Over at The Book Blog, Mitchel Lichtman commented that Astros pitcher Mark Melancon, should not have thrown an inside fastball on a 2-2 count with two outs in the bottom of the ninth to the Diamondbacks’ Paul Goldschmidt. Instead the pitcher should be looking to throw a ball on the outside part of the plate. I decided to take a look at the location and results of similar pitches and the effect on the Win Probability Added (WPA) of the game.
Adam Dunn as has had an unually huge drop in his production so far this year, especially in relation to his power. Over the rest of the season, people should expect some level of increase production because he really doesn’t that much further to drop. By looking back at players that had similar drops in power, the amount he should rebound can be estimated.
I wanted to look at how a hitter performed in the second half of the season and the next year after a huge power drop in the first half of the season. Thanks to our own Eric Seidman, I got a list of the players after 1973 that had at least 1200 PA in the 3 prior seasons, 100 PA before or on July 1st, 100 PA after July 1st and had a similar drop in production as Adam Dunn.
In 2007, Daisuke Matsuzaka became the talk of baseball with his Gyroball and the over $51M paid by the Red Sox to negotiate for him. The next season, Hiroki Kuroda quietly signed with the Dodgers. Since coming over from Japan, Matsuzaka has gotten more media coverage while the less publicized Kuroda has been the better pitcher on the field.
Matsuzaka came to the U.S. under a media storm which can be seen in the number of news articles written about him. Doing a Google search for news stories shows that he has had about 25K news articles written about him. On the other hand, Kuroda has had only about 1/4 the number of online articles. The 36-year-old Kuroda has definitely flown under the radar compared to his fellow countryman.
Since joining the league, their only similarity seems to be that they were from Japan. After signing with the Red Sox, Dice-K had 15 wins and over 200 Ks, helping the Red Sox to a 2007 World Series title. He had similar production in 2008 with an 18-3 record. In 2009 is when injuries began to creep up on him. In 2009 and 2010 he went on the DL five times and missed 164 games. In 2011, the story hasn’t been much different. He managed only seven starts and has been on the DL since May 17th.
His WAR totals definitely mirror his ability to stay healthy. In 2007 and 2008, he generated 7.2 WAR. From 2009 on he has totaled only 3.2 WAR. The 30-year-old still has a chance to rebound to his previous levels, but after each injury he deals with, the chances get slimmer and slimmer.
On the other hand, Kuroda has been fairly steady with his production while with the Dodgers. He has averaged 3.3 WAR and 28 starts from 2008 to 2010. So far in 2011 he has generated 1.2 WAR for career total of 11.1 WAR in 3.5 seasons, or 0.7 WAR more than Matsuzaka has created in his 4.5 seasons with the Red Sox.
Besides the fanfare of the signing and helping lead the Red Sox to a World Series Championship, it can be easy to tell why Matsuzaka gets more media attention. His 49-30 record looks prettier than Kuroda’s 33-39 record. Also he has been able to strike out more batters (8.2 K/9) than Kuroda (6.6 K/9).
Kuroda, on the other hand walks, less than half the batters (2.1 BB/9) than Matsuzaka (4.4 BB/9). Even though Kuroda has started seven fewer games, has has generated a bit more WAR due to his better walk rate. Kuroda’s career ERA/FIP/xFIP values (3.52/3.52/3.63) are about 0.75 points lower than Matsuzaka’s (4.25/4.25/4.52) values.
Matsuzaka came over from Japan with a media blitz and once he is done pitching, there will probably be another one. Kuroda has had less hype surrounding him, but has been the better of the two pitchers.
With the Royals recently calling up Eric Hosmer, Billy Butler looks to have been permanently moved to the DH spot. With Mike Moustakas ready to be called up to take over third base, that leaves Wilson Betmit without a position. Also, 27-year-old Clint Robinson (all hit, no field or run — a Billy Butler clone) is knocking the leather off the ball in Triple-A. It is time for the Royals to look at trading Butler to another team. The one team that screams for some offensive production from either the 1B or DH spot is the Tampa Bay Rays.
Troy Tulowitzki’s been on a tear this season. But this isn’t some small-sample, month-long streak. He’s been raking since last July, after he returned from a wrist injury that sidelined him for nearly five weeks.
Usually when a hitter returns from these types of injuries it takes awhile to hit at pre-injury levels. It’s pretty obvious to understand why: Batters use their wrists to swing through the ball. In Tulo’s case, though, it’s almost as if he never suffered the injury.
An umpire is not supposed to have any influence on any game, but many times they do, especially the home plate umpire calling balls and strikes. Even though the strike zone is supposed to uniform across the league, each umpire has their own unique strike zone. I have gone back over the past 3 years and projected how pitcher or hitter friendly each umpire will be for the up coming season.
With some nice pieces in place for the future, the Indians enter the season with the league’s youngest 40-man roster. Even though someone predicted that the Indians would win the AL Central last year, they didn’t come close to that benchmark and just missed the AL Central cellar. Going into 2011, they will need to improve both their hitting (75 runs scored below the league average) and pitching (36 runs allowed above the league average) without many additions to the team
After a coming in 6 games out of first place last year, the White Sox decided that they needed to add some power to their lineup and signed Adam Dunn to a 4 year, $56 million contract. Besides bringing in Dunn and a few changes in the bullpen, the 2010 and 2011 White Sox won’t be that much different in their personnel.
In the last couple days several players – most notably Adam Wainwright, but also Vicente Padilla and Nick Punto – have come up lame. Naturally, the loss of each of these players will have different effects on their teams’ respective win totals, as the Cardinals loss of Punto isn’t nearly as dramatic a blow as the news about Wainwright today. This season, I plan on tracking all players headed to the disabled list during the season including information on the injury, the amount of WAR and salary that were lost, along with several other factors
First of all, here is the spreadsheet to be viewed or downloaded containing all the players on or heading to the Nick Johnson List for 2011. As of right now, no player is officially on the DL, but several players will definitely be placed on the DL by opening day. I hope to keep this sheet updated daily by adding players as their information becomes available.
With two of the game’s better players, Justin Morneau and Jason Bay, spending considerable time on the DL last year because of concussions, I decided to take a look at how concussions have been reported and the possible effects head injuries might have on player performance. Thanks to the hard work of Matthew Grosdidier, who compiled most of the data, we have some interesting numbers to look at on head-related trauma.