Archive for Ben Sheets

Like many teams across Major League Baseball this season, the Atlanta Braves’ starting rotation got bitten by the injury bug. The ace of their rotation, right-hander Brandon Beachy, underwent Tommy John surgery — as did prized prospect Arodys Vizcaino. Both will not return before the end of the season.

The pitching depth that Atlanta had accumulated was supposed to help weather the storm, but the results have been underwhelming. That has forced Atlanta to look elsewhere for a starting pitcher. Preferring the least-expensive route, the organization did not turn to the trade market and instead signed former All-Star Ben Sheets to a minor-league deal.

On Sunday afternoon, Sheets made his first major-league start since 2010 and dominated the New York Mets over six scoreless innings. He struck out five and only walked one, generating ten whiffs over an 88-pitch outing. In many ways, it was like watching the old Ben Sheets on the mound.

In one particular aspect, though, it was very much a different Ben Sheets.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Dave discussed the Jon Garland signing, largely criticizing the acquisition based on the fact that they failed to offer Randy Johnson, a superior pitcher even at this stage, a deal as lucrative. While I am not going to continue the discussion about that particular signing, the idea arose that 200 innings from Garland is less productive than 120 or so innings from Johnson should he sustain injuries. This reminded me of something Tango posted last year showing that Albert Pujols‘ numbers were almost equivalent to the production of Mark Teixeira and Jeff Francoeur combined. Whew, spelled both correctly.

All too often, injury-prone pitchers are written off as ineffective. This could not be further from the truth as certain pitchers who fit this mold are wildly productive in the time they spend on the field. Even though they fail to stay healthy enough to log 200 IP in 35 GS, they end up posting some very solid numbers.

Take a look at Ben Sheets, for starters, who produced a 2.43 FIP in 106 IP back in the 2006 season. He made 17 starts, with a 9.83 K/9 and 0.93 BB/9, good for a K/BB of 10.55. Even with a .344 BABIP and 67% LOB, Sheets still managed a 3.82 ERA. All told, his half-season produced +4.0 wins. In the same season, the aforementioned Garland produced +3.9 wins in 211 innings. Yes, Sheets was slightly more productive than Garland even though he pitched almost exactly half of the innings.

This is not the only example either. In 2007, Randy Johnson made just 10 starts, pitching in 56 innings. His 3.20 FIP and 5.54 K/BB helped him produce +1.6 wins that season. In one-fourth of the season, he produced more than 200 innings of Tom Glavine, or 170 innings of Boof Bonser. His win value also surpassed the combined output of Kip Wells, Livan Hernandez, and Scott Olsen in ~520 IP.

Granted, we never know what would have happened if the injured pitchers lasted the entire season. Still, do you really believe Johnson and Sheets would have declined so rapidly that their statistics would drop them into the average category? When pitchers with half of a season or so of statistics are evaluated, the most common reaction is to think they could not possibly be as productive as innings-eaters who stay on the field. This simply is not a universal truth. 106 IP of Ben Sheets in 2006 (+4 wins) + 105 IP of Replacement Level pitching (+0 wins) is equal to, or greater than, 211 IP of Jon Garland (+3.9 wins).

Examples like this will not always surface, but injury-prone pitchers do have value, even if that value is only seen for half of a season.

Players classified with the Type A tag are generally the big boys, the cream of the crop. These players are all amongst the top of their respective positions and tend to command larger and more lucrative contracts. The team signing a Type A free agent loses a draft pick, depending on its slot in the draft, which goes to the team losing the newly-signed player. Yesterday, we took a look at the three remaining Type A relief pitchers on the market. Naturally, the next step is to look at the available Type A starting pitchers.

CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett signed with the Yankees, removing them from this post. Both project nicely though Burnett has had an unhealthy injury history. With both of these pitchers off the market, just four Type A starting pitchers remain free agents: Derek Lowe, Oliver Perez, Andy Pettitte, and Ben Sheets.

Lowe has been discussed here time and time again. He will be 36 years old halfway through the 2009 season but has been the most durable and consistent of this bunch. The Mets have a 3-yr/$36 mil offer on the table that he and agent Scott Boras all but scoffed at. Lowe is seeking closer to $16 mil/yr which may be unrealistic given the current market heavily favoring the buyers. With a projection calling for a 3.67 FIP in 185 innings, Lowe would be worth +3.5 wins in 2009.

Assuming a dropoff of -0.6 wins each season, then Lowe would be worth near +8.7 wins over the life of a 3-yr deal. If the current dollars per win rate is $4.8 mil/win, and 10% inflation occurs over the next few seasons, then Lowe would be worth +3.5 wins at $16.8 mil in 2009; +2.9 wins at $15.4 mil in 2010; and +2.3 wins at $13.4 mil in 2011. All told, that is $45.5 mil, and he is seeking somewhere closer to a 3-yr/$48 mil deal. As was mentioned in earlier posts, once negotiations are ended, I fully expect Lowe to sign for about 3-yr/$45 mil, which would properly value his projected contributions.

Andy Pettitte has a similar projection to that of Lowe’s, calling for a 3.75 FIP in 187 innings. Pettitte recently rejected the 1-yr/$10 mil offer from the Yankees, as he does not want to receive a salary lower than the $16 mil he made in 2008. Perhaps the Yanks will up their offer but Pettitte has flirted with retirement before, and it would not be terribly shocking to see him call it quits if he cannot receive the “right” offer.

Anyways, a 3.75 FIP in 187 innings would place him around +3.3 wins. Properly valuing his contributions would result in a 1-yr/$15.8 mil deal. Basically, Pettitte deserves the same salary relative to his projected production. Given the Yankees payroll and the fact that he would be a significant upgrade over someone like Ian Kennedy, it just makes sense to sign him to this deal. Will it happen, though? Who knows. Probably not.

Oliver Perez seems to be the odd man out of this group, not just because he is the only pitcher of the four under 30 years old, but also because he projects to be worth under three wins. Using FIP, Perez looks like a 4.60 pitcher in 180 innings. This would deem him +1.6 wins. Even if we amend the FIP to be closer to his projected ERA of 4.30, he is merely average, at +2.1 wins. Perez is not anywhere in the vicinity of Sandy Koufax, as Scott Boras has claimed, but he does have value. A 3-yr/$28 mil deal would make sense for Ollie, though I can see that deal upping itself to 3-yr/$36 mil when Lowe inevitably signs his 3-yr/$45 mil contract.

Lastly, that leaves Ben Sheets, arguably the most talented of the group albeit the most oft-injured. At 30 years old, Sheets is still relatively young, but he has proven to be very brittle. When healthy, he is a dominant force, but the caveat beginning this sentence should speak volumes towards his durability. In any regard, his projection calls for a 3.60 FIP in 180 innings, placing him around +3.4 wins. While Pettitte and Lowe are durable enough to garner 3-yr deals and Perez is young enough to merit a similarly lengthed deal, a more responsibly GM would offer Sheets a 2-yr deal with options that automatically vest due to playing time.

I could see a team like the Rangers signing him to a 2-yr/$28 mil deal with a third and even fourth year option. Again, he might be the most talented, but his resume does not necessarily make decision makers eager to dish out large sums of money over extended periods of time. Later on, we will look at the Type A free agent hitters available.

For the last day or two we have begun to delve deep into the baseball economy and how it relates to fair market value, free agency, and context. This morning, our discussion centered around the necessity to add context in order to more accurately represent free agency analyses. This afternoon, Dave brought forth a great evaluative tool, showing average dollars/win figures for all 30 teams. The figures in the spreadsheet were arrived at after concluding that a team of replacement players would cost $12 mil and win 50 games; that the goal of each team would be to win 40 games above replacement; by subtracting the $12 mil from the estimated payroll; and finally by dividing that difference by the 40 wins above replacement.

The logical next step is to actually put this into action, combining an analysis of fair market value with the context of a specific team. With the news that the Brewers have decided to offer arbitration to Ben Sheets, he seems like the perfect person on which to test our new methods. To make the post a bit easier to read, I’ll break it up into different sections.

Brewers Payroll
Over the last three years, the Brewers have increased their payroll from $57 mil to $80 mil. If we factor in about a 5% markup, their 2009 payroll can be estimated at $84 mil. Therefore, they would have $72 mil ($84 mil payroll – $12 mil replacement payroll) to win 40 games (90 wins – 50 replacement wins). The quotient amounts to an average of $1.8 mil/win. Now, this is just an average, and does not imply that every signing the Brewers make has to be for $1.8 mil/win. However, every player of theirs that exceeds $1.8 mil/win will necessitate an adjustment in what they have left to spend.

Ben Sheets & Fair Market Value
Weighting the Bill James and Marcel projections for 2009 puts Sheets at 180 innings with a 3.60 FIP, very solid numbers. He might not be the guy who, in 2004, produced a 2.65 FIP, 2.70 ERA, and > 8.0 K/BB, but he still has the ability to dominate. A replacement level starter would log 150 innings with a 5.50 FIP while a replacement reliever would pitch the remaining 30 innings at a 4.50 FIP.

Ben Sheets:     180 IP, 3.60 FIP, 72 runs
Replacement SP: 150 IP, 5.50 FIP, 92 runs
Replacement RP:  30 IP, 4.50 FIP, 15 runs

All told, that would put Sheets at 72 runs and the replacement level at 107 runs. This +35 run advantage for Sheets puts him at +3.5 wins above replacement. Normally, we would add a quarter-win or half-win for the fact that the starter in question would pitch the innings and help save the bullpen. Sheets does not get this advantage from me, and given his inability to consistently make more than, say, 22 starts in a season, I’m actually going to dock him a quarter-win, bringing his value to a solid +3.25 wins above replacement.

The going rate right now is $5 mil/win, so if Ben were to sign a 1-yr deal, the appropriate fee would be $16.25 mil. Factor in a 10% discount for a multi-year deal, and his 3-yr deal would be worth $44 mil, an average annual value (AAV) of $14.7 mil. That AAV divided by his 3.25 WAR amounts to a fee of $4.52 mil/win, about two and a half times higher than the Brewers’ average of $1.8 mil/win.

The Contract & The Team
If we knew nothing else about the Brewers, other than that they were striving for 40 wins above replacement and had 73 mil left with which to accomplish the feat, then signing Sheets to this deal would mean they now had 37 wins to add with about $58 mil to spend. We do know about the Brewers, though, and thanks to the guys at BrewCrewBall, calculations about returning players and their salaries can be made.

According to their figures, the Brewers will have 16 players returning to the roster, at an approximate sum of $66,449,000. The link suggests the total is closer to $73 mil, but Salomon Torres retired, and I’m unsure what is going on with Craig Counsell, so they were both removed. Calculating the wins above replacement for all 16 players, the total comes to about 35 wins, at the $66,449,000. This means that the Brewers have $17,551,000 left to spend in order to accrue the five remaining wins necessary to reach 40 WAR.

If they signed Ben Sheets to this 3-yr deal at fair market value, which would be an AAV of $14.7 mil for three seasons, they would have 38 wins above replacement amongst 17-19 players, and about $3 mil left to spend. Because they are getting such great deals on Braun (an astrounding $149,000 per win), Hardy, Weeks, and Hart, they can use the money saved in those areas to afford the inevitable jump in arbitration for the likes of Prince as well as other potential free agent targets.

Based on the projections for those returning, the Brewers appear to be in a solid position for 2009, and with about $14-17 mil remaining, should be able to increase from 35 wins to 40 wins above replacement, bringing their projection to 90 wins. Signing Sheets would be nice, but doing so may necessitate the usage of prospects to fill out the roster, who, could add quality for the league minimum, but might not be very useful.

Moving Forward
The next step in these types of analyses is to evaluate the remaining money in terms of the spots that need to be filled. With their $17 mil remaining outside of those returning, it is quite different in signing starters as opposed to a LOOGY, long reliever, and backup infielder. So, Brewers faithful on the interwebs, what are the positions that are not returning next season? And, on top of that, would you prefer to sign Sheets to his fair market value and fill the remaining spots with farm players, or invest that $14-17 mil elsewhere to fill out the roster, all the while keeping the goal of adding at least 5 WAR to the team?

This morning, our topic of discussion involved the bottom half of the top ten pitching performances of 2008, as determined by single-game WPA. As mentioned then, no pitcher accrued an individual game WPA above +1.0 this season, but there were still some absolutely fantastic outings. For posterity’s sake, numbers ten through six were:

10) Bronson Arroyo, 8/26 @ Hou:   0.660 WPA, 9 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 3 K
9)  Roy Oswalt,     9/6 @ Col:    0.676 WPA, 9 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 6 K
8)  James Shields,  5/9 vs. LAA:  0.685 WPA, 9 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 8 K
7)  Jeff Karstens,  8/6 @ Ari:    0.695 WPA, 9 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 4 K
6)  Matt Cain,      7/24 vs. Was: 0.707 WPA, 9 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 4 K

And here are the top five:

#5: Cliff Lee, 5/12 vs. Toronto
Cliff Lee had a remarkable season. After having to fight for his job in Spring Training, Lee went onto win the 2008 AL Cy Young Award. Without attempting to stir any discussions about Lee/Halladay, his top performance of the year, via WPA, occurred on May 12, against Doc’s team. Lee pitched a complete game shutout, scattering seven hits and two walks over nine innings, striking out five in the process. At the end of the day, Lee was putting the finishing touches on an incredible streak to start the season, earning a 0.715 WPA.

#4: Josh Banks, 5/25 vs. Cincinnati
Jeff Karstens seemed a tad out of place on this list, but at least there are plenty of people who have heard of him. Banks, however, is not well-known, and did not have a very solid 2008 season, yet he somehow managed to harness everything he has into the fourth best performance of the season. For those that do not remember, this 5/25 Padres/Reds game was the one that went 18 innings. Banks pitched six fantastic relief innings, surrendering five hits and no runs to go with two walks and four strikeouts. His work earned him a 0.718 WPA.

#3: Jesse Carlson, 4/16 vs. Texas
Keeping with the theme of relievers earning high WPA marks, Jesse Carlson of the Blue Jays found himself in quite the predicament against the Rangers early in the season. BJ Ryan had blown the save in the ninth inning, and the Rangers were again threatening in the tenth. Brian Wolfe allowed the first three batters to reach base safely, and was lifted in favor of Carlson. Jesse entered into a bases loaded, no outs, situation, and managed to get out of it, recording a “Houdini” in the process. He would pitch two more scoreless innings, limiting the baserunners to one hit and two walks, while striking out four. The Rangers would win the game, but Carlson recorded a 0.721 WPA for his stellar work.

#2: Ben Sheets, 9/6 vs. San Diego
Ben Sheets has always been the guy with the ridiculous “stuff” and potential to be fantastic if he could stay healthy. We got to see a lot of him this year, and he didn’t disappoint, but none of his games were better than the one on September 6. Against the Padres, home at Miller Park, Sheets tossed a five-hit, complete game shutout, walking one and fanning seven. His 0.729 WPA for the day placed him second on our list, though quite the distant second behind the best performance of the season.

#1: CC Sabathia, 6/10 vs. Minnesota
How could a list like this not have Sabathia? An eventual teammate of second-place Sheets, Sabathia’s game on June 10 actually occurred before he was sent to Milwaukee. Back when he was a member of the Indians, CC tossed a five-hit, complete game shutout, with no walks and five strikeouts. His single-game WPA, the best of any game for a pitcher this year, was 0.775, significantly better than everyone else on this list.

Nobody may have produced single-game WPAs above +1.0, but it is tough to imagine, after seeing these games, what someone would have to do to accomplish such a feat.