Archive for Daily Graphings

There’s nothing at all strange about a city the size of Denver having a major-league baseball team. I’ve been to Denver. Not only is it big enough to have multiple gas stations — it’s big enough to have multiple kinds of gas stations. Where things do get strange is in the details. Denver, of course, is really high up, relative to where sea level is, and that makes for an unavoidably different baseballing experience. There’s nothing, really, to be done about it. Baseball in Denver’s played at altitude, so baseball in Denver’s a different sort of baseball.

Things happen differently there, and for that reason Denver’s a perfect case for why park factors have to exist for analysts to get anywhere. It’s simply an extreme hitter-friendly run environment. Now, when it comes to games in Denver, everyone, at least, is on a level playing field (literally!) (figuratively too). But there are games played outside of Denver, and additionally, there are players who are removed from Denver. Whenever a position player leaves the Rockies, people get worried that he’s going to fall apart, because he’ll miss the lopsided circumstances. With players who used to play in Colorado, there’s a tendency to be cautious, and perhaps even skeptical.

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There’s bad days, and then there’s what Sergio Romo had against the Mariners in the midst of an 18-3 thrashing on Saturday. Romo faced five batters in the eighth inning, and you can imagine the type of opposition you face in the eighth inning of a Cactus League game on March 8:

1. Leon Landry singles to right. Most people don’t know who Leon Landry is. I only do because I remember the Dodgers trading him for Brandon League. Landry hit .216/.262/.303 as a 23-year-old in Double-A last year. Somehow, Seattle still won that trade.
2. Ketel Marte singles to right. I have absolutely no idea who Ketel Marte is, though he appears to not be related to Starling, Alfredo, Damaso, Andy or vodka.
3. Ty Kelly walks. Ty, or Tyler, Kelly, was apparently traded to Seattle last year for Eric Thames. Thames hit .252/.315/.356 in Triple-A for Baltimore, was picked up on waivers by Houston in September, and was released in December to sign in Korea. That is what Ty Kelly was traded for.
4. Tyler Smith walks. As I’ve moved into my 30s, I’ve become resigned to the fact that every male younger than me is named “Tyler” or “Austin.” And wouldn’t you know it, there were three different Tyler Smiths in pro ball last year alone. This one was drafted out of Oregon State in June, and played for Pulaski. Bonus points if you can identify the state “Pulaski” is in.
5. Ji-Man Choi singles. Now there’s a name you know, if only because “Ji-Man” is an 80 name. Despite a .411 minor league OBP, Choi didn’t rank on our top 15 Mariners prospects, and didn’t rank on the same list of most other sites.

I could do the same for his first outing of the spring, when he allowed six runs in an inning to Oakland, but the point here isn’t really to go on a tour of the lower levels of the American League West. The point is that there’s a sizable portion of you, I imagine, who have heard of zero of those five names. And yet Sergio Romo, World Series closer, All-Star, among the best relievers in the game for the last five years, managed to retire exactly none of them. After four games, Romo has faced 23 batters, allowed 14 of them to reach, and 12 to score (11 earned).

So… panic, right? Even within the context of “spring numbers don’t matter”, because no quality big leaguer should have such trouble with a collection of names like that without hiding some kind of serious injury.  Read the rest of this entry »

It’s no secret that strikeouts are up, league-wide. And they aren’t only up from where they were in the past — they continue to rise, having risen eight consecutive years. The average batter last year struck out about once per five trips to the plate. Compared to 2005, last year there were five more strikeouts per two games. There is, of course, a limit to how high the strikeout rate can go, and strikeouts in 2013 were barely up from where they were in 2012, but still, it’s an important trend, and for some people it’s a worrisome one. I know that former colleague Rob Neyer has expressed much concern over how many strikeouts there are in the game today.

No one disagrees about the fact. Strikeouts are recorded by record-keepers, and the frequency of strikeouts is up. The real question concerns the explanation. Plenty of people have provided plenty of possible reasons for why the game has gone as it has. For example, a year ago, Dave noted a connection between the recent rise in strikeouts and the roll-out of PITCHf/x. The system allows for an accurate evaluation of the zone, and as it turns out, the zone has been growing. That’s some fascinating research, right there, but I wonder: how might we be able to isolate the strikeout effect of PITCHf/x? We can’t, really, but we can try. We just need to look somewhere else.

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Last week, in a move that has been hailed as simultaneously “bold” and “very bold” by the author himself, I published a largely irresponsible leaderboard of regressed pitching leaders from spring training so far.

That post’s existence in the world was predicated on three conditions, as follow:

(a) Spring-training stats don’t appear to be very predictive of regular-season stats; but

(b) The return of baseball is exciting, and invites consideration of some sort; and

(c) Research suggests that, of all spring-training stats, pitcher strikeouts and (to a lesser degree) walks are probably the closest thing to predictive.

Owing to the wild success of that first post, what follows is the a second — and ever current — SCOUT pitching leaderboard for spring training. SCOUT- combines regressed strikeout and walk rates in a kwERA-like equation to produce a number not unlike ERA-, where 100 is league average and below 100 is better than average. Note that xK% and xBB% stand for expected strikeout and walk rate, respectively.

Some notes:

• Washington’s Taylor Jordan has produced the most impressive spring-training performance among all pitchers, it would appear. His most recent appearance, this past Saturday against a lineup of mostly Atlanta starters, was the best of his three total ones (box): 3.0 IP, 12 TBF, 6 K, 0 BB. While Ross Detwiler is probably the favorite to win the last spot in the Nationals rotation, Jordan could merit consideration for starting duties, as well.
• Since last week’s edition of the irresponsible leaderboard, Detroit reliever Luke Putkonen has recorded two appearances and 3.0 innings, posting a 4:0 strikeout-to-walk ratio in the process. The performance isn’t very surprising: he produced an 87 xFIP- in ca. 30 major-league innings last year.
• Toronto’s Drew Hutchison produced this past week the second of his two very strong spring appearances, recording the following line (box): 3.0 IP, 12 TBF, 5 K, 1 BB. Hutchison has an “outside chance” of winning a rotation spot, said John Farrell* at the beginning of the month. One assumes his spring thus far hasn’t hurt those chances.

*As several readers have noted, it is John Gibbons and not Farrell currently employed to manage the Blue Jays.

Back in November, Ken Rosenthal reported that the asking price for Ervin Santana was “more than $100 million on a five year deal…” It’s mid-March, Santana is still unsigned, and over the weekend, he left the Proformance agency and is now looking to sign a one year deal for essentially the value of the qualifying offer. Instead of $100+ million over five years, he’s going to get $13 or $14 million for one year, and then try again next winter.

It didn’t have to be this way, of course. In that same early off-season report, Rosenthal listed Ricky Nolasco’s asking price at $80 million over five years; he signed for $50 million over four instead. It’s not that unusual for agents to throw out a high early valuation in an attempt to give themselves room to make concessions while still landing a high value contract. The problem for Santana isn’t so much that his initial ask was absurd — it was, of course — but that it didn’t adjust downwards quickly enough as the market told him that it was absurd. With a more aggressive response to what the market was saying about his value, Santana likely could have landed a deal in that $40 to $50 million range earlier in the off-season, before teams spent their money on other alternatives.

But because someone in Santana’s camp believed they could land a deal closer to their original price, the market moved on without him. His story is an example of how harmful it can be to have an unrealistic baseline heading into free agency. And unfortunately for Santana, the market simply doesn’t care about W/L record and ERA the way it used to. Anyone developing a free agent pricing model based on outdated statistics is going to be in for a rude awakening when the offers actually come rolling in, because teams are better at forecasting future value for aging free agents than they were even five years ago.

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Once upon a time, Franklin Morales was the future of the Rockies. That time was 2007 and 2008, but things have never really worked out the way they were supposed to for the Venezuelan lefty. Now though, he has a World Series ring, but more importantly, another opportunity to be a starting pitcher in the major leagues. Back in Colorado, Jhoulys Chacin’s spring training injury and Brett Anderson’s overall brittleness signal that the Rockies are going to need plenty of starting pitchers this season, and while Morales may not be in the rotation come Opening Day, he has a chance to be one of the first off the depth chart. It may be his last chance to prove he can start in the majors.

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Anthony Seratelli graduated from Seton Hall in May 2005 and didn’t play baseball again until May 2006. The year off wasn’t by choice. The New Jersey native was bypassed in the amateur draft. He went to numerous open tryouts looking for an opportunity. He drove to Philadelphia, he flew to Chicago and Minnesota. No teams were interested in his services.

Seratelli is now 31 years old and in camp with the New York Mets. He has a legitimate shot of making the team as a utility infielder.

His professional journey started with the Windy City Thunderbolts of the independent Frontier League. It wasn’t organized ball, but Seratelli was living his dream. Read the rest of this entry »

As we know, in any given year, the playing field isn’t exactly even. It’s just one of those things that we quietly accept, because there’s not really much of anything to be done about it. The hope just has to be that, over time, things more or less balance out. (They don’t, at least for teams in the AL East.) For 2014, as for all seasons, the playing field won’t be even. I already took a look at this by projecting divisional WAR. But that can still be taken to the next obvious step — team-by-team projected strengths of schedule, also by WAR.

See, some teams will play easier schedules, overall. Some teams will play more challenging schedules! The effect is relatively small, compared to just levels of talent, but at the extremes it can make a difference of a few wins. Which means it can make a difference between a playoff spot and not a playoff spot, or a protected pick and not a protected pick. From the divisional post, one could already kind of work out the toughest and the easiest schedules, but I thought I might as well just calculate the breakdowns.

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When I talked to Michael Roth, he said he wasn’t too familiar with Eric Stults. I suggested maybe he should be. Stults, a savvy southpaw for the San Diego Padres, mixed and matched his way to 11 wins and a 3.93 ERA last year. Roth has a similar skill set and could one day have the same kind of success.

Roth doesn’t overpower hitters. What he does is possess enough moxie to have reached the big leagues less than a year after the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim took him in the ninth round of the 2012 draft. A 24-year-old graduate of the University of South Carolina, Roth made 15 appearances out of the Angels bullpen. He went 1-1 with a 7.20 ERA in 20 innings.

There is no questioning Roth’s intelligence, on or off the field. Despite his lack of pure stuff, he helped pitch the Gamecocks to consecutive College World Series championships. In the classroom he earned a degree in international business. Read the rest of this entry »

I hope you don’t think this is going to be an extensive study. I hope you don’t want for this to be an extensive study. Because, look, here’s the deal:

And that’s it. Those are the results. You can leave now, enlightened, if you so choose. All that’s coming is explanation, commentary, and history, and some people want that and some people don’t. The AL East projects to be strong! The NL East projects to be strong, too, relative to something other than the rest of this year’s major-league baseball. Relative to that, it’s pretty weak.

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