As a Mariner fan, I was searching for a distraction yesterday. The terrible news of Greg Halman’s death this morning weighs heavily and I wanted to think about anything else for a little bit. There is no proper transition to the run-of-the-mill machinations of the baseball offseason. Any attempt seems glib and unimportant; because it is. Baseball is just a game and countlessly more important things will happen and be ignored today than a rumor about Andrew Bailey, but it gave me an escape for a moment.

It’s not that the rumor or tweet itself is of much importance. The Athletics are shopping Andrew Bailey around and in a seller’s market for closers, appear likely to trade him. That is hardly a surprise. Andrew Bailey is really good and valuably cost-controlled for the next couple years. Of course teams are interested.

However, the rumor kicked off a thread in my brain and I realized something. Under the new CBA, free agent compensation has changed and a direct consequence is that almost all relief pitchers will fall outside Type A now and in the future. It used to be that if you were a team that believed it to be in need of an outside closer, you could dip into free agency, but have to pay market price and likely surrender a high draft pick. Or you could attempt to trade for a closer, pay less salary, keep your draft picks and even have a chance to add some when said closer went to free agency.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday, we took a quick look at the competitive balance in the MLB, and I made the claim that baseball may have more parity than most leagues, but it also has want of greater balance. During the course of the piece, I made this statement:

The NFL has decided it wants payroll to have essentially no impact on winning, so teams basically trot out the same amount of money every Sunday and hope their money was better-spent. Is that what the MLB wants?

Aft’wards, Paul Swydan pointed out to me that indeed NFL salaries are not flat. Despite their hard cap, their hefty revenue sharing, and their tight spandex pants, the NFL still exhibits nearly a $77M gap between the biggest and lowest payroll — impressive, but still nothing compared to the MLB:

Read the rest of this entry »

MLB’s Awards Week, with all of its attendant celebrations and arguments, is in full swing. It is also a good time to see just how bad the worst players in the league were. But, as always, the players in the middle get left out. Why not celebrate them, as well? Like my elementary school counselor used say: “everyone is special.” Who were 2011’s most average players?

Read the rest of this entry »

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a big Rich Harden fan. To be fair, I don’t get to see many strikeouts by watching my local nine, so he fulfills a need in that respect. But to contextualize, he’s the Will Venable to my Eno Sarris, and today I want to examine why nobody has tried to make Mr. Harden a reliever yet.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tony LaRussa announced yesterday that he will not return to manage the St. Louis Cardinals in 2012. He used the word “retirement” so we’ll take him at his word that after 5,097 Major League Baseball games, LaRussa’s managed his last one.

You’re likely familiar with his career highlights:

• 2,738 career wins as manager, 3rd most after Connie Mack and John McGraw
• .537 career winning percentage as manager
• 3 World Series titles as manager
• 3 American League pennants as manager
• 3 National League pennants as manager
• 14 postseasons as manager
• 4 Manager of the Year Awards (with another one likely this year)

But these numbers only begin to scratch the surface of Tony LaRussa’s managerial career.  Let’s take a closer look.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some of the following twirlers can really play the game of ball called base!

In 2011, a total of 272 different pitchers started a game in the MLB — that’s an average of 9 starters per team. In other words, five starters is not enough. Successful MLB organizations need pitching depth — and lots of it. Some teams may need a 7th or 8th starter for only 1 game, but ask the Boston Red Sox how important 1 game is.

For teams in the need, the 2012 starting pitcher free agent list has some value and some worthy risks out there, but as with every year, no team should expect the free agent market to have all the answers. The following list, though not exhaustive, runs down the most important names of the 2012 free agents:

Top Tier — Starters who promise big contracts and big seasons.
C.J. Wilson (LHP, Age 31 next season, free agent)
CC Sabathia (LHP, 31, may opt out)
Hiroki Kuroda (RHP, 37, FA)
Edwin Jackson (RHP, 28, FA)
Mark Buehrle (LHP, 33, FA)
Javier Vazquez (RHP, 35, FA)

The Obvious One, Mr. C.J. Wilson, finally promises to pull in that contract big enough to purchase his long-awaited solid-gold rocket car. Wilson, the heat-hurling lord of the lefties figures to have at least two very impressive suitors — the New York Yankees and his present team, the Texas Rangers. Since becoming a starter two years ago, he has posted a combined 10.5 WAR, sporting an ace-worth 3.24 FIP this year.

Not only does Wilson have a shot to break the bank, but there appears to be a chance that twirling titan CC Sabathia may opt out of the final four years of his contract with the Yankees. Sabathia has been yawningly awesome through his 10-year career, never posting a FIP- higher than 96 and assembling a career-best 2.88 FIP in 2011.

Read the rest of this entry »

Special thanks to Brandon McCarthy for taking the time to walk me through his experiences as a pitcher, and providing me with countless insights I never would have discovered researching on my own. 

When part one ended, we had covered the final changes McCarthy made to his delivery in Winter Ball, and were about to analyze his 2011 season. It’s safe to say that Oakland seems to have been the right choice, as the end result of two years of hard work and frustration was a league-leading 2.86 FIP built on the strength of a 1.32 BB/9 and 0.58 HR/9 – both by far career lows. He also mixed these with a solid 6.49 K/9 and career high 46.7% ground ball rate. The groundball rate can be explained fairly easily by the increased use of sinkers and cutters*, but it’s not often that we see a pitcher cut his walk rate by 2/3 almost overnight. However, these were the stats that McCarthy was chasing going into 2011.

“I CANNOT (emphasis McCarthy’s) stand the “nerd stat” narrative and the disdain for them, especially considering how valuable they can be… They’re accurate barometers of what you’re actually doing… Those are the numbers that I was chasing after. I wanted lower home runs, I wanted lower walks, more ground balls, and to get to the top of that category the first year after the changes is a nice accomplishment.”

Read the rest of this entry »

I would like to begin with an apology to Bud Selig and Major League Baseball. I realize that Commissioner Selig does not want any big announcements this week that would take away from the glory of the World Series, but I just can’t help myself. I have too much brewing in the Junk Stat Laboratory, and if I don’t export some of this stuff, a major explosion could be in the works — bits of laptop, brain matter, and SQL code everywhere. So today we begin with what some (read: almost no one) would say is the most “prestigious” of my made-up, junk-stat-based, year-end awards. It recognizes the hitter whose RBI total most exaggerates his actual offensive contribution: the Joe Carter–Tony Batista award.

Read the rest of this entry »

Special thanks to Brandon McCarthy for taking the time to walk me through his experiences as a pitcher, and providing me with countless insights I never would have discovered researching on my own.

There has been plenty of ink spilt this season over Justin Verlander’s American League MVP candidacy, and he is a shoo-in for the AL Cy Young Award. A large part of the narrative is the 24 wins, but one would assume that all the gushing means he had one of the most dominant pitching seasons of the last decade. However, when controlling for run environment, Dave Cameron notes that the last two AL Cy Young winners, Zack Greinke and Felix Hernandez, had better ERA’s relative to league average than Verlander. Moving on to the advanced stats, Verlander did not even lead the league in FIP in 2011. Neither did his nearest competitor for the award, CC Sabathia. It was in fact Brandon McCarthy of the Oakland Athletics.

In 2010, McCarthy was a 26 year-old pitcher with 372.2 Major League innings under his belt toiling away in Oklahoma City, AAA affiliate of the Texas Rangers. He had been cut from the big league club following a rough Spring Training, and was toying with his mechanics and pitch repertoire, all while battling micro stress fractures in his right shoulder. Injuries limited him to 56.1 innings that season, and while the 3.36 ERA looked tidy, a 79.9% strand rate masked a less impressive 4.23 FIP.  As a pitcher who is in tune with defense independent statistics and had experienced severe arm injuries four years in a row, McCarthy said “it was at that point that I was going to have to start considering my options outside of baseball.” A year later, he was the American League FIP leader.  To figure out this transformation, let’s travel back in time.

Read the rest of this entry »

The corner outfielder often gets lumped into the mix with the first basemen / designated hitter types. You might call that part of the market the ‘last piece saloon.’ But, Raul Ibanez aside, corner outfielders need to be able to run a little bit, too.

Oh, would you look at that, Ibanez is a free agent. But who needs a corner outfielder at all? Depending on how they put their team together, the Braves could maybe use another outfielder. The Red Sox have an opening, but after their last high-priced acquisition in the outfield, and their plethora of in-house options, it might not be a priority. Both Chicago teams are a maybe, with the NL version more probable. Do the Dodgers have any money? The Giants will sign one for sure. The A’s will wait for a bargain, as they always do. The Mariners have to be considered dark horses for any piece of offense. The Nationals could try again. That pretty much defines your market, and it’s a pretty decent one in terms of demand.

What does the supply look like?

Read the rest of this entry »