Jeff Passan is one of the most aggressive advocates for FanGraphs in the mainstream media, regularly citing data and concepts from our leaderboards and helping to educate the masses about different ways of viewing baseball. He’s certainly not an old-school guy who wants to be left alone with his pitcher wins and RBIs, and he’s more than happy to embrace new ideas supported by data. But he still has some problems with WAR, and specifically, the defensive component that can allow lesser hitters to be listed as among the most valuable players in the game alongside some of baseball’s greatest sluggers. To get an entire sense of his argument, read the whole piece, but here’s a selection that sums up his argument:

Defense does have its place in WAR. Just not in its present incarnation, not until we know more. Not until we can account for positioning on the field. Not until we can find out the exact speed a ball leaves a bat and how quickly the fielder gets a jump and the angle on the ball and the efficiency with which he reaches it. Not until we understand more about fielding, which will allow us to understand how to properly mete out value on a defensive play, which may take years, yes, but look how long it took us to get to this point, where we know more about hitting and pitching than anyone ever thought possible.

The hackneyed Luddites who bleat “WAR, what is it good for, absolutely nothing” should not see this as a sympathetic view. On the contrary, WAR is an incredible idea, an effort to democratize arguments over who was best. Bringing any form of objectivity to such singularly subjective statements is extremely challenging and worthwhile work.

Which is why this at very least warrants more of a conversation among those who are in charge of it. They’ve changed WAR formulas before. They’ll change them again. And when they do, hopefully the reach of defensive metrics will be minimized.

I don’t agree with everything Passan wrote in the piece, but his criticisms of the metric aren’t entirely off base. It is easier to evaluate run scoring than run prevention. WAR is flawed and an imperfect model. Some of the assumptions in the construction of the model may be entirely incorrect, and as we get more information, we may very well find that some of the conclusions that WAR suggested were incorrect, and maybe not by a small amount. Just as the statistical community is quick to highlight the problems with pitcher wins and RBIs, it is fair for Passan to highlight the problems with WAR, especially if the purpose of that discussion is to help improve the model.

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We can’t ever be sure exactly who a player is. Some guys are easier to project than others. Some guys have many years of data and consistent results. Guys like Hunter Pence or Ben Zobrist. Other guys have minimal data and inconsistent results. Danny Salazar is a guy like that.

Nevertheless, a large portion of what we do is try to figure out exactly who players are. We can’t have a definitive answer as to what a player’s true talent level is, but we do have data. We do have video, and we do have people inside the game with whom to converse. Let’s combine these three things and try to figure out what to make of Danny Salazar.

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Matt Kemp has had a terrible season.

He’s been worth only 0.9 WAR — close enough within the margin of error to refer to him as a “replacement-level player” — and he’s being paid $21 million to do it. He was so awful in center field that the Dodgers removed him from the spot in late May despite not having a reasonable alternative. No, really, they first turned to Andre Ethier, then to Scott Van Slyke, then to Yasiel Puig — then pushed Kemp to left field before eventually finding him a home in right field. His reaction to the move was so poor that he didn’t start for five consecutive games, around which he had an 0-18 streak. His agent, former pitcher Dave Stewart, couldn’t stop talking about how much he’d like to see a trade. That didn’t happen, obviously, in part because no one would reasonably want any part of his large contract.

Matt Kemp has had a great season.

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Joe Nathan and Glen Perkins agree that closers could earn more multiple-inning saves and throw more overall innings. But they don’t necessarily feel they should, and they certainly don’t see it happening.

Once upon a time, it wasn’t all that uncommon for a team’s top bullpen arm to log a lot of action. Notable examples are Mike Marshall, John Hiller and Goose Gossage.

In a six-year stretch from 1971-1976, Marshall averaged 73.5 appearances and 137 innings, and twice led the league in saves. Between 1973-1974, Hiller averaged 62 appearances and 137 innings, and had a 38-save season. Gossage averaged 56 appearances and 78 innings in the 10 seasons in which he saved at least 20.

Five closers have at least 40 saves so far this year, and all are averaging less than an inning per appearance. Of them, only Trevor Rosenthal – currently at 66 – is likely to finish with as many as 70 innings.

Nathan and Perkins are used in much the same manner. Over his career, Nathan has thrown 746 innings in 738 relief outings. In his three seasons as a closer, Perkins has pitched 192 innings in 191 appearances. Earlier this summer I asked both if a return to the Marshall-Hiller-Gossage days was possible. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a sign of the times that, when you think about Mike Zunino, you might well first think of his defense. He’s proven himself to be a tremendous receiver of pitches, and when you fold in the rest of his defensive skillset, Zunino has a lot of value, even independent of his bat. There’s evidence to suggest that Zunino is one of the people behind Felix Hernandez’s Cy Young-caliber campaign, and Zunino’s been trusted as a staff leader in his first full year in the bigs. Behind the plate, and off the field, Zunino scores high marks. At the plate, he’s also been interesting, but in more of a peculiar way.

It’s easy enough to look at the normal numbers. An 84 wRC+? He’s young, and, good thing he plays a premium defensive position. A .199 average, a .254 OBP, and a .404 slugging? This provides more insight on the sort of hitter Zunino is — he’s the picture of an over-aggressive power hitter, and you can see why his offensive profile has drawn comparisons to J.P. Arencibia. We’re familiar with this kind of hitter, and most teams probably have at least one or two of this kind of hitter. But it’s in the more minute details that Zunino’s season really stands out.

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I’m a member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, which means that I’m part of the pool of writers who are asked to cast ballots for MLB’s postseason awards. The MVP and Cy Young are the two big ones that get most of the attention, and then there’s Rookie of the Year, which has more recently turned into the Prominent International Star Who Made His MLB Debut This Year award — Jose Abreu will be accepting that one for 2014, though they’ll probably stick with the shorter title for now.

There’s also a fourth award that BBWAA members are asked to vote on — Manager of the Year. It’s the one award that we’re asked to give out that doesn’t go to a player, and not coincidentally, it’s the one in which there is usually the least consensus. Last year, nine American League managers received at least one vote in one of the three slots listed on the ballot, which might not sound like a lot until you remember that there are only 15 managers in the American League, so more managers got votes than those who didn’t.

This is what happens when you ask a panel of diverse members to try and come to agreement on a subject that is inherently difficult to measure. This challenge is compounded by the fact that there is literally no criteria or guidance provided along with the ballot. For comparison, the MVP ballot contains the following instructions:

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The Royals lead the American League Central by one game over the Tigers after Detroit defeated the Indians Thursday night, 11-4 in 11 innings. The teams are even in wins with 77; the Tigers have two additional losses. The Royals are 19-19 in blowout games and 20-22 in one run games. For the Tigers, those numbers are 23-18 (blowouts) and 20-18 (one run games). Both teams have a higher winning percentage on the road and both have dominated in interleague games.

This morning, FanGraphs’ playoff odds gave the Tigers a 54.5% chance of taking the division. The Royals’ odds are at 44.4%. No other division race features such closely-divided odds. Even in the National League West race between the Dodgers and Giants — which the Dodgers lead by two games with 22 to play — FanGraphs gives LA an 83.3% chance of winning the division.

If you believe the projections, the AL Central race is as close as it can get between the Royals and the Tigers. And yet the teams have reached this point in completely different ways. Read the rest of this entry »

Clayton Kershaw is having one of those all-time seasons, the kind of season that causes you to reflect on Pedro Martinez and some of his own all-time seasons. Kershaw is running a 1.70 ERA, and a big chunk of that is due to one brief start in the middle of May. The last time Kershaw left a game with an ERA more than 2 was June 29, and while we all recognize that ERA leaves out unearned runs, including Kershaw’s unearned runs lifts his runs-allowed average all the way up to 1.75, because his unearned-runs total is 1. Kershaw’s been a human sort of perfect. Even though he missed the whole month of April, he’s almost a shoo-in for the NL Cy Young, and he’ll get a lot of attention for the league most valuable player. Clayton Kershaw has stepped it up a level, from already having been Clayton Kershaw before.

Let’s think about what makes a great starting pitcher. I mean, in the most general terms. You want a guy to have at least reasonable stuff. Unless the stuff is extremely overpowering, then it’s important to mix up speeds and it’s important to hit locations. One thinks of a lot of ace pitchers as being able to spot the baseball where they want, and absolutely, great pitchers know how to pitch around edges. Kershaw’s no exception. His command this year has been better than ever. What you don’t think of ace pitchers as doing is hurling the ball down the middle very often. That’s the danger zone, the area where you find the bulk of the meatballs. Turns out Kershaw’s not afraid of going down the pipe. Turns out Kershaw doesn’t really get hurt there very much.

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Hey there everybody, and welcome to the second part of the year’s fifth edition of The Worst Of The Best. Here’s a link to the complete series archive, for you to print out and turn into a volume for your coffee table. And here’s a link to the first part, from several hours ago. This is the right place for you to be, if you’re fixing to see a bunch of bad missed swings. This is decidedly the wrong place for you to be, if you’re hankering for a bunch of sweet dingers. If it’s neither of those things that you seek, well what am I supposed to do, I’m not a mind-reader. Just say what you’re thinking for God’s sake and don’t make a guessing game of your preferences. There are more important things than communication, but most of them, like breathing, are automatic.

So, wild swings, month of August, PITCHf/x, distance from the center of the strike zone. All the usual stuff. Clearly checked swings are excluded, and so are swing attempts during hit-and-runs. Hits-and-run? Regular readers presumably skip right over this paragraph because it never introduces anything new. One of these days I’ll throw in a little twist and then we’ll see who benefits from skimming. I’m just kidding, I’m forever stuck in my ways. Still to come is a top-five list and a next-five list. Also, there are two bonus entries, which I couldn’t include in the countdown but which I also couldn’t ignore. There are basically three sorts of events that could qualify a play for a bonus entry. Here come two of them. By the way, congratulations, you’re not dead, and you have a computer! How great is life?

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By at least one stat, Giants rookie second baseman Joe Panik is top-two at his position in the National League. Look at his numbers coming up, and this seems about what you might expect. It turns out that, while he’s had to adjust to the big leagues, much of his current success can be attributed to not changing.

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