Archive for Daily Graphings

Public opinion of the Rangers’ offseason seems to have taken a negative tone — they lost Josh Hamilton to free agency, and were unable to lure Zack Greinke into their clutches. But despite these two misses the sky is most definitely not falling in Texas. Between its additions around the edges, its addition by subtraction and the trio of prospects that it will graduate to the majors, the team should be primed for a fourth consecutive pennant chase in 2013.

First, let’s tackle the additions. The braintrust in Arlington has added four players on major league deals this offseason, two catchers and two relievers. The catchers, if they play to their capabilities, should improve the team’s outlook at the position significantly. Signing Geovany Soto only sort of counts as a free-agent move, since they had him under control, non-tendered him and then re-signed him. But signing A.J. Pierzynski — who had spent the entirety of his 15-year career with the White Sox before joining the Rangers — was completely new.

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In a stunning development, the Yankees reportedly have no interest in former Rays, Twins, and Tigers designated hitter and “outfielder” Delmon Young. A glance at a current rumors (as of this posting) about Young’s free agency seems to turn up at least as many reports of teams not being interesting in Delmon Young as teams that might be. Part of that might be that Young is waiting to get serious about shopping his services until he recovers from ankle surgery. Part of it might be Young’s public history of less-than-stellar behavior, both recent and in the past. And part of it might just be that over 880 major league games and 3575 major league plate appearances, Delmon Young has been mostly terrible. But is there still reasonable hope for Young to be a decent everyday player? After all, he just turned 27, was once considered the best prospect in baseball, and he has mashed the ball in recent postseasons. It might just be worth looking a bit more closely at Young alongside a player with a somewhat similar history and skill set to see where that kind of thinking can lead.

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Big news everyone – Justin Upton is still on the trade block. He has been for about three years now, and he will continue to be until he is mercifully traded to a team that wants him more than Arizona seems to. With yesterday’s reports about Upton’s availability, more than a few people on Twitter asked me about Upton’s home/road splits, and whether or not we should expect him to regress significantly if he’s traded to a less hitter friendly ballpark. In case you haven’t seen them, Upton has enormous home/road splits, and it’s a career trend, not just a one year blip.

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I don’t know what you know about Collin Cowgill — for all I know, you don’t know anything about Collin Cowgill, aside from his name, now. Cowgill is an outfielder, and last year, in the majors, he successfully stole three bases, and was caught trying to steal four times. He finished with 116 plate appearances. Major-league pitchers finished with 5,913 plate appearances. As a group, they successfully stole three bases, and were caught trying to steal four times. This is going to be another article about pitchers not pitching.

It fits a theme of the week. At Baseball Prospectus, Sam Miller wrote about the non-pitching value of pitchers. Here, Jack Moore looked at pitcher hitting in certain detail. Featured below, you will find Cliff Lee, Anthony Bass, and Jake Westbrook. Discussed will not be their arms. Discussed will be their legs, or at least something their legs allowed them to do. Their legs, their heads, and the heads of their opponents.

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Pete LaCock is a good storyteller. The former first baseman is prone to embellishment — Retrosheet doesn’t see eye-to-eye to with some of his recollections — but his tales are certainly entertaining. The son of long-time Hollywood Squares host Peter Marshall, LaCock played for the Chicago Cubs (1972-1976), for the Kansas City Royals (1977-1980) and for the Yokohama Taiyo Whales, in Japan (1981).

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LaCock on battling Bob Gibson:

“Billy Williams had broken his ankle, so the team was looking for a left-handed hitter. I had been hitting the ball pretty well, so they brought me up from Double-A. I was 19 years old. The game was in Chicago, and Bob Gibson was pitching for the Cardinals.

“It was 3-2, bottom of the ninth, and we had runners on second and third with two outs. Our pitcher was due up and Don Kessinger was the next hitter. He wasn’t a very good left-handed hitter — he was a better right-handed hitter — and Gibson had already struck him out a few times.

“I figured they were going to walk me. My run didn’t mean anything and putting me on meant they could get an out an any base. They had a meeting on the mound and somebody said, ‘Does anybody know this guy?’ Gibson said, ‘If they’re bringing in a rookie, I’m pitching to him.’ Ted Simmons was the catcher, and he told me this. When he comes back behind the plate, he goes, ‘They’re going to pitch to you, kid.’ I said, ‘Great.’ Read the rest of this entry »

It still feels like the holiday season, and the holiday season is a time for sharing. To be honest, every time is a time for sharing, but around the holiday season it seems a lot more important. With friends and family and sometimes perfect strangers, you share gifts and pleasantries and the warmth of your company. Baseball teams, too, can get into the sharing spirit. I don’t know how else to explain what’s been going on with Eli Whiteside, Sandy Rosario, and Scott Cousins.

For these three players, it’s already been an incredibly active offseason, and it’s barely January. For players who are hitting the market, the offseason is a time to find a new home. Whiteside, Rosario, and Cousins have cycled through several potential new homes. In case you haven’t been paying close attention — and I don’t know why you would be — I’ll try to go over the details as quickly as possible.

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In a week, on Jan. 9, the Hall of Fame will announce its newest inductees. We can predict one thing: Few people will make it in, so the logjam of deserving players will only get longer. The Hall is a nebulous institution, and no two people have quite the same understanding of who qualifies, which means it’s awfully hard for any candidate to get the minimum 75% of required ballots needed for entry.

But some voters are having so much trouble making up their minds they’ve decided not to vote at all — in particular, ESPN’s T.J. Quinn and the Cincinnati Enquirer’s John Fay — which means the denominator is getting smaller. Though not by much.
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With January here and a few big name free agents still on the market, one of the popular stories of the week is how the new compensation system is affecting free agent pricing. I wrote about it yesterday, as did Jeff Passan, and this morning, C. Trent Rosencrans documented some comments Kyle Lohse made on the radio. He seems to have a pretty good understanding of what’s going on:

“It’s not exactly an open, free market when you attach such things on a guy like myself, but yet a guy like a Zack Greinke or Anibal Sanchez got a get-out-of-jail-free card because they got traded midseason, so the rules don’t pertain to them,” Lohse said. “I’m obviously a little biased, but the rules could use some tweaking.”

Of course, Greinke and Sanchez also have the advantage of being younger and better than Lohse, but their lack of draft pick compensation almost certainly helped drive up their price a little bit, so Lohse isn’t wrong here. But, rather than spend another day talking about the rules themselves, I want to talk about the actual change that teams appear to be making this winter – significantly inflating the valuation of a draft pick.

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Brad Lidge is 36 years old. In December, when he was still 35, he announced his retirement from professional baseball. He hadn’t been much of a factor since 2010, so in that sense it felt inevitable that Lidge would hang them up. In discussing Lidge’s career, Mike Axisa wrote up the memorable moment that was Albert Pujols taking Lidge deep. Below, in the comments section of that post, some Phillies fans chimed in to say they most remember Lidge for completing the 2008 World Series. Me, I find both of those to be memorable moments, and when it comes to most memorable, that’s entirely subjective. But when I think of Brad Lidge, I don’t think first of Albert Pujols, nor do I think first of Eric Hinske. I don’t think of any one particular moment. I think of the whole sequence of moments that was Lidge’s 2004 season with the Astros.

Craig Kimbrel is coming off an impossible season with the Braves, in which he struck out more than half of the batters he faced. Opposing batters made some sort of contact 61% of the time that they swung. Aroldis Chapman, too, was incredible with the Reds, collecting 122 strikeouts. Opposing batters made some sort of contact 62% of the time that they swung. Going further back now, Eric Gagne was downright unfair as a Dodger in 2003. He won the National League Cy Young, and opposing batters made some sort of contact 56% of the time that they swung.

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Two arguments favoring the designated hitter popped up around the internet Wednesday, first from Anna Hiatt of The Week (published at Yahoo!) and then from Craig Calcaterra at Hardball Talk. Naturally, the posts galvanized debate in all the typical corners — comments sections and particularly Twitter — as to which style of baseball is morally superior.

Personally, my general position is ambivalence — baseball is baseball no matter who takes the ninth spot on the lineup card. A more interesting question, from the perspective of how teams compete and win win, is what National League teams do with their pitchers at the plate (and on the bases). Are certain teams consistently good at getting their pitchers to hit? Are some consistently bad?

To put it bluntly, is there any indication pitcher hitting is a team-level skill at all?

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