February 9, 2010
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Are fastballs actually getting faster? (8)
Looking at Todd Wellemeyer, Jason Pridie, Mark Hendrickson and Willy Taveras (yes, things are slow) (1) APBA manager wanted (2) The Twins will spend over $100 million on players in 2010 (13) Why would Pujols strike a deal now? (17)  
Pat Andriola
Rich Barbieri John Barten Brian Borawski Craig Brown Evan Brunell Chuck Brownson Kevin Dame Joshua Fisher David Gassko Jeremy Greenhouse Brandon Isleib Chris Jaffe Max Marchi Bruce Markusen Dan Novick Harry Pavlidis Alex Pedicini Jeff Sackmann Nick Steiner Dave Studeman Steve Treder Bryan Tsao Tuck! Geoff Young John Brattain And here's the full roster.
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Tuesday, February 09, 2010Looking at Todd Wellemeyer, Jason Pridie, Mark Hendrickson and Willy Taveras (yes, things are slow)by Evan BrunellFour names have made waves (okay... more like ripples... in a puddle) in baseball recently. Let's take a quick peek at who they are and what value they bring. Click for more... Give Chien-Ming a chanceby Pat AndriolaWith Ken Rosenthal reporting that Chien-Ming Wang is going to make a decision on his (most likely) new team within seven to ten days, I decided to once again use Fangraphs' new splits data and see if there was anything that stuck out with Wang. Here are his xFIP's from 2005-2009, first versus righties and then versus lefties: 2005: 3.97, 4.46 2006: 3.94, 4.42 2007: 3.68, 4.76 2008: 3.49, 5.00 2009: 3.53, 5.54 That's 4.69 against lefties for his career and 3.78 versus righties. Although Wang has improved his performance against right-handed hitters throughout his career, he has gotten worse against lefties. While this is unsurprising for a groundball pitcher, the jump in xFIP (1.12 difference in '06 and '09) is pretty startling. Let's take a look at Wang's batted ball data versus lefties, specifically GB/FB ratio and LD%: 2005: 2.51, 11.8% 2006: 2.84, 17.0% 2007: 2.33, 21.8% 2008: 2.26, 20.5% 2009: 2.00, 25.8% So there has clearly been an increase in the quality of the ball off the bat of lefties against Wang. However, let's not forget that Wang only through 20.1 innings against left-handers last year. That tells you pretty much nothing. While Wang may be declining against lefties, he probably is more around a ~5.00 xFIP pitcher against them, which would, combined with his skill against righties, make him a valuable pitcher relative to his asking price. Finally, here are his projected FIP's for 2010: CHONE: 3.94 MARCEL: 4.29 Bill James: 3.81 Fans (24): 3.94 Not bad. Considering Wang has also consistently outperformed the league average on HR/FB% (other than his outlier '09 season), Wang could conceivably be a ~2.3 WAR pitcher next year if he recovers fully from his injury. That issue is a whole other story, but for now, non-injury Chien-Ming Wang is looking like a bargain. Job openings in Clevelandby Dave StudemanKeith Woolner, Manager of Baseball Analytics for the Cleveland Indians, has asked us to post the following job openings: Title: Data Architect - Baseball AnalyticsLocation: Cleveland, OH Description: The Cleveland Indians are currently scouting for a Data Architect to work in our Baseball Operations Department. This individual will report to the Director of Baseball Operations while assisting both the Baseball and Information Systems Departments. This individual will be a technical resource to the baseball analytics department, taking on increasing responsibility to design, implement, and manage the Baseball Department’s information architecture. Responsibilities include: • Creating data models, developing processes for extraction, transformation, cleansing, and loading a variety of internal and external data sources; • Creating and maintaining business rules and metadata to ensure data consistency, designing and implementing a data warehouse of baseball information. • Other responsibilities may include, but are not limited to, statistical analysis and baseball research, application and web development, and user interface and data visualization design. Candidates must possess: • A Bachelor’s degree (or higher) in Computer Science or a related field, along with demonstrated work experience designing and managing data warehouses, creating OLAP cubes, and using reporting tools. • Experience with Oracle (preferred) or another major database system including advanced knowledge of SQL and/or MDX is required. • Experience with any of the following are highly desirable: database administration, ETL and/or BI tools, application development in .NET and/or Java. • Proficiency in statistical analysis software packages (R, STATA, SAS, SPSS) is desirable, as is familiarity with current baseball research and analytics. For more information or to apply, visit http://www.indians.com/jobs , Requisition Number 10-0025. Interested candidates must apply online to be considered. Title: Baseball AnalystLocation: Cleveland, OH Description: The Cleveland Indians are currently scouting for a Baseball Analyst to work in our Baseball Operations Department. This individual will report to the Manager of Baseball Analytics while assisting both the Baseball and Information Systems Departments. Responsibilities include: • Performing advanced statistical analysis on large volumes of baseball-related data and implementing predictive models to aid in departmental decision making. • Creating reports, charts, tables, graphics, and other tools to deliver information to staff in concise and readable formats; • Advising and assisting other analysts and staff on proper selection and implementation of techniques in statistical analysis and data mining; • Monitoring developments in statistical fields to identify new algorithms or methods applicable to baseball problems; • Evaluating published sabermetric research to ascertain its value and applicability to internal models and processes. • Other projects may be assigned consistent with departmental needs and candidate skills. Candidates must possess: • A Master’s degree (or higher) in Statistics, Operations Research, Mathematics, Computer Science, or a related quantitative field. • This individual must possess expert knowledge of modern statistical analysis and/or machine learning techniques. • Significant experience with R, STATA, SPSS, SAS, or similar software is required. • Strong knowledge of baseball, particularly in sabermetrics is also required. • Experience with a database system such as Oracle or SQL Server, and proficiency with SQL is highly desirable. • Demonstrated ability to advise, consult, mentor, or teach others is desirable. • The ability to communicate complex concepts at an appropriate level to colleagues possessing a wide range of backgrounds is also important. For more information or to apply, visit http://www.indians.com/jobs , Requisition Number 10-0024. Interested candidates must apply online to be considered. APBA manager wantedby Dave StudemanThe North East League, the world's first play-by-mail baseball simulation league, is pleased to invite experienced APBA managers to apply for an open franchise. We're also going to name an official alternate who will automatically get the next available franchise. This is the first manager search that we've run in 12 years, so if you're at all interested in joining the NEL, now's the time! The NEL is a basic game APBA league that is just about to start its 50th season. We use the 1986 version of the boards (the white boards) with very few changes, but we do have a computerized version of the game that allows an 8-game series to be played, complete with stat compilation, in an hour or two. We hold an annual convention (this year in late March in New Jersey), and virtually every league member attends virtually every convention. The available franchise has one of the best rosters in the league, including such names as Johan Santana, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, Adam Wainwright, Ian Kinsler, Jose Reyes, Kevin Youkilis, Mariano Rivera, etc. Famous former NEL managers include Bob Fraser, APBA's former general manager; Tom Heiderscheit, the former editor of the APBA Journal; and the late Bill Linn, the long-time author of "Linn on Leagues" in the Journal. If you're interested in learning more about the NEL, please email Woody Studenmund at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), and I'll send you a packet of information about the league. Are fastballs actually getting faster?by Dan NovickI don't think it will come as a surprise to anyone that I use FanGraphs a lot. It seems that every month, owner David Appelman rolls out some new shiny improvement to the site. Just recently, he gave users the ability to look up splits. But while everybody has been sorting and looking things up, something else has piqued my interest. I've actually been meaning to look into this for a while, but it was the two articles Matthew Carruth posted on Monday that inspired me to finally do this. I want to look at the pitch speeds displayed on the FanGraphs player pages, which are provided by Baseball Info Solutions. Over the course of this past season, I noticed a change in fastball velocity for a large number of pitchers. Though my evidence was anecdotal, there seemed to be a clear trend of increasing fastball velocity, at least from 2008 to 2009. I decided to look at all pitchers who threw at least 90 innings in a given year, and simply find the average velocity of every pitcher's fastball. Why 90? Because I said so. The identities of the pitchers in the sample change from year to year, but I don't think that changes much in this case. Here is the average fastball velocity for pitchers who fit the criteria: 2002: 89.47 mph That's an increase of one full mile per hour in just two years. I don't think that there's some new wave of pitchers who suddenly started throwing really hard the last few years. More likely, it's a problem with BIS's data collection. From 2002 (the first year this data is available for) through 2007, the average fastball velocity remained between 89.31 mph and 89.88 mph, a difference of just .57 mph. Said differently, the average fastball velocity from 2002-2007 was 89.57. In just two years, that number increased to 90.67. I looked at the same thing for other pitches, and there wasn't much of anything to be found. Curveballs, changeups, and sliders didn't show any clear trend like the fastballs did. This leads me to believe that it's not a problem with the radar guns they're using, or we'd see a similar trend across all pitches. I have another theory, however. It's possible that pitch f/x data, which became available throughout the league in 2008, is influencing what BIS puts into its database. Maybe BIS saw that pitch f/x was reading pitches at faster speeds, and decided to "catch up." I don't really have an answer for why this is happening, and I only half-believe my pitch f/x theory. If someone has an explanation for why this sudden change is happening, I'd love to hear it. Monday, February 08, 2010How do you spot a lefty masher?by Pat AndriolaI was extremely excited to find that our saber-partner, Fangraphs, is now hosting splits data on their site. Lefty/righty splits are something that fascinate me. Ever since I was a little kid, I was awed by the idea of having a "lefty masher" on the bench, just in case an opposing manager brought in a LOOGY, allowing you to pull a quick-one and play for the extra-base hit. However, lefty/right analysis has advanced since my adolescence, and I think this post from MGL is a must read for what I'm talking about. In it he says: IOW, how a batter does against RH pitchers informs us on how he will likely do against LH pitchers and vice versa. Why? Because there is not much of a spread in true platoon splits among ML baseball players yet there is a large spread in overall true hitting talent among ML baseball players. So if we see a large platoon split, like for a player like [Ryan] Howard, it is likely a fluke. If a player does really well versus RH pitchers but terrible against LH pitchers, both the “really well” and the “terrible” numbers are likely fluky and the “truth” is somewhere in between. So MGL's main thesis is that the large discrepancies we see in some players is due to a smaller sample size relative to their overall performance, which is a more useful indicator of their talent and can be applied to platoon splits via regression to come up with a more "stable" number. MGL goes on to do this for Howard, getting an OPS of .805 versus lefties, rather than his actual .719 over the past four years. The question I then have to ask is: how long do we have to wait to believe that a noticeably large split is due to a real ability to mash one side and a true inability to hit even close to as well (relative to the other side) against the other? Unfortunately, we don't have league leader/sortable data on Fangraphs pertaining to splits just yet, but I thought about all the guys that announcers had told me stunk against their same-handed pitching counterparts and looked them up. Here are some interesting names sorted by wRC+ with their same-handed numbers first, opposite second, and plate appearances in parentheses: Ryan Garko: 106 (485), 136 (1229) Carlos Delgado: 107 (1400), 154 (3123) Fernando Tatis: 90 (465), 111 (910) Eric Karros: 83 (312), 134 (737) Jack Cust: 105 (1510), 134 (1373) Some extreme differences there, and these are only the ones that hit me from memory. Obviously MGL and others are not saying that some players don't hit better against opposite hand pitchers; this is clearly true. The question is how much. I'd also like to see how players do split wise over the course of a career. Obviously the skill of hitters diminishes over time, but it'd be interesting to see if the splits are larger. Ryan Howard certainly is not "old" at 30 years old, but his skill set and physical size certainly have shifted over the years. While he was never slender, Howard is certainly a "bigger" guy than he used to be, and probably a good amount slower. Besides that, as players get older they tend to lose some hand-eye skill and bat speed, an effect that may be magnified when facing a pitcher of the same handedness. Here are Howard's wRC+ from 2006-2009, going from overall to versus lefties and then versus righties. 2006: 166, 133, 182 2007: 140, 110, 159 2008: 123, 91, 143 2009: 141, 71, 178 As you can see, that's a 49 point difference in 2006, same in 2007, 52 in 2008, and 107 in 2009. I doubt the difference will be as big in 2010, because I'm sure we can charge a big chunk of the 107 to some luck, but we shouldn't be surprised to see a difference of around 75-90 points. There's still a good amount of work to be done in this area of research, and we should be excited for Fangraphs' new tool. I think the next step is looking to the data to find similar traits in players, both physically and in their numbers, to determine whether their relative success versus opposite-handed pitchers would be indicative of future success, or just white noise. I'm anxious to find out. Jose Tabata in his mid-twenties?by David GolebiewskiSince Neal Huntington became general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates in September of 2007, the organization has undergone wholesale changes in player evaluation and resource allocation. Gone are the mind-bending days of passing up B.J. Upton and Matt Wieters to save a quick buck, forfeiting staggering amounts of surplus value in those zero-to-six years of service time in the process. Also gone are the days of paying large chunks of cash to veterans on their last legs, such as Matt Morris and Jeromy Burnitz. Click for more... Friday, February 05, 2010Stanton packs the powerby Alex PediciniFew prospects posses the enormous raw power that Mike Stanton has. The Florida Marlins outfielder has hit a grand total of 67 home runs in his first two full minor league seasons before the age of 20. He was recently rated the number three prospect in all of baseball by MLB Network. The 6'5 righty was an incredible athlete in high school and had committed to play both football and baseball at USC before signing with the Marlins as a second round pick in 2007. In just over 1000 career minor league at bats Stanton has compiled a .267/.354/.593 average. Although he has shown a propensity to strikeout (31.7 percent), which is obviously a concern, he has posted a decent walk rate (10.5 percent) and the ability to work the count. The Marlins challenged Stanton during the 2009 season with a mid-season promotion to Double-A and he appeared to be slightly overmatched, which is not out of the ordinary for a 19-year old. He posted a remarkable .433 wOBA in 210 plate appearances in Advanced-A but this number dipped to .344 in 341 PA in Double-A. Despite his relative struggles after the promotion he still flashed his power by posting a .224 ISO Stanton has power to all fields and several reports have him as an 80 power on the scouting scale. You can get a sense of how far he can hit the ball from these spray charts (2008 and 2009) courtesy of minor league splits. His defense has also been improving. Although he is not a base stealer he does have pretty good speed and range in the outfield and his arm plays well in right field. Total Zone had him pegged as a +9 right fielder in '09. His frame is still thin and he could potentially add more muscle and power as he matures physically. The amazing thing about Stanton is that he is still so raw. He will become a more fluid and advanced hitter as he grows into his body. With more at bats in the minors he will be able to refine his swing and cut down his strikeouts. Florida always seems to develop young prospects nicely and I expect they will take caution in monitoring Stanton's progress. He will likely start out 2010 in Double-A again and he may reach the majors by late 2011. He projects as a solid right fielder and middle of the order run producer for the Marlins. The Twins will spend over $100 million on players in 2010by Joshua FisherThe Minnesota Twins, on death's doorstop just a few years ago, will spend more on player salaries this upcoming season than the Los Angeles Dodgers, baseball's attendance leader in 2009. After signing Orlando Hudson, the Twins' payroll projects to be $96 million on opening day, and that number doesn't account for whatever amount will be added to Joe Mauer's 2010 take, currently slated for $12.5 million. It's not unreasonable to suggest that Mauer's annual salary will increase by $10 million or more, which would mean a payroll of over $106 million in 2010. In 2000, the Twins' payroll was $15,700,000. A decade later, it will have increased by over $90 million. To put that number in perspective, the Yankees' payroll has increased by about $103 million over that span. It's a strange day, indeed, in which the Twins are in the Yankees' company when it comes to payroll increases. So what does the Orlando Hudson signing mean? In 2010, the Hudson signing cements the Twins as favorites to repeat as AL Central champions. Adding a 2.0-2.5 win player is never a bad thing, but it's even nicer when that player bumps an incumbent who goes a long way toward putting the R in WAR. Given that the Twins have either won or lost the division by a single game three of the last four years, it's not hard to see that a win here and there can make all the difference. This offseason's been delightful for the Twins, who retained Carl Pavano and added J.J. Hardy* and Jim Thome along with Hudson. The only real fly in the ointment is Delmon Young. While I think there's a strong case to be made for not giving up on the guy, Jason Kubel and Jim Thome really need to be playing every day against righties unless Young can turn the corner. How long the team will sacrifice Kubel/Thome plate appearances to give Young a chance will be interesting to watch. I think there's a decent chance the Hardy/Carlos Gomez swap ends up being the stealth steal of the offseason. Seriously, Milwaukee? The ghost of Tom Goodwin is the best you could do? On the broader, organizational level, the move shows we're not dealing with the same old Twins. A few weeks ago, I wrote that the Twins might be well on their way to becoming the American League's St. Louis Cardinals. Look where we are today: sparkling stadium? Check. Best player in the league? Check. Organizational stability? Check. The willingness and wherewithal to capitalize on an undervalued player? Check. The AL Central is the Twins' for the taking in 2010, and that doesn't look to change any time soon. For a state devastated by sports catasters and disastrophies (yes, that's where we're at), the Twins are a crucial beacon of hope. With a solid major league core, some interesting hitting prospects, and the system's never-ending supply of strike-throwers, the Twins are in a good spot. And you know what? One of these years, they'll knock off the Yankees. As we all know, getting to the tournament is more important than being the best team in it. And the Twins might just be in as good a position as any team in baseball to make the tournament with regularity over the next several years. Thursday, February 04, 2010Why would Pujols strike a deal now?by Joshua FisherOver at Circling the Bases, Craig Calcaterra speculates on negotiations between Albert Pujols and the St. Louis Cardinals. I just don't understand why. I suppose negotiating an extension this offseason makes some sense; it would probably be Albert's last giant contract, and getting it inked soon mitigates the risk of catastrophic injury. Also, it gives the Cardinals cost-certainty going forward. The Cardinals won't like paying two players about $45 million a year, but at least they'll know what they have to play with. It's the timing that confuses me, and it mostly has to do with our buddy Joe Mauer. Why would the only player in baseball justified in asking for more money than Mauer not wait for Mauer to set the market? Pujols has every reason to ask for more money--I don't need to spill any digital ink describing just how insanely awesome he is. If Mauer has a chance to become the best catcher ever, Pujols has a chance to be regarded as the best player ever, barring injury or an age adjustment or that other thing I'm not even going to talk about. So why not wait? Now, between the Longoria and Mauer pieces, I don't think I can say I'm anything less than an advocate for player greed. It's entirely possible that Pujols doesn't really care about every last dime. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||