November 20, 2009
Order Now The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 is now in development and will ship in mid November! This year's book will feature articles by THT's staff as well as Bill James, Tom Tango and Craig Wright. If you use this link to purchase the Annual, you will be in the first group to receive it and you'll be supporting THT. Most Recent Comments
Sportswriters don’t vote for Cy Young based on popular opinion; baseball universe explodes (12)
Where could Omar Vizquel and Nick Johnson end up? (6) You’re not Alou (8) Is peak at age 29? (6) A defensive shift (3) 
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Friday, November 20, 2009Kevin Millwood or Luis Castillo: Who is more valuable?by Evan Brunell News broke Friday of a potential three-way deal that would send Milton Bradley back to Texas from the Cubs. Chicago would receive second baseman Luis Castillo from the Mets as their reward for shedding the malcontent, with Kevin Millwood heading to the Big Apple to complete the trade. This has been debunked by several sources, such as MLB Trade Rumors, T.R Sullivan and Jon Heyman. However, it's sparked a debate between Heyman and other people on Twitter whether or not Castillo or Millwood is valuable. So, is Castillo valuable? Is Heyman on the mark that Millwood is more valuable than Castillo? The easiest way to find out is to look at Fangraph's valuation of both players in a dollar figure. Castillo was worth $7.2 million this past year, drawing a salary of $6 million. Last year, he was valued at a paltry $2.6 million, going to show how awful Castillo and his contract looked just a year ago. Millwood, on the other hand, posted a very good season with a 3.67 ERA. His FIP was 4.80, so there's cause for concern as to whether Millwood is smoke or mirrors. I'm not putting all my eggs into the FIP basket, to use an analogy, but I'm certainly not relying on his ERA either. Millwood was valued at $10.9 million, so right off the bat there is an easy answer to the question as to who is more valuable. When you think about it, too, isn't it obvious that Millwood is more valuable? Let's toss out some comparisons. Castillo has 2 years and $12 million remaining on his contract. He plays second base, a position where offense is not particularly relied on, and will enter his age 34 season. At this point in his career, all Castillo has going for him is his plate discipline and an ability to hit for an average hovering in the .280-.300 range. He's not adept defensively according to UZR. If I had to select Castillo or Chris Getz to be my second baseman next year, I'd select Getz. (All else NOT equal.) My point here is that Castillo and his production -- with his contract heavily factored in -- is rather replaceable. The only thing Luis has going for him at the moment is that his bad contract can be swapped for another bad contract. (Give me Milton Bradley any day of the week over Castillo, Carl Everett attitude be damned.) Millwood will be 35 and can hit 200 innings pitched a season. He's a solid, if erratic pitcher who will keep a team in the game and will make $12 million in the final year of his contract. He is best used as a No. 3-4, although the Rangers currently cast him as their ace. Millwood is not replaceable. While you might be able to get away with calling up a AAAA player and having him perform to or over Castillo's abilities, you can't say the same of an AAAA pitcher with respect to Millwood. That's where this trade breaks down. A Bradley for Millwood swap makes more sense talent-wise, but Castillo being considered on the level of these two players is fallacy at its finest. If true that Mets GM Omar Minaya overvalues him -- even when trying to trade him -- then you can bet on Castillo being the Mets' second baseman in 2010. Thursday, November 19, 2009Sportswriters don’t vote for Cy Young based on popular opinion; baseball universe explodesby Pat AndriolaKeith Law didn't vote for Chris Carpenter. Will Carroll didn't either. Of course, according to the baseball fans on Twitter, both are saber-morons who are ruining the game. Hysteria indeed. A few interesting tweets/comments: Jon Heyman (@SI_JonHeyman): "i dont mean to pick on the voters. but how do 2 of them leave chris carpenter off the ballot entirely? #dumbsportswriters" Joe and Evan (popular NY talk show hosts, @JoeandEvan): "Plain and simple Linceum should NOT have won Cy Young...disgrace that ESPN's Keith Law left Carpenter off ballot." Matthew Pouliot (NBC Sports): "Now get a load of this: the Cardinals were 68-60 when Wainwright didn't pitch. The Braves were 68-62 when Vazquez didn't pitch. So, the Cards were 23-11 in Wainwright's starts, while the Braves were 18-14 when Vazquez pitched. That's the real world for you." Man, Heyman really gave it to them with that "dumb" comment. Here are the stats, just so we all know what's up: NL SP FIP: 1. Lincecum 2. Vazquez 3. Carpenter NL SP xFIP: 1. Vazquez 2. Lincecum 3. Haren... 7. Caprenter NL SP WAR: 1. Lincecum 2. Vazquez 3. Haren... 6. Carpenter It isn't crazy at all to not include Carpenter from the list. In fact, if Chris Carpenter pitched for a crappy NL West team and didn't win a whole bunch of games while missing the playoffs, nobody would be making such a big deal about this. Rob Neyer sums up this situation nicely: There's something to be said for Conventional Wisdom. In this case, the Conventional Wisdom was unanimous: the three best pitchers in the league were Lincecum, Carpenter, and Wainwright. But in a field as traditionally conservative as award voting, isn't it healthy to allow room for just a bit of unconventional wisdom, too? But what we may see from this is a whole bunch of backlash not just for these two intelligent/honest writers, but for the saber community as as an entity. It's the whole, "We left you nerds alone when you were just blogging 'n such, but now that you're voting with us, you better back off." I hope I'm wrong. I hope that this commentary is at least isolated to the mid-afternoon sports radio shows and MLB.com message boards. However, I get the eery suspicion that we haven't heard the last of it. Wednesday, November 18, 2009You’re not Alouby Dave StudemanHere's something I didn't know, courtesy of Craig Wright's excellent subscription newsletter, A Page from Baseball's Past. The Alou brothers weren't really Alou's. Felipe Alou is really Felipe Rojas. A mistake was made on his first contract in which the scout put in the family name of his mother rather than that of his father. Felipe made the name "Alou" so famous that his younger brothers Matty and Jesus adopted it when they came to the U.S.. The "Alou" brothers have a half-brother from their father's first marriage, and he had a son who also went on to the major leagues. That son was naturally raised under the family name of Rojas name back in the Dominican Republic. That player was Mel Rojas, who pitched 10 years in the majors. Matty Alou in particular still goes back and forth between his two last names depending on which country he is in or what he thinks the situation calls for. "I use 'Alou' when I call the airlines for reservations, because I get a better seat."That blows my mind. It's like saying Babe Ruth's first name wasn't really Babe. Tuesday, November 17, 2009Notable minor league free agentsby Alex PediciniThe 2009 minor league free agent list is littered with former top prospects and number one picks. Some of these names should sound familiar; Josh Barfield, , Chad Cordero, Eric Duncan, Clint Everts, Ryan Harvey, Dallas McPherson, Greg Miller and several notable others are all free agents this year. As Dave Cameron over at Fangraphs pointed out, even former top catching prospect Ben Davis is back, this time as a knuckleball pitcher. I will be keeping my eye on several players in particular, which I have listed below alphabetically. Click for more... Is peak at age 29?by Colin WyersThough old players may not be what they once were, the evidence indicates they can still be valuable. According to my estimates, a hitter who has a .900 OPS at his peak would be expected to post around an .850 OPS at 35; a pitcher with a peak 3.5 ERA is expected to post around a 3.75 ERA at 35. Yes, age saps athletic skill, but the stock of skill being diminished is also important. Is this true? Let's look at Bradbury's original study (unless you subscribe, it costs about $30 to download). He says: The results indicate that both hitters and pitchers peak around age 29. This is older than some estimates of peak performance, but it is in-line with the general understanding of human physiological function. ... For [linear weights],which is not normalized for playing time, players peak at 29.41 years. This is similar to the peak-age estimate of 29.13 for OPS, which is normalized for playing time. How can we test this theory easily? Well, if peak age is 29, we should see players at age 29 have a higher OPS than they did at an earlier age, right? Some may (rightly) note there is a selection affect in who gets to play in successive seasons, and due to regression to the mean we should expect to see players decline from one season to the next - players who underperform are less likely to play in a successive season than those who overperform. So let's take those players who were 29 in 2008 and compare them to how they did in 2006 at age 27. Thirty-five position players were 29 in 2008 (based upon age on July of that season, the same age criteria used in Bradbury's study). Of them, 27 also played in 2006. What we see does not seem to support Bradbury's conclusion - on average, players lost roughly .014 points of OPS from 2006 to 2008. That's not what we should expect to see if the average peak age is in fact 29. Something that should also be noted - 43 players were age 27 in 2006. So a little over half of those players stuck in the league to age 29. (Of course, some of those players could have missed a season due to causes like injury or a demotion and could have returned in this past season - I don't have 2009 stats in my database yet.) We're looking at the survivors. But that's just a one-year sample, right? What if we looked at all age 29 seasons from 1997 to 2008? (As for why 1997, I shall explain shortly.) We see a similar (but less pronounced) dropoff, of about .006 points of OPS. And of course baseball isn't all hitting. The Baseball Databank has outfield positions broken down from 1995 on (and 1995 plus two years is 1997 - see how that works?)
What we see as that as players grow older, they move off the more important defensive positions (catcher, shortstop, center field) and move to the corners. Thinking of peak only in terms of hitting is not instructive if we want to figure a player's free agent value - defensive value needs to be considered as well. Bradbury's model may do a good job of explaining in retrospect where peak age is for players who make it to age 35. But it does not seem to have a lot of predictive value for what will happen to a 27-year-old player going forward. Anyone looking to predict future performance should look to some other method of estimating the effects of age. UPDATE: Here's another way of looking at the issue. Bradbury's study included all batters who debuted past 1920 and played 10 seasons between age 24 and 35. Now, looking at all players who debuted past 1920, 48% were out of the league before the age of 29, Bradbury's purported peak. Does that make sense to anyone? Or flip it around - the most common debut age for a baseball player is 23, and the average player who debuts at that age will play six years, or until age 29. In point of fact, if we look at the most common debut ages:
So, for player that debut from age 21 to 26 (that's 75% of players), the average career length takes them through their age 29 season. Either MLB teams are all highly irrational, discarding players the second they've reached their peak (when given the aging curve Bradbury proposes, a typical player should still have several productive seasons post-peak) or Bradbury's study is simply wrong. Where could Omar Vizquel and Nick Johnson end up?by Evan BrunellLast week, I mused about where Adrian Beltre, Mike Cameron and Mike Jacobs could end up. Today, I bring you two more potential fits. Click for more... Monday, November 16, 2009A defensive shiftby Chuck BrownsonWhat do the following 5 players all have in common: Jason Bay, Ken Griffey, Jr., Jermaine Dye, Brad Hawpe, and Adam Dunn? The answer: they were named in Matthew Carruth's article over at fangraphs as being baseball's 5 worst defensive players over the last 3 seasons. They are also either free agents this offseason or have been linked in trade rumors. Click for more... Reds bring back Ramon Hernandezby Evan BrunellIn a bit of a surprise, the Cincinnati Reds have brought back Ramon Hernandez on a one-year, $3 million contract to function as their starting catcher. The reason I say it was a surprise is because popular notion has been that the team is looking to slash payroll. In such a situation, the more adept defensive catcher (and younger... and cheaper) in Ryan Hanigan would figure to be handed the starting job. However, Walt Jocketty brushed off payroll concerns, saying all that information was circulated by writers. I buy only parts of it: Francisco Cordero, Aaron Harang and Bronson Arroyo have all been clearly shopped in the past. In addition, where there's smoke, there tends to be fire. As Mark Sheldon reports, the Reds have $65 million tied up in just nine players for 2010. There's no way they can afford to fill out the rest of the roster with competent players for only $10 million more. (Their payroll was $73 million last year, and amid declining attendance, I don't see this payroll rising.)  I'm not opposed to this deal from a one year perspective because I totally buy the Reds being leery of handing the job to Hanigan with only one full major league season to his credit. It was a good one, but it's not a line you clear the way for .263/.361/.331. I think the power has the potential to uptick, and you can't argue the plate discipline. What throws me off is a vesting option for 2011 that gives Hernandes $3.25 million should he play in 120 games. That figures to be easily attainable provided Hernandez doesn't have any long-term injury issues. A that point, the club will be wasting millions on a 35-year old catcher at risk for injury. Sunday, November 15, 2009Sabermetrics 101 at Tuftsby Pat AndriolaSince the beginning of September, Professor Andy Andres has been teaching the 2009 version of Sabermetrics 101 at Tufts University. The class, which is available through Tufts' Experimental College (which specializes in offering classes in somewhat esoteric areas) is described as follows: This course will teach the fundamentals of the emerging science of Sabermetrics, the objective analysis of baseball. We will discuss baseball, not through conventional wisdom and consensus, but by searching for real knowledge concerning the game of baseball. Hitting, pitching, fielding performance, along with other areas of sabermetrics, will be analyzed and better understood with the current and historical baseball data. Students will design and implement their own sabermetric research study , learning the important concepts in statistics and statistical analysis needed to perform this research. Being a student at Tufts, I've been privileged enough to take the class, and thus far it has been a blast. Some notes that readers may find interesting: -The syllabus consists of reading such essentials as Moneyball and Baseball Between the Numbers, but we have also branched out into reading less mainstream works, such as Understanding Sabermetrics and readings from FC Lane. -There are almost weekly written assignments, including students choosing and defending their choices for MVP, Cy Young, and a Gold Glove (I went Mauer, Greinke, and Brendan Ryan, respectively). -Class discussions are great. I sometimes find myself stereotypically attacking traditional views and defending more post-modern saber thought, but that's definitely part of the fun. -There's one Yankees fan in the entire class. This is a rarity for any class at Tufts, albeit one centered around baseball. -As of now, it looks like guest lecturers coming up will include Steve Moyer and Joe Sheehan. -Final projects are offered as a binary: you can contribute to a group project in which many students put together a lengthy piece on historical and analytical aspects of sabermetrics, or you can conduct (and eventually present) your own research project. As of now, it looks like my partner and I will be focusing on and researching linear weights for batted ball data. Overall the class has been wonderful, and I genuinely look forward to it each week (although what college student doesn't look forward to class). I hope other colleges begin to explore opening up interesting classes such as these, and I want to thank Andy for a great job thus far. Saturday, November 14, 2009It’s in the mailby Dave StudemanThe Hardball Times Annual 2010 is now shipping. If you ordered it from ACTA, you will receive it very soon (if you haven't already). If you ordered it from Amazon, you'll get in a couple of weeks. I warned you... I learned yesterday that the Annual was printed by the same printer that printed the Harry Potter books, among other top sellers. I think that's pretty appropriate, considering that this was the sixth THT Annual. We'll catch up to Harry next year. The bottom line is that I think the book looks fantastic; Tuck's toons and all the graphics and tables look really good on the printed page. If you've got any comments about the Annual, post them here. We're always looking for feedback. Enjoy. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
