November 22, 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
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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. A look at Red Sox prospect Casey Kellyby Alex PediciniOne of the more intriguing two-way prospects in the minor leagues is Red Sox shortstop and pitcher Casey Kelly. Kelly, just 20 years of age, was a first round pick in 2008 out of Sarasota High School. He made his debut in 2008 as a shortstop and in 130 at-bats between Rookie-A and Low-A he struggled with a .255 on-base percentage and .331 slugging percentage. He walked just six times and struck out a whopping 42 times. He began the 2009 season in the starting rotation in the South Atlantic League (Single-A). He was dominant in his nine starts and quickly was promoted to Advanced-A where he enjoyed similar success in eight starts at that level. In 95 combined innings Kelly registered a 2.73 FIP and had a remarkable 4.63 strikeout to walk rate. The Red Sox organization made a conscious to shut Kelly down following his Futures Game appearance and he was the re-assigned to the Gulf Coast League to adjust back to playing shortstop for the remainder of the season. Once again Kelly struggled at the plate. In his 162 at-bats with the Rookie-A and Single-A teams. He posted a disappointing .302 on-base percentage and a .340 slugging percentage. He is currently playing for the Mesa Solar Sox of the Arizona Fall League. Kelly has continually expressed a desire to be an everyday player, however, after his success on the mound and struggle at the plate the two-way experiment is likely to end next season. Offensively he is very raw. He possesses power potential but his swing is rather long and he has yet to show much plate discipline. He is very athletic (he turned down a chance to play football at Tennessee) and a smooth, fluid fielder but his large frame might be better suited for third base if he continues to be an everyday player. Kelly clearly shows the most promise as a right-handed pitcher. He has a fresh arm and has excellent control of his offerings. He throws three pitches, a fastball, curve ball, and change-up. His low-nineties fastball rates as only average but his hard, 12-6 curve ball is a true plus pitch. He will also mixes in his heavy sinking change. He has solid command of all three pitches and shows poise and mound presence beyond his years. He does a nice job of keeping the ball low in the zone. My concern about Kelly is that he will be reluctant to make the necessary steps to becoming a full-time pitcher. There were reports that he would only sign with a major league team if he was allowed to play shortstop and he clearly wants to play there. While the Red Sox have given him his shot, he has shown much more potential as a pitcher. Soon he will need to focus primarily on pitching and this is a change he will need to wholly embrace. Friday, November 13, 2009Intro to Sabermetricsby Nick SteinerMichael Jong, of Marlin Maniac and Beyond the Boxscore, has written quite the nice set of articles outlining some of the major concepts of modern day Sabermetrics at FanHuddle: Glossary: part one, two and three. Runs created The value of walks The "international currency" of baseball (runs) Linear weights He also has several in depth player profiles, which are also very informative. If you are interesting in learning about Sabermetrics, from the bottom up, this is a very good place to start. A look at arm ratingsby Jeremy GreenhouseUsing 2006-2008 data, I ran a regression using UZR's ARM rating per 150 games as my dependent variable against the three Z-Scored arm ratings on Tangotiger's Fans' Scouting Report-accuracy, strength, and release-and using the number of ballots as my weights. Fans can explain about 10% of the variance in an outfielder's ARM runs per 150 games. It turns out that grading out a 60 on arm strength, one standard deviation above the league average of 50, is worth around half a run over the course of a year. Here are the estimated coefficients of the regressions. An asterisk indicates statistical significance at the 10% level.
Either the fans don't do a good job of assessing the ability of an outfielder to release the ball quickly, or that aspect of an outfielder's game just isn't important in stopping the running game. Arm strength is most important in center field, while accuracy is valued highest in left, confirming our intuition. Ain’t lovin’ Granderson?by Chuck BrownsonThis is my first post here at THT after spending a year and a half blogging for my favorite team, the St. Louis Cardinals. It's good to be on board. With the end of the World Series, every baseball fan's second favorite pastime is rumor-mongering about who's heading where and for how much or whom. As is always the case, I've been suckered into it as well. While there has been a lot of talk about the top free agents on the market, the rumor that has really drawn my attention is the one that suggests that the Tigers are looking to trade Curtis Granderson. On the surface, it appears as though this is not an altogether terrible idea. He batted just .249 last season and struck out 141 times. He also struggles to hit lefties, mustering a feckless .484 OPS last year against southpaws. Click for more... Brewers decline Looper option: how will they build rotation?by Evan BrunellThe Milwaukee Brewers were smart to decline starting pitcher Braden Looper's $6.5 million mutual option, freeing up a significant amount of money to plug various holes. Click for more... Thursday, November 12, 2009Local heroes as managersby Chris JaffeYa know, when I sat down to write this piece for my blog, I thought it would be a nice, little short thing - kinda like one of my typical THT Live posts. It turned out to be akin to one of my columns here, not a Live post. In response to a newspaper column earlier this week by Mike Imrem, I wonder if it's actually true if a team has a hard time firing a manager who used to be a star player for them. I found the answer a bit surprising, but was able to figure out a conclusion that made sense to me at least. Short version: star players don't seem to have a longer managerial shelf life, and if anything many are fired quicker than normal. I figure it's because their local fame allows them to get hired in the first place, rather than a sense that they're always the most qualified person for the job. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||