Archive for Daily Graphings

Several years ago, my colleague Mike Axisa, writing for MLB Trade Rumors, noticed a trend. Teams and players had started to use “mutual options” in contracts, in the place of a player option or team option.

Previously, options generally worked one of two ways: With a player option, it’s in the player’s sole discretion whether to stay with the team for the option year at the option price. If the player walks away, he becomes a free agent. With a team option, it’s in the club’s sole discretion whether to keep the player for the option year. If the team exercises the option, the player stays with the team for the option year at the agreed-upon salary. Unless the player has a no-trade clause, the team can trade him once the option is exercised. That’s exactly what the Rays just did with James Shields. If the club declines the  option, then it typically pays the player a certain sum of money, called the buyout.

So what is a mutual option and why is it used?

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Last year, FanGraphs was accepted into the BBWAA as an approved organization, and at present, we have four writers on staff who are members of the organization: David Laurila, Eno Sarris, Carson Cistulli and me. Once we’ve each been in the organization for 10 years, we will receive the right to vote for the Hall of Fame. So, in nine years, I might be publishing a Hall of Fame ballot. But, for now, I’ll run down who I’d vote for if I had a ballot.

We’ll do it in descending order of confidence in the pick, ranging from the easiest calls down to the toughest.

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After having his 2011 season ruined by injury, Adam LaRoche had a nice comeback in 2012. He hit .271/.343/.510 (127 wRC+), including a career-high 33 home runs on the way to the postseason with Washington. The Nationals and LaRoche had a mutual option for 2013, but LaRoche turned down his side of it and opted for free agency as he entered his age-33 season.

LaRoche is reportedly looking for a three-year contract similar to the one Mike Napoli received from Boston, while the Nationals are said to be willing to offer only two years and $25 million. LaRoche is apparently talking to the Orioles, too. LaRoche had a nice year, but it is worth asking (assuming the Nationals are being serious in their pursuit of LaRoche) why Washington is bidding on LaRoche, given that they already have Michael Morse signed for 2013 at a considerably lower price.

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Because of what he does, we know a lot more about Hiroyuki Nakajima than we know about the average stranger. We don’t so much know anything about Nakajima’s personality, but we know about his performance at work. Yet because of what he does and what he’s done, we also know a lot less about Hiroyuki Nakajima than we know about the average major-league baseball player. It isn’t necessary to have profiles for every player who plays in Japan, but now that Nakajima has signed with a major-league organization, people want to know more. People want to know what Nakajima’s going to be, before Nakajima makes it evident with his performance what he’s going to be.

We know that Nakajima has signed with the Oakland A’s, for two years and $6.5 million. Nakajima was a free agent, able to sign with anyone. We know that Nakajima is 30, and right-handed, and a shortstop, and projected to be Oakland’s regular shortstop as long as he’s not terrible. We know that Nakajima has a killer bat flip. We know that my Firefox initially identified “Nakajima” as a typo and suggested “Nakedness” as an alternative. And we know Nakajima’s Japanese statistics. When attempting to evaluate a player you’ve never seen, or even a player you have seen a bunch of times, nothing’s more important than the numbers.

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Travis D’Arnaud has always been a highly-regarded prospect. Even before his numbers took a leap forward in Double- and Triple-A, scouts liked his approach at the plate and thought his athleticism would bode well for his developing defense. He was the Mets’ prerequisite for any R.A. Dickey trade, and getting him was an important position-player prospect piece in their rebuilding plan.

And yet, there are plenty of reasons to doubt him, reasons that go beyond his specific track record or the general fact that he is a prospect.

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The Mariners could use some roster upgrades, but no less important is the need for several of their current players to improve. In some cases — youngsters Dustin Ackley, Jesus Montero and Justin Smoak are prime examples — a physical adjustment could be what it takes. Seattle skipper Eric Wedge addressed the subject during this month’s winter meetings in Nashville, Tenn.

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David Laurila: In your press conference, you said Justin Smoak made some mechanical changes this year. What were they?

Eric Wedge: He lowered his hands a little bit and did a better job of finishing his swing. He put himself in a better position to see the baseball, which is half the battle. He did a lot of work — a lot of tweaking — and it paid off for him.

DL: What goes into the decision to make mechanical adjustments?

EW: You have to work off what you see and make educated decisions. It’s a combination of film and what you see [in live action]. You have to communicate with the player and the coaches, and when everybody feels the time is right to do something, you do it. What you don’t want is to do it too early.

DL: Is there a relationship between mechanics and approach?

EW: The approach is more of the intangible. It’s a mindset; it’s your game plan as you head up to home plate. The tangible side of it is the physical and fundamental side — the hands, the swing, the lower-half — and it all works together.

When you talk about a young player starting to figure it out, there are a lot of things he has to master. That’s what [Smoak] has been battling with, and I think he’s just about to get over that hump.

DL: Are there times you want both the mechanics and approach to change?

EW: Yes, and he’s one of them, but sometimes it’s just one or the other. Sometimes a guy has a nice swing, but mentally he’s not doing what he needs to do in regard to his approach, his game plan or his discipline in sticking with that game plan. There’s a lot going on and that’s why it’s so tough to hit. Ultimately, you need everything working together.

DL: Has Dustin Ackley made any mechanical changes? Read the rest of this entry »

All that pitch-framing research is exciting, because it’s new, it supports an age-old idea, it seems to be meaningful, and it allows us to better capture the idea of a catcher’s real value. I’d say that was a true analytical breakthrough. One issue, though — however minor — is that not all pitchers are identical, and pitch-framing results can’t be taken to be 100% the responsibility of the catcher in question. It stands to reason it’s a lot more complicated than that, and it stands to reason there are pitchers who might be easier or more difficult to frame than others. You can probably think of a few off the top of your head. I think consensus is that Livan Hernandez has been relying on framers since about a month after he debuted.

What I’m not going to do here is identify the pitchers who are easiest and most difficult to frame. What I am going to do here is take a small step in that direction, by analyzing PITCHf/x data between 2008-2012. Instead of looking at this from a catcher’s perspective, we can look at this from a pitcher’s perspective, throwing to a number of different catchers on possibly a number of different teams. Not everything will average out, and in fact not everything will come even close to averaging out, but I’ll let the hard part of the work fall to someone smarter and more capable.

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As you probably know, there are multiple ways to calculate WAR, with our version (sometimes referred to as fWAR) and Baseball-Reference’s version (or rWAR/bWAR, depending on who is citing it) being the two most popular. And, as you probably also know, they can be quite different when it comes to evaluating pitchers. Two years ago, I wrote a couple of posts (Part One, Part Two) explaining why we constructed our pitcher WAR the way we did, and what we see as the pluses and minuses of both systems. Neither system is perfect, and neither system works in every situation, but we feel that using a FIP-based approach to evaluating pitchers is more transparent and more effective for the majority of pitchers in baseball.

But, there are pitchers who routinely outperform their FIP, and the way we do pitcher WAR will systematically underrate those pitchers. The primary group of pitchers who post results that are better than their BB/K/HR rates would suggest are knuckleballers.

Tom Tippett — who now works for the Red Sox — wrote about this extensively back in 2003, so this isn’t a new idea. When Voros McCracken released DIPS 2.0, he adjusted the system to account for the fact that knuckleball pitchers didn’t really fit into the normal trend. Even before R.A. Dickey ever started throwing the pitch, knuckleball pitchers were a well established exception to the norms of FIP. And that means that you don’t want to use standard “fWAR” for pitchers to evaluate Dickey, or any other knuckleball specialist.

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Baseball fans like to talk about splits. Some splits are more useful than others. Platoon splits are particularly interesting because they can be used both in evaluating players and in thinking about strategy. As has been emphasized elsewhere, observed platoon splits can vary quite widely from a player’s true platoon skill. For that, we need to know the platoon skill of the population from which he comes, at least generally speaking. The first step for doing that is to see what the overall platoon split of hitters is in any given year. Looking at that also leads to other interesting questions.

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The Mets got involved in contract extension negotiations with R.A. Dickey, and Dickey’s requested price seemed to be reasonable, but for whatever reason, the Mets didn’t want to pay it. Possibly because they don’t trust Dickey in the longer term, possibly because they don’t think they’re ready to win, possibly because of a blend of those reasons, or for neither of those reasons. The Blue Jays, meanwhile, are happy to pay it, as they’ve agreed to give Dickey a two-year extension. So Dickey is just about officially a member of the Blue Jays, at the cost of some of their top prospects.

The Blue Jays might trust Dickey more, and based on their offseason, they certainly think they’re more ready to win. From the looks of things, they’re the current American League East favorites. There are those major differences between this trade and the Royals’ James Shields trade — the Blue Jays are better than the Royals are, and the Blue Jays didn’t trade someone who could’ve been of immediate use. Yet, because the Blue Jays aren’t proven and because people love top prospects, there’s a sentiment that the Jays might’ve overpaid. This depends on the weight you put on trying to win in the short term, but when looking at the Dickey deal, it makes sense to look at similar previous deals.

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