) his retirement today. Zaun had played 16 seasons in the major leagues, and had actually put up above-average offense (very good for a catcher) the last two seasons (103 and 105 wRC+, respectively), but after coming back from injury to sign a minor-league deal with the Padres, decided that he just didn’t have the desire to play anymore.
Apparently he didn’t get the memo from Jason Kendall that aging catchers are supposed to linger on years after they were useful in order to keep teams from being tempted to play younger players. Maybe Zaun decided he didn’t fit the Kendall mode, given that he actually might still be able to contribute to a team: ZiPS projected Zaun to hit .255/.341/.403 in 2011. Perhaps Zaun finally realized that one must put up barriers to keep oneself intact.
Indeed, using this methodology for relating player performance to league average, Zaun turns out to be almost exactly average for his career. Instead of reciting easily looked-up stats (summary: Zaun was a slightly below-average defensive catcher who made up for it with good on-base skills), perhaps a more interesting tribute to Zaun (other than the awesome flash intro to his website) would be to rank his five most valuable offensive plays by Win Probability Added (WPA). Get ready to Bring Your Z-Game!
What is the one “thing” we associate with pitchers? For me, and I imagine for many others, it is strikeouts. Preventing runs or getting outs are more accurate general descriptions of the pitcher’s primary task. But when I think of good pitchers, the first thing I think of is strikeouts. As we know, however, there are many pitchers who succeed without getting many strikeouts. Let’s take a look at some of 2010’s relatively successful starting pitchers with low strikeout rates, and see how they might fare in 2011.
I’ve written about platoon skill generally and as applied to different players in the past. Today, I’d like to briefly take a look at general platoon performance as expressed in wOBA over the past decade or so (FanGraphs’ player pages have splits since 2002), noting some general tendencies and perhaps a couple of surprises.
I’m a sucker for the second-best. Well, okay, so Duke Snider was more like the third-best outfielder in New York during the 1950s (as you may have heard), but you get the idea. I’ve never pretended to be a historian of baseball. I hardly remembered that Snider’s nickname was “The Silver Fox,” although that’s partly because it seems silly that someone who is already called “Duke” (itself a nickname given to him by either his uncle in recognition of young Edwin’s pride after his first day of school) needs a nickname. I suppose it’s not nearly as dumb as calling Jason Heyward the ‘The J-Hey Kid,’ a lame rip-off nickname made worse by the fact that Heyward’s middle name is incredibly awesome: Adenolith. Seriously, a player has a middle name that sounds like a cross between one of Godzilla’s foes and something out of H.P. Lovecraft, but the best (probably) some hack at an Atlanta newspaper and/or former Jeff Francoeur fan (side question: does Heyward fly Delta?) can do is “The J-Hey Kid?” Where was I? Oh, yeah, the late Duke Snider. As a quasi-sabermetric tribute to him, I propose renaming the “Willie Mays Problem” the “Duke Snider Problem.”
You are running a team that is coming off a divisional championship, thanks in large part to a Cy Young Level performance by a pitcher finally “all the way back” from injury. He’s still under team control through 2012, and your team is still considered a contender for the division. What do you? Consider trading him, of course! According to the linked report, that might be the situation with the Twins and Francisco Liriano. But can they contend in 2011 without him?