Archive for Daily Graphings

Like many Americans, Delmon Young is presently unemployed. Like few presently unemployed Americans, Young should shortly become employed, and somewhat lucratively. Young, presumably, will land a major-league contract, and even the major-league minimum guarantees several hundreds of thousands of dollars. Relative to the rest of the unemployed, Young’s in a good situation. He’s in a far worse situation, though, than people figured he would be around this point in his career.

Delmon Young is 27 years old. This guy, he’s 27. Granted, this guy is even younger, but we’re not really here to judge people on their looks. Young is 27, and he’s more newly 27 than nearly 28. He’s younger than Mitch Moreland. He’s younger than David Price, and he’s only months older than Mark Trumbo. This is supposed to be Young’s career peak, and Young was supposed to have an incredible career peak. Young, last year, was bad. By our metrics, in three of his six full-ish big-league seasons he’s been below replacement-level. In another, he was exactly replacement-level. For his career, he’s at 0.8 WAR. In his initial 30-game campaign in 2006, he was worth 0.9 WAR. You’re getting the Delmon Young idea.

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If you go up to the toolbar at the top of the screen and click on leaders, then switch over to the pitching tab, you will see three names at the top of the list:

1. Justin Verlander
2. Felix Hernandez
3. Clayton Kershaw

Those three are, without a doubt, three of the best pitchers in baseball. You could probably make a pretty good case that they are the three best pitchers in baseball. And, last year, they rated #1, #2, and #3 in pitcher WAR, which is why they’re the first three names on the list of the default leaderboard. But, they also have something else in common; they’re all due to become free agents in two years.

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Tim Lincecum’s resume contains the following items: 2 time Cy Young award winner, 4 time All-Star and twice World Series Champion. With all the achievements over the last 5 seasons, he was relegated to a long relief once the Giants made the playoffs because he was no longer effective as a starter. Lincecum’s problem is he can no longer just throw the ball across the plate and hope a batter just swings and misses. If he wants any hope of returning to be the starter he once was, he now needs to learn how to pitch.

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Buster Posey will be a San Francisco Giant at least through the end of the 2016 season. The upcoming season will be his first as an arbitration-eligible player. He’ll have three more of those before he becomes a free agent. That is, unless Posey and the Giants agree to a long-term contract that buys out one or more of his free-agent years. Should Posey commit to the Giants long-term? Should the Giants commit to Posey? What kind of deal makes sense?

Hard to believe, sometimes, but the reigning National League most valuable player has played in only 305 major-league games and amassed only 1,255 plate appearances. His first major-league at bat came on Sept. 11, 2009, during a brief September call-up. (He struck out). In 2010, the Giants didn’t call Posey up from the minors until late May, as Bengie Molina continued to handle the everyday catching duties. Even then, Posey played first base for a month before the Giants traded Molina to the Rangers and installed Posey behind the dish.

In 443 plate appearances in 108 games, Posey hit .305/.357/.505 with 18 home runs. His 134 wRC+ tied him with Ryan Braun for 15th-best in the National League. Posey was named National League Rookie of the Year and guided the Giants’ vaunted pitching staff during the team’s World Series run. He earned $400,000 but delivered $16.7 million in value with a 4.2 WAR.

Posey’s 2011 campaign was cut short by the devastating ankle and leg injury he suffered in a home plate collision with Scott Cousins on May 25. In his 45 games that season, Posey dropped off from his sensational rookie numbers and hit only .284/.368/.389 in 185 plate appearances. The power numbers, in particular, looked concerning but may very well have stabilized during a full season. Posey earned $575,000 but delivered $8 million worth of value in just two months of playing time.

And then there’s 2012. National League Batting Champion*. National League MVP. National League Comeback Player of the Year. World Series champion. Posey played 148 games and had 610 plate appearances and he did the most with them. He hit .336/.408/.509 with 24 home runs. He led the National League with 8 WAR, and if his base running wasn’t so poorly rated, his WAR could have reached 10. The Giants paid him $615,000 and he gave his team $36 million in value.

What does all of this mean for a possible long-term deal between Posey and the Giants?

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Going into last season, Justin Ruggiano was your classic AAAA player. A soon to turn 30-year-old outfielder, he’d appeared in 98 big-league games over three seasons, hitting just .226. The Rays had released him over the winter, and the team that picked him up — the downtrodden Astros — had sent him to Triple-A.

Then he got the opportunity he’s long been waiting for.

On May 26, Ruggiano was traded to the Miami Marlins and promptly jumpstarted his career. In 91 games, the native of Austin, Texas hit .313/.374/.535, with 13 home runs and 14 stolen bases. He also played solid defense in center field, where he is slated to begin the 2013 season in a Marlins uniform. As he famously Tweeted to Ken Rosenthal in November, “I got this.”

Ruggiano recently sat down to talk about his 2012 campaign, as well as the Marlin’s controversial salary dump, steroids and the Hall of Fame, and much more.

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David Laurila: You had a breakout season. Why?

Justin Ruggiano: You can’t have a breakout year if you’re never given an opportunity. It was basically my first chance to play an extended amount in the big leagues, and once the dust settled, I was able to relax and play my game without being too caught up in the moment. I felt like I was playing baseball again, as opposed to in years past, where I was the 25th man on the team and didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, if I’d still be there or if I’d be going back to Durham.

It was a satisfying season, because I was able to back up what I’ve thought I was capable doing this whole time. Can I go out and duplicate what I did last year, every time? Not necessarily, but that’s baseball. That said, I think I proved I can play at this level.

DL: Earlier this winter, Ken Rosenthal tweeted that the Marlins need a centerfielder. Your response was “No we don’t. I got this.” Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier, I wrote about the season’s worst called ball. It only made sense to attempt a companion piece, regarding the season’s worst called strike. I’ll blockquote from that other article, because even though blockquoting is lazy, it’s Friday afternoon and shut up:

Last season, in baseball, there were more than 700,000 pitches thrown. Of those, nearly 400,000 were taken, or un-swung at. Every single one of those taken pitches was determined to have been a ball or a strike by a trained human umpire. Trained human umpires are very good at their jobs — to confirm, one need only watch an untrained human umpire. The umpires in the major leagues get almost every call correct. But they do miss some, and when it comes to nearly 400,000 called balls and called strikes, it stands to reason that there are going to be mistakes, and there are going to be really bad mistakes. It’s simple probability. Within any such data pool, there are going to be extremes.

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Many writers, including Dave Cameron, have expressed their disappointment that the voters of the Baseball Writer’s Association of America chose not to enshrine anyone on a loaded Hall of Fame ballot this year. Some have already called for a change in the process. Perhaps unfortunately, then, the signs seem point to stasis when it comes to the Hall of Fame voting. Nothing looks like it’s going to change, and Hall of Fame leadership if just fine with that.

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Last season, in baseball, there were more than 700,000 pitches thrown. Of those, nearly 400,000 were taken, or un-swung at. Every single one of those taken pitches was determined to have been a ball or a strike by a trained human umpire. Trained human umpires are very good at their jobs — to confirm, one need only watch an untrained human umpire. The umpires in the major leagues get almost every call correct. But they do miss some, and when it comes to nearly 400,000 called balls and called strikes, it stands to reason that there are going to be mistakes, and there are going to be really bad mistakes. It’s simple probability. Within any such data pool, there are going to be extremes.

Herein, we will reflect on the 2012 season’s worst called ball. That is, the called ball that was most like a strike. As it turns out, I actually wrote about this before, but at that point I had less than three months of data. Now I’m looking at data for the season entire. For the record, I’m not doing this to criticize the umpire, or to make some statement about instant replay and automated strike-zone judgment. I’m doing this for the sake of exploration, for the sake of curiosity satiation. As you watch what unfolds below, try not to be frustrated. Try instead to be interested. If anything, you should be trying to eliminate frustration from your life.

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The Brewers signed Kelvim Escobar to a minor-league contract with a spring-training invite. You know the story with these no-risk pseudo-commitments. Teams sign interesting names to these contracts every year, and this offseason we’ve seen Jeremy Bonderman get a deal, and Scott Kazmir get a deal, and Dontrelle Willis get a deal. I’m probably forgetting others. These contracts frequently go to players who used to be something, on the off chance that they might be something again. Most often, the players don’t contribute much, and they’re forgotten about until the next round. Minor-league contracts are great for winter conversation, and by and large irrelevant come April and May.

Escobar, sure enough, used to be something, like the others. He’ll get a chance to make the Brewers’ bullpen out of camp, if he pitches well. With Escobar, whether he’ll pitch well is the second question. Whether he’ll pitch is the first question. Escobar has been through more injury problems than most, and it’s somewhat incredible that he’s racked up more than 1,500 big-league innings. Though he hasn’t added to that total in a while, there was a time that Escobar was able to throw on a regular or semi-regular basis.

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Major League Baseball announced expansion of its drug testing program Thursday, as the league and the players union have modified the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program to provide for unannounced, random blood testing for HGH (human growth hormone) during the regular season. From the league’s press release:

Today’s announcement marks another significant step in the progression of Baseball’s HGH testing policy, which continues to be the strongest in American professional sports. Since July 2010, Major League Baseball has conducted random blood testing for the detection of hGH among Minor League players. As a part of the 2012-2016 Basic Agreement, the parties agreed to blood testing for hGH during 2012 Spring Training, during the off-season, and for reasonable cause, making Baseball the first sport to deploy this kind of testing at its highest level. Under the new agreement, all of those aspects of the Program will continue, and there will be in-season, unannounced, random blood testing.

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