On Monday morning, I wrote an article that revealed the top five teams in Major League Baseball at drafting and developing talent for their big league club over the past decade, starting with the 2002 Draft.
Several people commented that they wished to see the entire list of teams, ranked by total accumulated WAR and also including average WAR per homegrown player. Here is the entire league:
It is a simple question.
What is sabermetrics?
Not the history of it, but what is it, right now? What is, in our nerdiest of lingoes, its derivative? Where is it pointing? What does it do?
Last Tuesday I created no little stir when I listed the 2012 saber teams, delineating them according to their perceived embrace of modern sabermetrics.
Today, I recognize I needed to take a step back and first define sabermetrics, because it became obvious quickly I did not have the same definition at heart as some of the readers and protesters who gathered outside my apartment.
I believe, and this is my belief — as researcher and a linguist — that sabermetrics is not statistics. The term itself has come to — or needs to — describe more than just on-base percentage, weighted runs created plus, fielding independent pitching, and wins above replacement.
Sabermetrics is the advanced study of baseball, not the burying of one’s head in numbers.
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The Seattle Mariners organization is loaded with high-ceiling pitching arms and could field one of the most potent pitching staffs in the game within the next two to three years. The club has done a great job of building an organizational strength that will thrive in its home environment. The front office spent time this past off-season answering questions about its future offense with the addition of Jesus Montero, one of the most potent bats in the minor leagues. The organization has some other interesting position players but a lot of them are raw and years away from helping out at the big league level.
1. Jesus Montero, C/DH
BORN: Nov. 28, 1989
EXPERIENCE: 5 seasons
ACQUIRED: 2006 international free agent
2010-11 TOP 10 RANKING: 1st (Yankees)
The Mariners organization acquired one of the top offensive prospects in baseball but it cost the organization dearly with pitchers Michael Pineda and Jose Campos heading to the New York Yankees. The Mariners front office suggests that Montero will continue to catch, although the general consensus remains that he’ll move to first base or designated hitter sooner rather than later. The right-handed hitter made his MLB debut in 2011 and showed the ability to hit for both power and average despite the fact he didn’t turn 22 until this past November. Despite his youth, Montero already has five years of pro experience, as well as two full seasons in triple-A. He’s ready for prime time and could be the Mariners best hitter in 2012 – as a rookie. The home ball park could hamper his numbers a bit but the all-star potential could be there for years to come.
Yesterday, as Part 1 of this post, I looked at the accomplishment that was Michael Pineda’s 2010 season in the minor leagues — an accomplishment, specifically, for his ability to limit walks while simultanously throwing a fastball with excellent velocity.
As was noted in that piece, no other starter with 50-plus innings in either Double- or Triple-A (again, in 2010) was able to sit at around 95 mph with his fastball while also walking fewer than 7.0% of batters faced. Pineda, in fact, accomplished this feat at both Double- and Triple-A, walking 5.4% of opposing batters in 77.0 innings at Double-A West Tenn and then 6.5% of opposing batters in 62.1 innings at Triple-A Tacoma.
In this post, I’ll be looking at which players performed similarly in the high minors last season to how Pineda did in 2010.
Silly monkey, BRAINS ARE FOR ZOMBIES.
Casey Kotchman is in many ways a man without a home — a player equal parts under-appreciated and over-valued, who irks both old and new schools at the same time. Old school analysts say his defense is amazing, but they cannot quantify it, and in 2011, they claimed his cleared vision meant he finally learned how to aim the ball “where they ain’t,” but he’s still a .268 hitter with little power. The new school says he’s worth about 7.6 runs per season defensively, but worth ~1.1 WAR per 600 PAs — not good — and his BABIP was high 2011, so he should not be able to repeat his success.
Despite his inability to build a consistent following of fans in the baseball outsiders communities, Kotchman seems to have some insider communities very much interested in him, as Tom Tango points out:
Kotchman’s last four teams: Redsox, Mariners, Rays, Indians. Can we say that a team that signs Kotchman is saber-leaning?
Indeed, after spending five and a half seasons on the Angels’ and Braves’ rosters, Kotchman has begun to shuffle around with the Nerdz, most recently signing with the Cleveland Indians. It makes sense too — Kotchman’s lack of power keeps him cheap, and his strong defense keeps him amorphous for the old school teams, while the new schools might have different valuations on Kotchman, they can at least quantify his contributions and better know how he fits.
Then, on Monday, the Houston Astros signed Justin Ruggiano, long-time Tampa Bay Rays outfielder who was never good enough to stick on the Rays’ roster, but who possesses strong defensive chops and above average patience. His lack of power and ~.290 batting average, however, must make him a mystery — or at least an undesirable asset — to the old school teams.
Upon Ruggiano signing with the Astros, a once highly old school team, my reaction was all: “Welp, that’s one more team to compete with” — and then it occurred to me! No only have the Astros entered the realm of, so to speak, saber-minded organizations, but so have the long-backward Chicago Cubs.
Suddenly the league looks very different.
Ideas for this post came from conversations with Dave Cameron on recent episodes of FanGraphs Audio. Most scouting info is courtesy Baseball America.
Allow me to establish immediately that the title of this post is, in part, disingenuous: insofar as every player is unique, there is no “Next Michael Pineda.” There are pitchers who will surprise us with their success in 2012, for sure — some of them in a way similar to how Michael Pineda surprised us in 2011 — but none of them, obviously, will do it in precisely the same way that Pineda did.
Having said that, allow me to also submit that Michael Pineda absolutely represents a type of pitcher who is perhaps more likely to succeed than we (or, at least, than the present author) has, at one point, assumed.
To get a sense of what I mean, let’s consider the relative prospect statuses, over the last three years, of Pineda and the player (Jesus Montero) for whom he was traded this offseason.
Among Wednesday’s moves, the Seattle Mariners announced the signing of Carlos Guillen to a minor league contract. After a very successful career with the Tigers, Guillen returns to the team he broke into the majors with all the way back in 1998.
Unfortunately, it just doesn’t appear Guillen has anything left in the tank.
A few years ago, Michael Morse looked like another marginal major-league guy who once had a brief hot streak. After reportedly having the last two seasons of his arbitration eligibility bought out by the Washington Nationals this weekend, Morse is now a millionaire many times over. (The reported amount is $10.5 million.) It has been a long path to relevance for the 29-year-old. Of more relevance right now is his current true-talent level — and how he fits in with the Nationals’ plans, considering the on-and-off Prince Fielder talk.
Remember when the robot in Terminator refuses to die? The lady, like, punches him, shoots him, squishes him in a pressing machine, but he’s still reaching out one mechanical claw, ever thrilled at the prospect of pre-killing John Conner? Well, in this analogy, Jamie Moyer is Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The Colorado Rockies have agreed to terms with LHP Jamie Moyer and are a physical away from one of the more intriguing displays in Triple-A. Moyer is not only coming back from Tommy John surgery, something that derails even young pitchers, but he is also recovering from The Beatles breakup. Which happened when he was 8 years old.
Get it?
He’s old.
This is the joke they were making about Moyer six years ago.
What does this mean? Well: (1) Jamie Moyer is pretty much my idol. And (2) he has a long — nay, looooooong — shot at making the big leagues in 2012. Let’s take a look at what Moyer could possibly have left in the tank.
Over the last couple of years, I’ve expressed an amount of skepticism relating to Jesus Montero’s status as an elite prospect. Essentially, my argument has been that since Montero is likely to be the kind of player who produces all of his value at the plate, he’s going to have to develop into a monster hitter to justify the expectations placed upon him. For bat-only players, the offensive bar to become a superstar is extremely high, so Montero would have to become one of the very best hitters in baseball to be a truly elite player.
The counterpoint has usually been that Montero is going to become one of those hitters, with scouts comparing his offensive profile to Mike Piazza and Miguel Cabrera, among others. He’s extremely strong, he’s got pretty good plate coverage, and he’s held his own in the minors while being pushed aggressively up through the minor leagues. Several of the game’s best hitters had very similar development paths, and it’s clear that Montero could develop into that kind of offensive force. Given what the Mariners paid to get him, they’re clearly hoping for that outcome.
Still, Cabrera and Piazza are Montero’s ceiling – the best possible outcome if he continues to develop, stays healthy, and maximizes his physical abilities – but projecting a player solely based on upside will often lead you astray. In evaluating Montero as an offensive prospect, we need to not only know what his ceiling would be, but the range of potential outcomes and the likelihood of each one coming to pass. To find a more complete picture of what a Montero-style hitting prospect usually turns into, we turn to history and the lessons of players who were lauded in similar ways as Montero is now.
