Archive for Daily Graphings

In case you’d forgotten, where the Houston Astros used to be a National League baseball team, now they’re going to be an American League baseball team. It’s a big deal, because it’s a sort of pseudo-relocation, and it’s also been a long time coming since before the leagues were unbalanced and that didn’t make any sense. For years, we had one league with 14 teams and one league with 16 teams, and we didn’t just tolerate it — we hardly ever bothered to acknowledge it. Unbalanced leagues! Amazing!

The move has generated certain negative responses, both particular and broad. A lot of Astros fans aren’t happy, because they’ve grown to prefer NL baseball, and also because people prefer to remain unchanged, given their druthers. A lot of baseball fans aren’t happy, because now there’s going to be more regular interleague play, and people have strong feelings about that. And a lot of AL baseball fans aren’t happy, because the Astros are bad, they’re moving to the AL West, and the schedule is unbalanced. There’s a perception that the Astros will give an advantage to teams in the West, and therefore that they’ll give a disadvantage to teams in the Central and East.

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I recently wrote about my attempt to design an indicator that would predict when players were at a higher risk for having a collapse-type year. I named the metric CLIFFORD, referring to the fact that players identified by it were at risk of falling off a cliff offensively. My inspiration was Adam Dunn and his disastrous 2011, in which his wOBA declined by .113.

My initial research showed that 58% of collapse candidates identified by Marcel actually experience a wOBA decline of at least .03 (or 30 points)–2.43 times the likelihood of non-collapse candidates. Collapse candidates identified by CLIFFORD actually decreased by at least 30 points of wOBA 53% of the time–2.14 times the likelihood of non-collapse candidates.

Marcel initially appeared to do a better job identifying these candidates. If we knew nothing else outside of just the Marcel projection, our chances were better at identifying collapse candidates than if we used CLIFFORD (and, yes, the difference between the relative risk for both measures is statistically significant).

However, and here’s the bright spot, there was not much overlap between the two metrics.

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It’s January 29th and Michael Bourn is still a free agent. While Scott Boras is known for pulling late-winter rabbits out of his hat, the new free agent compensation system is proving to be a significant roadblock. As we talked about a month ago, the changes to the draft slot allocations have caused a reaction — an overreaction, perhaps — in draft pick valuations, and teams are no longer as willing to sacrifice a first round pick to sign veteran free agents. Combined with questions about how well his defensive skills will hold up as he gets older and a premium asking price, the result has been a depressed market for Bourn’s services, and no obvious resolution to the standoff.

So, the Mets — likely with some influence by Scott Boras — are apparently considering asking Major League Baseball to declare their first round pick protected, even though it falls outside of the top 10 picks, which were the ones declared off limits to compensation in the CBA. And the argument is actually kind of interesting.

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A report by the Miami New Times was published today, linking multiple Major League players to an anti-aging wellness clinic that was reportedly a front for supplying people with HGH and other PEDs.

Among the players named in the report: Alex Rodriguez, Nelson Cruz, Gio Gonzalez, and three players who were suspended by Major League Baseball last year (Bartolo Colon, Yasmani Grandal, and Melky Cabrera). Rodriguez is going to get the most attention, because he’s Alex Rodriguez, but the report suggests that Miami has become the new San Francisco in terms of providing PEDs to Major League players. Given the amount of players that live and train in the area during the off-season, that probably shouldn’t come as a huge surprise.

Major League Baseball has released the following statement in response to the report. Read the rest of this entry »

This afternoon, it was reported that the Rays will ink Kelly Johnson to a one-year deal. It’s an interesting match, as Johnson provides the Rays with the one thing that they like — a player who has been very good in the past but who still comes at a modest cost. He also gives Tampa manager Joe Maddon the thing that he likes best — options.

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This is a post with two potential introductions. We will deploy both one of them. By our numbers, a year ago, Michael Young was worth -1.4 WAR. He’s going to be a starter for the Phillies. A year ago, Ryan Howard was worth -1.0 WAR. He’s going to be a starter for the Phillies. A year ago, Delmon Young was worth -0.7 WAR. He’s supposedly going to be a starter for the Phillies. A year ago, Chone Figgins was worth -1.0 WAR. By reports, the Phillies are the last team to have expressed some interest. A year ago, Joe Mather was worth -1.5 WAR. He’ll be in Phillies camp on a minor-league deal. A year ago, Yuniesky Betancourt was worth -0.8 WAR. He’ll be in Phillies camp on a minor-league deal.

It’s misleading to present the numbers like that, but it’s also powerful. The Phillies are going to have a lot of talent on their roster, but they could also have a lot of players coming off really bad seasons. For now, it doesn’t mean much that Mather and Betancourt will be in camp, because they’re on minor-league contracts, and minor-league contracts are effectively harmless. But the risk is that a bad player on a minor-league contract can end up on the major-league roster, and as you’ve figured out, I’m using this as the latest opportunity to write about Yuniesky Betancourt, the extraordinary underachiever.

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The Los Angeles Dodgers announced this morning the creation of a new cable television network that will broadcast all Dodgers games and other Dodgers-related programming beginning in the 2014 season. The network, to be called SportsNetLA, will be operated by American Media Productions or AMP, a newly-formed subsidiary of the Dodgers’ ownership group. Time Warner Cable (TWC) will carry the new network in Los Angeles and Hawaii and pay the Dodgers between $7 billion and $8 billion over 25 years for that privilege.

“We concluded last year that the best way to give our fans what they want — more content and more Dodger baseball — was to launch our own network,” Dodgers chairman Mark Walter said in a prepared statement. “The creation of AMP will provide substantial financial resources over the coming years for the Dodgers to build on their storied legacy and bring a world championship home to Los Angeles.”

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Last week, the Diamondbacks traded Justin Upton to the Braves for Martin Prado and a collection of unexciting prospects. The trade was not particularly well received, and the response didn’t get any more positive in the aftermath, as members of the Diamondbacks organization explained that Upton’s personality wasn’t really what they were looking for.

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At this writing, the biggest baseball news of the last few days is that the Brewers haven’t ruled out signing free-agent starter Kyle Lohse. Or maybe it’s that the Mariners are reportedly getting closer to signing Kelly Shoppach, or maybe it’s that Jair Jurrjens might or might not pitch for the Netherlands in the WBC. There are still important things that could happen, but none of them have just happened, which is why you’re presently reading a FanGraphs article about position players pitching toward the end of January.

The thing about position players pitching is that it’s not supposed to happen. It happens very infrequently, but it does happen, and from those things that happen that shouldn’t, we’re often able to learn. Over the past five years, covering the PITCHf/x era, pitchers have thrown well beyond 200,000 major-league innings. Non-pitchers, by my count, have thrown 42 major-league innings. We’re talking about the difference between well more than three million pitches, and just more than 700 pitches. What can we see when we poke around? And I mean aside from the fact that non-pitchers are terrible at pitching.

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At one point last season, the Pirates were 63-47, right in the thick of the National League playoff race. They were in excellent position to finish at .500 or above for the first time since 1992; they just needed to win 18 of their remaining 52 games. They won 16 of their remaining 52 games and really Pirates’d everything up. What happened to the Pirates? Well, you can’t blame their inability to stop the running game, according to Rod Barajas, reasonably:

“Is (allowing stolen bases) the reason why we’re not winning? Absolutely not,” Barajas said. “The first half we weren’t throwing anybody out, either, and you didn’t hear anybody complaining.”

The Pirates didn’t lose because they couldn’t stop the running game, but they really couldn’t stop the running game. The numbers say that Michael McKenry threw out 13 of 74 would-be base-stealers, and that’s bad. The numbers say that Rod Barajas threw out six of 99 would-be base-stealers, and that’s much much worse. That’s arguably the worst throwing season in catcher history. Of course, a lot of this is out of the catchers’ hands, but they’re the ones who have to wear the statistics. Rod Barajas has to wear some humiliating statistics.

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