Archive for Daily Graphings

Ladies and gentlemen, The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2014 is now ready and waiting to be devoured. It is the 10th edition of the book. That’s a momentous sort of thing, and it wouldn’t be possible without all the painstaking work that Dave Studeman has put into it — and the site — for the past decade.

This is my second year working on the book, and it has been a fantastic experience both years. I won’t bog you down with all the gory details, but suffice to say that this year’s book is pretty spectacular.

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Just a few years ago, in 2011, the two Most Valuable Player awards were given to Justin Verlander and Ryan Braun. They were fine choices, both, but just according to WAR, the two best players in baseball that year were Jacoby Ellsbury and Matt Kemp. Ellsbury, at 27, was a nine-win everyday center fielder. Kemp, at 26, was an eight-win everyday center fielder. Both of them had the look of long-term franchise players, but both stumbled in 2012 and still haven’t returned to that previous level. Now, during the 2013-2014 MLB offseason, both Ellsbury and Kemp appear to be available. And they are, naturally, two of the biggest available names.

Ellsbury, of course, is available as a free agent, and Scott Boras has drawn parallels to the Carl Crawford contract. Ellsbury could be looking at something like six years and $130-140 million. Kemp is available as a trade target, as the Dodgers are said to be shopping Kemp, Crawford, and Andre Ethier in order to better accommodate Yasiel Puig and clear some payroll space. Kemp’s under contract for another six years at $128 million. The Kemp and Ellsbury money could be very similar. Somebody is going to pay that amount to Ellsbury on purpose. Kemp, though, probably can’t be moved without the Dodgers eating some cash. As similar as the two players might look, it’s probable that, at this point, Matt Kemp’s trade value is negative.

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Earlier this week, I posted about the best bunts of the 2013 regular season according to Win Probability Added. You can read about the basic idea (and its limits) there. Now that we have looked at the best, why not a few of the worst?

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Here at FanGraphs, we have two different models of pitcher WAR: one based on FIP, and one based on runs allowed. These represent the extreme opposite ends of the viewpoints on how much credit or blame a pitcher should receive for events in which his teammates have some significant influence. If you go with strictly a FIP-based model, a pitcher is only judged on his walks, strikeouts, and home runs, and the events of hits on balls in play and the sequencing of when events happen are not considered as part of the evaluation.

If you go with the RA9-based model, then everything that happens while the pitcher is on the mound — and in some cases, what happens after they are removed for a relief pitcher — is considered the pitcher’s responsibility, and he’s given full credit or blame for what his teammates do while he’s pitching.

Both of these models are wrong. It is evidently clear that pitchers have some influence over the rate of which their balls in play are turned into hits, and the order in which the events they give up occur, but it also evident that they are not solely responsible for those two things. The quality of defensive support behind a pitcher, and the timing of when the defense either bails out or screws over their teammate, has an impact on a pitcher’s runs allowed total. The truth of nearly every pitcher’s performance lies somewhere in between his FIP-based WAR and his RA9-based WAR.

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First unnecessary reminder: big-league baseball players are extraordinarily talented, each and every one of them. Second unnecessary reminder: big-league baseball players are also imperfect, prone to frequent mistakes. For evidence of the former, consider most of the action in every game, where pitchers are throwing balls that move at 95 miles per hour and hitters are sometimes hitting them fair and far. For evidence of the latter, consider missed spots or off-balance swings. Consider errors on what would ordinarily be routine plays. Baseball games are littered with material for the positive and cynical alike.

A fun thing to examine is pitcher strike rates in 3-and-0 counts against pitchers, or in 3-and-0 counts with the bases loaded. You’d expect much higher strike rates than you actually observe. In this way, we see that pitchers are flawed when it comes to their ability to throw to a rectangle. Sticking with 3-and-0 counts, we can find something of a hitter equivalent. In those counts, pitchers usually want to throw strikes. In those counts, hitters usually want to swing only at hittable strikes. So we can find hitter mistakes by exploring swings in 3-and-0 counts at pitches out of the zone. You can think of them as momentary breakdowns in discipline.

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Monday morning brought the startling news that the Atlanta Braves will be leaving Turner Field in downtown Atlanta at the end of the 2016 season for a new ballpark in neighboring Cobb County. The ballpark will be just 20 years old when the Braves depart. It opened in 1997, after the city of Atlanta converted its Olympic Stadium into what was then a state-of-the-art ballpark. But according to the Braves, Turner Field is in need of $150 million in renovations and upgrades, on top of the $125 million the Braves have spent on improvements to date. Even then, says the team, the ballpark would still sit in an area of downtown Atlanta that is not easily accessible by public transportation and that is surrounded by parking lots and little other economic development, which hampers the fan experience.

Instead, the Braves will reportedly invest that money and more into a new ballpark in unincorporated Cobb County, about 14 miles northwest of Turner Field.  The team purchased 60 acres near the intersection of Interstates 75 and 285 and plans to develop not just a new ballpark, but mixed-use properties (residential and commercial), parking lots, and open/green space.  Here’s a map showing where Turner Field is located (A) and where the new ballpark will be built (B).

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Players are sent to the Arizona Fall League for all sorts of reasons. The MLB-owned prospect-laden fall league serves as a domestic winter league, and so teams use it as they wish. But once you are selected as an all-star, an AFL Rising Star, you’ve got a unique stamp of approval, something akin to being an all-star in a league of all-stars. And now that the Rising Stars game has been around since 2006, we have some data to see exactly what that selection means for a prospect.

Some teams send players to Arizona because they were injured during the year and need to build up arm strength, innings pitched, or plate appearances. Some teams send players to try out a new position. Some teams send fast-track prospects from the low minors so that they preview what play in the high minors will look like. Some teams send polished picks straight from the college ranks so that they can skip a level on their way to the bigs. Some teams send prospects they might like to trade so that they might look better to future trade partners after some time in the offensive-friendly league. Most teams send players that face the Rule 5 draft if they aren’t moved to the forty-man roster.

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At around 11 pm eastern time last night, Philadelphia television and radio host Howard Eskin reported the following on Twitter:

#phillies GM Ruben Amaro deep in serious talks w #bluejays to acquire OF Jose Batista. Can also play 3rd. Phils would deal OF Dom Brown plus

— Howard Eskin (@howardeskin) November 13, 2013

As I write this several hours later, no other media entity has followed up on the report, either confirming or debunking, so as I get write this before I go to bed, I am unaware of whether this is a rumor to be taken seriously or something that is more conjecture than reality. So, consider this post less of an analysis of a potential Jose Bautista/Domonic Brown trade and more a collection of thoughts that I’ve had since reading the reactions to the rumor. I will note that these thoughts are mostly directed towards Phillies fans who find abhorrent the idea of acquiring one of the game’s best players.

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Everyone understands that not all bunts are a bad idea, right? The auto-sacrifice has (I think) mostly fallen out of favor with fans and teams, but as a nice illustration of sabermetrics’ infinite task, the analysis of bunts continues to evolve. The bunt as a piece of traditional baseball strategy was (and in some circles, continues to be) a target for early sabermetric analyses. But as the field grew more sophisticated, the analysis grew more subtle: a bunt may or may not be a good idea depending on the base/out/game situation, the skill of the bunter, and the position of the fielders.

A more sophisticated analyzing which bunts represent the best process (as opposed to results) would take, well, days of searching through game logs. Analyzing which bunts were the best executed would be an even more onerous burden. For this particular annual tradition, I have chosen the much simpler task of which bunts of the 2013 regular had the best result as measured by Win Probability Added.

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The posting system — the agreement that governs player movement between the teams of Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan and Major League Baseball in America — looks like it’ll be changing this winter. We tackled the reasons why this might happen during the first round of rumors, but it’s worth revisiting now that more particulars are coming to light.

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