Archive for Teams

Ah, another fortnight has passed. How did you spend them? Perhaps you were deeply immersed in the Teapot Dome scandal? Perhaps you were eagerly awaiting the release of “Yeezus?” Perhaps you were simply watching the paint dry in anticipation of the next iteration of this series? I know I was doing at least one of these things.

As always, you can peep the explanation of our depth charts and standings pages — which fuel The Fortnight like so much lemon lime Gatorade — here. This week, we’ll be looking at the fortnight’s biggest losers.

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Jeff Sullivan’s recent enjoyable trot through San Diego Padres statistics and history led to a number of commentors thinking about San Diego’s park factors. The Padres changed the outfield dimensions of Petco Park in the off-season, and since park factors are backwards looking and rely on multiple years of data, changing dimensions can throw a bit of a monkey wrench into the calculations. So, it’s possible that our park factors are now somewhat behind the times, and we need to keep this in mind when looking at the park adjusted numbers (such as wRC+, ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-, WAR, etc…) for San Diego players, both hitters and pitchers.

It’s not quite so simple as noting that the changing dimensions have made the old park factors useless, however. Moving in the fences helps home runs, yes. This is undeniable. But it also can decrease triples and doubles, as well as effect the more odd elements of park factors, such as walk-rates, strikeout rates and pop-up rates.

It’s too early in the season to construct terribly useful park factors for the new dimensions, but we can do some harmless back-of-the-napkin mathematics to at least determine if the recent numbers suggest at least the early signs of serious run environment changes.
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You all know the R.A. Dickey story by now. Journeyman major leaguer reinvents himself as a knuckleball thrower in his 30s, then refines the pitch to become one of the better starting pitchers in baseball, culminating with his selection as the National League Cy Young Award winner last year. The knuckleball is always a fascinating pitch, and Dickey is a fascinating guy, so there has been no shortage of media attention focused his direction.

While I was not working here at FanGraphs last year, I could not resist taking a belated look at some of Dickey’s dominating knuckleballs from that 2012 season. I’ve selected three particularly impressive pitches from that campaign and used an effect known as StroMotion to help track their movement.

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It could have worked out so perfectly. The Yankees’ acquisition of Vernon Wells appeared to be unwise at the time, but they’d be looking to him as a backup, who needed only to fake it as a starter while Curtis Granderson was hurt. Pretty bad gamble, sure, but we’re given only one reality, and when Granderson debuted on May 14, Wells had an .875 OPS. It was up in four-digit territory through the first three weeks, and all the talk was about how Wells had found a new home, and a new life, more like his old one. Wells had done more than enough, and with Granderson healthy, he could be reduced to a role player.

Granderson got hurt again, and Wells hasn’t stopped playing. Wells has stopped hitting, even though he hasn’t stopped getting opportunities. Wells, now, owns the worst rate numbers of his career, a small step down even from what he did with the Angels. Wells didn’t just regress from his hot streak — his numbers over-corrected, such that he’s been more of a burden than a boon.

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“Nothing has ever come easy for me, especially the first time around,” — Oakland third baseman Josh Donaldson

Josh Donaldson played baseball for two high schools. Add to that college, two minor league sytems, and the pros, and he’s had to start over in a new place often over the course of his career. And, for the most part, he’s had a hard time at first. But with hard work and a few changes to his approach, he’s come back and been dominant. The process of acclimating, to Donaldson, is equal parts understanding himself and understanding the new situation.

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With two outs in the top of the sixth inning in a tied game and runner on second, a manager elects to intentionally walk a right-handed batter with his right-handed starter in order to have that same starter face another right-handed batter. Two singles follow, putting the manager’s team down by two, leading the team to defeat. An intentional walk leading to bad things for the pitching team is hardly a novelty or surprise, but the characters involved make it a bit more interesting.

This happened yesterday. The manager was the Rays’ Joe Maddon, and the batter was the Royals’ Jeff Francoeur. Jeff Francoeur’s game (and lack thereof) has been dissected and discussed to the point of pointlessness. I have made plenty of contributions to the field, so there is no need to belabor that point. Joe Maddon has a pretty good reputation as a manager, but analyzing any manager’s abilities as a whole is difficult for a variety of reasons. This particular sequence struck me as odd, particularly given the Rays’ reputation for trying to gain every little advantage they can.

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Now that the draft is behind us and we’re only six weeks away from the trade deadline, we’re officially in rumor season. This time of year, we’ll be treated to an almost daily look at which teams might be buying or selling and what players could be changing uniforms before the end of July. The Phillies are probably the most interesting potential seller, because their roster is littered with big name players who would draw headlines if traded. Ruben Amaro has been clear that he does not intend to “blow up” the roster, but that doesn’t rule out making any trades at all, as he even noted that he didn’t think the Red Sox “blew up” their roster last year when they traded three of their most expensive players in one deal.

So, assuming the Phillies fall far enough back in the race to convince Amaro to be a seller, Jonathan Papelbon is probably going to be one of the most talked about trade targets of the summer. Contenders are always looking for bullpen help, and certain contenders — yes, Detroit, we’re talking about you — have glaring holes at the back end of their bullpen that could use a significant upgrade. Papelbon is still a terrific reliever, and his postseason track record will appeal to teams who put a lot of stock in experience in the ninth inning role.

However, I have a suggestion for any team that is considering giving up talent and taking on a good sized chunk of the roughly $34 million left on Papelbon’s deal; trade for Jesse Crain instead.

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Last year I reintroduced VOL, a custom metric that attempts to measure the relative volatility of a hitter’s day to day performance. It is far from a perfect metric, but at the moment it’s what we have.

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It is a fact undeniable that people don’t often talk about the San Diego Padres. The reasons for this, presumably, are numerous. The Padres haven’t been good for a while. They have a relatively small fan base, and a limited payroll, and they’re overshadowed by bigger deals up north. They play out West, for whatever that might matter. They don’t have any stop-what-you’re-doing superstars, and the good players are frequently talked about in trade rumors. It’s just hard to talk about 30 different teams evenly, and if you’re in the business of ratings or traffic, the Padres aren’t a big draw. But the Padres as a team perform independent of the buzz. And on Sunday, in San Diego, they knocked off the Diamondbacks 4-1.

That capped off a series sweep, that followed another series sweep. This might have escaped your attention, but the Padres are now a game over .500, at 35-34. They’re right in the thick of things in the National League West, and if you forgive the arbitrary cutoff, since April 24 the Padres are tied for the second-best record in baseball. They started 5-15, slipping off whatever radars they might’ve been on in the first place. They’ve made it all the way back, quietly, and they’ve done so because of their position players. Almost entirely.

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In 150 at-bats back in 2011, Brett Lawrie captured our attention and imagination. “If he could hit nine homers in such a short time, Lawrie could have 30-homer potential over the course of a full season,” is likely a sentence you read before the 2012 season. It’s probably a sentence I wrote, as a matter of fact. In the season and a half since though, Lawrie has hit just 16 homers, and has battled a myriad of injuries. He’s just 23-years-old, but perhaps it’s time we stopped waiting for Lawrie to be a star.

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