With the move of the Houston Astros to the American League, and the unfortunate fact that both leagues will have an uneven number of teams, interleague play is destined to change this year. As cross-platform play goes from something that happens in the middle of June, once a year, like some sort of strange exhibition mini-season, to something that happens every week, the National League will have to re-evaluate their past strategies for American League parks.

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Armed with a new measure for offensive volatility (VOL), I wanted to revisit research I conducted  last year about the value of a consistent offense.

In general, the literature has suggested if you’re comparing two similar offenses, the more consistent offense is preferable throughout the season. The reason has to do with the potential advantages a team can gain when they don’t “waste runs” in blow-out victories. The more evenly a team can distribute their runs, the better than chances of winning more games.

I decided to take my new volatility (VOL) metric and apply it to team-level offense to see if it conformed to this general consensus*.

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Yesterday, the Chicago White Sox warmed the cockles of the present author’s heart by taking 29-year-old infield-type Angel Sanchez from the Angels in the Rule 5 draft. Because Sanchez can play the infield (including shortstop) and because he has some kind of offensive upside (owing to his excellent contact skills) and because he’s cheap (he still has just two years of service time and will likely make the league minimum), Sanchez will allow the White Sox to spend money elsewhere. Or, otherwise, to not spend money elsewhere and just keep that money and use it for whatever, like for a donation to an important New England boarding school.

Players who are chosen in the major-league phase of the Rule 5 draft (as was Sanchez) must be kept on the selecting team’s 25-man major league roster for the entire season after the draft — which suggests, if he’s retained by the White Sox, that Sanchez will fill some manner of utility role behind Gordon Beckham, Jeff Keppinger, and Alexei Ramirez.

Paying a player like Sanchez at or near the league-minimum salary would seem to give the signing time a competitive advantage. It’s also possible that that’s not the case at all. What the author found himself wondering — and what he attempted to answer by means of this post — is the question: “How much are utility infielders worth these days?”

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The Reds have been looking for a consistent leadoff hitter since the current iteration of the team began contention in 2010. Drew Stubbs was supposed to fill that role, but his performance has trended the wrong way since 2009 — after a sharp 105 wRC+ in 2010, Stubbs has posted marks of 90 and a brutal 64 in 2011 and 2012 respectively. Between Stubbs and Zack Cozart, Reds leadoff hitters hit an awful .208/.254/.327 last season.

Now, the Reds are looking to fill the two holes Stubbs’s decline has left them with — leadoff hitter and center field. The club was interested in Ben Revere but the Phillies beat them to the punch. CBSSports.com’s Danny Knobler reports the Reds are shifting their sights towards Rockies outfielder Dexter Fowler.

Knobler reports starting pitcher Mike Leake may be the cost for Fowler. Homer Bailey’s name has popped up as well. Is Fowler enough of an upgrade over Stubbs for the Reds to deal away one of their MLB-ready starting pitchers?

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In a vacuum, you could probably make a decent enough case in favor of exchanging Alex White for Wilton Lopez. As Jeff wrote last week, Lopez is the game’s most extreme high GB/low BB reliever, and this skillset allows him to be an effective late-inning reliever. Lopez is a quality arm, and he can be a key piece of a good bullpen. Meanwhile, White has been pretty lousy during his first 150 innings in the big leagues, and there’s a decent chance that he ends up in the bullpen himself. As one person noted to me on Twitter last night, the Rockies traded a guy I’ve projected as a reliever in the past for a better reliever.

There’s just a few problems here. The primary one regards the health of Lopez’s right arm. The reported deal with the Phillies that never materialized last week apparently included Philadelphia having some significant concern over his elbow, and a couple of folks here in Nashville have said that Lopez flunked a physical at the trade deadline that nuked a trade for him back in July. When there’s smoke, there’s often fire, and the fact that Lopez spent a month of the 2012 season on the DL with an elbow issue suggests that there’s almost certainly something there worth worrying about. Without access to the medical information and people who can intelligently interpret it, we can’t say to what degree Lopez is damaged goods, but it is clear that other teams have serious concerns about how long Lopez’s elbow is going to last before he needs surgery.

However, predicting injuries isn’t something anyone has mastered, so let’s just assume for now that Lopez is going to stay healthy. Even with that assumption, it’s not clear that this is a significant upgrade for Colorado relative to simply shifting White to the bullpen.

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Early Sunday morning, Twitter was abuzz with news that the Dodgers and Fox Sports West had agreed to a 25-year broadcast deal valued between $6 billion and $7 billion. By Sunday afternoon, Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times had confirmed the outline of the deal, but cautioned that the Dodgers and Fox were still negotiating, with a November 30 deadline looming.

As I explained last week in this post, the parties’ existing agreement gave Fox an exclusive, 45-day window in which to negotiate a new deal to govern the 2014 season and beyond. Hence, the November 30 deadline. If an agreement isn’t inked by Friday, the Dodgers must submit a final offer to Fox by December 7. Fox then has 30 days to accept or reject the offer. If Fox rejects the offer, the Dodgers are free to negotiate with whomever they want.

However the negotiations play out, it’s clear now that the Dodgers’ local TV revenue is about to enter the stratosphere. A 25-year deal worth between $6 billion and $7 billion would net the Dodgers between $240 million and $280 million per year. Per year. That’s more than any team has ever spent on player salaries in a single season — even the Yankees. And it’s nearly double the amount of local TV revenue pulled in annually by the team with the second-most lucrative deal — the other Los Angeles team (the Angels) — which entered into a 17-year deal with Fox Sports West worth $2.5 billion.

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Spend a little while thinking about Tyler Colvin. Since you’re all FanGraphs readers, I’m going to assume that you’re at least somewhat familiar with who he is. That is, if you think about the things you know about Tyler Colvin, number one is that you know he’s a major-league baseball player. You probably have a good idea that he played for the Cubs, and plays for the Rockies. You’ll probably recall that he was nearly killed on a baseball field by a flying and stabby shard of a bat. But whether you know the bare minimum about Tyler Colvin, or whether he’s your favorite player ever, he did something in 2012 you likely didn’t realize. Or at least, things happened in 2012 involving Tyler Colvin you likely didn’t realize.

Colvin, this year, was one of few things about the Rockies that wasn’t a disappointment. He played in a whole lot of games and slugged .531, with a 117 wRC+. Though he didn’t walk and though he did strike out, he still managed to produce, even after you adjust for the ballpark insanity. Officially, he reached base 122 times on hits. Officially, he reached base 21 times on walks, and another two times on hit-by-pitches. Yet these were not the only times that Tyler Colvin reached base, and everyone was safe.

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It’s the bottom of the eighth inning. Men are on first and third base, there’s one out and your team is down by one run. The opposing team has one of the best ground-ball pitchers on the hill, and the infield is playing back and is looking for a double play. All you need is a fly ball to tie the game and significantly swing your chances of winning.

So who do you want at the plate?

It’s likely that the opposing manager will either bring in a ground-ball specialist or just tell the pitcher to stay away from pitches that could be hit in the air to the outfield. Knowing who you’d want to hit requires an understanding of what pitches are the most likely to induce a ground ball — and what hitters manage to hit fly balls against those pitches most often.

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Earlier this week I posted about the Best Bunts of 2012 according to Win Probability Added (WPA). Nothing like that is really complete, however, without talking about the worst. So here, divided into some rather arbitrary categories, are some of the worst bunts of 2012.

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In September, teams are allowed to expand their rosters and the Rockies did that in 2011 by calling up Wilin Rosario. Rosario showed a bit of pop, but had some problems making contact. Going into 2012, questions about his ability to not strike out existed. By using a small sample size of a hitter’s swing and contact values, a better estimate of his walk and strikeout rates can be estimated.

The Rockies began the 2012 season with Ramon Hernandez as their #1 catcher and Wilin Rosario was slated as the backup even though Rosario was a highly touted ranked prospect (#49 in 2011, #87 in 2012). The main reason the Rockies didn’t have any faith in Rosario was his plate discipline. In the minors, his BB% ranged between 4.5% and 8.7% and his K% between 19.2%-29.9%. In 57 MLB plate appearances, his BB% was 3.5% and his K% was 35.1%. These values forced people to have reservations about him being able to stick in the majors.

In the 2011 FG+ fantasy preview, Paul Swydan wrote the following on Rosario:

Swinging at every pitch thrown to you is only a good strategy for a hitter if you have enough bat control to hit or foul off nearly every pitch thrown to you (see Guerrero, Vladimir). Wilin Rosario is not this type of hitter, and his acceptable plate discipline in the low minors has steadily worsened as he has moved up the Rockies’ organizational ladder.  ….. Rosario still needs to fine tune his game — particularly his plate discipline — and is unlikely to contribute to your team no matter where he starts the season.

Instead of using BB% and K%, a player’s estimated K% and BB% can be determined by using swing and miss values. To get an idea of this value, I created a formula using (See Appendix) O-Swing%, K-Swing%, O-Contact% and K-Contact% plate discipline values.

By plugging Rosario’s 2011 plate discipline numbers into the spreadsheet, his 2011 plate discipline numbers would be 22% K% and 6% BB%. While the BB% is fairly close to his actual value (4%), the K% is off by 13 percentage points.

With questions surrounding his plate discipline in 2012, he saw is K% end up at 23%. This was within 1% point of what his 2011 estimated K%. With reasonable plate discipline, he was able to put up a decent season (1.8 WAR in 426 PA). Using a second method to calculate a Rosario’s K% and BB% helps to get a better picture of his true talent level.

Rookies, like Rosario, are called up and get a small number of plate appearances. By using a player’s plate discipline numbers, the player’s walk and strikeout rates can be estimated. The estimate can help determine if the player’s talent level is significantly different than their stats suggest.
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Appendix

I wanted a formula to help estimate a player’s K% and BB% using the plate discipline values available at FanGraphs. The formula create wouldn’t be a prediction (as it contains no regression) or stat that stabilizes fast.

I took every player that had over 200 PAs in a season from 2002, when plate discipline numbers are first available at FanGraphs, to 2012. I ran a linear regression against over 3500 seasons and came up with the following two formulas:

BB% ((NIBB-IBB)/PA)
BB% = -0.228 x O-Swing% -0.139 x Z-Swing% – 0.030 x O-Contact% -0.257 x Z-Contact% + 0.437
R-Squared = 0.45

K% (K/PA)
K % = 0.248 x O-Swing% -0.345 x Z-Swing% – 0.153 x O-Contact% -0.837 x Z-Contact% + 1.169
R-Squared = 0.79

I have gone ahead and saved people some time and uploaded a spreadsheet to the Google Docs that will automatically do the calculations.

To use the sheet.

1. Download the spreadsheet by using the “Download As” feature under File.
Go to the players page at FanGraphs, minimize minor league data, go to the Standard stat area and copy the all the data going back to 2002.

2. Go to the downloaded spreadsheet and paste the data with the upper left corner being the left yellow box.

3. Go back to the player’s FanGraphs page and copy the (non-Pitch F/X) Plate Discipline values.

4. Go back to the downloaded spreadsheet and paste the data with the upper left corner being the right yellow box.

5. Once the data has been added to the spreadsheet, the player’s real and estimated K% and BB% will be calculated.