Archive for Teams

Wednesday night, in Game 1 of the World Series, Jon Lester was good. The Cardinals’ hitters, in turn, were not, or at least their performance was not, and as a consequence, the Cardinals lost. The Red Sox are now ahead by a game, and the Cardinals have as long as possible to wait for the next start by Adam Wainwright.

That’s the story, basically. It’s not the story that’s going to get all of the physical and electronic ink — the Cardinals’ defense, early on, was atrocious, and Wainwright gave up a few solid hits, and Carlos Beltran got hurt robbing a grand slam, and David Ortiz subsequently got his home run anyway to pour gravy all over the blowout. There’s a lot that’ll be written about what went wrong for St. Louis early. There’s a lot that’ll be written about the implications of Beltran being injured. But the Cardinals didn’t score a run until Ryan Dempster hung a splitter in the top of the ninth. With some luck, this game could’ve been closer. With some luck, this game could’ve been even more lopsided. Against Lester, the Cardinals just weren’t going to win without a miracle.

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The good news for the Red Sox: they’re in the World Series! That’s amazing! And they have home-field advantage, too, thanks to the heroes and zeroes included in this box score. At this point, while both the Red Sox and Cardinals are quite good, you have to think of the Red Sox as being the favorites. Yet, there’s bad news for them as well: as an American League team with a quality designated hitter, they’ll have a decision to make before the games in the National League ballpark. David Ortiz and Mike Napoli can both hit the crap out of the ball, but when Boston’s in St. Louis, one of them is going to have to sit, at least for the first several innings.

John Farrell has already gone on record as saying that Ortiz will start at first base at least once, maybe twice. And, who knows, he’s free to change his mind at any point, since he’s the one who draws up the lineups. It’s only natural to want to investigate the same question. Who should start at first in St. Louis, between Ortiz and Napoli? Which starter would most increase Boston’s win probability, and thus Boston’s World Series win probability? Getting to the answer is almost impossibly complex. Because of that, in a way, it’s also unthinkably simple.

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During the postseason is when we talk about postseason statistics, and one of the first points always brought up is that the level of competition in the postseason is more difficult. As such, it isn’t fair to just run a straight comparison between numbers in the playoffs and numbers not in the playoffs. The postseason is selective for the best teams, which will have many of the best players. Many of the worst players on the best teams won’t play, or won’t play much. There is a counterpoint, though, at least as far as pitchers are concerned: the playoffs take place in October, by which point a lot of arms might be worn down. The season is long, and it’s taxing, and who’s to say what’s really left in the tank come Columbus Day or whenever?

What we know, anecdotally, is that good pitchers tend to still be good. We seldom ever see a player’s velocity crater, and if a guy were truly worn down he probably wouldn’t be used. One of the interesting things we’ve seen with Michael Wacha, though, is that his velocity hasn’t just stayed the same — lately he’s been throwing harder. It stands to reason that’s why he’s been so effective, at least in part. And it turns out Wacha isn’t the only Cardinal with strength saved for a final push.

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Over the past two weeks, the author has published an entirely premature statistical report and then a slightly less premature one of those for the Arizona Fall League — not necessarily because such a thing is of great utility to prospect analysis, but more because, for those of us not currently present in the Greater Phoenix area, it’s one of the few ways to participate in that very compelling league. Moreover, it can serve as a pretense upon which to discuss participants in that league, not unlike Atlanta’s Thomas La Stella.

What follows, then — sans both apology and expertise — is the third edition of this site’s weekly AFL statistical report.

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Apparently some people do not respect the sanctity of World Series Week:

Royals ready to talk about Billy Butler deal for teams that would take on DH owed $8 million in '14, $12m in 2015.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) October 22, 2013

Move over, Scott Boras and A-Rod.

Jokes aside, the Royals’ reported willingness to see what they can get from Billy Butler is, on the surface, not all that interesting. A team seeing what sort of value they can get from their assets simply makes sense. “Team X should trade Player Y if they can get more surplus value back” is a truism. If the Royals can get more value back for Butler than he is worth, then, yes, they should probably trade him. Of course, on the other side of things, teams should only trade for Butler (or any other player) if they do not have to give up too much. These sorts of unbalanced trades are not really worth discussing in the abstract. What might be more interesting is trying and figure out why the team would want to move Butler given their other needs.

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Last night, Jeff sent me a text that said simply “Lincecum re-signed, 2/35”. My immediate reaction was that this was a hilarious overpay. I had just published a piece earlier in the day explaining why I didn’t see why the crowd thought Lincecum would get 3/40 when Dan Haren was projected for 2/19 and wouldn’t come with the qualifying offer tag. 3/40 for Lincecum, coming off two mediocre years, just seemed like an overpay. He was the kind of guy you should buy low on, and that’s not buying low.

And 2/35, with a full no-trade clause, is even more player friendly than 3/40 would have been. And this is what the Giants paid to keep him from even testing the free agent market; the presumption is that they think his price would have been even higher had they let other teams start bidding. When you factor in the value of the draft pick that would have been tied to signing Lincecum, and the value of the no-trade clause, this contract essentially bets that Lincecum’s market value is somewhere around $20 million per year.

That seems crazy. Last year, he had an ERA- of 124, ranking 74th out of the 81 pitchers who qualified for the ERA title. He ranks right between Jerome Williams and Kyle Kendrick on that leaderboard. And that was an improvement over his 2012 season, in which he ran an ERA- of 139, the very worst mark put up of the 88 pitchers who qualified that year. Over the last two seasons, the only qualified pitcher with a worse ERA- than Lincecum is Edinson Volquez, who the Padres released during the season. By runs allowed, Tim Lincecum has been basically replacement level for the last 400 innings. And he just got valued at around $20 million per year. Crazy, right? Well, maybe not.

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The league’s getting faster. Not the time of game — fastball velocity. And throwing some of the fastest fastballs in a league of fast have been the Cardinals, whose 92.6 mph average as a staff was good for third overall this year. The Red Sox did fine against a Tigers team that was only .3 mph short of that average, but going into this World Series, it’s still fair to say they will see some fastballs that are over 94 mph. And it’s fair to wonder how they’ll do against that added oomph.

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After several years of trying to fill the post-Manny hole in left field with the likes of Carl Crawford, Bill Hall (!), Scott Podsednik, & Jeremy Hermida, the Red Sox actually managed to put together a cost-effective and productive platoon situation in 2013.

Returnee Daniel Nava would hit the righties (and he did, with a .392 wOBA), and free agent acquisition Jonny Gomes would hit the lefties, which he did as well, putting up a .346 wOBA split. Including the surprising Mike Carp, who was acquired in February when the Mariners couldn’t find room for him and who shockingly hit everyone (.382 wOBA), the Red Sox left fielders put up the team’s most valuable season for the position since 2009, also known as “the last year Jason Bay was any good”.

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Yesterday, the names of the World Series umpires were released, with John Hirshbeck serving as the crew chief. Like I have done for the first two rounds in the playoffs, I will examine each umpire’s strike and ball calling tendencies. Overall, the group is pretty solid, with the exception of Bill Miller, who calls one of the league’s largest strike zones.

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The Detroit Tigers were really good in 2011, making it to the ALCS one year after finishing at just .500. Then 2012 went even better, where despite winning fewer regular season games they made it to the World Series, and 2013 was successful as well, going back to the ALCS. That’s a pretty excellent run of success, and they’re likely to be right back in the mix in 2014, since they return the majority of their core. But they still haven’t turned any of those seasons into a champion, and for a city that will next year be three decades past celebrating their last Tigers World Series winner, close isn’t good enough — and you start to wonder when this iteration runs out of chances.

That’s especially true for owner Mike Ilitch, who turned 84 this summer and has made it clear that he wants to see a winner in his hometown, for the first time since he purchased the club in 1992, while he’s still around to enjoy it. As if getting back to the ALCS (or beyond) for a fourth year in a row wasn’t going to be difficult enough, the Tigers find themselves contending with forces that make 2014 possibly their last best chance to get a championship out of this group. Read the rest of this entry »