Daily Notes for the Ides of March
Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.
1. Featured Game: San Francisco at Seattle
2. SCOUT Leaderboard: Spring Training Batters
3. Graph: Home Run vs. Walk Rates, 2002-11
Featured Game: San Francisco at Seattle
Regarding Seattle’s Starting Pitcher
Right-hander Erasmo Ramirez will start for the Mariners, reports MLB.com Chris Haft. As a 21-year-old last season, Ramirez struck out 17.4% of batters while walking only 4.8% over 152.2 innings between Double- and Triple-A. In terms of velocity and walk rate last season, he approached the accomplishment that was Michael Pineda’s 2010 minor-league season.
On Seattle’s Maybe Third Baseman
Starting at third base tonight for Seattle could maybe be Vincent Catricala. Catricala slashed .349/.421/.601 in 600 plate appearances as a 22-year-old last season between High- and Double-A. The .318 wOBA that ZiPS projects for him is the fourth-highest figure among Mariners hitters. Catricala entered play last night with two homers in 19 spring plate appearances.
Briefly, Regarding Melky Cabrera
As you will note below, on the entirely infallible SCOUT batting leaderboard, Melky Cabrera is having a terrific spring so far — where “so far” means about 30 plate appearances.
Broadcast Information
Mariners Television at 22:05 ET (MLB.TV)
SCOUT Leaderboard: Spring Training Batters
A Note on the SCOUT Batting Leaderboard
Below is the SCOUT batting leaderboard for spring training (ST). SCOUT represents an attempt to derive something meaningful from small samples and is the average of a player’s standard deviations from the ST mean in (regressed) strikeout rate and home-run rate. (Click here for more on SCOUT.)
A Note on How Walks Have Been Removed from SCOUT
For this edition — and, perhaps, for future editions — of the SCOUT batting leaderboard, I’ve removed walk rate. Speaking anecdotally, there seems to be a significant-enough population of hitters who’re able to post high-ish walk rates against minor-league (and, presumably, spring-training) pitching based largely on selectivity, but whose walk rates decline considerably when they face more talented major-league pitchers. Dan Szymborski, proprietor of the ZiPS projection system, has confirmed that high minor-league walk rates do not necessarily beget high major-league ones.
A Note on What Might Else Inform Major-League Walk Rates
Probably power. Hitters with power definitely walk more than those who lack it (i.e. power). See the graph below, for example.
A Final Note, Regarding the Significance of These Numbers
While the intention of SCOUT is to derive something meaningful from small samples, it should be noted that these samples are very small — which is to say, readers should proceed with due caution. That said, the following leaderboards are a preferable alternative to those which list slash stats or the like.
Batting Leaderboard
Here’s the SCOUT batting leaderboard for spring training thus far.
| Name | Org | PA* | K% | HR% | xK% | xHR% | Kz | HRz | SCOUT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Melky Cabrera | SF | 30 | 3.3% | 10.0% | 14.8% | 3.4% | 0.31 | 0.20 | 0.26 |
| Eric Sogard | OAK | 35 | 8.6% | 5.7% | 15.5% | 3.1% | 0.23 | 0.10 | 0.16 |
| Aubrey Huff | SF | 27 | 7.4% | 7.4% | 15.8% | 3.1% | 0.20 | 0.12 | 0.16 |
| Jaff Decker | SD | 25 | 8.0% | 8.0% | 16.0% | 3.2% | 0.18 | 0.12 | 0.15 |
| Mat Gamel | MIL | 22 | 13.6% | 13.6% | 17.1% | 3.5% | 0.06 | 0.22 | 0.14 |
| Hector Luna | PHI | 22 | 9.1% | 9.1% | 16.4% | 3.2% | 0.14 | 0.13 | 0.13 |
| Norichika Aoki | MIL | 25 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 14.7% | 2.5% | 0.32 | -0.06 | 0.13 |
| Danny Valencia | MIN | 20 | 10.0% | 10.0% | 16.6% | 3.2% | 0.11 | 0.14 | 0.12 |
| Domonic Brown | PHI | 21 | 4.8% | 4.8% | 15.9% | 2.9% | 0.20 | 0.04 | 0.12 |
| Martin Prado | ATL | 30 | 3.3% | 0.0% | 14.8% | 2.4% | 0.31 | -0.08 | 0.12 |
*Estimated.
Batting Laggardboard
By way of curiosity, here are the 10 worst batters so far, per SCOUT.
| Name | Org | PA* | K% | HR% | xK% | xHR% | Kz | HRz | SCOUT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chris Heisey | CIN | 26 | 42.3% | 0.0% | 21.9% | 2.5% | -0.47 | -0.07 | -0.27 |
| Jason Heyward | ATL | 30 | 33.3% | 0.0% | 20.8% | 2.4% | -0.34 | -0.08 | -0.21 |
| Chris Gimenez | TB | 23 | 39.1% | 0.0% | 20.9% | 2.5% | -0.36 | -0.06 | -0.21 |
| Jai Miller | BAL | 23 | 43.5% | 4.3% | 21.6% | 2.8% | -0.43 | 0.03 | -0.20 |
| Josh Donaldson | OAK | 38 | 26.3% | 0.0% | 19.9% | 2.4% | -0.24 | -0.10 | -0.17 |
| Adam Loewen | NYM | 22 | 40.9% | 4.5% | 21.1% | 2.9% | -0.37 | 0.04 | -0.17 |
| Mike Carp | SEA | 24 | 33.3% | 0.0% | 20.2% | 2.5% | -0.27 | -0.06 | -0.17 |
| Michael Bourn | ATL | 27 | 29.6% | 0.0% | 19.8% | 2.5% | -0.23 | -0.07 | -0.15 |
| Ezequiel Carrera | CLE | 20 | 35.0% | 0.0% | 20.0% | 2.5% | -0.25 | -0.05 | -0.15 |
| Bryan LaHair | CHC | 20 | 35.0% | 0.0% | 20.0% | 2.5% | -0.25 | -0.05 | -0.15 |
Notes
• The sample for this SCOUT leaderboard includes the 136 batters who’d recorded at least 20 spring-training at-bats as of Wednesday afternoon.
• Jason Heyward’s numbers omit Wednesday’s game, during which he recorded a home run, zero walks, and zero strikeouts — and looked quite good, it must be said.
• Baltimore outfielder Jai Miller has 29 strikeouts in 73 career major-league plate appearances (39.7%), and 1,154 strikeouts in 3,750 career minor-league plate appearances (30.8%).
Graph: Home Run vs. Walk Rates, 2002-11
Here’s a graph of the relationship between home-run and walk rate for 1,542 qualified player season from 2002 to ’11.
Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
Back in the ’50s and ’60s, power was considered the main factor in a batter’s walk rate – walks were attributed to pitchers, but the idea was that pitchers avoided giving power guys anything good to hit. (Selectivity was about getting a pitch to drive.) Sluggers like Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Norm Cash, Harmon Killebrew and Carl Yastrzemski walked a lot, of course. Nobody knew what to make of Eddie Yost, who didn’t even have a particularly small strike zone.
About the graph at the end of the write-up. It looks like it’s generally a good fit with some outliers but the R-squared is only 0.1905. How am I to interpet this? Thanks.
A low R-squared means that the relationship is more complicated than this univariate regression can show. That’s all! No surprise.
So nice not to see any CWS players on the laggarboard.
Carson, I think this is a bad decision, I found minor league walk rate had the highest correlation to major league wRC+
Tell me more about that. You have the data?
I don’t have my data, but someone at minorleagueball posted stuff for Low A. they didn’t have wRC+, but BB% correlated better to career wRC+ than K% or XBH/SO.
It’s here http://www.minorleagueball.com/2012/1/2/2678421/loa-strikeout-walk-rate-spreadsheet
And your theory about walks doesn’t seem to be true, as Low A walk rates have a correlation of .517 to major league walk rates. Ks were a little better than BBs for correlating to the MLB, as Ks have an R of .637, but still BBs are much more important for major league success
Huff is high on the list. Maybe the MVP caliber Huff twin will be playing this year while the lousy one will be relaxing at some secluded five star resort.
Danny Valencia on a leader board! He is the Twins player they were touting as having reworked his on field approach and approach at the dish.
I realize best shape has been covered, but is there something fan graphs has done on reworked batting stance / new approach on the field?
So are all of the outliers at the top end Barry Bonds, or only some of them?
Bonds wouldn’t appear on the graph. His top performance (2001) was a HR average (HR/AB) of 0.15, or 15%.with a (surprisingly low) walk rate of about 26%.. If you use PA as the denominator for HR, it goes down to 11%, still off the graph.
Of course 2001 would be “off the graph”… it’s outside the sample year range; 2002-2007 Bonds, however, is most definitely on that graph.
It’s all Bonds.