Archive for Carlos Pena

Are you familiar with FanGraphs? If so, hello there, friend! If not, welcome to FanGraphs, future friend! On FanGraphs you can find a wide variety of statistics and statistical leaderboards, and among the selection is plate-discipline data from PITCHf/x. As of a couple years ago, this data started including a Pace column. Pace is a simple statistic to understand: it’s the average number of seconds that pass between pitches, for both pitchers and hitters.

Pace is not a statistic that tells you anything at all about how good or bad a player is. There are relationships between Pace and deep counts or Pace and plate appearances with runners on, but Pace is more of a statistic intended to describe the game. We know that there are fast pitchers and slow pitchers, eager hitters and methodical hitters, and Pace gives us numbers. Pace has zero value when you’re talking about who stands the best chance of winning the next World Series. Pace has plenty of value when you’re talking about the gameplay itself, because it captures and describes a part of the viewing experience. It’s good to have numbers that do that, and the introduction of PITCHf/x-based Pace filled a tiny void.

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If over a beer and a ball game, a buddy said, “Paul Goldschmidt will outhit Jason Heyward in 2012″, I would have assumed he had had one too many. With the release of Bill James‘ 2012 projections, the SABR legend said just that as the Diamondbacks first baseman is projected to produce a wOBA of .382.

Having scouted Goldschmidt in July, I came away believing he would take advantage of lesser pitching, but struggle with top flight velocity. If Goldschmidt hits to his wOBA projection, then I greatly undersold his overall hitting ability and he’s on the cusp of becoming one of the top-25 hitters in terms of wOBA in all of baseball based on final 2011 leaderboards.

Goldschmidt video after the jump

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Heath Bell and Carlos Pena were each claimed on waivers earlier this week, though it appears that neither player will be moving.

The Giants claimed Bell, most likely to bolster their bullpen given the injuries to Brian Wilson and Sergio Romo. The waiver claim could have also been submitted to block the Diamondbacks from acquiring Bell. The Yankees claimed Pena, even though Mark Teixeira plays virtually every inning at first base and Jorge Posada has performed well against righties this season with a .359 wOBA.

But given the Yankees place in the standings and the lack of need for the Red Sox, the claim on Pena probably wasn’t used as a blocking mechanism.

Both players should have been dealt back at the trade deadline, when teams could unilaterally work with one another. Both Bell and Pena might not represent massive improvements to anyone with only a month remaining in the season, but they could have impacted the playoff picture if traded in mid-July, when more teams were seemingly in the race. Let’s take a look at both situations.

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At 47-43, the Pittsburgh Pirates sit just one game back in the NL Central standings. The club has a winning record after the All-Star break for the first time since Sid Bream slid and Barry Bonds bolted. And for the first time since the 1997 “Freak Show” edition of the club, whose entire payroll was less than what Albert Belle made that year, the Bucs will play pennant-altering games in the second half. The fans are taking notice: attendance is up by 3,000-4,000 per game at PNC Park, and local TV ratings have increased by a third.

But there’s one major weakness that could turn the Pirates’ resurgent season sour: the offense. Pittsburgh ranks 11th in the NL in on-base percentage, 14th in slugging and 12th in runs scored. Outside of MVP candidate Andrew McCutchen, no current starter has been comfortably above-average in the batter’s box. It’s going to be hard to keep up with the Cardinals and Brewers with such a tepid lineup.

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The month of June marks the unofficial beginning of the trade season, and so we thought it would be helpful to run down a list of which players might be for sale at some point this summer. But, rather than just run down a list of potential trade targets, we thought that we would spend the week discussing the most interesting players at each position and have compiled a list of the best players available at each spot, along with their expected production going forward and notes about which teams might be possible fits as buyers. We hope you enjoy the series.

Kicking off our week of looking at trade targets are the players who will be acquired primarily for their work with the bat: first basemen and designated hitters. Note that there might be some overlap across the posts as some players can handle multiple positions.

Here are five realistic trade candidates at the position(s), based on projected WAR over the rest of the season, contract status, the state of their current employers and the needs of various potential contenders.

PLAYER: Billy Butler
TEAM: Royals
POSSIBLE DESTINATION(S): Angels, Rays
CONTRACT STATUS: Four-year, $30 million deal through 2014
PROJECTED WAR: 2.1

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Once a cherished prospect, ranked among the top 10 farm talents in the game by Baseball America before the 2002 season, Carlos Pena took a circuitous route to major league success. The 10th overall pick in the 1998 draft drifted through the Texas, Oakland and Detroit organizations, putting up full-season wOBAs in the .330s and .340’s — hardly standout marks for a first baseman.

Released by the Tigers in March of 2006, Pena toiled at the Triple-A level for the Yankees (who cut him loose in August) and the Red Sox. He inked a one-year, $800,000 minor league deal with Tampa Bay for 2007 and proceeded to post a .430 wOBA that season. The Rays rewarded Pena with a three-year, $24.125 million deal, buying out two years of arbitration and his first free agent year . Pena put up a .374 wOBA in both 2008 and 2009, but the free-agent-to-be is hardly having an ideal walk year in 2010.

In 189 plate appearances, the 32-year-old is batting .189/.307/.377, with a .304 wOBA. While his walk rate is still solid at 13.8 percent, it’s down from his 15-16 percent marks from 2007-2009. Pena had Isolated Power figures of .345 in ’07, .247 in ’08 and .310 in ’09, but his ISO sits at a comparatively mild .189 this year. To this point, he has been sub-replacement-level, with -0.1 WAR. What gives?

Over the ’07 to ’09 seasons, Pena showed quality plate discipline. He swung at a lower-than-average rate of pitches thrown outside of the strike zone — 19.8 percent in ’07, 20.8 in ’08 and 23.6 in ’09, while the MLB average was around 25 percent those years. Pena let it rip on in-zone pitches, with Z-Swing marks well above the big league norm, but he rarely got himself out on junk pitches off the plate.

This year, however, Pena has hacked at 31.5 percent of out-of-zone offerings (27.7 percent MLB average in 2010). It could be a coincidence, but perhaps pitchers have taken note of his uncharacteristic eagerness to chase. Opponents have put just 41.8 percent of pitches in the strike zone against Pena, compared to the 49-51 percent range from ’07 to ’09 and the 47.6 percent MLB average this season.

He’s making more (presumably weak) contact with those pitches out of the zone — 55.7 percent, compared to 42.5 percent in ’07, 48.7 percent in ’08 and 39.6 percent in ’09. The result of Pena’s expanded zone and higher out-of-zone contact rate is more 0-and-1 counts or balls put in play on the first pitch: his first pitch strike percentage is 64.6, way above his marks of 51.8 percent in ’07, 58.2 in ’08 and 55.1 in ’09 (58 percent MLB average).

Normally a prodigious pull hitter, Pena hasn’t lashed the ball to the right side with the same gusto this year:

He’s hitting fewer line drives, grounding out far more than usual and popping the ball up at a rate well above the big league average. The result is a .373 wOBA on pulled pitches, a far cry from his previous work and 26 points below the average for lefty batters.

Odds are, Carlos Pena won’t continue to hold a .214 BABIP and a wOBA that might get him confused with Ramiro Pena — Carlos’ rest-of-season ZiPS projection is .231/.354/.494, with a .371 wOBA. But clearly, he’s not helping his free agent stock right now. If Pena wants to get paid, he needs to show more restraint and start roping the ball to the pull field once again.