Archive for InstaGraphs

Infielder John McDonald announced his retirement on Wednesday, having recorded at least some manner of major-league playing time in each of the past 16 seasons.

McDonald’s defensive reputation was excellent almost till the end — and the numbers support that narrative. In more than 4000 innings at shortstop, McDonald saved about 19 runs, or about six runs per every 150 games. At second base, he was (unsurprisingly) better, saving roughly 16 runs per every 150 games at that position.

Offensively, his track record was decidedly less impressive. In 2651 plate appearances, McDonald slashed just .233/.273/.323, producing a 56 wRC+. Not poor enough, that, to prevent him from having a legitimate major-league career. That said, McDonald was sort of a human case study designed to test how little offense a team would tolerate from an elite defender.

What’s notable about McDonald’s offensive performance is that, of the two metrics which most directly inform batting average — that is, strikeout rate and BABIP — McDonald constantly posted above-average figures by one of them. Between 1999 and 2014, the league-average strikeout rate was 17.2%. Over that same interval, McDonald produced a 14.3% strikeout rate. Maybe not quite a standard deviation better than the mean, that, but still solidly above average. The trouble for McDonald was his batted-ball outcomes. Over those same 2651 plate appearances — more than an adequate sample for such a thing to become reliable — he produced just a .264 BABIP, rendering him something like a 30 on the 20-80 scale by this particular measure. The frequency with which he made contact, in other words, was never adequate enough to compensate for his lack of power on contact.

McDonald’s curious batting profile has some value for its capacity to provide a better understanding not only of current players — but, perhaps more intriguingly, for prospects. For, inspecting his batted-ball profile, one finds that McDonald consistently produced infield-fly-ball rates (IFFB%) above — which is to say, worse than — league average. Even more relevant to this line of inquiry, McDonald’s IFFB rates were also high relative to all his batted balls. Indeed, both inuition and Steve Saude (writing for Community blog in 2012) tell us that, if IFFB% offers some clues as to a hitter’s BABIP, then IFFB as a percentage of all batted balls offers even more in that way.

Regard, for example, this graph, which plots BABIP vs. IFFB% for all players who recorded more than 5000 plate appearances between 2002 and -14:

And now regard this second graph, which plots BABIP vs. IFFB per Batted Ball for that same population:

The correlation is considerably stronger in the latter instance — and continues to grow stronger in larger samples, too, as the table below illustrates (again, using the sample of hitters from 2002 to -14).

While there are certainly calculators that exist and which offer more sophisticated means by which to estimate a player’s “true talent BABIP,” as it were, it’s striking the degree to which a player’s infield-fly profile reveals his likely BABIPs. This is advantageous, as well, as fly-ball and pop-up rates become reliable in about just 20% of the plate appearances as does BABIP.

As for McDonald himself, one finds that he produced infield flys on 5.8% of his batted balls — a figure which would equate roughly to a .270 BABIP. His career mark, again, was a .264 BABIP.

Finally, for the benefit of the reader, here’s a reference table featuring rough equivalencies between IFFB per batted ball and BABIP:

Over the last month or so, some diligent folks have tracked the publicly disclosed Hall of Fame ballots. Carson collected that information for us earlier today, and looking at it, one couldn’t help but feel dread at the possibility of some deserving candidates being axed from the ballot for failure to garner five percent of the vote. Larry Walker, Sammy Sosa and Gary Sheffield were among the players who had to be sweating the technique of the assembled electorate. Or, if they weren’t, certainly there were some concerned fans.

As it turns out, those fears went mostly unwarranted. The only player with a legitimate-ish case for inclusion in the Hall who fell under the threshold was Blue Jays great Carlos Delgado. While Delgado certainly has a case, Jay Jaffe didn’t have him making it in via JAWS, and he would have faced an uphill climb whether he had remained on the ballot or not. At 43.5 WAR, he was definitely at the bottom of the pack of players getting legitimate consideration.

This turn of events is, to be perfectly honest, a neat trick. While more than four members of this class were deserving, to see four players elected and only Delgado actually fall off the ballot is a pretty remarkable balancing act by the voters. In years past, that has not been the case (Kenny Lofton and Kevin Brown say hi). Hopefully next year, the logjam will continue to clear, and those deserving candidates who were at the bottom of the ballot this year will begin to gradually accumulate more votes.

Before I leave you, I have a special treat. Thanks to the hard and timely work of FanGraphs intern Morris Greenberg, here are four custom Hall of Fame leaderboards:

• Position players in the Hall of Fame (updated to include Biggio)
• Position players still eligible for the Hall of Fame
• Pitchers in the Hall of Fame (including Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and John Smoltz)
• Pitchers still eligible for the Hall of Fame

The Baseball Writers’ Association (BBWAA) voted to elect Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz and Craig Biggio to the Hall of Fame today. Full results are up on the BBWAA website currently.

For the pitchers, it was their first time on the ballot. For the first time in history, three first-ballot pitchers made it on the same ballot. That may say something about how voters are struggling with the steroid era — there are some great hitters still remaining on the ballot who have struggled to make the required 75% because of the taint of drugs in their numbers (some even without a tangible report attached to their names).

Our leaderboards love the new inductees. Randy Johnson shows up as fifth all-time in Wins Above Replacement, with Pedro Martinez coming in at 16th. The two also rank one-two in strikeout percentage among pitchers with at least 2000 innings. That Pedro did it at his stature makes it all the more remarkable, but listen to him talk about pitching and it all makes sense.

The John Smoltz argument is a tricky one, but once you give him credit for both starting and relieving — as Jay Jaffe did in a well-thought-out article — he does much better. As it was on our leaderboards, Smoltz is top 15 in strikeout percentage all time among pitchers with 2000 innings. And if you add wins to saves (strange, but the Hall voting often takes strange turns), Smoltz is a top-ten pitcher in that category among those with 2000 innings.

Craig Biggio is a unique entrant into the Hall of Fame himself. While there will be some debate about which hats certain entrants will wear, the debate for the former Astro might surround which glove he’d wear. With over 300 games played at catcher, second, and in the outfield, he’d have a healthy decision on his hands. All that positional versatility added up to a modest WAR total (84th overall), but with 3060 hits on his ledger and 285 hit by pitches (second overall), Biggio met some great benchmarks.

Congratulations to the new entrants to the Hall of Fame!

The results of this year’s Hall of Fame voting will be announced at 2pm ET. What this post isn’t is a manifesto on who ought and ought not enter the Hall of Fame. What it is is a survey of four useful tools for understanding which players on this year’s ballot are most likely to enter — or most deserving of entry — into the Hall.

Ballot-tracking estimates are current as of this morning.

Name
JAWS (Link)

Explanation
Designed by former Baseball Prospectus and current SI.com writer Jay Jaffe to “improve the Hall of Fame’s standards, or at least to maintain them rather than erode them,” a Jaffe Wins Above Replacement Score (or, JAWS) is calculated by taking the average of a player’s career WAR and his seven-year peak WAR (not necessarily in consecutive years).

The players listed below are merely those who’ve produced a higher JAWS score than the average such total at the relevant position (denoted by Avg at Pos). By definition, a number of extant Hall of Famers possess JAWS scores below that particular threshold. Even using this higher standard, however, one finds that 12 players are technically “qualified,” according to JAWS — or, two more than a voter can include on his ballot.

Who’s In (JAWS, Avg at Pos)
Jeff Bagwell (63.9, 54.2)
Barry Bonds (117.6, 53.3)
Roger Clemens (103.3, 61.8)
Randy Johnson (82.0, 61.8)
Edgar Martinez (56.0, 55.0)
Pedro Martinez (71.1, 61.8)
Mike Mussina (63.8, 61.8)
Mike Piazza (51.2, 43.1)
Tim Raines (55.6, 53.3)
Curt Schilling (64.5, 61.8)
Alan Trammell (57.5, 54.7)
Larry Walker (58.6, 58.1)

Read the rest of this entry »

Because managing editor Dave Cameron has chosen recently to reproduce himself, the responsibility of running and editing this site has fallen temporarily to idiots not only like the present author, but actually to that present author himself. A poor choice, that — and one that surely jeopardizes the health of FanGraphs.

A pleasure of editing is that it affords one the opportunity of working more closely with this site’s learned contributors. What else it means, though, is that certain less exhilarating transactions that require coverage typically require coverage by the editor, regardless of his qualifications for analyzing same. Which, that’s how it’s come to pass that I’m now writing this brief post about Emilio Bonifacio and Emilio Bonifacio’s one-year, $4 million deal with the Chicago White Sox.

Emilio Bonifacio is a known and mostly unremarkable quantity. So cajoled, one could probably manufacture a hot take of some sort regading him. What his resume indicates mostly, however, is that he offers a floor of about -1 win, a ceiling of about +3 wins, and is a strong candidate to produce something precisely in the middle of that given 600 plate appearances.

Here’s a haphazardly composed histogram, based only on the author’s whim, featuring a slightly more nuanced version of that same estimate:

On the one hand, paying $4 million for what Bonifacio is likely to produce over 500-600 plate appearances — that’s probably about right, given the market. That said, there have been a number of players with the ability to play second base — Dean Anna, Buck Britton, Ty Kelly, Tommy La Stella, Cord Phelps — who are projected to approximate Bonifacio’s production and who’ve required a less substantial investment.

Moreover, if the White Sox harbor notions of qualifying for the postseason — and given their acquisitions this offseason of Melky Cabrera and Adam LaRoche and David Robertson and Jeff Samardzija, it would appear as though the front office does harbor such notions — Bonifacio doesn’t so much actively help the club achieve that goal as he does protect them from catastrophe.

Protecting a club from catastrophe is important. Notably, however, the White Sox already appear to have a number of players qualified for that role. Here, for sake of reference, are the Steamer projections (per 600 plate appearances) not just for Bonifacio, but also the other second base-types also on Chicago’s 40-man roster:

Garcia’s projection is something less than inspiring — and Saladino’s might be half-a-win optimistic insofar as he receives the entire shortstop positional adjustment despite possessing slightly below-average shortstop defense. Those caveats having been made, there do appear to be alternatives to Bonifacio.

So why sign him? Taking for granted that the White Sox front office is populated by intelligent people compensated decently to consider such questions, there’s probably a reasonable answer to this. What one must acknowledge first is that the commitment isn’t that large in the context of the current market. And that Bonifacio is also capable of playing the outfield. Also, the presence of Bonifacio allows the club to enter spring training without the obligation of handing the starting job to a rookie or near-rookie. That, augmented by Bonifacio’s actual value in wins, is the service for which the White Sox have paid $4 million.

It technically happened two days ago — but also sort of happened just today for those among us who celebrate the New Year’s holiday (and its Eve) with sufficient piety. It, in this case, represents the official signing by the Dodgers of left-hander Brett Anderson to a one-year, $10 million contract upon which the two parties agreed in principle about two weeks ago (and which could pay even more to Anderson, if he meets certain incentives).

Anderson is intriguing, naturally, for what he’s been able to accomplish on the field. Among the 223 pitchers who’ve thrown 250-plus innings in a starting capacity since 2009, Anderson has recorded the 15th-best park-adjusted xFIP (tied with several others). Very positive, that. One is compelled to note almost immediately, however, that remaining on the field has been difficult. He’s averaged, by way of example, just 40 innings each of the last three seasons. Less positive, that.

New Dodgers GM Farhan Zaidi is less concerned about Anderson’s health than one might suppose given the latter’s history, characterizing Anderson’s injury-plagued seasons as “a run of bad luck.” Zaidi et al, being very smart and having a decidedly vested interest in the matter, are more qualified to speak on the issue than the present author. So I’ll stop doing it immediately.

Another uncertainty regarding Anderson, however — perhaps related to his injuries and perhaps not — concerns his fastball velocity. For, simultaneous to recording the worst park-adjusted xFIP (96 xFIP-) of his career in 2014, Anderson also recorded his lowest ever average fastball velocity (89.8 mph). There’s a distinct relationship between velocity and success, nor does Anderson appear to be immune from it.

Here, for example, is a graph of xFIP- versus average fastball velocity for all of Anderson’s seasons in which he’s faced at least 150 batters:

There’s been a remarkably strong relationship, one finds, between Anderson’s ability to throw the ball hard and to prevent runs (or, at least, do the things that lead to run prevention). Relative to previous years, he didn’t excel at the former in 2014 — and, though he produced an excellent ERA (68 ERA-) in 2014, both the indicators and his track record (which reveals no tendency to outperform his fielding-independent numbers) suggest that ERA was untenably low. As such, it really does appear as though throwing at least, say, 90 mph is of some importance to Anderson — and that dropping below that figure would challenge his ability to prevent runs at a league-average rate. Given the Dodgers’ aspirations at the moment, league-average innings are the sort they’d obviously prefer.

Major league front offices apparently don’t like taking time off, so there were a bunch of transactions today while you were busy not being on the internet.

The Phillies trade outfielder Marlon Byrd and cash to the Reds for pitcher Ben Lively
The Reds continue their quest to be stuck in the middle, and I have to say, it’s going great for them. Byrd will help keep the ship afloat, and he is certainly an upgrade over Ryan Ludwick. Then again, that’s not saying much, as Ludwick was one of the worst players in baseball in his final two years with the Reds. Byrd isn’t going to move the needle for Cincinnati — they would have had do something bold like trade for Justin Upton if they wanted to appreciably improve their chances in 2015 — but he shouldn’t torpedo them the way Ludwick did.

What the move says about Cincy in the bigger picture is that they still think they can put together a competitive team in 2015, but that if they do so it will be largely with players returning to form. Between Joey Votto, Brandon Phillips and Jay Bruce, the team has no shortage of players who could be expected to do just that. Hoping for them all to do it at once and counting on players like Devin Mesoraco and Billy Hamilton to simultaneously worth three WAR or better again…let’s just say it isn’t a plan with very high odds of succeeding. All of which I’m sure is not much of a surprise to Reds fans, who are likely used to the lack of imagination from their front office at this point.

As for the Phillies, they keep on doing what they are supposed to be doing, even if they did get the ball rolling a year or two too late. Lively had a pretty decent season last year, and could be expected to contribute to a big league rotation in the near future. Here is what Kiley McDaniel had to say about him back in November, when he tabbed him as the 13th-best prospect in Cincy’s system:

13. Ben Lively, RHP Video: Lively was a 4th round pick out of UCF in 2013 and has beat expectations so far, with 79 stellar innings in the hitter-friendly Cal League this year before 72 more solid innings in Double-A.  Lively’s performance may overstate his raw ability a bit; he’s a back-end starter that sits 90-93 and hits 95 mph with four average-ish pitches, led by a slider that’s a 55 at times.  There’s deception and about average command; Lively’s delivery isn’t great but he manages to make it work for him and he throws strikes.

Rockies sign catcher Nick Hundley
Looking at our handy Free Agent Tracker, you see that this was about the best the Rockies could do if they wanted to add another catcher. And adding one certainly is a decent idea for Colorado. Now they have some options with respect to Wilin Rosario. Hundley is never going to be much with the lumber — his slugging percentage actually went down when he was traded from Petco Park to Camden Yards last season — but he earns good enough marks with his defense to be worth a roster spot.

That’s where things get a little interesting. The Rockies have to figure out what to do with Rosario. They can either keep Hundley, Rosario and Michael McKenry on the roster — with Rosario filling more of a first base/designated hitter role and catching only occasionally to stay fresh — or they can trade Rosario. Certainly, Rosario is a better hitter tha he showed last year — both Steamer and ZiPS expect a rebound from him offensively in ’15 (with Steamer more bullish than ZiPS). And even last year, he was mashtastic against lefties (156 wRC+ in 107 PA) so there can still be a role for him in Colorado.

No matter what, the Rockies won’t have a true starting catcher next year, but with three decent options, they won’t necessarily be punting the position either.

Cubs sign outfielder Chris Denorfia
In the past, Denorfia has down two things with aplomb — play defense and hit left-handed pitching. He only did one of those things well last season, so the deal is a bit of a risk. But if he does hit like he has in the past, he will make a great platoon partner for Chris Coghlan in left, and serve as a security blanket for Arismendy Alcantara and Jorge Soler in center and right. For $2.5 million, it’s certainly a gamble worth taking, and a nice bit of fine tuning for the Cubs roster.

The Padres didn’t need Seth Smith, and traded him to the Mariners. The Mariners are getting themselves a nice little hitter, especially against right-handed pitching. Jeff will likely have more on Brandon Maurer, who was the Padres’ return for Smith, in the next couple of days, but until then I wanted to type up a little something about Eli Manning’s backup quarterback (it’s true).

Eno reminded us about players with a very defined skill set on Monday, and that is definitely how you would describe Smith. He’s not a very adept defender. He isn’t a complete sieve, but he’s certainly not around for his defense. He’s not the worst baserunner, but he wouldn’t be the first runner you picked to steal a base. Probably not the second either. And he isn’t much against left-handed pitching. Well, he was last year in an incredibly small sample, but given his track record that probably won’t persist.

What Smith does do well is hit right-handed pitching. Since his debut in 2007, there have been 169 batters to compile 2,000 or more plate appearances against right-handed pitchers. Smith is tied for 36th in wRC+. Pretty good, right? Especially for a part-time player. And for a team looking to add a corner bench or platoon bat this offseason, it would have been hard for the Mariners to do better. Let’s look at the players on this list, their current status, and their stats vs. righties since 2007 to drive home the point:

So, there are a few players who are likely available with the same skill set, but most of them — Fielder, Choo, Ethier, Hamilton, Howard, Gonzalez, Beltran, and Teixeira — are either very expensive, come with injury concerns, or both.

There are a couple of standouts here — Morneau and Utley most notably — which is nice company to be in. When you add in positional concerns though, Smith sort of stands alone. Utley could probably play the outfield, but I doubt you’d get him to waive his no-trade clause to do so. Perhaps they could have landed Joyce if they had acted sooner, and Joyce is probably Smith’s best comp. But at this moment, given the objective of trying to find an available player with a great track record of mashing against righties and who doesn’t cost a fortune, it would have been hard for the Mariners to do better than Seth Smith.

The Padres acquired yet another player today, as the new General Manager continues to trade away the prospects the past General Manager acquired for win-now assets. You could call Shawn Kelley just a reliever, but that doesn’t make him sound special. He is a little special, though, and he could absolutely close.

A word from our Prospector General on the guy San Diego gave up first — Johnny Barbato was a sixth-round pick with decent numbers relieving in the minor leagues so far. Kiley McDaniel said that he has a “55 fastball and 60 curve as starter with command issues and doesn’t really throw a changeup, so the relief fit is obvious. Fastball plays up to 60 (92-95, touching 97 mph) in short relief stints, so if he can command those two pitches enough, he could be late relief, but more likely is middle relief fit.”

The Yankees may have been cutting costs — Kelley is in his final year of arbitration, due almost three million dollars, and coming off what looks to be a mediocre year by results.

But dive a little deeper, and Kelley is a top-shelf reliever.

By strikeout rate over the last two seasons combined at least, Kelley is a top-15 reliever. He’s had some issues with the walk, so he’s only top 20 when judged by strikeouts minus walks.

Of course there’s a bigger flaw than his walk rate, or the guy with all the strikeouts might have had more saves by now. Over that same time frame, Kelley’s homer rate was also top 15.

Talk to the pitcher, as I did in mid 2013, and it’s just about execution.

I’ve always given up a few homers here and there, I’m aggressive and I attack the zone. I was making some mistakes early in the season. I had a rough week where I gave up three or four in one week. It was about executing my pitches. Make sure the slider is in the dirt. I was making some mistakes.

For a guy that owns a better-than-average walk rate for his career, it looks like command sometimes leaves him for stretches. Not a big deal, maybe.

Unless it speaks to a platoon issue? Kelley threw his slider more often than his fastball last year (and second-most in baseball). It still had the eighth-best whiff rate on a slider in baseball (minimum 100 thrown), so it’s deadly. But we know sliders can have platoon issues, and so does Kelley, so he has a plan for the pitch:

Use to both sides of the plate — backdoor and back foot — so it kind of makes it two pitches. Being able to throw it harder and also being able to take a little off makes it two sliders. I throw more of a slurve to get more depth and movement. I can throw that slower one around the back corner of the plate to the lefty to get him to take or give up on it. I can command it and do different things with it, so I’m not technically a two-pitch pitcher.

You can see Kelley’s slower, slurvier sliders on the left-hand side of this scatter chart for his 2014 sliders.

It’s been a successful plan when judged by platoon peripherals. For his career, Kelley has a higher strikeout rate against lefties. Yes, his walks go up too, but his homer rate is about a third of his homer rate against righties, and his ground-ball rate against lefties is also higher.

Slightly above average velocity for a reliever, decent control, good command when he’s executing right, a deadly slider he can manipulate to avoid platoon issues, and a shrug for his home runs? Pair that with a top-15 strikeout rate, and it sounds like a late-inning reliever and possible closer. Even for one year of control, that’s worth a future reliever that may require Tommy John surgery soon.