Archive for Daily Graphings

When the Diamondbacks traded Justin Upton to Atlanta last week, the reaction was mostly negative, and was mostly centered around the idea that Arizona traded three years of a young star for a one year rental and some marginal prospects. However, from Arizona’s perspective, they weren’t acquiring one year of Martin Prado; they were acquiring the rights to sign Martin Prado to a long term contract, and they just announced that they’ve done just that.

The four year deal is worth $40 million, according to Ken Rosenthal, and will cover his final season of arbitration eligibility and three years of free agency. He was already set to make approximately $7 million in 2013 — he had asked for $7.05 million, while Atlanta had countered at $6.65 million — so this can essentially be seen as a three year, $33 million extension that covers 2014 through 2016.

Considering what other similar players got in free agency this winter, 3/33 for Prado has a pretty good chance of working out decently for Arizona.

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I have a theory about front offices, and about baseball organizations in general. It seems to me that everybody’s trending in the direction of getting smarter about the game. There are fewer things within the game to exploit, because everyone’s got better awareness and understandings. I believe that, over time, front offices will come to closely resemble one another, strengthening the correlation between team success and team payroll. The front-office extremes will be closer together, and teams will depend more on money and luck. It’s just a theory and we’re not there yet, but it seems to be a sensible conclusion.

About those extremes, and about better understandings — today, we’re still trying to nail down evaluations of defensive performance. When people complain about WAR, they almost always begin by complaining about UZR, because UZR isn’t perfect or even anywhere close to it. But while we’ve still got a ways to go with regard to defensive quantification, over the last several years tremendous progress has been made. I probably don’t need to explain it to you, because you are smart. We’re getting numbers, the numbers usually aren’t dreadfully inaccurate, and people better understand that defense is important and can make a whale of a difference. Finding good defenders is no longer something to be exploited; defense isn’t nearly as underrated as it used to be.

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“Ken Caminiti calls it his goody bag. The black and green duffel accompanies him on every road trip, along with his bats and the black mitt that helped him win his second Gold Glove award last season.

“I take it everywhere,” the San Diego Padres third baseman says, pulling it out of his locker stall before a game in Atlanta recently. “It’s part of my routine.”

Caminiti unzips the bag and reveals bottles and zip-locked bags of pills, vitamins and nutritional supplements. He opens one packet and shoves a handful of capsules into his mouth viking-style, all but swallowing the plastic.”

The above is the lede to Pete Williams’s 1997 USA TODAY story titled “Lifting the game: Creatine is baseball’s new gunpowder.” It’s not the only incredible part of the story when viewed through the lens of what we now know about performance enhancing drugs. The entire story is required reading, but a few snippets demand extra attention.

Hat tip to Bomani Jones for digging this story up early Wednesday morning.

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As promised, there’s only a few instructs reports left but it’s lasted me the (most warm in Florida) winter as junior colleges started this week and I was in the Dominican last week to see the top July 2 players. Along those lines, this wrap-up from Phillies camp will lead off with a high profile American but finish with three recent international signees that caught my eye.

Larry Greene signed with the Phillies for $1 million as the 39th overall pick in the supplemental round of the 2011 draft. Greene is from the South Georgia, the same area that has recently produced Buster Posey, Kaleb Cowart and Byron Buxton. Unfortunately, Greene isn’t the same kind of prospect but, as the signing bonus suggests, he has the tools to be a successful big leaguer. The first thing you notice about Greene physically also stands out on the roster—the Phillies updated his height and weight to 6’1, 259. That should create a certain mental image, but Greene isn’t fat and runs better than you’d expect; think NFL fullback. And don’t think Ryan Howard because that’s really lazy.

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Dave Eiland isn’t a big fan of teaching the cutter, nor does he feel a true curveball can be easily taught. That doesn’t mean the Kansas City Royals pitching coach isn’t a master of his craft. Highly respected among his peers, he played 10 big-league seasons and spent eight years as a pitching coach in the Yankees system — three with the parent club — before joining the Royals. Eiland shared his thoughts on tutoring young pitchers during a late-summer visit to Fenway Park.

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David Laurila: What is your primary responsibility as a big-league pitching coach?

Dave Eiland: To get the absolute most I can out of the pitchers’ abilities. To do that, I focus on their strengths and on improving their weaknesses. I also concentrate on how their strengths match up to the hitters’ weaknesses. I do that with film work, studying hitters’ strengths and weaknesses, and how each individual pitcher can use their strengths to attack those weaknesses.

DL: What role do scouting reports play?

DE: They play a big role, and I do my own scouting reports. By studying film, I know where certain holes are and what pitches hitters can and can’t handle in certain areas and counts. I know their tendencies in certain counts.

A lot goes into it, but I try to keep the information that I give to pitchers simple. I don’t want to overload them with so much stuff that everything starts running together. Then you have paralysis by analysis.

DL; Is the amount of information you share with pitchers handled on a case-by-case basis?

DE: They all read the same scouting reports, Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not going to go over what Pace is again, because not only have I written about it several times — it’s also perfectly intuitive, such that you should understand it on the first try. Pace isn’t important, for baseballing purposes, but Pace is important for watchability purposes, therefore Pace is of some importance to us as fans. It’s tracked at FanGraphs, for both pitchers and hitters, and also for whole teams and leagues. It is a statistic not unworth examining.

In the past, I’ve played with opposite extremes. In September, I wrote about Mark Buehrle facing Carlos Pena. Pace tells us that Buehrle is the fastest-working pitcher, while Pena is the slowest-working hitter. I wanted to see what would happen to their Paces during head-to-head showdowns, and the results split the middle. More recently, I wrote about Jonathan Papelbon facing Michael Bourn. Similar idea in mind, with Pace telling us Papelbon is the slowest-working pitcher, while Bourn is the fastest-working hitter. Preliminary results showed a Pace right on Papelbon’s slow average. Bourn didn’t make Papelbon speed up.

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From 2001 to 2006, Freddy Garcia posted six consecutive seasons with 200 or more innings pitched, and while he wasn’t an ace, he was an above average durable starting pitcher. That skillset helped him earn about $45 million during his three arbitration seasons and the three years of free agency that the White Sox bought after acquiring him from Seattle. He was a valued asset for his durability and consistency.

Then, in 2007, his shoulder started hurting. He tried to pitch through it, but his performance suffered, and finally he underwent season ending shoulder surgery in August. As damaged goods, he was only able to land a minor league contract with the Tigers for 2008, and that began a pattern that continues to this day.

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All baseball managers have strategies, and all manager strategies are supposed to function to maximize a team’s chances of winning. They don’t all work out that way, of course, and one need only explore the world of sacrifice bunts, but the managers’ hearts are in the right place. When managers get involved, they do so because they believe their involvement will bump the chances of winning the game. And managers don’t like to concede a game before it’s over, and one could never be critical of a manager for not giving up. There always exists some chance of victory, before the conclusion, and there’s something noble about pursuing long odds. But the necessity of managerial involvement follows a spectrum. In close games, in high-leverage situations, it makes the most sense to try something strategic. In not-close games, there’s hardly any benefit, so while such strategizing isn’t pointless, it is the most pointless.

As a sort-of example, the Giants closed out the Cardinals in the NLCS in Game 7. The Giants were up 1-0 after one, 2-0 after two, and 7-0 after three. It was still 7-0 at the seventh-inning stretch, with the Giants at home. They’d add two more runs, just for the hell of it. In the top of the eighth, Bruce Bochy replaced Santiago Casilla with specialist Javier Lopez. In the top of the ninth, with two outs, Bochy replaced Lopez with closer Sergio Romo. Bochy managed as if the game were close when it wasn’t, and there wasn’t much in the way of benefit. But Bochy gets a pass, because (A) whatever, and (B) it was Game 7 of the NLCS and those are high stakes. This was essentially pointless strategizing in a very important baseball game.

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More than any other pitcher in 2012, Edinson Volquez captured why park effects matter. The Padres’ righty exhibited a similar profile at home and on the road — lots of strikeouts (8.9 K/9 home, 8.5 away), walks (5.0 BB/9 home, 5.4 BB/9 away) and ground balls (53 percent home, 48 percent away). All marks were slightly better at home, as expected, but there’s nothing in the basics to suggest a significant home/road split.

Except, of course, he pitched for San Diego. Volquez posted a 2.95 ERA behind just three home runs allowed (0.3 HR/9) at Petco Park but was ravaged on the road to the tune of a 5.60 ERA and 11 home runs allowed (1.2 HR/9).

The aggregate Volquez was a below average but still useful pitcher — he posted a 114 ERA- and 113 FIP-, numbers typical of a fourth or (more likely) fifth starter. A mediocre pitcher finding acehood within the Petco Park walls is nothing new, but it does raise a question: does the pitcher change his style to fit his surroundings when his home park is extreme?

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We are proud to have three pieces from FanGraphs and three pieces from our partners at The Hardball Times nominated for the SABR Analytics Awards. However, we are also big fans of the great work being done at other publications, and think that every nominee listed below is worthy of your consideration. Please vote for whatever piece you feel best represents the category it was nominated in, regardless of where it was published.

Here’s your chance to vote for the 2013 SABR Analytics Research Awards winners.

To read any of the finalists, click on the link below. Scroll down to cast your vote. Read the rest of this entry »