What do these fellow batsmen have in common?
• Adrian Gonzalez
• Matt Kemp
• Emilio Bonifacio
• Michael Bourn
• Michael Young
Well, probably a lot, seeing as how they all share a profession, but today let us examine a particularly unique distinction: The fact that they collectively represent the top five BABIPs of the 2011 MLB season.
Let’s find out how much was luck and how much was repeatable.
With disabled list information available going back 10 years, I have decided to examine some league wide and team trends.
League Trends
To begin with, here are the league values for trips, days and average days lost to the DL over the past 10 years.
If you missed it yesterday, Ben Badler of Baseball America has some pretty fascinating background about the Orioles saga with Korean prospect Seong-Min Kim. You probably heard about the signing when the Korean Baseball Organization filed a protest with Major League Baseball due to the Orioles failing to follow protocol. The deal ended up being voided, Kim was suspended by the KBO, and Orioles scouts were banned from games in Korea over the incident.
However, as Badler reports, there appears to be way more to the story than just a snafu over the improper signing of a prospect.
The Baltimore Orioles recently avoided going to an arbitration hearing by signing Adam Jones to a one year, $6.5 million contract, but there are still rumblings about a long-term deal being in play. According to Ken Rosenthal, the Orioles have started to explore the possibility of signing Jones to a long-term deal, as well they should. Jones currently has one more year of arbitration left before becoming a free agent, and considering that he’s a young +2 to +3 win player with the upside for more, he’s the sort of player the Orioles should be hoping to build around.
Rosenthal reports that Jones wants at least a five-year extension, so that got me curious: what would a five-year extension for Jones look like? Are there any players in a similar situation to him that have signed extensions recently?
Yesterday evening, Roch Kubatko of MASN announced the most unexpected: The MLB had voided the Baltimore Orioles‘ contract with 17-year-old South Korean pitcher Seong-Min Kim.
Kim had signed with the Orioles earlier this year, but the $550,000 signing almost instantly sent the peninsula into an icy rage. The Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) decried the MLB for not affording it the same unspoken courtesies as Japan’s NPB league. This week, the MLB, the Orioles, and the KBO have taken the tack of calling the signing a “breach of protocol.”
Which is funny because:
Protocol, by definition, is official. Yet this signing hoopla is about an unofficial rule: You don’t take amateur talent from East Asia (or at least Japan and South Korea). For the Orioles’ breach (which has been officially undone now), the KBO outlawed Seong-Min Kim (on February 8) from playing in Korea (that may/should be rescinded), and they have forbid the Orioles from sending scouts to South Korea (that does not appear likely to be rescinded).
In a shame-based culture such as Korea’s, a social breach such as this, however unintentional, can leave a damaging, lasting, and — to Americans — overzealous impression, and that is bad news for the Orioles.
But there is even a bigger issue here, that of the differing expectations and standards in the international market for talent. Because while the KBO complains about MLB teams snatching away talent from the amateur levels, the Puerto Rican baseball community has begun to complain about the opposite issue.
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Nobody was expecting the Baltimore Orioles to instantly become playoff contenders in 2012, but today’s news out of Birdland is still depressing. According to Jim Duquette, Zach Britton’s shoulder injury from late last season is “still lingering” and will limit his workload during spring training. Britton was rated as the Orioles’ top pitching prospect coming into the 2011 season, and he was arguably the O’s best pitcher for the first half of the season before slumping badly down the stretch.
Britton is hardly the first Orioles’ pitcher to have injury troubles. Heck, at this point, Orioles fans probably expect the team’s best pitching prospects to either get injured or flop at the major-league level. Brian Matusz looked like he was off to a spectacular young career, before getting injured and failing to regain his velocity or control. Jake Arrietta and Chris Tillman used to be considered the future of the franchise, but neither has been able to successfully transition to the majors. Also, while not a highly rated prospect, Brad Bergesen flashed some promise in 2009, but has since had injury issues and trouble striking out major-league hitters.
So while this news about Britton shouldn’t be too surprising, it makes me wonder: how much of the Orioles’ struggles to develop good, young pitchers is a result of organization philosophy and management, and how much is just plain bad luck?
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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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.
The Baltimore Orioles have had preliminary talks with Manny Ramirez. While Eric Seidman recently detailed some veterans who may be forced to retire due to lack of interest, Ramirez seems to be an outlier. He’ll be 40 in May — and he still has to serve a 50-game suspension — but teams are still interested.
This is a trade that just doesn’t make sense to me:
The Rockies and Orioles are nearing an agreement that would send starter Jeremy Guthrie to Colorado, most likely for pitchers Jason Hammel and Matt Lindstrom, reports Dan Connolly of the Baltimore Sun. (MLB Trade Rumors)
Let me preface this by saying that I like Jeremy Guthrie and Jason Hammel more than most people probably do. After watching Guthrie pitch in the AL East for the past five seasons, I’ll be glad to see him go. Despite his underwhelming strikeout numbers and flyball tendencies, there are some nights where he pumps his fastball up around 95 MPH (with good movement) and can shred through opposing lineups. My eyes are overly optimistic on Guthrie, though, as the reality is that he’s a 32-year-old starter that doesn’t generate many whiffs and is only around a +2 win pitcher. He’s no ace, but he’s still a valuable pitcher to have.
The same can be said about Jason Hammel. Since being traded to the Rockies prior to the ’09 season, he has racked up +9 wins over three seasons. He comes with his share of question marks — his strikeout rate plummeted in 2011, and his ERA has always outpaced his peripherals due to a high BABIP — but considering he will be 29 years old this season, he has the potential to be better than Guthrie. His 4.37 career SIERA is better than anything Guthrie has posted over the past five years, so you can argue that the Orioles are getting an excellent buy-low starter in this deal. Whether Hammel lives up to that potential…well, we’ll see.
But here’s what I don’t understand: what do the Orioles and Rockies get out of this trade?
