Archive for Mets

Last night was one of many emotions for me, all of which happened to coincide with the Phillies-Mets game. Johan Santana took on Phillies newcomer Joe Blanton in a contest that would eventually result in a sole owner of first place for the time being. While my night got off to an exciting bang thanks to a Jayson Werth RBI single in the first inning, it quickly turned sour when the Mets tied it up and pulled ahead thanks to a blown call from the umpire two run homer from the ever-so-torrid Carlos Delgado. The deflation quickly shifted to awe as Santana once again just cruised through the high-powered offense of the Phillies. Eventually that awe turned back into some form of sadness as Ramon Castro added to the Mets’ lead, before pulling a complete 180 to elation as the Phillies scored six runs in the ninth inning once Johan was taken out.

After the game, however, the baseball fan and analyst in me angered at the audacity of some mainstream writers to suggest, in so many words, Johan doesn’t have that “it” factor anymore, or that he isn’t nearly as good and seems to be on the decline. And the major reasons for these opinions stem from last year’s 15-13 W-L record and this year’s mere 8-7. From reading some of these articles or listening to some Baseball Tonight analysts you would think that Johan would struggle to cut it as the #3 option on most teams.

Frequent Fangraphs commenter Bill Baer wrote a great piece at Crashburn Alley that echoed my feelings last night during the game, that Johan has been incredibly unlucky this year, just like Phillies ace Cole Hamels. My feeling was that if Santana’s record was 11-3 or even 10-4 that most people would feel very differently about his performance this year. But then I looked at his numbers and calculated his projection over the remainder to see what his end of season statistics might look like… and my anger that he has lost something based on his W-L shifted to surprise.

See, even though his record doesn’t do his season justice, Santana does appear to have lost some semblance of effectiveness. Entering this season his projection called for around a 3.26 FIP, 1.10 WHIP, 2.24 BB/9, 9.23 K/9, and a 4.12 K/BB. Here are his 2008 numbers, his projection over the remainder, and what his overall numbers would be should this projection hold true:

2008 to date: 3.75 FIP, 1.21 WHIP, 2.47 BB/9, 7.79 K/9, 3.16 K/BB
Second Half: 3.45 FIP, 1.17 WHIP, 2.41 BB/9, 8.58 K/9, 3.57 K/BB
2008 Overall: 3.64 FIP, 1.20 WHIP, 2.44 BB/9, 8.08 K/9, 3.31 K/BB

If his season ends up like this, it would mark his worst K/9, BB/9, WHIP, K/BB, and BAA since becoming a full-time starter in 2004. Don’t confuse this with ineffectiveness, however, as he has been very productive this year, ranking in the NL’s top ten in several pertinent categories. As I mentioned above, if his record were 11-3 or something along those lines most of these conversations would cease to exist because most fans are usually quite content in believing a pitcher with a record that good is impervious to luck.

In his seven losses this year, Johan has pitched 45.2 innings and surrendered just 17 earned runs, good for a 3.35 ERA. That’s an extremely solid ERA for games in which he received a loss. In these same seven games, he has received only nine runs of support. Nine. That’s 1.77 RS/9 in these games. Of course he’s going to lose some of these if his team fails to score any runs. While I was shocked to see his strikeout numbers decline and baserunners increase, he is still among the elite in my eyes and the eyes of many others, I’m sure. If someone wishes to poke holes in his production this year it would make much more sense to note some of the aforementioned numbers, not to say his record is a disappointing 8-7, especially when considering how well he has pitched in some of these losses and how little support he has received.

He may not be the 2004 Johan and his true talent level may have changed a bit, but he is still a darned good pitcher.

The biggest move this offseason saw Johan Santana heading to the Mets in exchange for Carlos Gomez and some more prospects. The former two-time (should be three-time) Cy Young Award winner looked to solidify a pitching rotation that seemed more than capable of making fans forget all about last year’s end of season breakdown. Coming off of a relative down year—a down year for him was still better than the up year of most others—there were some who questioned whether or not Johan would be able to regain whatever made him successful pre-2007.

One of the biggest reasons his performance suffered last year came in the form of home run balls. From 2003-2006 his HR/9 ranged from 0.85-0.97; in 2007 it jumped to 1.36 as he allowed 33 dingers. I recently took a look at his Pitch F/X data over the last year and a half to see if he had done anything differently on hits as compared to fouls or swinging strikes. The results also showed that his home run balls—or other hard hit balls—generally came from pitches not just with lesser velocity and/or movement but also very poor location: Most of his home run balls came on pitches right down the middle.

In Johan’s first 60 innings this season he surrendered 11 HR; over his last 34.2 he has surrendered just one.

First 9: 60.0 IP, 52 H, 11 HR, 15 BB, 57 K
Last 5: 34.2 IP, 36 H, 1 HR, 9 BB, 29 K

Of course it is too small of a sample to generate definitive conclusions but we can still investigate and make observations pertaining to whether or not any discrepancies in relevant Pitch F/X data exist in this split. For starters, here are the velocity and movement data for his first nine starts:

FA: 90.54 mph, 5.63 horiz/9.22 vert
SL: 84.18 mph, -0.98 horiz/4.53 vert
CH: 79.69 mph, 5.51 horiz/8.13 vert

And here is the same data in his last five starts:

FA: 92.39 mph, 6.68 horiz/9.64 vert
SL: 84.89 mph, -0.57 horiz/4.64 vert
CH: 79.94 mph, 6.48 horiz/7.54 vert

He has thrown harder and with more movement lately. One of the problems with his hard hit balls, as mentioned above, dealt with the percentage of pitches he threw down the middle. Here are his splits of pitches thrown down the middle:

First 9: 11.5%
Last 5: 11.9%

Though it appears he has thrown slightly more down the middle recently the small sample detracts from any real discrepancy. How about his accuracy? Here is his Ball/Strike/In Play breakdown for the first nine starts, followed by the last five:

K: 46.8%, 45.1%
B: 35.1%, 34.5%
X: 18.1%, 20.4%

Speaking of balls put in play, have any less fallen in for hits lately?

Outs In Play: 67.5%, 64.2%
Hits In Play: 32.5%, 35.8%

Despite sustaining a similar level of accuracy and balls put in play he has actually allowed a slightly higher percentage of those in play to fall in for hits. Looking at his WHIP in these two different spans (1.12 compared to 1.25) it seems that he was hit less in the early going though those hits were of a higher value than recently, despite the increase in hits given up lately. Lastly, has he gotten ahead of hitters any more or less lately? Here is his first-pitch strike split:

First 9: 51.2%
Last 5: 44.8%

All told, not much can truly be garnered in terms of data discrepancies but Johan has gotten ahead of hitters less as of late, has essentially sustained his patterns of accuracy, is throwing virtually the same percentage of pitches down the middle, and is allowing more hits. All of these signs would intuitively point toward similar or worse performance and yet he has thrown better lately. Perhaps his increase in velocity and movement over his last five starts has prevented hitters from getting the fat part of the bat on the ball quite as often. Definitely something to look out for as the season progresses.

While taking full advantage of my MLB Extra Innings package last night a scrolling bottom line informed me that Mets shortstop Jose Reyes hit his 7th home run. At that point it dawned on me that a) Reyes is on pace for a career high in home runs and b) I have not been bombarded with Reyes on the national media circuit as much as the last couple of years.

Reyes has steadily improved from the time of his initial call-ups until now but, while scanning his statistics, I found that we can actually trace his improvement by comparing two seasons: His 2004 campaign and numbers accrued through the first 49 games of this season.

2004: 53 G, 56-220, 16 2B, 2 3B, 2 HR, 33 R, 14 RBI, 5 BB, 31 K
2008: 49 G, 58-208, 12 2B, 5 3B, 7 HR, 31 R, 24 RBI, 20 BB, 31 K

2004: 2.2 BB%, 14.1 K%, .271 OBP/.373 SLG, .644 OPS
2008: 8.8 BB%, 14.9 K%, .338 OBP/.486 SLG, .823 OPS

Everything is very similar with the exceptions of added power and an increase in walks. His increase in extra base hits and walk frequency has turned a player with the makings to be another Nick Punto into a legitimately effective offensive threat.

The years in between the two shown above saw Reyes make great strides towards improvement. Take a look at how his frequency of walks has increased through the years:

From 2005-2007 he went from walking 3.7% of the time all the way to 10.2%; inversely, his K% dipped to the 11.2%-12.5% range. This year, however, Reyes has been walking less and regressing to his strikeout rates of four years ago.

Oddly enough, he currently has a WPA of 0.00; he has a +4.44 +WPA and a -4.44 -WPA. Also odd, is Reyes’s BABIP of exactly .300. It has been suggested elsewhere, on numerous occasions, that speedy players are much more likely to post consistently higher batting averages of balls in play due to their ability to leg out infield singles or bunt hits. This has not been the case for Reyes (career .308 BABIP), who, by many accounts, is one of the fastest players in the entire game.

To check the reasons behind his decrease in walks and increase in strikeouts I turned to the swing data here to compare this year to last. Reyes is swinging at the same amount of pitches outside the zone yet making 7% less contact on those swings. He has also swung at 5% less pitches in the zone and is making close to 1% less contact. Pitchers have offered 6% more pitches in the zone than last year as well.

The increase in pitches seen in the zone could go a long way towards explaining the decrease in walks and his significant drop in out of zone contact definitely contributes to the explanation behind his strikeout increase. I’m sure Reyes will be fine and his Mets won’t play this poorly all year long, but I find it very interesting that we can seemingly track his improvement by comparing two half-seasons, five years removed.

One of the perks of working for Redlasso is that I am constantly patrolling baseball blogs for all teams. This no-doubtedly keeps me apprised not just of the statistics but also some of the inner workings of teams I would otherwise not be familiar with. One of the articles I came across this morning, over at Mets Fever, initially confused me. The post discussed Adam Rubin’s assertion that the Mets were seriously thinking about sending Aaron Heilman to AAA in favor of Carlos Muniz.

Now, Heilman has not gotten off to the greatest start in reliever’s history, but here are four reasons why the Mets should not send him down.

1) HR/FB
David Appelman wrote about home runs per flyball a few hours ago, explaining that pitchers will generally be in the 10% range. In 2006, Heilman gave up 5.4% HR/FB; last year, 9.1%. This year it is currently 17.9%. It is not very likely he will sustain this pace. He might not regress to the 5-9% range but even something around 12% will cause some of his barometers to drop.

2) Rates of Balls in Play
From 2005-2007 Heilman had an average LD/GB/FB breakdown of 21%/45%/34%. Right now he is at 15.8%/47.4%/36.8%. He has given up ~5% less line drives yet his BABIP of .327 is much higher than the .290, .283, and .263 of the last three years. More of his flyballs are leaving the yard and more of his grounders are finding holes. Additionally, his BA against has been between .222 and .229 the last three years, nowhere near the .274 clip at which opponents are currently hitting him.

3) Mets Starters Are Not Helping
The starting rotation is averaging around 5.81 IP/start, just slightly over 5 2/3 innings. Last year the rotation came in at around 5.95. The bullpen is needed more because the starters are not going very deep into games, giving the Mets three relievers with 23+ games: Pedro Feliciano (26), Heilman (24), and Joe Smith (23). Unlike Feliciano and Smith, Heilman is not a specialist reliever and therefore has accrued more innings.

4) ERA Can Be Misleading for Relievers
Heilman has a 5.81 ERA and a 5.38 FIP, meaning his controllable skills have not been much better than the earned runs results; however, his ERA and FIP numbers are likely to regress when his HR/FB goes down. Additionally, of his 24 games, 17 have been good, or at least not terrible, meaning his high numbers are a direct result of just 29% of his outings.

Now, in defense of those considering the option, Heilman is walking 4.44 batters per nine innings, way up from the 2.09 last year. Still, though, he is striking out 9.23 per nine innings, way up from 6.59 last year. Due to the double increase he still has a respectable K/BB ratio. Another area of concern is his velocity. No, he isn’t throwing slower but rather has increased speed on all of his pitches. His slider has jumped from 83-84 mph to 87.1 mph. With a fastball at 92 mph the difference in speeds might not be large enough to make the slider effective.

Heilman may not repeat the successes of the last few seasons but he is not very likely to finish this season the way he has started it. If the Mets want to make a move to shake up the bullpen, perhaps they should bring up a starter that can go deeper into games rather than send down he who has been a consistent key cog over the last few seasons.

When Omar Minaya traded Lastings Milledge to the Nationals this offseason, for Ryan Church and Brian Schneider, the heads of many New York fans began to spin. Don’t believe me? Check out some of these comments from a New York Times blog entry detailing the trade:

Wow. Worst. GM. in Baseball. What a joke. Kazmir part 2.— Posted by Tom

Great. The Mets have now inherited 25% of the starting lineup of one of the worst teams in baseball in return for a potential star. How could the combination of Schneider/Church conceivably be better for the Mets than the combination of Torealba/Milledge. Oh wait, Church is left handed. Comforting. 6 years older and below average at best, but at least he’s left handed. And then there is the Estrada trade. What the heck is Omar doing? — Posted by Mike C

This is an absolute disaster. They make decisions like “Must trade Milledge” and then settle for garbage in return instead of realizing that he’s better and cheaper than what they get in return. Schneider is toast and cost $5mm per. Church is ok, 29 year old. I hate myself for rooting for this doomed franchise. — Posted by Sauerball

I could show more but I live by the rule of three and think these responses clearly illustrate the frustration of Mets fans that this trade took place.

While the team is off to a slower-than-expected start, Ryan Church has performed so well that I’m sure at least some of the larger group of Mets fans represented in the aforementioned quotes have rescinded a bit. Church currently leads the Mets with 10.77 BRAA and a 0.67 WPA. His slash line of .310/.378/.478 accounts for the highest batting average on the team and second highest slugging percentage. He also leads the team in hits with 35 and runs participated in (RBI+R) with 45.

Despite posting a very high .373 BABIP, Church has actually been a tad unlucky based on his line drive rate. Lining the ball 28.7% of the time we would expect his BABIP to be near .400. Where is this coming from? Well, he is hitting virtually the same amount of grounders — 42.6 last year and 42.5 right now — but has turned six percent of his flyballs from a year ago into line drives.

Should he manage to keep up this torrid pace he would finish the season hitting .314/.384/.487, with 22 HR and 119 RBI. TangoTiger’s 2008 Marcel Projections pegged him for a respectable .274/.334/.465, with 15 HR and 65 RBI.

One factor not discussed much is how Church played in a notorious pitcher’s park the last three years. Whether or not the confines of Shea Stadium will truly benefit him is yet to be seen but, from what can be seen, without his production the Mets would likely be in panic mode.

During the last few days, I’ve been asked the “Is Frank Thomas done?” question several times, as Mariner fans wonder if he is the right fit to take Jose Vidro’s spot at DH. During these conversations, I’ve mentioned that the main indicator of whether a player has really fallen off The Cliff is his power level. If he has lost his ability to drive the ball, then yes, he’s probably done. Mariners fans have seen a lot of players fall of The Cliff (Bret Boone, Edgar Martinez, John Olerud, and Carl Everett to name a few), and in all of their collapses, you can see that their Isolated Slugging % and Home Run Per Fly Ball % take precipitous nosedives. If a player is actually finished as a major league hitter, those two numbers are the first place to look.

With regards to Thomas, that is part of why my conclusion is that he still has more to contribute as a major league hitter. However, the situation got me thinking – is there a major league hitter right now that is a current example of a player just falling off a cliff? I think there is. Take a look at these graphs.

The first graph shows a huge decline in power – you can see a line almost straight down from the ’06 season to now. What used to be well above average power has deteriorated to an ISO of below .100. The second chart shows that the batting average on balls in play is actually not that different than the career average. In other words, it doesn’t appear that this hitter is hitting the ball hard and just having it find a fielders glove. We can’t build much regression to the mean back into his batting average, which means that since he’s not hitting for power, if he’s also not hitting for average, he’s probably done.

Who is this guy who is currently plunging off The Cilff? Mets fans could probably already guess, but it’s Carlos Delgado. Once a powerful slugger, injuries and age have caught up with him, and he just doesn’t look to be much of a productive major league player anymore.

Last season, the Phillies employed a season-long strategy in which Pat Burrell would play six or seven innings before a defensive replacement helped rest his ailing feet. Usually coming in the form of speedster Michael Bourn, the strategy often worked to perfection; a natural centerfielder, Bourn could cover more ground and get to more balls. Those against the move argued that the Phillies shaky bullpen would give up many leads; in doing so, the Phillies were likely to have Chase Utley and Ryan Howard followed by Bourn in crucial situations, rather than Burrell.

Said proponents of leaving Burrell in the game could not deny that Bourn’s defensive prowess definitely helped the Phillies. Bourn was shipped to Houston in the Brad Lidge deal and so So Taguchi (yes that was planned) signed with the team to serve a similar role.

The problem thus far has been Taguchi’s inability to field his position in replacing Burrell. Add on the facts that Burrell has been posting gaudy numbers and the Phillies bullpen is still suspect and the move does not look good. Taguchi has only recorded one error on the season but there have been three other plays he should have made and did not. That accounts for four plays in his ten leftfield replacements that were not made. The plays in question have not necessarily been terrible but ones that a fan/manager/sane person would definitely expect to be made by a defensive upgrade.

In last night’s Phillies/Mets game, Taguchi misplayed a tough fly ball in the eighth inning, poorly timing his dive/slide. The ball bounced off of the front of his glove, allowing Raul Casanova to slide safely into second. Though the play ultimately did not result in a run it definitely did nothing to ease the pressure placed on the shoulders of JC Romero, now in the midst of his second inning of work. Here’s a graph of the game:

While it is not very likely Burrell would have produced different results if still in the game, Taguchi has not done a very good job as a defensive replacement. Looking at the Phillies likely 7th-9th inning pitchers we get the following:

• 7th: JC Romero – GB% increased from 57-63 % from 2005-2007
• 8th: Tom Gordon – career GB/FB of just 1.27
• 9th: Brad Lidge – career GB of 39.6 %, career FB of 38.6 %

Since Romero is primarily a ground ball pitcher it would make more sense to let Burrell stay in the game for the seventh inning, especially if his batting position is nearby in the offensive half of the inning. If Romero stays in for the eighth inning, like last night, it would not necessarily hurt to leave Burrell in as well due to his vast offensive advantage over Taguchi. With Gordon or Lidge on the mound it would make more sense to look for a defensive replacement but preferably one that would provide a significant upgrade. Nineteen games into this season Taguchi has not lived up to expectations.

Back on April 3rd, I witnessed quite the odd series of events in the tenth inning of a Braves/Pirates matchup, ultimately resulting in Braves reliever Chris Resop coming into pitch, then moving to leftfield, then returning to pitch. Based on the looks I saw develop on the faces of the players involved, I was not the only one a tad confused as to exactly what was happening.

Mike Hampton had been scheduled to make his first start since 2005 but, as expected, this did not happen. A decision was made just prior to the game to scratch Hampton from the start and it was soon learned he would be placed on the disabled list. Since the umpires were already out on the field when the decision was made, the start of the game had to be delayed to allow replacement starter Jeff Bennett time to warm-up. Bobby Cox, after using seven pitchers in this seesaw game, and fulfilling his promise to give Peter Moylan the day off, was left with just Resop and Royce Ring as extra innings rolled around. The goal was for Resop to go the distance unless a crucial lefty-lefty matchup presented itself.

Resop began the frame by walking speedster Nyjer Morgan. Luis Rivas then sacrificed Morgan to second and Jason Bay walked; Morgan advanced to third on a passed ball. With runners on and lefty Adam LaRoche coming up, Cox decided to make his move. Matt Diaz came in from leftfield, Chris Resop went to leftfield, and Royce Ring came into pitch. Ring promptly struck LaRoche out, serving his LOOGY purpose. Ring came out, Resop came back into pitch, and Gregor Blanco replaced Resop in leftfield. As fate would have it, Resop gave up what would turn out to be the game-winning single to Xavier Nady as soon as he came back in. This proved to be the first time in eighteen years that an NL player both pitched and played the field in the same inning.

In that instance, the first game of a doubleheader between the Cubs and Mets, Les Lancaster accomplished the same feat. The day prior, June 12th, the Cubs got waxed 19-8, a game that saw the bullpen get used so heavily that even Doug Dascenzo, an outfielder, pitch. So we have pitchers playing the outfield and outfielders pitching in this article. In the 6th inning of the June 13th game, Cubs starter Jeff Pico had two outs, with one on, and an 8-5 lead when Les Lancaster came into relieve him. Lancaster made quick work of Mark Carreon to end the inning.

When Les trotted out to the mound for the seventh inning, however, things did not go as he planned. He gave up four singles while retiring just one batter; with the lead now just 8-6, and lefties coming up, Lancaster was replaced by Paul Assenmacher. Les moved to leftfield, though, so he could come back into the game. Assenmacher walked a batter and gave up two singles, handing the lead to the Mets. Lancaster came back into pitch and took the brunt of the Mets offense, lasting until the ninth inning. In two separate pitching stints that game, Lancaster’s line: 2.2 IP, 8 H, 9 ER, BB, K. His ERA ballooned from 3.79 to 5.02.

Another incredibly interesting story along similar lines took place on July 22, 1986, again in a game involving the Mets. The Mets roster was in shambles following a usage of relievers and the ejections of Ray Knight and Kevin Mitchell after a brawl. In the tenth inning, Gary Carter replaced Knight at third base while Jesse Orosco and Roger McDowell alternated between pitching and playing the outfield. Unlike the Resop, Lancaster, and Assenmacher examples, this one actually paid off as Orosco and McDowell combined to give up four hits and no runs in four innings of relief work. Orosco even caught a fly ball as Tony Perez hit a liner right into his glove in rightfield.

These are just three examples of why baseball will forever be the most interesting and strategic sport. And, to tie everything together, Roger McDowell is currently the pitching coach for the Braves. I can only guess he experienced a wicked case of deja vu on April 3rd, thinking back to his similar experience over twenty years ago.