Archive for Teams

All baseball managers have strategies, and all manager strategies are supposed to function to maximize a team’s chances of winning. They don’t all work out that way, of course, and one need only explore the world of sacrifice bunts, but the managers’ hearts are in the right place. When managers get involved, they do so because they believe their involvement will bump the chances of winning the game. And managers don’t like to concede a game before it’s over, and one could never be critical of a manager for not giving up. There always exists some chance of victory, before the conclusion, and there’s something noble about pursuing long odds. But the necessity of managerial involvement follows a spectrum. In close games, in high-leverage situations, it makes the most sense to try something strategic. In not-close games, there’s hardly any benefit, so while such strategizing isn’t pointless, it is the most pointless.

As a sort-of example, the Giants closed out the Cardinals in the NLCS in Game 7. The Giants were up 1-0 after one, 2-0 after two, and 7-0 after three. It was still 7-0 at the seventh-inning stretch, with the Giants at home. They’d add two more runs, just for the hell of it. In the top of the eighth, Bruce Bochy replaced Santiago Casilla with specialist Javier Lopez. In the top of the ninth, with two outs, Bochy replaced Lopez with closer Sergio Romo. Bochy managed as if the game were close when it wasn’t, and there wasn’t much in the way of benefit. But Bochy gets a pass, because (A) whatever, and (B) it was Game 7 of the NLCS and those are high stakes. This was essentially pointless strategizing in a very important baseball game.

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More than any other pitcher in 2012, Edinson Volquez captured why park effects matter. The Padres’ righty exhibited a similar profile at home and on the road — lots of strikeouts (8.9 K/9 home, 8.5 away), walks (5.0 BB/9 home, 5.4 BB/9 away) and ground balls (53 percent home, 48 percent away). All marks were slightly better at home, as expected, but there’s nothing in the basics to suggest a significant home/road split.

Except, of course, he pitched for San Diego. Volquez posted a 2.95 ERA behind just three home runs allowed (0.3 HR/9) at Petco Park but was ravaged on the road to the tune of a 5.60 ERA and 11 home runs allowed (1.2 HR/9).

The aggregate Volquez was a below average but still useful pitcher — he posted a 114 ERA- and 113 FIP-, numbers typical of a fourth or (more likely) fifth starter. A mediocre pitcher finding acehood within the Petco Park walls is nothing new, but it does raise a question: does the pitcher change his style to fit his surroundings when his home park is extreme?

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It has been a rough week for the population of former Montreal Expos in the major leagues. On the heels of Nick Johnson’s retirement, former Expos, Nationals, Mets, and Phillies catcher Brian Schneider announced that his baseball playing career was over. Schneider started his professional career after being drafted by the Expos back in 1995, when they still may have seemed to have a viable future in Montreal (remember that 1994 team?). Schneider was never a star or even a “what if” guy like Johnson, but he he did manage to play 13 seasons in the majors. Schneider was hardly a career backup, either, as he started at least 95 games at catcher every season from 2003 to 2008. He was not ever an average bat (other than in his 48 plate appearance stint in 2001), but he was not terrible, especially considering his position. Schneider was good defensively. He threw out more base runners than average, and the limited records we have show Schneider to have been good at framing pitches.

Schneider was on two teams (the 2010 and 2011 Phillies) that made the postseason, but never got a plate appearance in the playoffs. Schneider may not have been much more, at least by the numbers, than an adequate catcher with a diverse combination of skills, but even players like that can have some pretty exciting hits. As we often do on these occasions, let’s take a look at Schneider’s three biggest hits according to the “story stat,” Win Probability Added (WPA).

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Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, are being released at FanGraphs this year. Below are the projections for the Seattle Mariners. Szymborski can be found on Twitter at @DSzymborski.

Other 2013 Projections: Angels / Astros / Athletics / Blue Jays / Brewers / Cardinals / Cubs / Diamondbacks / Giants / Mets / Nationals / Phillies / Pirates / Rangers / Rays / Reds / Rockies / Royals / Tigers / White Sox.

Batters
One, choosing to wax optimistic with regard to the projections below, would note that five of the top six players by projected WAR on the Mariners are either 25 years old or younger. Dustin Ackley, Mike Zunino, Kyle Seager, Jesus Montero, and (less immediately) Brad Miller: not only might they form a young, cost-controlled nucleus around which the front office can build, but their youth suggests that improvement is not only possible, but likely.

Another, choosing to be less optimistic — perhaps because he knows that, as a resident of Seattle, summer proper is still ca. six months away and that the city will remain ensconced in a 45-degree rain cloud until then — perhaps that other one would emphasize the lack of impact talent among the club’s field players and how recent acquisitions (like Jason Bay, Raul Ibanez, Kendrys Morales, and Michael Morse) address the team’s needs, but by too little.

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In case you’d forgotten, where the Houston Astros used to be a National League baseball team, now they’re going to be an American League baseball team. It’s a big deal, because it’s a sort of pseudo-relocation, and it’s also been a long time coming since before the leagues were unbalanced and that didn’t make any sense. For years, we had one league with 14 teams and one league with 16 teams, and we didn’t just tolerate it — we hardly ever bothered to acknowledge it. Unbalanced leagues! Amazing!

The move has generated certain negative responses, both particular and broad. A lot of Astros fans aren’t happy, because they’ve grown to prefer NL baseball, and also because people prefer to remain unchanged, given their druthers. A lot of baseball fans aren’t happy, because now there’s going to be more regular interleague play, and people have strong feelings about that. And a lot of AL baseball fans aren’t happy, because the Astros are bad, they’re moving to the AL West, and the schedule is unbalanced. There’s a perception that the Astros will give an advantage to teams in the West, and therefore that they’ll give a disadvantage to teams in the Central and East.

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I recently wrote about my attempt to design an indicator that would predict when players were at a higher risk for having a collapse-type year. I named the metric CLIFFORD, referring to the fact that players identified by it were at risk of falling off a cliff offensively. My inspiration was Adam Dunn and his disastrous 2011, in which his wOBA declined by .113.

My initial research showed that 58% of collapse candidates identified by Marcel actually experience a wOBA decline of at least .03 (or 30 points)–2.43 times the likelihood of non-collapse candidates. Collapse candidates identified by CLIFFORD actually decreased by at least 30 points of wOBA 53% of the time–2.14 times the likelihood of non-collapse candidates.

Marcel initially appeared to do a better job identifying these candidates. If we knew nothing else outside of just the Marcel projection, our chances were better at identifying collapse candidates than if we used CLIFFORD (and, yes, the difference between the relative risk for both measures is statistically significant).

However, and here’s the bright spot, there was not much overlap between the two metrics.

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It’s January 29th and Michael Bourn is still a free agent. While Scott Boras is known for pulling late-winter rabbits out of his hat, the new free agent compensation system is proving to be a significant roadblock. As we talked about a month ago, the changes to the draft slot allocations have caused a reaction — an overreaction, perhaps — in draft pick valuations, and teams are no longer as willing to sacrifice a first round pick to sign veteran free agents. Combined with questions about how well his defensive skills will hold up as he gets older and a premium asking price, the result has been a depressed market for Bourn’s services, and no obvious resolution to the standoff.

So, the Mets — likely with some influence by Scott Boras — are apparently considering asking Major League Baseball to declare their first round pick protected, even though it falls outside of the top 10 picks, which were the ones declared off limits to compensation in the CBA. And the argument is actually kind of interesting.

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The Marlins Top 15 list has a little bit of everything and the organization boasts some impressive arms. There are three left-handed starters on the list that have the potential to develop into No. 3 starters, if not better. The overall depth of the system is improving but it’s still not quite where I’d like it to be.

#1 Jose Fernandez (P)

Fernandez, just 20, dominated two levels of A-ball in 2012. The 14th overall pick during the 2011 amateur draft, the right-hander was considered an advanced high school arm but he’s been even better than advertised. He struck out 158 batters with just 35 walks in 134 combined innings last season. He has a four-pitch repertoire that includes a mid-to-high-90s fastball, plus changeup and two very good breaking balls in a curveball and slider.

Although he’s very advanced for his age, a contact I spoke with says Fernandez still has some work to do, including, “Learning how to pitch, reading hitters swings, and a better understanding of pitch sequences,” the talent evaluator said. The young hurler also has so many weapons at his disposal that he needs to learn when it’s appropriate to use each one for maximum effectiveness. Fernandez has a durable frame and should be able to provide 200+ innings with ease at the big league level. He will, though, have to watch his conditioning to prevent getting too big around the middle. Read the rest of this entry »

This afternoon, it was reported that the Rays will ink Kelly Johnson to a one-year deal. It’s an interesting match, as Johnson provides the Rays with the one thing that they like — a player who has been very good in the past but who still comes at a modest cost. He also gives Tampa manager Joe Maddon the thing that he likes best — options.

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This is a post with two potential introductions. We will deploy both one of them. By our numbers, a year ago, Michael Young was worth -1.4 WAR. He’s going to be a starter for the Phillies. A year ago, Ryan Howard was worth -1.0 WAR. He’s going to be a starter for the Phillies. A year ago, Delmon Young was worth -0.7 WAR. He’s supposedly going to be a starter for the Phillies. A year ago, Chone Figgins was worth -1.0 WAR. By reports, the Phillies are the last team to have expressed some interest. A year ago, Joe Mather was worth -1.5 WAR. He’ll be in Phillies camp on a minor-league deal. A year ago, Yuniesky Betancourt was worth -0.8 WAR. He’ll be in Phillies camp on a minor-league deal.

It’s misleading to present the numbers like that, but it’s also powerful. The Phillies are going to have a lot of talent on their roster, but they could also have a lot of players coming off really bad seasons. For now, it doesn’t mean much that Mather and Betancourt will be in camp, because they’re on minor-league contracts, and minor-league contracts are effectively harmless. But the risk is that a bad player on a minor-league contract can end up on the major-league roster, and as you’ve figured out, I’m using this as the latest opportunity to write about Yuniesky Betancourt, the extraordinary underachiever.

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