From David DeJesus‘ 2003 debut through his 2010 season, the versatile outfielder hit 90 wRC+ (1175 PA) against left-handed pitchers. Since then, DeJesus has mustered a lulzwut 29 wRC+ (327 PA) against lefties. Despite his one-sided floundering in the past three seasons, DeJesus managed to procure a three-year contract extension from the Rays.
We all had a good sense going into things last season that the Tigers would have a pretty lousy team defense. The Tigers themselves understood defense wasn’t the priority, and in the end, they allowed the second-highest BABIP in the American League. Yet Max Scherzer, individually, finished at .259. At the other end of the spectrum, the Royals and Cubs featured pretty good overall team defenses. Edwin Jackson allowed a .322 BABIP. Wade Davis allowed a .361 BABIP. Defensive performance, not unlike run support, varies, and different pitchers can get different levels of support from the same group of gloves. Of course, BABIP isn’t explained by defense 100%, but it is a major component. It’s defense, pitching, and luck.
Along similar lines, just as we understand which teams do and do not have good defenses, we’re developing an understanding of which teams do and do not have good pitch-receivers behind the plate. The Braves, for example, have long had quality receivers. Ryan Doumit’s employers, meanwhile, have been a catastrophe. But pitch-receiving performance also varies, in large part just because of our small sample sizes, meaning two different guys on the same staff can end up pitching to different strike zones. So while we’ve talked about catchers here, I want to spend this post talking about pitchers. Which pitchers in 2013 threw to the biggest zones? Which pitchers threw to the smallest ones?
Right around Opening Day, Forbes publishes its annual report on MLB team valuations. There is information on team revenues, debt, net income, and overall franchise value. The 2013 valuations, published in March, relied on 2012 numbers, plus a bit of forecasting about teams likely to land new, lucrative local TV contracts soon.
Now Bloomberg Business is getting into the act. A few weeks ago, Bloomberg published its own MLB team valuations, along with a terrific infographic comparing each team to the 29 others. Bloomberg also dug a bit deeper, and broke down each team’s revenue into gate receipts, concessions, sponsorships, and media rights. Bloomberg also used 2012 numbers, but reflected higher revenue and valuation figures than Forbes’ report from earlier this year.
By no means am I a veteran of the press box. But already I’ve tapped into a strange phenomenon that may be universal to all baseball writers — I’m not rooting for a team, I’m rooting for my story.
For example. Going into the American League Division Series, I decided I would do some research on the home field advantage offered by the extensive foul ground in Oakland. After gathering some quotes — easy, considering the optics of Josh Donaldson, running forever for a foul ball — I was ready for a Game-Changing Moment. A foul ball over the bullpen mound in the late innings. A missed foul ball by the Tigers. I was rooting for a foul ball.
Baseball Savant is a wonderful online resource, the sort of resource a part of me doesn’t want to talk about in fear of you guys finding out all my secrets. It’s a place where you can run your own PITCHf/x queries, and the site chooses to split its strike zone up into nine equivalent areas. That’s the approximate rulebook strike zone, and presented below — from the catcher’s perspective — please find the 2013 league called-strike rate by sub-zone. This is simply called strikes / (called strikes + called balls).
Baseball has always had its share of eccentrics. Mark Fidrych talked to the ball. Moises Alou urinated on his hands to get a better grip on his bat. Then there was Turk Wendell, about whom the Chicago Tribune wrote:
Consider this a partial list:
He doesn’t wear socks on the field. He waves at the center-fielder before each inning. He brushes his teeth between innings. He makes three crosses with a finger in the mound dirt before he pitches. When the inning is done, he sprints from the mound, leaps sideways over the foul line and spits out what appears to be four pounds of black licorice.
And he eats the same dinner at the same restaurant chain the night before every start: French onion soup. Peel-and-eat shrimp. Broccoli bites. Salad. Garlic sticks. Four-cheese lasagna. And something called `Death by Chocolate’ for dessert.
“I eat it all in about 15 minutes,” he said. “I say, `Bring it out all at once.’ “
The Only Nolan may have topped them all.
Read the rest of this entry »
Coming into the 2013 season, Neil Wagner was a 29-year-old right-handed reliever with all of five big-league innings under his belt. Prior to signing with Toronto last November, he had bounced from the Indians to the A’s to the Padres. A former 21st-round pick out of North Dakota State, he was a minor-league journeyman.
With the help of his trusty notebook, Wagner became a bona fide Blue Jay. After beginning the campaign in Triple-A Buffalo, where he logged a 0.76 ERA and 16 saves, he ended up being one of the most-reliable arms in the Toronto bullpen. Called up in late May, he went 2-4, 3.79 as one of the few pleasant surprises on a underachieving team.
Wagner talked about his stat-influenced road to success when the Blue Jays visited Fenway Park in September. Read the rest of this entry »
Robinson Cano just turned 31, and the FanGraphs crowd expects him to sign an eight year contract this winter that will take him through 2021, his age-38 season. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that he lands a nine or ten year deal, as Prince Fielder and Albert Pujols did a couple of years ago, and ends up getting signed through age-40. And it’s not a controversial statement to say that Robinson Cano is unlikely to still be a highly productive player at that point in his career.
Any team that signs Cano this winter is going to be be guaranteeing him in the range of $25 million per year for years in which Cano should reasonably be projected as a below average player, and maybe even a guy who shouldn’t be starting for a big league team. The negotiations for his services are essentially going to center around how many years a team is willing to guarantee Cano a significant paycheck while expecting almost nothing in return. The team that eventually gets to sign him will be the team that gives him the most “dead money” years.
This is what free agency for elite players has evolved into. Instead of negotiating on annual salary, the market has evolved to negotiate on years. Let’s look at some data, so you don’t have to take my word for it.
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: HEYO
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: Lyrics of the day come from a song that’s either searing social commentary or a love ballad about survival:
And naaw I don’t want to see your thongs |
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whoa, so early today |
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Hiya! |
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LET’S GET IT STARTED |
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: Starting with an interlude. Just cause.
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Here’s the simplest smart offseason rule of thumb: it should never be about specific improvements. It should be about improvements, however. No team needs to go out and try to land some right-handed power hitting. Those teams just need to get better. No team needs to go out and try to land a left-handed starting pitcher. Those teams just need to get better. The St. Louis Cardinals don’t necessarily need to replace Pete Kozma with a superior shortstop. They just need to get better, and if they get better somewhere else, great. They should get a shortstop. But they don’t need to get a shortstop to have a good offseason, is the point. When it comes to improving, it pays to be as open-minded as possible.
But even if we all know that to be true, we still feel in our hearts like we wish our teams had more of one or two things. We tend to want more dingers, or more defense, or more quality baserunning, or less attempted baserunning, or more flamethrowers in the bullpen. We think a lot in terms of acquiring specific skills, even if that isn’t or shouldn’t be the point, and these days one more specific skill we can quantify is pitch-receiving. There are fans out there who are rooting for their team to sign a good framer of pitches. Or, rooting for their team to not sign a bad framer of pitches. Pitch-framing is a thing we think we understand, now, and below, I’m going to share with you the framing numbers for this year’s crop of free-agent catchers. You can thank Matthew Carruth and StatCorner.com. I was left to do just the easy work.
