Yesterday, I posed a thought experiment that had recently been posed to me: if Mike Trout were to become a free agent but declare that he would only sign a one year contract, how much would you offer him for the 2014 season alone? 2,800 people submitted answers — well, a little north of 2,800 now, but I had to dump the data into Excel at some point — and the results are pretty interesting. Let’s get right to them.
Last month, I asked 10 big-league players if hitting is more of an art or more of a science. I posed the same question to Luke Scott. Not surprisingly, his answer was both thoughtful and interesting. Love him or hate him — the Tampa Bay Rays outfielder is outspoken, charismatic and controversial — Scott understands his craft. He also describes it in way that only Luke Scott can.
Lately, Yasiel Puig has been in one of his slumps. For really the first time in his professional career, he’s been the target of a lot of criticism, some of it warranted and some of it over the top. Most significantly, he’s had some struggles at the plate, with his aggressive approach backfiring. Thursday afternoon, the Marlins pitched to him accordingly. The first four times Puig stepped up to the plate, he saw a first-pitch slider. The fifth time he did get a sinker, but by that point it was 6-0 in the ninth so for all I know the plan was ignored.
The first time Puig got a first-pitch slider, he popped it up. The third time he got a first-pitch slider, he fouled it off. The fourth time he got a first-pitch slider, he swung right through it. But the second time he got a first-pitch slider, he beat the living crap out of it. All four times, Puig swung at the slider. One of those times, he gave the ball a ride, or a punishment, depending on how you feel about balls and what they enjoy. There was something remarkable about that ball in play. Something potentially remarkable, at least.
Recently, I was asked what I think turns out to be a pretty interesting thought experiment: if Mike Trout was released by the Angels and became a free agent, but decided he did not want to sign long term with any other team and simply preferred to go year to year instead, where would the bidding war for a single year of Trout’s services end up?
This question gets at a lot of different points, many of them kind of fascinating. What percentage of a team’s total payroll can be allocated to one player while still leaving enough flexibility to put a contender around a superstar? Is a team better off allocating a majority of their available dollars to a few premium assets, then using low-cost filler to round out the roster, or by spreading their money around to multiple players in order to reduce the risk of one injury or a single bad year ruining their entire season? Should a team prefer an +8 WAR player over two +4 WAR players for the same cost?
The 2013 Atlanta Braves have the best record in baseball, at 77-49, and the most commanding lead of any team in the majors. Atlanta leads the second-place Washington Nationals by 15 games, and if both teams maintain their current winning percentages — .611 and .492, respectively — the Braves would finish 99-63 while the Nationals finished 80-82, winning the division by 19 games. That would actually be extraordinarily rare. Since 1901, only 14 teams have ever finished in first by as many as 19 games. Read the rest of this entry »
Today, the Reds placed Jonathan Broxton on the disabled list with an elbow injury that will require season ending surgery, bringing to an end a disappointing year that began with a pretty nifty paycheck over the off-season. Broxton is hardly the only relief pitcher who got paid last winter and hasn’t quite earned his salary this season, however. Below is a table noting the performances of the 13 relievers who signed mutli-year contracts over the winter.
Right now, Jacoby Ellsbury is presumably focused on helping the Red Sox, but a few months from now, Ellsbury should become a free agent. He probably isn’t thinking too much about that right now, but you could forgive other people for giving it a lot of attention, fans of non-contending teams, and even high-ranking employees of them. Ellsbury looks like an impact player who’s going to hit the open market, like the kind of player who can turn a decent team to a good team, and those who feel like he had just one fluke season would be wise to consider what he’s done in 2013.
Any talk about Ellsbury as a free-agent acquisition has to begin with his statistics. It’s those statistics that explain what he is as a player, and it’s those statistics that give the best indication of what he might become as he ages. Ellsbury, this year, is the owner of a 112 wRC+, and for his career, he’s the owner of a 109 wRC+. He routinely posts positive base-running values, and he also routinely posts positive defensive values. Through Wednesday’s action, Ellsbury’s running a .358 2013 OBP. A lot of people are going to be looking at that OBP. But what would you say if I told you that’s not actually his 2013 OBP at all?
Advancements in baseball research, and in our understanding of the game, have made it more difficult to be satisfied with a statistic. More and more, we’ve become aware of the holes, of the problems, of — sometimes — the game-theory considerations. Batting average was left behind when people realized singles and doubles aren’t the same thing. On-base percentage isn’t as good as park-adjusted on-base percentage. It’s great to have wRC+, but what was the quality of competition? To what extent did a hitter get lucky or unlucky? Everything can always be questioned, infinitely, and we’ve all become more able to perform the questioning.
Below I’m going to present a statistic that would’ve made me the happiest about six or seven years ago. Below, we’re going to review this season’s most unhittable individual pitches, as determined by contact rate against. After all, what better way to show which pitches are great and which pitches aren’t, than by looking at how often they’re hit by swings? Is this not one of the ideal measures of dominance?
Web Application Developer, Baseball Development
The St. Louis Cardinals are seeking a web application developer with a passion for baseball. This developer will collaborate with the Baseball Development team to build the Cardinals’ next generation of baseball analytics and scouting applications. The ideal candidate is a versatile developer with demonstrated ability for working within a team framework
Responsibilities
Qualifications
To apply, please send your resume to ccorrea@cardinals.com
I haven’t done one of these link pieces in a while, but thanks to Dan Brooks pointing this out on Twitter, I have a new site to recommend: Phil Roth’s MLB payroll visualization charts.
Basically, it takes player and team payroll information from Baseball Reference and puts it into a set of interactive charts that lets you see the variance in MLB payrolls among teams by year, as well as seeing the building blocks for each team in each year. Here’s a couple of screen shots, though the interactive graphics are much, much cooler than just static JPGs.
