Everybody knows that Jose Bautista has put up ridiculous power numbers this year. Bautista’s 43 home runs are eight more than second place Albert Pujols and his .355 ISO is 53 points above Miguel Cabrera‘s and only trails Josh Hamilton’s batting average by six points. Those are impressive numbers and a large reason why Jose Bautista has a .426 wOBA this season.

It’s important to realize, however, that Bautista has not been a one-dimensional hitter this year. The power has been the driving force behind his line, but Bautista also has a .385 OBP this season. That ability to reach base is largely based on a fantastic 14.9% walk rate, the best of his career and second in the league among qualified pitchers behind Daric Barton.

Although he’s never seen this many free passes, the ability to walk is not something new for Bautista. Since 2006, Bautista has had an above average walk rate every season and has eclipsed 11% three times including 2010. Bautista’s walk rates since 2006 have been 116%, 131%, 108%, 156%, and 175% of the league average, and that’s why Bautista was basically a league average hitter over his time in Pittsburgh.

The discussion with Bautista always seems to turn to his performance next year, and for good reason. For as impressive as Bautista’s power is, we simply don’t learn much about a player’s true power talent from only 500 or 600 plate appearances. That’s why ZiPS projects a drop in ISO from .355 to .230.

Despite this projected drop in power to human levels, Bautista is still seen as a well above average hitter by ZiPS and that’s because Bautista has had and continues to have above average plate discipline. ZiPS projects a 13.7% walk rate, and given Bautista’s track record, it’s hard to imagine much of a deviation from that number.

The question of Bautista’s performance next year is a worthwhile one, and for a variety of reasons it’s no sure thing that his power remains at such a high level. However, even with a decline, Bautista should be able to remain an above average hitter, and that’s due to his fantastic patience at the plate and ability to reach base via the walk. That should continue to make him a viable hitter, and any extra power only serves to increase his offensive value.

Nobody could watch Aroldis Chapman’s debut without coming away impressed. There is, however, the question of Chapman’s value, as the Reds paid 30 million dollars for the rights to Chapman’s services, and that’s no small investment for a MLB franchise. Not only that, but it’s $30 million on top of whatever arbitration rewards he reaps. From Cot’s Contracts:

-If Chapman qualifies for arbitration after 2012, $5M is converted to a bonus and he becomes arbitration-eligible
-If Chapman qualifies for arbitration after 2013, $3M is converted to a bonus and he becomes arbitration-eligible

As Chapman’s contract calls for $5 million after 2012 and $3 million after 2013, assuming he reaches arbitration after the 2013, the contract will actually pay out $25.25M plus three arbitration awards, with his 2015 arbitration reward replacing the $5 million player option in his contract for that season.

Essentially, Chapman looks to make $30.25 million over six years as a minimum and could see, based on Jonathan Papelbon’s arbitration progression as an elite reliever, something like $58 million in that time as a reliever. Taking the absolute best-case scenario – the Tim Lincecum track – that salary could go up as high as $70 or $80 million.

Of course, if Chapman becomes Tim Lincecum, that would be a steal for the Cincinnati Reds. But there is still a legitimate question as to whether or not Chapman can start in the Major Leagues, particularly given his struggles as a starter in the minors. Chapman was still a strikeout maniac in that role, racking up over 10 per nine innings, but the control was completely lacking. The young Cuban walked over five per nine innings in the starting role, resulting in a 4.01 FIP as a starter and a similar ERA. Chapman’s current value as a starter appears to limited if even existent.

Chapman was successful as a reliever, striking out over 13 per nine innings and walking fewer than four. Given his success, it’s hard for me to envision the Reds moving him out of the bullpen and back into the rotation, and although it’s certainly possible, Chapman would almost certainly require at least one more season in the minors to start. Right now, his potential value as a starter is extremely high due to his insane stuff, but due to his seeming lack of control in that role, it’s also an enigma.

As a reliever, at least we can be somewhat sure that Chapman is ready for the show – he certainly looked it last night. ESPN’s Stats & Info blog compared Chapman to Francisco Rodriguez, which seems like a fair comparison given their uncanny minor league stats. But when a player has shown merely eight pitches in the Major Leagues, it would be irresponsible to project him as equal to a top player at his position. The cautionary tale of Joel Zumaya immediately comes to mind – a player with big time velocity and questionable control much like Chapman. Hopefully Chapman won’t suffer an injury as stupid as Zumaya’s first, but it doesn’t change the fact that Zumaya has only posted 2.7 WAR since 2006, partially as a result of his injury history and partially as a result of his inability to limit walks.

Francisco Rodriguez posted 13.1 WAR from 2003-2008 with the Angels, and given that 2.0+ WAR seasons are limited to the top 10 or so relievers in a given year, I wouldn’t be comfortable projecting much more than that. In that situation, the Reds would be looking at over $50 million for 13 wins, and probably something like $3.8-4.2 million per WAR. That’s roughly market value for the free agent market, which is basically how we should treat Chapman, and with the Reds looking like a team for whom wins will be valuable, that’s fine. But that doesn’t take into account the possibility of collapse, which is certainly real – this is a risky contract for the Reds, which, if it works out, is at best a market value free agent deal if Chapman reaches expectations.

That takes us back to the issue of Chapman as a starter. Although his current value as a starter is low, his future value as a starter is much higher than his future value as a reliever simply due to the inherent value of the two roles. It’s possible that his role in the 2010 Reds’ bullpen may simply be the team’s version of the David Price bullpen experiment of 2008. That would probably be the best way for Cincinnati to approach Chapman’s development, as he could aid in a playoff run now and provide more value than a simple free agent bullpen pickup over the long run. There’s no doubt that Aroldis Chapman is a special talent, but his best pitching should come out of the rotation. The Reds must recognize this, and although it will be tempting to keep that talent in the bullpen come 2011, sticking to the original plan and developing Chapman into a starting pitcher with A+ stuff will almost certainly realize more value for the franchise.

Aroldis Chapman’s Major League debut was met with nothing short of giddiness and excitement from legions of baseball fans last night. As Chapman was considered one of the best international prospects in the game and had crazy stuff to boot, it makes sense that fans both inside and outside of Cincinnati were extremely excited to watch this phenom. Throw in the utterly ridiculous radar gun readings showing a 105 MPH fastball and there’s the most anticipated debut this side of Stephen Strasburg. Unsurprisingly, as soon as Chapman took the mound, Twitter went over capacity. Now that’s a buzz.

Chapman didn’t disappoint – he touched 102.7 on the gun, according to Brooks Baseball, and the TV gun for FSN Wisconsin had Chapman at 103 to his first batter faced, Johnathan Lucroy. That’s legitimately unique velocity, although I have to say that I’m actually more impressed by this pitch. (h/t Big League Stew)

Chapman struck out Lucroy with an 86 MPH slider, which showcased a whopping eight inches of horizontal break. The pitch didn’t hit the 90 MPH mark nor move a foot and a half as Reds’ catcher Ryan Hanigan claimed, but that’s still impressive. Indeed, that pitch may end up being the true knockout in Chapman’s arsenal. He threw it twice and drew swinging strikes both times, whereas the fastball was thrown six times and “only” drew one whiff. MLB hitters are certainly capable of making contact with high velocity pitches, and almost every strikeout artist relies on a secondary pitch as the hammer, with the notable exception of Matt Thornton.

Eight pitches obviously aren’t enough to fully gauge what we have in Aroldis Chapman, but it’s certainly enough to get excited about. His stuff is sheer spectacle, and he should be a viable weapon out of the Reds’ bullpen down the stretch.

Due to an injury to Rafael Betancourt as well as other concerns, the Rockies were looking to add a reliever on today’s waiver trade deadline. They did just that today, acquiring Manny Delcarmen from the Boston Red Sox along with cash considerations (not Kevin Cash considerations) in exchange for minor league reliever Chris Balcom-Miller.

Delcarmen satisfies the Rockies needs in the sense that he has been a relief pitcher in the minor leagues before, but he isn’t likely to actually improve the Rockies bullpen. His 4.70 ERA is not MLB quality for a reliever, and his 5.18 xFIP and 5.69 FIP suggest that me may be even worse. Delcarmen walks far too many batters – 5.7 per nine innings – to survive without an elite strikeout rate. He has never struck out more than a batter per inning, and with the introduction of HR issues – a 14% HR/FB rate and a 1.4 HR/9 – Delcarmen has been well below replacement level in 2010. Delcarmen was moderately productive earlier in his career, as he was worth 3.7 WAR from 2005-2009, but ZiPS doesn’t see him returning to that former glory, projecting only a 4.02 FIP, and it’s hard to imagine that Coors Field will help whatever is ailing him with regards to home runs.

The real story here, however, is the guy coming back to Boston. Balcom-Miller has had a fantastic season with Asheville in the Sally League, posting a 3.31 ERA in 108 innings backed up by a fantastic 117:19 K:BB ratio. That’s a 6.2 K/BB for a 21 year old in his second professional season. Baseball America said prior to the season that Balcom-Miller’s ceiling was as a “solid middle-of-the-rotation starter,” and one has to think that this season would only improve his stock.

The Rockies might need warm bodies, but that’s about all they will get out of Delcarmen. He no longer projects as a productive reliever. Meanwhile, the Rockies will send a very promising starting pitching prospect out of the system for what might be at best a minuscule increase in their playoff odds. It’s hard for me to classify this deal as anything less than an overreaction to the Rafael Betancourt injury by Rockies GM Dan O’Dowd, and the end result will be a similarly talented (if not worse) team in Colorado and a weakened farm system.

As the Cardinals slide farther and farther out of the National League Central race, it’s hard not to notice that one of their best players hasn’t been in the lineup for over two weeks. Young center fielder Colby Rasmus hasn’t had more than one plate appearance in a game since August 14th; since then, his only action has been as either a pinch hitter or defensive replacement. In that time, Rasmus has had all of four plate appearances, as his job has effectively gone to Jon Jay, especially given this quote from manager Tony La Russa (h/t Viva El Birdos)

“He’s had all the work,” La Russa said. “He’s never backed off the work, taking batting practice. I think it all has to do with what his concentration is, and what his focus is. I do believe that, you just watch his swings in batting practice and in the game, I think he is convinced that he helps us more if he just yanks the ball out of the park. That normally is not the case, because you’re limiting yourself to a side of the park and you’re vulnerable to too many pitches. We really push, ‘Just play the game.’ That’s what Jon [Jay] does. He plays the game. take a single, take a walk, let the home runs come.”

From this quote, it is obvious that La Russa takes issue with Colby Rasmus’s approach. I don’t particularly doubt that La Russa understands how a MLB player should approach an at-bat. But Rasmus’s poor approach has still resulted in a .268/.352/.501 line, which translates to a .364 wOBA and a 130 wRC+. Basically, Rasmus has been an excellent hitter, and most evidence points to Rasmus supporting that line with an average to above average glove in center field. Even though Rasmus’s line is boosted by a likely unsustainable .341 BABIP, ZiPS projects Rasmus as a .341 wOBA hitter, which is good for a slick fielding center fielder. The wOBA projects Rasmus as a 3-4 WAR player with upside.

The aversion to playing Rasmus goes farther back than merely the past two weeks. Rasmus has 403 plate appearances on the season and has started only 93 of the club’s 138 games, despite the fact that he hasn’t missed significant time before his recent injury. As a result of La Russa’s anti-Rasmus tendencies, along with the midseason trade of Ryan Ludwick, a grand total of 591 plate appearances have gone to Jay, Joe Mather, Randy Winn, Allen Craig, and Nick Stavinoha. This group, despite a .315 collective BABIP, have posted a meager .317 wOBA, and none of them provide the kind of defense Rasmus does.

The apparently superior approaches that La Russa has favored haven’t produced more than Rasmus to date and there’s nary a crystal ball that suggests that they will, even if the group is limited to Jay and Winn or Jay and Craig. Jay’s line, particularly once his .376 BABIP normalizes, screams average, and Craig’s isn’t much better. Winn is at replacement level this season and even at that level ZiPS suggests that he’s playing over his head.

Tony La Russa has been around long enough to suggest that he’s a good major league manager, but right now, it’s clear that his decisions are resulting in an inferior St. Louis Cardinals team on the field. Colby Rasmus is a 3-4 WAR player right now with 4-5 WAR potential, and in his stead, La Russa is fielding players at the league average or below. The Cardinals need to utilize every weapon they have to catch the Reds; the Cardinals are now six games back of the Reds, three games back of the Phillies, and have playoff odds below 25%. Without Rasmus on the field the Cardinals are killing their chances at October. As time goes on, one has to wonder if La Russa and his whopping .535 career winning percentage is worth keeping around if he will let personal feelings or just simply misguided judgments of talent keep players like Rasmus off the field. The questionable move has certainly cost the Cardinals in 2010 and if the Cardinals organization isn’t careful, they could lose out on a player who looks to be one of the premiere center field talents in baseball.

Everybody knows about Billy Wagner’s ability at the closer position, and by now most know about impressive rookie Jonny Venters holding down the Atlanta Braves bullpen. However, the best FIP on the team belongs to Takashi Saito and his 2.40 mark over 48 innings this season. This impressive performance has Saito at 1.1 WAR already, making him the third Brave reliever to top the 1.0 WAR mark this season.

It’s not terribly surprising that Saito is having a good season. CHONE and ZiPS both projected a sub-3.50 FIP out of Saito despite his advanced age – a major input for these systems. However, there were warning signs that Saito wouldn’t be as good as these projections expected, as Erik Manning pointed out in the winter.

Saito’s career K/9 of 10.9 dropped to 8.4, which is substantiated by an 80% contact rate. Compare that to a career rate of 73%. His walks were also up, as more batters sat back on his breaking stuff rather than chasing it outside of the zone.

Saito also became an extreme fly ball pitcher – 52% of his balls in play were flies, but 18% of those were of the infield variety, so that’s at least a positive here among some negatives.

Throw this and more together and out pops a 4.40 tRA – not completely terrible, but a clear decline across the board for Saito. It’s definitely not what you would want to see out of high leverage reliever.

Groundball rate typically stabilizes quickly, and so even though Saito only threw 55 innings in 2009, that’s enough to worry at least a little bit about a 15% drop in groundball rate. Whatever it was that caused the massive increase in balls in the air, it has reversed itself in 2010. Saito is once again inducing ground balls on 46% of balls in play. Combine that with a strikeout rate (12 K/9) that’s back at elite levels and a walk rate (2.6 BB/9) that’s back below average, and Saito is once again looking like an elite reliever as he did with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Swift drops across the board in a relief season like those Saito suffered in 2009 may not be worrying for a younger pitcher, as the small sample size typically has a high impact. However, when the subject is over the hill, we have to worry about legitimate deterioration of skills with age. In this case, it doesn’t appear that Saito has lost much, if anything, of what made him worth a staggering 6.9 WAR in only 189 innings from 2006-2008. The magic continues for Saito with Atlanta at the age of 40, and any hints of his career headed towards its end appear to be gone now.

Although Edwin Jackson was considered to be the major grab for the Arizona Diamondbacks in the three way trade involving Max Scherzer, Curtis Granderson, and Austin Jackson, the Diamondbacks certainly considered Ian Kennedy to be a large piece of their future as well. Kennedy has a 4.22 ERA, 4.60 FIP, and a 4.32 xFIP, so he’s performed roughly as an average pitcher. At age 25, there’s certainly room to improve, but one has to think that the Diamondbacks will expect more out of Kennedy as his career goes on.

Games like yesterday’s against the Padres suggest that Kennedy has top half of the rotation potential. Kennedy threw seven shutout innings against San Diego, allowing only one hit and two walks while striking out a whopping 12 batters. Only nine of the 24 batters faced by Kennedy even managed to put the ball in play, and four of them put the ball on the ground. Even though it was in cavernous PETCO Park, it’s hard to classify this outing as anything but dominant.

As we dive deeper, we continue to see impressive numbers out of Kennedy’s start. Kennedy threw 62 strikes in 105 pitches (59%), drew 16 swinging strikes (15.6%), and was above average with every single one of his five pitches according to pitch type linear weights. Particularly impressive was Kennedy’s changeup, which he threw 16 times. Twelve of them went for strikes, and a ridiculous 8 – half of them! – resulted in swings and misses. Kennedy was drawing swings and misses both at the edges of the zone and down the middle, as this plot from Brooks Baseball shows.

Click to embiggen

Some may be quick to dismiss a start against the Padres in PETCO Park, but we can’t do that this year. The Padres offense has been above average this year, and that’s prior to additions such as Ryan Ludwick and Miguel Tejada. In the post-Dan Haren era, the Diamondbacks will need production from other SPs in the system. Expecting Kennedy to become another Dan Haren is a pipe dream, but with performances like this as well as Daniel Hudson’s strong showings with his new team, the Diamondbacks have two young starting pitchers who should form the core of a solid starting rotation for a few years to come.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable parts of the Padres run to the playoffs is the fact that they’ve done it just one season after trading their ace Jake Peavy to the White Sox for four young pitching prospects. Although there was certainly some promise in that package, it was hard to imagine a situation in which the Padres pitching staff – particularly, the starting rotation – didn’t take a hit without the presence of Peavy.

The main driving force behind the San Diego rotation has been young stud Mat Latos. The second was one of the pitchers brought back from Chicago in exchange for Peavy: Clayton Richard. Richard has fit right into PETCO Park, throwing 159 innings with an ERA of 3.55 and a FIP right behind at 3.60. Overall, Richard has already posted 2.3 WAR this season, which compares quite favorably to Peavy’s 2.7 mark in 2008 and his injury limited 1.8 mark in 2009.

Now, Richard is not yet as good a pitcher as Peavy was in his heyday as a Padre. Surely, Peavy was a benefactor of his home park, but still, his K-rates eclipsed one per inning every season from 2004-2007 and again in 2009. Peavy’s walk rates which hovered between 2.5 and 3.1 per nine innings prevented him from posting elite defensive-independent numbers. Particularly in 2008 and 2009, when Peavy’s walk rates settled around 3.0, Peavy fell from elite to merely above average.

Richard simply doesn’t have the strikeout ability that Peavy did, as his K/9 is a career high 7.1 this season. Richard’s walk rate also sits at 3.6, well above any mark that Peavy ever posted in San Diego. But Richard induces far more ground balls – 48% against Peavy’s 42% career mark – and that has helped Richard keep the ball in the yard this season. which is partially due to Petco Park and partially due to a bit of luck, but it’s a big reason why Richard has had so much success this year. As Richard’s luck regresses, he won’t be able to equate Peavy’s results from even his down 2008 and 2009 campaigns, but a 4.13 xFIP suggests that Richard should still be a productive member of the rotation, and at age 26, he has room to grow.

Jake Peavy is set to earn $59 million over the next three seasons. Over that same span, Clayton Richard will make $400 thousand in 2011 and then two arbitration rewards in 2012-13. The updated ZiPS system projects Richard to post a 3.77 FIP against 3.89 from Peavy. For the Padres to get out from under that massive contract while adding a pitcher who can replace the production is just an incredible, incredible find, as Clayton Richard looks to be a key for the Padres franchise both for now and the conceivable future.

Four days ago, if I had said that the four game series between the Phillies and the Astros would end in a sweep, I don’t think that anybody would find that claim terribly outlandish. If I had said that it would be the Astros completing that sweep this afternoon, I would have been laughed out of the room. However, behind a 5-1 victory over the Phillies today at Citizen’s Bank Park, the lowly Astros extended their winning streak to five games, including a road sweep over the two time defending National League champions.

Entering the series, the Phillies had a .556 winning percentage and a .529 third order winning percentage – winning percentage based on expected runs scored and allowed and adjusted for strength of schedule – according to Baseball Prospectus’s adjusted standings. The Astros entered the series with a .439 winning percentage and a .405 third order winning percentage. Basically, by either measure, the Phillies have played about 120 points of winning percentage better than the Astros this season.

Let’s take a look at just how unlikely, then that makes this sweep. The method to use here is the log5 method, a method derived by Bill James to estimate the winning percentage when two teams meet. The following formula gives the expected winning percentage for team A facing team B:

According to this method, the Phillies would be expected to win one game 61.5% of the time using raw wins. Using third-order wins – the better method – the Phillies are expected to win one game 62.3% of the time. However, we have to account for the Phillies playing at home. Since the home team wins 54% of the time in MLB, we credit the home team with 20 points of winning percentage and subtract 20 points from the away team. With this adjustment, the Phillies win 65.3% of the time with raw wins and 65.1% of the time with third order wins. Using probability theory, we can then determine the amount of times we would expect the Phillies to win 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4 games in a four game series, as seen in the following chart.

Expecting Philadelphia to sweep the series wasn’t realistic, as the odds of Philadelphia taking four out of four was only 18%. However, they should have won the series – 56% probability of three or four wins – and a series loss should only have happened 11% of the time. Now, we know that some crazy things happened, particularly in the 16 inning game which saw Roy Oswalt make an out in left field. Still, we would only expect a sweep to happen 1% of the time. This one out of one hundred could be disastrous for the Phillies. Over the past week, their playoff odds according to Baseball Prospectus have fallen by 23%, and before this game their odds were roughly 1 in 3. San Francisco is off tonight, but Los Angeles has already won and St. Louis plays the Nationals tonight. The Phillies lost out on a major chance to make a stand in the Wild Card race and capitalize on a three game losing streak in Atlanta. It’s not fair to say that this series will take all of the blame if the Phillies miss the postseason, but there’s no denying that this sweep was disastrous for Philadelphia baseball.

Nobody should be particularly surprised that Heath Bell is having another excellent season as the Padres closer. This is Bell’s fourth year as a Padres reliever, and in his worst year prior to 2010 Bell posted a 3.58 ERA and a 3.34 FIP. The other two seasons were nothing short of excellent: 2.02 ERA, 2.50 FIP, 2.4 WAR in 2007 and a 2.71 ERA, 2.42 FIP, 2.0 WAR season in 2009.

Bell, as most ace relievers do, thrives on the strikeout. In his time with the Padres, only his relatively weak 2008 campaign saw a strikeout rate lower than one per inning. 2009 saw a climb above 10 K/9 for the first time in his career. It’s not terribly surprising that Bell has good strikeout numbers – mixing a 94 MPH average fastball with an 81 MPH curveball is bound to induce plenty of swings and misses, and Bell has that in a 10.0% swinging strike rate.

This year has seen another increase in strikeouts for Bell, as the hefty closer’s K/9 rate has risen to 11.6. The uptick in strikeouts is accompanied by an expected rise in swinging strike rate. Bell has gone to the curveball a career high 30% of the time this year. Due to the much higher swinging strike rates on breaking pitches, the rise in swinging strikes and strikeouts in general is unsurprising. The side effect of that, however, has been a decrease in pitches in the strike zone, and with pitches out of the zone come more walks. Bell’s 3.5 BB/9 rate is certainly acceptable for a reliever who can whiff such a high amount of batters, but it also marks a career high.

Despite the career high in walk rate, Bell’s FIP of 1.95 (along with an ERA of 1.84) is easily a career low, mainly because Bell has only allowed one home run in his 53.2 innings of pitching and the 48 fly balls he’s allowed. Bell’s 2.1% HR/FB ratio obviously can’t be sustained, but it’s not as if we should expect Bell to come crashing down to earth or anything. Bell gets a decent, but not great, amount of ground balls – 45%. More importantly, though, Bell has shown an ability, like some elite relievers, to maintain low HR/FB rates. Not that Bell can maintain anything like he’s done this year, but from 2007-2009 Bell has posted HR/FB rates of 6.0%, 6.8%, and 5.1%, respectively. Although the three years still only covers 240 innings due to the nature of relieving, that’s enough evidence to at least suggest that Bell’s HR/FB rate should stay below the league average of just under 10%.

Before the season, all the talk with Heath Bell was how long it would take for him to end up in the uniform of some contending team. With August coming to a close all the talk is of Bell’s fantastic performance and the performance of the Padres. Bell continues to establish himself as an elite closer, and now, it looks he will get to do it as a Padre in October.