What We Learned In Week One
We’ve got a little more than a week of baseball in the books, and while the samples are too small to make any meaningful conclusions, we’ve still seen some interesting things in the last seven days. So, let’s cover what we learned in week one.
The Astros are terribly impatient.
I don’t think anyone thought Houston would be good this year when they saw the roster that had been put together. We placed them dead last in the organization rankings for a reason, after all. But in their seven games, they’ve been a total and utter disaster.
It’s bad enough that their offense isn’t hitting, but perhaps most shocking is their remarkable insistence on swinging at everything. Through seven games, Houston has drawn just six walks while striking out 50 times. The Angels have drawn the second fewest walks, but they have 17. The Astros are in a class by themselves in terms of hacking away.
They’ve swung at 33.4 percent of pitches outside the strike, easily leading the league. They’re tied with the Rangers for the highest overall swing percentage, except that Texas’ hitters are actually, you know, talented. Houston won’t have much of an offensive threat until Lance Berkman returns from the disabled list, but at least they could make pitchers throw strikes. The current approach is obviously not working.
The Orioles outfielders are going to get a workout this year.
Here are the GB% for Baltimore starters so far:
Kevin Millwood: 37.5%
Jeremy Guthrie: 34.1%
Brad Bergesen: 42.1%
Brian Matusz: 0.0%
David Hernandez: 11.8%
Matusz and Hernandez continued their trend established in 2009 of being extreme flyball pitchers in their 2010 debuts. Chris Tillman is also an extreme flyball guy, so interestingly, the Orioles crop of young arms is made up almost entirely of guys who ptich up in the zone and give up balls in the air. Millwood and Guthrie are about average groundball guys for their careers, so the outfield will only get to rest on days when Bergsen takes the hill.
Kelly Johnson should have gathered more interest this winter.
Not that we should overreact to his hot start, but Johnson settled for just a one year, $2.35 million contract from Arizona after he was non-tendered by the Braves. He’s quickly reminding the rest of the National League that he’s a pretty good offensive second baseman, showing both power (five extra base hits) and bat control (four walks, one strikeout) in his first 23 plate appearances. But this isn’t anything new, really – ZIPS had Johnson projected to hit .279/.352/.472 before the season even started, and his career wOBA is .343.
He’s not a great defender at second base, but a 28-year-old who can hit like that and at least fake it at a middle infield spot should not be settling for the contract that Johnson got. Even better for Arizona is that they retain his rights beyond 2010, because he’s not going to have enough service time to qualify for free agency until after the 2011 season.
The cutback in winter spending led to some necessary market corrections, but it also led to Arizona getting a new second baseman for a fraction of what he’s worth. Kudos to the D’Backs for taking advantage of a market that failed to realize that Johnson is still a quality player.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
The A’s have 5 team HR yet lead the AL (and are 2nd in MLB) in runs scored.
“The Astros are terribly impatient.”
or
“The Astros are terrible.”
Whichever.
Johnson did not get more money b/c MLB is racist.
I really hope you’re being sarcastic.
It’s definitely sarcasm. “O-Dawg” was alluding to Orlando Hudson’s comments within the last 24 hours.
Ordonez has 2 HR already (9 last year) and how about Scott Podsednik with now 6 SB already?
Yeah, SBs are such a low-frequency event in general (relatively speaking) that the numbers and leaders can swing all over the place from month to month and even season to season, but the SB leaderboard so far this year is especially amusing.
Albert Pujols has more RBI than the Astros’ team has runs scored.
That is both amazing and tragic at the same time. How long before the Astros outscore Pujols?
Thus why I wouldn’t trade Albert for the whole Astros lineup.
Losses in the bank.
Let’s say you thought the Mariners were a true talent 84 win team this year before the season started. You can later use your own true talent level, but for this example I am going with 84, A quick glance at the 2010 Standings shows the Mariners with a record of 2-6 going into play today. It would be silly to change your true talent level projection based off of only 8 games. Therefore with 154 remaining games, you need to adjust that 84 win level down to just under 82 wins (154 * .5185) = 79.85 + 2 = (let’s call it) 82 wins.
So even if you felt the Mariners are an 84 win true talent level team going into the season, you have to adjust that down to 82 wins due to them already having 6 losses in the bank after 8 games. A similar exercise can be done for other teams.
Let’s say you had the A’s as an 80 win team. They are 6-2. We get…
(154 * .4938) + 6 = 82 wins. In this scenario the A’s have caught the Mariners in “true talent” projected wins.
So even though there have only been 8 or so games played and samples are too small for most individual player stats, there are some pre-season projections that need to be modified.
The Mariners invented true talent
Why would you modify pre-season projections with data from the season?
Because they become more accurate that way? He’s not saying that the new projections are pre-season projections (they obviously aren’t) but that with a week’s worth of games already played, that has an effect on what people thought would happen. If someone predicted the Yankees to go 162-0 and they lost a game, then that projection would necessarily be wrong. This clearly isn’t that extreme, but if a team projected to go sub-.500 starts hot then their season projection ought to be adjusted for that hot streak, because although they may go on a losing streak later on and compensate for it, that’s only a possibility, while the hot streak is a certainty because it already happened.
Maybe for the same reason that the game graphs here on Fangraphs get updated with each batter as the game goes along?
Quincy and Paul are correct and have stated pretty clearly why. The losses and wins accululated so far are “money in the bank”. This point was hapred on by the author last year after the Mariners hot start. The wins were “money in the bank”. This year, the early losses are also “money in the bank”. Reading this article reminded me of that. 🙂
vr, Xeifrank
how about this:
colby rasmus is really good.
If Kelly Johnson has a great year (and based on this start, he will), sabermetrically inclined Braves fans like myself will exhibit wry smiles and wag our fingers in the direction of Frank Wren, “I told you so” on our lips and in our hearts.
Although Prado is playing for league minimum, so the loss isn’t acute.
And Prado’s been almost as good as KJ has been.
It’s tough because, as a Braves fan, I’d like to keep both, but it’s also hard to keep Kelly Johnson on the bench when he’s only able to play second. They had two above average second basemen, and they kept the guy who who was cheaper, and had experience playing the corner infield spots, so it’s hard to fault.
Still, it’s apparent from the contract that Kelly signed that the league didn’t properly evaluate his value, so keeping him around wouldn’t have helped the Braves get any in trade, which they did try before releasing him.
As a Braves fan, I’ve watched KJ a ton over the past few years. He’s a very streaky hitter and I would be very surprised if he beats his CHONE prediction of .350 wOBA at the end of the year.
Temo, that’s fine, but you do realize what the market value of a defensively average 2B with a .350 wOBA is, right?
I recall M’s fans on here talking about the tingling feeling running down their legs after the Bradley trade. How’s that working out? Question: How unfair is it that Elijah Dukes is begging to catch on with a Mexican league team while Milton has $18m left on his deal?
Elijah Dukes:
Called the mother of his kids dawg
Threatened to kill them, and he was not bullshittin
I think it’s pretty fair.
My point is not that Elijah Dukes is a model citizen, but how is calling someone “dawg” either a crime or worse than Milton flipping off fans in what has to now be half the stadiums in MLB? Or bum rushing the press box after he heard an announcer said something negative about him? Dukes was caught on tape saying some very bad things, and what he did should never be tolerated, but at least it was emotionally charged and involved him feeling his children could be taken from him. Milton has taken aggressive actions towards perfect strangers, repeatedly, in front of thousands of witnesses, in addition to running from the police. No, not fair.
The man has multiple assault charges against him. That’s a little worse than throwing a water bottle in the vicinity of a guy who threw it at him.
I’m not saying the league should give up on Dukes, but Dukes is alot more than just a bad guy in the club house. He’s a bad guy. I hope he gets help, but until that time I wouldn’t want him anywhere near my team. You can’t compare him and Bradley. Bradley’s surly, Dukes is a thug.
You’re right. The Bradley trade was stupid. Also, the Twins should have let Denard Span go instead of signing him long term. Jay Bruce, Shane Victorino, Jose Lopez, Alexei Ramirez, and Carlos Lee should all also be cut.
Exactly – losing Carlos Silva is going to kill the Mariners this year.
“I recall M’s fans on here talking about the tingling feeling running down their legs after the Bradley trade. How’s that working out?”
M’s fans still have that tingling feeling.
In the first sentence of this article: “the samples are too small to make any meaningful conclusions.”
Take a look at each of their seasons in the majors. Dukes has only had one season in which he had a positive WAR. Bradley on the other hand has only had one season with a negative WAR. As for legal or league problems, I admit to not being as well versed in Bradley’s problems, but I do not know of any actual physical altercations (although, there may be some). Dukes has has multiple assault charges against teammates, relatives, and significant others. So, one player gets upset and confronts others (yelling or giving the finger), and the other player throws Gatorade bottles at your head, or chokes you, or texts a picture of a gun to you with the phrase “You dead dawg”.
Add production with legal troubles, and that is why Bradley is playing in MLB and Dukes is not. The amount of Bradley’s contract cannot be blamed on the Mariners. They simply traded one sunk cost for another. But they felt there was upside in the one they received back since they needed a middle of the order bat and a LF.