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.

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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Holding and participating in weekly live chats is a really effective way to find out what people want to know more about, and therefore what might be worth writing about. It’s at least an effective way to find out what a few people want to know more about, and that’s usually good enough for me. I’ve been receiving an awful lot of questions about Rockies catcher Wilin Rosario, so he seems like a guy to discuss. Before we discuss Wilin Rosario, we must first discuss Josh Bard.

In 2005, the Red Sox had both Tim Wakefield and Doug Mirabelli. Mirabelli worked well with Wakefield, by which I mean Mirabelli demonstrated that he was capable of catching Wakefield, but in December Mirabelli got traded to the Padres. The next April, Wakefield made five starts for the Red Sox, throwing each time to Josh Bard. In the first start, Bard registered three passed balls. In the next start, Bard registered zero passed balls, but in the start after that, Bard registered two passed balls. He had another passed ball in Wakefield’s fourth start, and in Wakefield’s fifth start, Bard racked up four passed balls. That was on April 26. On May 1, the Red Sox traded with the Padres to get Mirabelli back, and Mirabelli caught Wakefield that day. He didn’t record any passed balls.

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There are rate stats for just about every kind of opportunity a hitter faces in a game. Batting average tells you how often a player reaches base via a hit. On-base percentage tells you how often a player avoids making an out per plate appearance. But what about swings as opportunities?

Last year, I played around with the idea of production per swing. The idea was to examine what hitters gave the most value when they took a swing. The methodology was pretty simple: calculate the Weighted On-base Average (wOBA) each hitter generated using their swings — instead of plate appearances — as the denominator*.

Of course, there is a healthy correlation between actual wOBA and wOBA per swing (.83 in 2012), but less so Isolated Power (ISO). (wOBA/swing and ISO share only a .53 correlation.) Some of the results may not be all that surprising, but many certainly are.

Let’s first look at the top-25 so far this year:

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Ubaldo Jimenez was once a terrific young starting pitcher for the Colorado Rockies. He had tremendous raw talent and pitching acumen to boot. If harnessed, he figured to miss bats, keep the ball on the ground and limit walks while remaining on the effectively wild side. He could dial it up to 96 mph — average fastball velocity of 95.8 mph in 2007 — and threw a top-notch, looping curveball that was tough to pick up with his herky-jerky windup. He was, potentially, the prototypical pitcher capable of succeeding at Coors Field.

After posting WAR totals of 4.3, 5.9 and 6.4 from 2008-10, he took a step back last season. His strikeout, walk and groundball numbers were very similar to the prior three years, but he served up more home runs and was less effective at stranding runners. Last season was a case of strong ERA estimators that belied better performance than his actual earned run average. As such, he seemed like a prime regression candidate this season. Through 28 starts and 161.1 innings this year, however, Jimenez has just 0.4 WAR. After averaging 5.5 WAR from 2008-10, Jimenez isn’t currently on pace to finish with even one win above replacement over a full season.

While last season’s relative struggles — he had been so effective that 3.5 WAR represented a down year — at least gave hope to improved performance, everything has gone wrong this season. Jimenez has regressed, but not in the direction his 2011 peripherals portended. Instead, he is set to finish this season with the worst numbers of his career across the board. He quickly went from one of the best to one of the worst, and it doesn’t seem that the major causes are easily fixable.

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Rockies hitters have always had a hard time producing above-average seasons once context is applied. As a team, the club has never compiled a season with a 100 wRC+. Outsized park factors continuously knock their stats down a few pegs, as do the adjustments hitters have to make to differing altitudes when the team hits the road. Even with that as a backdrop though, Dante Bichette’s 1999 season was an outlier for the ages — one that is not only historically notorious by itself, but helped the Colorado pitching staffs have one of the worst, if not the worst season in franchise history.

Bichette, who came to the Rockies in a trade requested by manager Don Baylor and executed hours after their 1992 expansion draft, was a fixture in the Colorado lineup for the franchise’s first seven seasons. He ranks fourth in the club’s annals in games played, and the only outfielder who has played more games than him in a Rockies uniform is Larry Walker. He ranks 10th in club history in wRC+ (minimum 1,000 plate appearances) and provided a bevy of memorable moments as one of the original Blake St. Bombers.

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Drew Pomeranz takes the mound today for the Colorado Rockies. The 23-year-old lefty came into the 2012 season with Matt Moore expectations, but so far has Jamie Moyer results. On Tuesday, he takes the bump aiming for a solid 4.0 IP against the playoff contending Atlanta Braves, and if he hopes to salvage anything from his forgettable rookie season, he will need to get his secondary pitches working for him.

Pomeranz has improved over the last two months, as his K-rate and BB-rate have both moved in the right direction:

But in order for his success to grow, Pomeranz will need to dramatically alter his approach, and that starts with his curveball.
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There have been two players named Betancourt throughout the course of major-league history, and it just so happens that both of them are current. Far more has been written about Yuniesky Betancourt than Rafael Betancourt, even though Rafael has been around longer, and even though Yuniesky is terrible. But then, that’s kind of the reason. Yuniesky wasn’t supposed to be terrible, but he became terrible, famously terrible, and he kept getting jobs. Rafael is a reliever who has been quietly effective for relatively unpopular teams for the better part of a decade. It never didn’t make sense that more should be written about Yuniesky. But some should be written about Rafael, because it turns out he’s more interesting than you probably thought.

Full disclosure: I’m obsessed to a minor degree with Rafael Betancourt. I find him to be absolutely fascinating for reasons that might not appeal to the average baseball fan. There’s something particular about the way that Betancourt goes to work. He hasn’t hit a batter since his rookie season way back in 2003, many hundreds of appearances ago. That’s crazy, and I’ve written about that elsewhere. But that’s a symptom. It’s not that Betancourt tries not to hit batters; it’s that he pitches in such a way that hit batsmen are almost impossible. Especially, specifically, against lefties.

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