Archive for Teams

Episode 257
First, imagine FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron. Next, imagine all baseball. Now, imagine Dave Cameron analyzing all baseball. That’s precisely what follows in this episode of FanGraphs Audio.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 34 min. play time.)

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Season-ending awards routinely evoke differing passionate opinions amongst baseball fans, writers, and players. A perfect example of that is the debate as to whether Mike Trout or Miguel Cabrera should win the American League MVP, which has continuously raged for the better part of September.

With that in mind, I was surprised to see the overwhelming majority of the FanGraphs staff vote for Bryce Harper as the NL Rookie of the Year over left-hander Wade Miley. While arguments can certainly be made for Harper, I thought Miley had a slightly better resume to be crowned the best rookie in the National League this season.

And, I suppose, that definition is where some of the confusion lies in my part. The Rookie of the Year is defined as the best rookie, not the most valuable rookie. That difference in terminology has always led me to vote for the rookie who compiled the best numbers without giving extra consideration to a position player because they largely play every day, and thus, often provide more value to their respective teams — which is why pitchers rarely win MVP awards.

Perhaps I’m alone in interpreting the award in that fashion. It was surprising, however, to see Wade Miley and Bryce Harper so far apart in the voting, despite identical +4.8 WAR seasons. Miley has the fourth-highest WAR of any pitcher in the National League, while Harper owns the third-highest WAR of any NL center fielder. The numbers are so close. There doesn’t seem to be a clear-cut decision.

Miley played a huge part in salvaging the Diamondbacks’ starting rotation. The team’s two stalwarts from last season — Ian Kennedy and Daniel Hudson — failed to reproduce their success, due both to ineffectiveness and injury. Kennedy  was nothing more than league-league average. He soaked up 200-plus innings, but merely posted a 98 FIP- and a 96 ERA-. Hudson, on the other hand, only made nine starts and saw his season end with Tommy John surgery.

With that in mind, the Diamondbacks needed someone to step up and anchor the rotation. Miley was not only the starter who experienced the most success on the mound, but he averaged 6.4 innings per start. Working consistently deep into games helped save the bullpen from overwork. It’s hard to imagine the Diamondbacks’ bullpen compiling the fourth-best FIP in all of baseball without Miley stepping into the rotation with such a high level of success.

The Diamondbacks’ left-hander also has the advantage in playing time. He spent the entire season in the big leagues, while Harper joined in the last week in April. That is a month’s more value Miley provided his team.

Harper evens the scales, however, with his his defensive value — in which he compiled an +8.9 UZR and one of the best arm numbers (+6.6 ARM) in the league. He’s more than a than just a bat. He augmented the Nationals’ production on both offense and defense, which negates much of the advantage Miley has with stabilizing a rotation in potential crisis and overall playing time.

The tipping point for me comes on a razor-thin point, in which Miley performed better compared to his position than did Harper. Miley’s 76 FIP- means he performed 24% better than the league-average pitcher. Harper, on the other hand, posted an impressive 122 wRC+, meaning he performed 22% better than the league-average hitter. Both statistics are park-adjusted, as well, which helps cut out the background noise of Chase Field being more hitter-friendly than Nationals Park.

In terms of which performance is more objectively impressive, Bryce Harper wins in a landslide. He was essentially a five-win player as a 19-year-old, while Wade Miley did so at 25 years old. Perhaps that comes into play for some people, which is fine. That simply did not affect my evaluation of which player had a statistically better rookie season.

When it came down to it, the race was so close that an extremely minor point swung my favor to Miley. He performed a little better compared to the league average than did Harper. That’s why he got my vote.

The Dodgers entered the offseason a little sooner than they expected, but they have already hit the ground running in terms of their offseason planning. While they must await the results of medical exams on both Matt Kemp and Chad Billingsley, they have a pretty good idea of how they expect to attack the offseason, and that is to get after starting pitching. That is a good goal — with Billingsley and Ted Lilly potentially unavailable at the start of the season, and Aaron Harang potentially not good at any time, Los Angeles could use some reinforcements. But general manager Ned Colletti is also planning, at this juncture, to run with the combo of Luis Cruz at third and Hanley Ramirez at shortstop next season. This is a mistake.

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Here are the four rookie position players above 3.0 WAR in the 2012 season:
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It is known by the educated and handsome everywhere that Virgil’s Aeniad begins with the words “Arma virumque cano” — or, in English, “I sing of arms and the man.” After that part, much less is known — except that, at some point, a she-wolf saves a human child via suckling.

In any case, everyone knows that Virgil sang of arms and one man. What this post presupposes is: what if he sang of three men? And what if by arms he didn’t mean weaponry but actual arms on a person’s body? And what if Virgil knew that both baseball and the internet were things?

He would probably sing about three arms from the first game of the Nationals-Cardinals divisional series, is what.

Adam Wainwright’s Arm
Adam Wainwright’s arm was excellent on Sunday. How excellent? Here’s one answer: until walking Kurt Suzuki with two outs in the sixth — which would prove, actually, to be his 26th and final batter of the game — Wainwright had posted the lowest single-game FIP- of any start ever of his career (around 17, I think it was). As it is, Wainwright’s 10-strikeout performance againt the Nationals still qualifies as one of the best starts of his entire career.

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Almost three years ago, the Colorado Rockies signed an extension with their 26-year-old catcher, Chris Iannetta. Iannetta was coming off of two good offensive years for a catcher. Although the team had made him split playing time with Yorvit Torrealbea during 2009, the new contract seemed to indicate that Iannetta was going to be the main guy going forward. It was not to be. Iannetta ended up getting fewer than 700 plate appearances for the Rockies in 2010 and 2011 combined. While he did not exactly light it up as he had in 2008, it was baffling why the Rockies would extend a promising catcher then jerk him around in favor of obvious stopgap players like Miguel Olivo.

Whether the Rockies were right or wrong to do that, by the end of 2011 it was pretty clear that Iannetta had worn out his welcome in Colorado. Wilin Rosario, a prospect who had good power, and (perhaps most attractive to the Rockies) shared Olivo’s aversion to walks and blocking pitches, was ready. The Rockies struck a deal with the Angels after the season that sent Iannetta to the Angels for Tyler Chatwood. For some reason, the Angels had a hole at catcher. Or maybe, given Iannetta’s hitting style, Mike Scioscia just really appreciates irony. In any case, despite Iannetta’s injury-marred season, rather than making a decision on Iannetta’s club option for 2013, the Angels replaced it with a three-year, $15.5 million contract last Friday.

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Jeff Zimmerman and I have done lots of work on player aging curves in the past 12 to 18 months. Jeff started things off with a series of hitter aging curves, which focused mostly on standard outcomes and WAR components. Jeff and I then joined forces this year for a series focused on pitcher aging.

This time around, I wanted to know how a hitter’s plate discipline changes over his career. We already know plate discipline statistics are easily the most stable, year over year. That said, I wondered whether I’d see meaningful patterns as players age. Often times, scouts and commentators mention how a hitter’s approach changes over time: less disciplined, less contact as a young player; better bat control and better strike-zone awareness as a hitter matures. But does the data confirm this thinking?

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On Friday, the Rangers season ended, as the team fell to the Baltimore Orioles in the AL Wild Card play-in game. Josh Hamilton, in what will quite possibly be his final at-bat as a Texas Ranger, was booed by the home crowd. From an outside perspective, a break-up seems inevitable. The Rangers — and their fans — seem to just be tired of the Josh Hamilton Experience.

On one hand, the frustration is understandable. Back in May, I wrote a piece noting that Hamilton’s combination of approach and success were historically unique. That he was destroying opposing pitchers while showing the plate discipline of a three-year-old was fascinating. Then opposing pitchers adjusted, they simply stopped him throwing him anything near the plate, and Hamilton went into an epic two month slump. In August, Hamilton rebounded a bit, and he and his coaches both suggested that he’d made the necessary changes to his approach, even though the evidence suggested otherwise.

Not surprisingly, the success didn’t last, and any notion that Hamilton had made any strides with his pitch selection issues were dashed in the final month of the year, as his monthly totals illustrate:

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A series between two teams full of unique individuals doesn’t really fit into a nice plot with themes, characters and nemeses. But when in setting up this series, it still made sense to highlight the depth and undervalued skills on the Athletics and the top-heavy, star-driven status of the Tigers team. Two plate appearances from Sunday’s game two between these two teams seemed to encapsulate the overall matchup well, and highlight many of those same themes.

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The Giants lost to the Reds 5-2 in Game 1 of their NLDS on Saturday, but for San Francisco, it wasn’t so bad — there were identifiable moments where things easily could’ve gone differently. One break here, one break there, and maybe it’s the Giants instead who’re leading the series. The offense, certainly, didn’t look as bad as its ultimate two-run total. While every game is important when there can only be three, four, or five games, at least the Giants could come away feeling like they hadn’t been badly outplayed.

In Game 2, the Giants got themselves slaughtered. The Reds scored nine runs, the Giants scored zero runs, the Reds racked up 13 hits, and the Giants racked up two hits. In Game 2, the Giants were badly out-hit, and accordingly, in Game 2, the Giants were badly out-pitched. With Madison Bumgarner pitching at home against Bronson Arroyo, I can’t imagine there were many people out there who expected the Giants to lose by the score of a forfeit.

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