Archive for Miguel Cabrera

Let us acknowledge, with the 2012 regular season drawing to a close, that there’s been a fun debate surrounding the American League Most Valuable Player award. If not fun, then — at the very least — interesting. Let us acknowledge that there was a time at which it looked like voters would really, deeply, have to think. Let us now acknowledge that, with the Tigers probably going to the playoffs and the Angels probably not going to the playoffs, there’s probably going to be a little less thought, at least for some. It looked like we were going to have a rare contest between two guys not playing extra baseball, but now it’s looking like no such luck.

It’s all about Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera, with Adrian Beltre being the subject of the occasional whisper. Pretty much everybody I’ve read has an opinion one way or the other; I suppose without an opinion, one probably wouldn’t be writing. Trout has many of the overall season numbers on his side, and the Cabrera argument wouldn’t have so much steam if it weren’t for his torrid offense down the stretch when the Tigers have needed it most. Cabrera, they say, has stepped up while Trout has stepped back, and these have been the most meaningful games. And that’s why Cabrera is deserving of consideration, at the very least.

Read the rest of this entry »

Science is neat. In many scientific experiments, you can run trials, generate results, slightly change the conditions, run trials, and generate other results. Then you can compare those results to measure the effect of the change that you made. I used to work in a neuroscience lab with fruit flies, and one of the first projects to which I was assigned attempted to measure the draw of potential mates against the draw of fresh food. Without going into detail, we were constantly futzing with the method and seeing what happened to the numbers in the end. It was not a very good experiment and it never came close to getting published. At least there were usually donuts.

Baseball isn’t like science. In baseball, there is but one trial, and it’s always going on. We can speculate about the effects of certain things, and we can feel pretty confident about our speculations, but we can never know for sure. We can never know for sure how many wins above replacement a player is or was worth. We can never know for sure the significance of a borderline pitch call. And we might never know the meaning of a play that Alex Gordon made in Detroit Wednesday evening.

Read the rest of this entry »

Evaluating trades is one of the most fun aspects of baseball analysis. The best evaluations often are made at the time of the trade, based on perceived mindsets of the teams involved and on the information available at the time the deal was conceived. Hindsight makes things easier, but often winds up with less accurate assessments. Still, taking another look after a couple of years can be an interesting exercise, especially when players involved in the original deal moved to new teams.

Suddenly, one move can impact the roster of four or five different teams depending on the eventual destinations of the players involved. One recent deal involved the Florida Marlins sending all-stars Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis to the Tigers for Andrew Miller, Cameron Maybin, Burke Badenhop, Mike Rabelo, Dallas Trahern and Eulogio De La Cruz. Though the latter four players have their merits, the December 2007 deal was really two of the top prospects in baseball for Cabrera and the ability to not have to pay Willis.

Three years later, the Marlins essentially unloaded a hall-of-fame player for three middle relievers — as both Maybin and Miller are on new teams and only one of the original players acquired remains on the major league club.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have a strange affinity for the Home Run Derby. It spawns from watching re-runs of the old school Home Run Derby TV series, originally aired in 1960. The rules were different back then — two hitters went head-to-head, squaring off in a nine-inning “game” in which each batter got three outs per inning. If a player didn’t swing at a pitch in the zone, it counted as an out. Between turns, a batter would kick back and chat with host Mark Scott. The winner got a check for two grand and the chance to defend his title the next week against a new opponent. The list of those who competed — Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle among them — is a who’s who of all-time greats.

It’s true, the current form of the Home Run Derby doesn’t compare to its progenitor. The field of contestants doesn’t always include a cavalcade of stars. Sometimes, it seems like hitters take 20 pitches right down the middle before letting ‘er rip. And, the broadcast of the event really should come with a public service announcement imploring viewers to turn down the volume, lest they be haunted in their sleep by shrieks of “backbackbackback.”

Yet, despite its flaws, I watch intently. There’s something enthralling about those majestic moon shots. This year, the list of derby contestants includes Miguel Cabrera, David Ortiz, Nick Swisher and Vernon Wells from the American League, and Corey Hart, Matt Holliday, Hanley Ramirez and Chris Young from the National League. While I don’t claim this will have any predictive value — having a BP coach lobbing mid-60’s fastballs down the pike is quite another thing from game conditions — I thought it would be fun to take a closer look at tonight’s contestants. Where do they hit their homers, how hard are they hit, and how far do those taters travel?

Here’s a chart showing where the HR derby competitors have gone yard this season. I listed switch-hitter Swisher’s numbers from both sides of the plate:

Not surprisingly, most of the contestants’ home run power comes to the pull side of the field. Cabrera is crushing the ball both to the pull side and the opposite field — his home run per fly ball percentage to the pull side is 65 (27.2% MLB average for RHB), and it’s 14% to the opposite side (2.8% MLB average for RHB). Hart and Ramirez have also gone to the opposite field more than most, while Ortiz and Swisher have hit a decent number of homers to center.

Courtesy of Greg Rybarczyk’s Hit Tracker Online, here’s how the HR Derby contestants rank in terms of speed off the bat on those homers. The MLB average, for comparison’s sake, is 103.4 MPH:

Wells (106.8 MPH) leads the pack, followed by Holliday (106.1), Cabrera (105.2), Ortiz (104.2), Ramirez (104.1), Young (102.7), Swisher (102.3) and Hart (101.9).

Who’s hitting the longest homers? Hit Tracker measures the “Standard Distance” for home runs hit. From the site, here’s the definition:

The estimated distance in feet the home run would have traveled if it flew uninterrupted all the way down to field level, and if the home run had been hit with no wind, in 70 degree air at sea level. Standard distance factors out the influence of wind, temperature and altitude, and is thus the best way of comparing home runs hit under a variety of different conditions.

Here’s how the derby hopefuls rank in terms of Standard Distance homers. The MLB average is 393.8 feet:

Wells (406.5 Feet) and Holliday (406.1) again rank first and second. Ramirez (400.2), Ortiz (398.8), Cabrera (396.8), Swisher (396.4) and Young (394.5) all best the big league average, while Hart (392.5) comes in below that mark. Hart is tied for the major league lead in “Just Enough” homers, with 10. Just Enough’s, per Hit Tracker, clear “the fence by less than 10 vertical feet,” or land “less than one fence height past the fence.”

And finally, to pre-empt against any cries of “the derby screwed up his swing!,” here are the contestants’ current wOBA totals, as well as their projected rest-of-season wOBA figures from ZiPS. In other words, here’s what they have done so far, and here’s what we can reasonably expect in the second half:

Six out of eight project to hit worse in the second half. Some of these guys have greatly exceeded their previously established level of performance. Even accounting for the spike in production (ZiPS incorporates data from the current season), they figure to regress somewhat when games resume Thursday. If Hart doesn’t continue hitting bombs at a prodigious rate, it’s not because of some HR derby hex — it’s the product of regression to the mean.

Yesterday, we took a look at what goes into infield defense by examining the cases of Mike Jacobs and Hanley Ramirez. Keeping with the themes of defense and, well, the Florida Marlins, I decided to check some data out at the suggestion of colleague Brian Cartwright. Brian astutely pointed out that both Ramirez and second baseman Dan Uggla have posted similar fielding numbers in the sense that both looked slightly different in 2006 and 2008 than they did the year in between.

Interestingly enough, Miguel Cabrera’s defense at third base has followed the same trend, -4 in 2006, -8 in 2007, and -4 in 2008. Of course, Cabrera did not play for the Marlins last season, and was replaced by Jorge Cantu, who proceeded to post a -6 UZR. Let’s visualize the overall UZR numbers for their infield in this span, stacked up next to each other:

Name      2006   2007   2008
Jacobs    -3.2   -4.1  -11.1
Uggla     +7.0   -9.6   +2.9 
Ramirez   -5.5  -19.1   -0.3
Cabrera*  -4.3   -8.1   -6.2

*-Cantu for 2008

In 2006, Jacobs and Cabrera were quite comparable. The next season, Jacobs declined slightly while Cabrera fell off much more, yet their infield peers, perhaps in trying to make up the difference, lost 14-16 runs from the year prior. Last season, the third base situation improved a bit and Ramirez bounced back fantastically. Conversely, Jacobs experienced a vast decrease in his defensive mark and Uggla gained 11-12 runs.

Their respective ranges produce similar results. While we might expect worse range from Jacobs and Cabrera/Cantu to lead to worse UZR marks for Uggla and Ramirez, there seems to be more at work here. Cabrera’s range decline of a couple of runs cannot be the sole contributing factor to Ramirez’s overall defensive mark falling completely off the chart. Likewise, how would Uggla get that much better if Jacobs also fell by the wayside?

As the Chase Utley/Ryan Howard example showed, where Utley posted a ridiculous + – score largely due to Howard’s lack of range, worse range at a position right next door can lead to more opportunities. Unfortunately, many forget that more opportunities can also lead to more failure, but Ramirez and Uggla did not cost their team drastically more error runs than they had in 2006, meaning their extra opportunities were not as detrimental as you might think.

As both MGL and I have shown here, more range actually leads to less errors, and vice versa, with less range leading to more errors, but even when the ranges of Ramirez and Uggla took significant hits in 2007, they did not experience huge shifts in errors compared to the league average fielder at their position.

It makes perfectly good intuitive sense that when the infielder playing next to you shows poor range, that your numbers would also suffer, but that does not seem to be the definitive case here. Perhaps something else is at work, like the pitchers being hit very hard, or both players experiencing the injury bug, but I do not have the end all solution here. Maybe a wisdom of the crowd approach would serve well to answer this question. So, what say you? Why would the defensive numbers of Ramirez and Uggla drop so drastically in 2007 when Jacobs and Cabrera did not take too significant of a hit? And why then would Ramirez and Uggla improve even though Jacobs severely worsened?

Last week, Matthew examined the idea of anchoring, or how our perception of a player’s performance on the whole can largely be influenced by very good or very poor production in the first month of the season. No matter what happens from that point forward, unless the player in question belongs to “our” team, we are going to instinctively jump back to the April performance to gauge how he is doing. It is with this in mind that I bring up Miguel Cabrera of the Tigers, the offensively-talented youngster that is usually thought of as a force to be reckoned with when he steps up to the plate.

From 2005-2007, Cabrera posted OPS counts ranging from .947-.998, exhibiting the kind of patience and power that makes any fan of an opposing team feel uneasy. After an off-season trade from the Marlins to the Tigers, some speculated that the change of scenery, or the change in leagues that is, may effect his numbers, much like those of Carlos Beltran and Adrian Beltre. Now, Beltran and Beltre had poor inaugural seasons with their new teams but bounced back quite nicely after that. The Tigers got off to an incredibly disappointing start, and Cabrera’s numbers in April were not necessarily indicative of his proven track record.

He was hitting .270/.359/.470, an .829 OPS, with 5 doubles and 5 home runs. His relatively slow start, coupled with the poor performance of the team, led many to believe this speculation was coming true, and that Cabrera would have a down season. Since May 1st, Cabrera has hit .293/.350/.543, an .893 OPS, with 27 doubles and 28 home runs. On the whole, that brings his seasonal line to .289/.351/.530, an .882 OPS, with 32 doubles and 33 home runs, numbers very similar to those he posted in 2004, his first full year in the majors. In fact, his current OPS+ of 130 is the same as it was back in 2004.

His line has definitely improved since April, but it does not appear that anyone has realized. Not many know he’s got 33 jimmy-jacks this year, or that his ISO of .241 is the second-highest of his career. They just know that he had a slower-than-usual April, and are basing assessments off of that. Granted, his season is well off the Marcel projection of .328/.408/.558, a .966 OPS, but there are some interesting reasons why. First, his BB % is the lowest it has been in a full season in his career, meaning quite simply that he isn’t walking as much. That is one reason his OBP is much lower—the SLG is actually quite similar to year’s past, but the OBP is off. Additionally, his BABIP has ranged from .330-.382 in his career, even being projected at .371 this year. As of right now, it is .312, still technically above average but much lower than what he has established himself capable of. Because of this, not as many hits are falling in, which affects all three components of the slash line.

Cabrera is on a new team, at a new fielding position, in the league with superior talent. All three of those factors could play a big part in his performance this year, or they could have nothing to do with them. If the BABIP is any indication, it seems like an outlier. He could very well “bounce back” next season and post numbers similar to those in Florida, as his true talent level would suggest, but he will need to be a bit more patient at the plate, swinging at less pitches out of the zone, as his percentage is higher this year. A team could do much worse than employ a first baseman with an OPS right around .900, but Cabrera has shown himself capable of so much more than that. His early season performance may still be affecting his current seasonal reputation, but he is still having a very good year, one extremely similar to his 2004 campaign.

There is no doubt that the Detroit Tigers organization has had a disappointing season up to this point. However, there is good news in the minor league system.

After purging most of its top prospects from the system this past winter to acquire such names as Miguel Cabrera, Edgar Renteria, and Dontrelle Willis, the Tigers organization was rated as having one of the worst systems in the game. But a number of the mid-level prospects in the system have improved their games. As well, top pitching prospect and 2007 first-round pick Rick Porcello made his much-anticipated pro debut.

Porcello, who was drafted out of a New Jersey high school, was considered a Top 10 talent but he fell to the 27th overall pick due to signability concerns. Every team in the league who passed him up now regrets it, as he is holding his own in High-A ball as a 19-year-old. He throws in the mid-90s and has a four-pitch mix that includes a fastball, curve, slider and change-up.

So far this season, Porcello has a 2.94 ERA in 67.1 innings. He has allowed 67 hits and only 19 walks, to go along with 41 strikeouts. Although he is not striking out a ton of batters, Porcello is inducing more than 2.2 ground balls for every fly ball out and only four balls have left the yard. He is actually having better luck against left-handed batters (.222 batting average), than righties (.283).

His worst game of the season came on June 1 when he faced the Dunedin Blue Jays for the fourth time in a month. He allowed four earned runs on nine hits and three walks over 4.2 innings. Porcello was been excellent so far in his pro career despite skipping over both short season ball and low A-ball. He could end up being one of the first pitchers from the 2007 draft to make it to the majors, which is good news for the Detroit Tigers.