Looking at Todd Wellemeyer, Jason Pridie, Mark Hendrickson and Willy Taveras (yes, things are slow)

Posted by Evan Brunell
Four 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.

Todd Wellemeyer is coming off an injury-marred season with the Cardinals where he posted a 5.89 ERA and 5.21 xFIP. The year prior, he was considered another one of Dave Duncan's success stories, but had been essentially the same pitcher (looking at FIP/xFIP) from 2006-2008. He's not someone who will ever hold down a permanent job, but his 90+ mph fastball will keep getting him looks despite his poor control. Any team that can sign him to a minor league contract will be getting a league-average pitcher who can start and relieve. As depth in Triple-A, you can have much worse pitchers.

Jason Pridie is a slap-stick hitter who doesn't even really carry a stick capable of slapping. He's a speedy, defensive outfielder who marked down a .306 wOBA in Triple-A for Minnesota. Upon the signing of Orlando Hudson, Pridie was designated for assignment at which point the Mets claimed him off waivers. Pridie isn't a complete waste of a 40-man roster spot, but shouldn't be looked at as anything more than a fifth outfielder. The Mets have some question marks in that area, so their acquisition of Pridie makes sense. It would still be a surprise to see him open up the season on the 25-man roster, but given these are the Mets...

Mark Hendrickson inked a one year, $1.4 million ($1.2 million in 2010, $200,000 buyout or $1.2 million team option for 2011) contract with the Orioles, returning as a swingman. The former pro basketball player has an even 5.00 ERA for his career, but xFIP shows that his true talent value is around a 4.50 ERA, and has been hurt by an above-average BABIP most of his career. He's struggled to establish himself as a starting pitcher but may have found his calling at age 35 as a relief pitcher. He posted a 3.44 ERA along with a 37/14 K/BB ratio out of the bullpen this past year. While his 4.37 ERA over 11 starts was also strong, his track record indicated that he wasn't cut out to start.

Willy Taveras was acquired last week by the Athletics along with infielder Adam Rosales in exchange for infielder Aaron Miles and a player to be named later. With the release, the Athletics have essentially "bought" Rosales for about $1 million, which I think is a master stroke. Players with 0-6 years of service time (and particularly 0-3 years) almost always provide a return on investment given their low base salary and talent strong enough to make the majors. Given the team saves so much money on these 0-3 players, I've always wondered why more teams don't just go and buy these players outright. Just make the money back on production on the field. In any event, Taveras will latch on somewhere as a backup outfielder. Don't be surprised if Rosales outproduces Taveras in 2010.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

Give Chien-Ming a chance

Posted by Pat Andriola
With 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.

Pat Andriola is a junior at Tufts University. You can contact him at Patrick.Andriola @ tufts.edu or follow him on Twitter @tuftspat.

Job openings in Cleveland

Posted by Dave Studeman
Keith Woolner, Manager of Baseball Analytics for the Cleveland Indians, has asked us to post the following job openings:

Title: Data Architect - Baseball Analytics

Location: 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 Analyst

Location: 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.

Dave was called a "national treasure" by Rob Neyer. Seriously. Comments about this article can be sent to him through the miracle of e-mail.

APBA manager wanted

Posted by Dave Studeman
The 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.

Dave was called a "national treasure" by Rob Neyer. Seriously. Comments about this article can be sent to him through the miracle of e-mail.

Are fastballs actually getting faster?

Posted by Dan Novick
I 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
2003: 89.31 mph
2004: 89.67 mph
2005: 89.44 mph
2006: 89.88 mph
2007: 89.64 mph
2008: 90.13 mph
2009: 90.67 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.

Dan Novick is a lifelong Yankees fan, and still gets the chills every time Enter Sandman plays from the Yankee Stadium speakers. He welcomes comments and questions via e-mail.

Monday, February 08, 2010

How do you spot a lefty masher?

Posted by Pat Andriola
I 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.

Howard has a .719 OPS in the last 4 years versus LHP. How would we estimate his “true” OPS versus LHP? You might be tempted to just use the .719, which is not too good or you might be tempted to use the .719 and then regress that toward the league average for a LH batter of Howard’s physical characteristics, which might be around the same or a little higher – I don’t know. Both of these methods would be wrong. You cannot ignore the fact that he also hit 1.052 in OPS versus RHP over the same time period (last 4 years) and in many more PA. This suggests that he is a very good hitter overall (which he is) and that the .719 is somewhat of a fluke.

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.

Pat Andriola is a junior at Tufts University. You can contact him at Patrick.Andriola @ tufts.edu or follow him on Twitter @tuftspat.

Jose Tabata in his mid-twenties?

Posted by David Golebiewski
Since 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.

According to Baseball America, the Pirates spent a MLB-high $18.7 million in the 2008 and 2009 drafts. Pittsburgh ponied up for Pedro Alvarez in '08, while also giving a seven-figure bonus to 6th-round pick Robbie Grossman, a toolsy outfielder, and a $900,000 bonus to 20th-rounder Quinton Miller, a hard-throwing righty.

The renewed focus on snatching up talent in the draft continued this past June. The Bucs elicited some grumbles by drafting catcher Tony Sanchez with the fourth overall selection (a defensible move, in my opinion-an average to above-average player at a premium position is a valuable commodity). But Pittsburgh gave $600,000 to fourth-round lefty Zack Dodson, $1.2 million to eighth-round righty Zack Von Rosenberg and $1.125 million to eighth-round left-hander Colton Cain.

In addition to the beefed up draft budget, the Pirates opened a $5 million complex in the Dominican Republic. And the major league roster has been radically altered, with numerous veterans jettisoned in favor of young, cost-controlled talent.

Unfortunately, one of the more promising farmhands acquired in the flurry of trades over the past two seasons might be several years older than originally thought. Jose Tabata, picked up from the Yankees in June of 2008 along with Ross Ohlendorf, Daniel McCutchen and Jeff Karstens for Xavier Nady and Damaso Marte, might be in his mid-twenties instead of his listed age of 21.

According to Rob Biertempfel of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, GM Huntington recently said the following regarding Tabata's age:

All of the documentation he has used to obtain his visa from the U.S. government and his passport from the Venezuelan government indicates his reported age is accurate. Apart from unfounded speculation, there is nothing to indicate his age any different than reported. My point is that while we have reason to doubt his reported age, it is a non-issue to us.

And here is Biertempfel's take on Tabata:

Even if Tabata should have three or four more candles on his birthday cake, he's still considered a top prospect. But how good he is, to a degree, does depend on his age.

To be clear, there is nothing concrete to suggest that Tabata is older than his listed age. But Huntington's comments do leave some degree of doubt. While Tabata's age is said to be a "non-issue," it could play a very large role in how he is regarded as a prospect.

Having turned 21 this past August, Tabata is considered one of the better outfielders in the minors. The 5-11, 220 pound Venezuelan is a better athlete than his frame would suggest, though he's going to play a corner spot in the majors. Tabata is a career .295/.364/.402 hitter in the minors, and batted a combined .293/.357/.406 between Double-A and Triple-A this past season.

That performance as a 20 year-old garnered plenty of prospect accolades. Baseball America ranked Tabata as the second-best talent in the Pittsburgh system in November, saying that "he has the potential to be an all-star right fielder if his power develops." John Sickels also dubbed Tabata the second-best prospect in the Pirates' organization in December, giving him a B grade and noting his age relative to the levels at which he played: "I don't know if I agree with the Pirates about his power, but I do believe them about his age and at 21 he is still VERY young with high upside."

ESPN's Keith Law placed Tabata as the 57th-best prospect in the game in late January. Said Law:

The two major questions now on Tabata are whether his pattern of making very hard contact is going to lead to above-average power in games, and whether his listed date of birth is accurate...if he's really 23 or 24, he wouldn't make the Top 100 at all.

And there is the crux of the issue. At 21, Tabata is considered a precocious talent who has kept his head above water while competing with players several years his senior. He gets the benefit of the doubt in terms of future power output, with the thought process being that he has years of development time left. If, however, Tabata is 23 or 24, then we are talking about a player with less projection, who played at an age-appropriate level and didn't really stand out from his peers.

To what extent a few extra birthdays would ding Tabata's prospect status is up for interpretation, but there's no doubt that it would decrease his standing within the organization.

Thanks to extensive research conducted by Victor Wang, we can get a feel for how much of an impact those extra candles on the cake would have on Tabata's expected value to the Pirates.

Wang calculated the expected surplus value (how much a player's production would cost to replace on the free agent market, minus his actual salary) of players during their first six years of major league service time, based on prospect tiers.

Why the first six years? Teams have control over a player for the first six years of his career. Those 0-3 year players make peanuts compared to their free agent market value, and the 4-6 year guys still generally earn less than they would if all teams could bid on their services. After that, clubs choosing to retain a player are usually paying the full sticker price. Wang found the values for top 100 prospects based on Baseball America rankings from 1990-1999. For players not ranked in the top 100, he used John Sickels' prospect grades.

Here is the list of the expected surplus values from Wang's research, courtesy of Beyond the Boxscore:

Top 10 hitting prospects $36.5M
Top 11-25 hitters $25.1
Top 26-50 hitters $23.4
Top 51-75 hitters $14.2
Top 76-100 hitters $12.5
Grade B hitters $5.5
Grade C hitters 22 or younger $0.7
Grade C hitters 23 or older $0.5

Let's say a 21 year-old Tabata qualifies in the Top 51-75 range, with an expected surplus value of $14.2 million during the first six years of his big league career. If he is actually 23 or 24, it's a safe assumption that he would fall off the top 100 entirely, and would place in the Grade B hitters as rated by Sickels. That's a hit of $8.7 million in expected surplus value ($14.2 million in surplus value as a Top 51-75 hitter to $5.5 million in surplus value as a Grade B hitter not making BA's Top 100 list).

A 21 year-old Tabata has considerable value. A 23 or 24 year-old Tabata, however, is much more of a question mark. It would appear that the outfielder's age is actually a very large issue for the Bucs.

A journalism student at Duquesne University, David Golebiewski is a contributing writer for The Hardball Times, Fan Graphs, Inside Edge, Rotoworld and Baseball Daily Digest. Feel free to e-mail him with any questions or comments.

Friday, February 05, 2010

Stanton packs the power

Posted by Alex Pedicini
Few 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.

Alex is a student in Boston. He welcomes all questions and comments here

The Twins will spend over $100 million on players in 2010

Posted by Joshua Fisher
The 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.

Joshua operates http://www.dodgerdivorce.com and welcomes feedback via Twitter (@DodgerDivorce) and e-mail (Joshua [DOT] Fisher [DOT] baseball [AT] gmail [DOT] com).

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Why would Pujols strike a deal now?

Posted by Joshua Fisher
Over 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.

Joshua operates http://www.dodgerdivorce.com and welcomes feedback via Twitter (@DodgerDivorce) and e-mail (Joshua [DOT] Fisher [DOT] baseball [AT] gmail [DOT] com).

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Justin Verlander stays in Detroit for five years, $80 million

Posted by Evan Brunell
The Associated Press is reporting that right-handed starter Justin Verlander has agreed to a five-year, $80 million deal with the Tigers. The deal buys out Verlander's final two years of arbitration and three years of free agency.

It's a similar deal to Felix Hernandez's extension, which was five years and $78 million. The 26-year old Verlander has two years on Hernandez and King Felix is far and away the better pitcher over the last several years, but it seems as if Hernandez's signing was a map for Verlander's extension. Verlander benefited from Hernandez's terms, a better win record and more All-Star appearances despite better run support.

Moving away from that, the deal locks Verlander up through his age 31 season, freeing him up for a deal similar to what A.J. Burnett and John Lackey got (and Josh Beckett will get after the year), so another big payday is en route. Verlander suffered through a poor 2008 after two straight years of emerging as a young right-hander. The first of that year was the Tigers' 2006 postseason run in which Verlander tossed 207.2 innings total and experienced a couple bouts with arm fatigue. He had a similar year in 2007, pitching a total of 201.2 innings. In 2008, his strikeout rate declined and walk rate rose, but he arrested both categories in 2009 while throwing an obscene 240 innings and an American League-leading 269 punchouts.

He posted the best strikeout rate of his career, with 10.09 whiffs per nine inning against a scant 2.36 walks allowed, also a career-high. At a listed 6'5" with 200 lbs and no injury issues whatsoever, he's morphing into the best young workhorse in the game with a no-hitter to his credit already. FanGraphs valued him at an amazing $37.1 million this past year, coming off his 3.45 ERA and 3.26 xFIP. It's possible that will be the highest mark of Verlander's career, but there's reason to think he's worth at least $20 million a year over the next five years. While Hernandez's contract is the best value moving forward, Verlander's deal is no slouch either.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Scott Downs or Jason Frasor?

Posted by Evan Brunell
The Toronto Blue Jays' closer's job at the moment seems to be between Scott Downs and Jason Frasor, although other candidates may have a say in the battle. For instance, Kevin Gregg may ink shortly with the Blue Jays, which would throw him into the discussion for the closing job. For the purposes of this article, however, I want to take a look at who would be the better candidate to close between the internal options of Downs and Frasor.

Tackling Downs first, the 34 year old joined Toronto for the 2005 season after being released by the Nationals. Downs served two years as a swingman, drastically improving on his Expos numbers thanks to increasing his reliance on off-speed pitches, along with his BABIP falling from .334 to .299. As a result of the tweaks Downs made to his game, his strikeout numbers rose, which was enough to put him on the map as a pitcher. In 2007, the Blue Jays decided to make him a full-time relief pitcher, and he pitched a league-leading 81 games while posting a 2.17 ERA.

The left-hander's velocity continued rising, flashing an average 85-mph fastball in 2004 all the way up to the 90-mph fastball he showcases to this day. Since moving to relief, he has abandoned his slider in favor of increasing reliance on his fastball (unsurprising, given the additional velocity gained) and is now a two-pitch pitcher, flashing a solid curveball as well. His ERA continued to fluctuate season to season, posting a 1.74 mark in 2008 and 3.09 in 2009. However, the latter mark came with a .322 BABIP while 2008 was tagged with a .264 line. His xFIP has remained constant during his time with Toronto, never surpassing 3.89 or dropping below 3.18 -- the 3.18 mark coming this most recent season.

Downs is a left-handed reliever with a good feel for his fastball and despite a down year with the curve in 2009, an above-average flashing of his secondary pitch. With the increase in velocity, he has emerged as one of the best relievers in baseball. He is an impending free agent.

Moving along to Frasor, the right-hander is also eligible for free agency following the year. He is one and a half years younger than Downs, and will begin 2010 with the official season age of 32. He has been a career Blue Jay, debuting as a 26 year old in 2004. Sans 2005, where it looked like he could become one of the better relievers in the league, Frasor instead settled into being a solid middle reliever, posting a 4.37 ERA over 154.1 innings from 2006-2008. His xFIP numbers largely support his cumulative ERA over the time period, although he was significantly better from 2006-2007 than his ERA would indicate, and worse in 2008. He boasts a 94-mph fastball which he backs up with a slider, split-fingered fastball and an occasional changeup.

His fastball and slider are his two best pitches, and experienced a breakthrough season in 2009 by posting a 2.50 ERA and converting 11 of of 14 save chances. While Downs is a groundball pitcher, inducing grounders over half the time, Frasor has marked down only 38 percent of grounders in each of the two past years. While Frasor's 2.50 ERA should be commended, it came with a .268 BABIP and caused an xFIP of 3.68, not far off his overall xFIP of 4.05. (Downs' career xFIP is 3.73.) Frasor has very similar strikeout, walk and K/BB numbers to Downs.

To break it down, Frasor allows much more balls in the air, but flashes a mid-90s fastball while Downs averages around 90 miles per hour. Frasor pitches from the right side, while Downs pitches from the left and has consistently racked up better ERAs and xFIPs than Frasor. Frasor has no appreciable platoon split, other than the requisite small downturn in effectiveness against lefties (.692 OPS as opposed to .642 against .644). A major strike against Downs is in this area, as his OPS allowed against right-handers is .136 higher than lefties. (.787 versus .651.)

One caveat here is that while Downs' has naturally faced more left-handers over the last few years by virtue of being left-handed himself, much of the platoon disparity and ineffectiveness against right-handers comes from before the 2006 season. Looking at the last four years, his effectiveness against righties rivals that of Frasor.

All told, I'm far more inclined to hand Downs the closing spot simply because his numbers are stronger. Both pitcher's strikeout and walk totals are essentially equal (excepting a major 6.08 BB/9 blip Frasor had in 2008), but Downs' greater groundball percentage and sustained lower xFIP makes me more confident in his ability to close out a game. In addition, for a rebuilding club, I would haphazard a guess that a left-handed closer would fetch far more in return than a right-handed closer at the trading deadline. With both as impending free agents, Toronto should be looking to maximize their market value as much as possible. If the Orioles can get such a strong prospect as Josh Bell in return for George Sherrill (which you could make the argument is a worse pitcher than Downs), then everything should be done to make Downs as appetizing as possible.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

Discussion: What makes sense for Joe Mauer and the Twins?

Posted by Joshua Fisher
It would be a massive upset if Joe Mauer and the Twins can't reach an agreement that keeps him in Minnesota for years to come. It would be a blow to the team as it opens a publicly-funded stadium built with Mauer in mind. It would be a blow to a sports community fraught with one disappointment and defection after another. And it would be a blow to me, personally; I live about a mile from Target Field, and it's really freaking fun to watch the guy play ball.

But what makes sense?

The rumor flying around these parts (after it spends the proper amount of time doused by that pink de-icing liquid) is a ten-year deal well into the $200 millions. While that might be the broad framework of an eventual agreement, I'm not buying that it will be as simple as that de facto lifetime contract. Such a commitment, in my opinion, doesn't serve either party's best interests.

As fabulous a player as Mauer is, we don't know how long he'll be able to catch. And we don't know if he can play third base. And we don't know if he'll have the power to be paid like the best player in the league if he plays first. Committing the team's short- and medium-term future to a player surrounded by so much uncertainty is a more than a little dangerous.

As for Mauer, his concern has to be that, with the Twins paying he and Justin Morneau something like $40 million per season combined, will there be enough money to put a team around those two? It's important to remember how big a boon Target Field should be for the organization; the Twins didn't derive any revenue from luxury suite sales at the Metrodome. So they'll get a significantly larger boost from opening a new stadium than usual, which should help.

I don't see the Twins and Joe Mauer parting ways at this juncture. The Twins simply cannot trade their franchise player during the inaugural season at their publicly-funded ballpark, which is exactly what would have to happen if no agreement is reached. And Mauer really does want to be here. Staying long-term would all-but-assure him of becoming the single greatest figure in the history of Minnesota sports. This deal is going to get done.

So what kind of contract makes sense? I say something like 10 years at $250 million with a couple out clauses along the way, maybe for 2013 and 2016. I think it would be appropriate to have the the 2016-and-beyond seasons contingent on something like plate appearances, to mitigate the injury risk. (Thanks, Ed!) This gives the club the cornerstone it needs and the player the chance to hit the market in his prime if, for whatever reason, it's just not going to work in Minnesota.

What do you think?

Joshua operates http://www.dodgerdivorce.com and welcomes feedback via Twitter (@DodgerDivorce) and e-mail (Joshua [DOT] Fisher [DOT] baseball [AT] gmail [DOT] com).

Monday, February 01, 2010

More on WAR

Posted by Jeremy Greenhouse
Earlier this year, it seemed like every other week FanGraphs was improving its stats section. So I’m anxious to see what David Appelman has in store for the new season comes, as I’m sure his projects have been building up. But first, I had some thoughts on the already-existing WAR.

My main philosophical problem with Fangraphs’ WAR (fWAR) is that relievers are given extra value for having pitched in high-leverage situations. Personally, I don’t understand why we use a pitcher’s actual leverage index and chain from there. Why not just start and end with the deserved leverage index?

My new and unrelated idea is to replace linear weights as the primary metric used to calculate WAR with WPA/LI. I proposed this, and Colin Wyers disagreed. Wyers either doesn't follow my thought process, or I'm wrong. So I felt I should explain my rationale.

For pitchers, FanGraphs has decided not to include defensive data. I propose that pitchers should be evaluated based on WPA/LI with defensive adjustments based on UZR. Rally’s WAR (rWAR) essentially follows this method by tallying a pitcher’s runs allowed and adjusting for defense with Total Zone. I'm uneasy using rWAR for pitchers, for the simple fact that I can’t get over an advanced metric using RA or ERA. But WPA/LI as the basis for rWAR would serve the same purpose and would be much more accurate in measuring a pitcher's actual contributions. Also, for relievers, WPA/LI adjusts for the game state in which the reliever enters the game, which I think is a huge plus.

As for hitters, for which fWAR and rWAR both use basic linear weights, WPA/LI is just better in my opinion, in that its weights are "perfect." WPA/LI has dynamic linear weights, so to speak.

I feel WPA/LI should be the starting point, though far from the end point. WPA/LI has its problems, since the current version doesn’t distinguish between hitter, baserunner, pitcher, and defense. The hitter and pitcher are assigned equal responsibility for all events. The data is available to calculate WPA/LI for baserunners and defenders, but it would be exceedingly difficult to do so. Nevertheless, WPA/LI is just a step up from basic linear weights in that it accounts for the game state. It's going to take a while for someone to develop a WPA/LI-based WAR, but I have a feeling that WPA/LI is the future.

Any questions? Feel free to email me.

Chicago’s $60 million question: will Alex Rios bounce back?

Posted by David Golebiewski
Selected with the 19th overall pick in the 1999 draft, outfielder Alex Rios emerged as an all-around threat for the Toronto Blue Jays. The gangly 6-5 righty batter combined power, speed and range, garnering a six-year, $64 million contract extension in April of 2008, with a $13.5 million club option for the 2015 season. Rios' well-rounded skill-set and whopping new deal figured to make him a fixture in the Jays' outfield for years to come.

Within a year and a half, however, Toronto's frustration with Rios and its other burdensome financial commitments (hello, Vernon Wells) compelled the club to let Rios go to the Chicago White Sox on a waiver claim. In snagging Rios, the Pale Hose took on what was left of his $5.9 million salary for the 2009 season, as well as a total of nearly $60 million from 2010-2014 (contract information from Cots Baseball Contracts):

2010: $9.7 M
2011: $12 M
2012: $12 M
2013: $12.5 M
2014: $12.5 M
2015: 13.5 M club option ($1 M buyout)

While he was wallowing in mediocrity prior to the waiver claim, Rios face planted upon reaching the South Side. He finished the season with a macabre -0.1 Wins Above Replacement, according to Fangraphs. Making the worst first impression possible, Rios has been the subject of much derision.

The knee-jerk reaction is to say, "well, Kenny Williams blew it. Look at all that cash they owe him now." But is that really the case? Will Rios be an anchor on Chicago's payroll for years to come? Let's try to find out.

Last year, Rios' park and league-adjusted offensive performance was 15 percent worse than average (85 wRC+). Granted, he did get into some bad habits: Rios drew a walk in just 5.8 percent of his plate appearances (his lowest mark since 2005), and he hit more ground balls (43 percent, compared to about 38 percent from 2006-2008). The extra-worm burners help explain why Rios' Isolated Power dipped to .148, his worst figure since 2005.

His career wRC+ is 105, though, and Rios posted a 120 wRC+ from 2006-2008. Rios' batting average on balls in play was .277 in 2009, compared to a .323 career average and a .322 expected BABIP (xBABIP). Even if you're skeptical that Rios can reclaim that '06-08 form, he seems likely to regress back toward his career averages. CHONE projects him to have a 106 wRC+ in 2010, as does Marcel. Those systems forecast that Rios will be about five runs above average with the bat next season.

In addition to his slumbering lumber, Rios also rated poorly in the field in 2009. His UZR/150 figure was -7.1 in right field, and -3.7 in center field. However, taking just one year of defensive data is never a good idea. We have years of information that suggest Rios is a plus defender: his career UZR/150 in right field is +13.1, and +8.2 in the middle garden.

Jeff Zimmerman of Beyond the Boxscore released 2010 UZR projections in November. He took four years of UZR data, weighing then 5/4/3/2 regressed to 125 games and applying a slight aging factor (more details here). Rios will patrol center field next season, where he projects as +4 runs with the leather.

Factoring in position and replacement level adjustments, Rios figures to be a 3+ win player in 2010. If you accept the $4.5M/WAR figure, that performance would be worth $13-14 million on the free agent market.

Rios turns 29 years old this month, so it seems highly unlikely that he suddenly lost the ability that allowed him to post an average of 3.4 WAR per season from 2004 to 2008. Let's say Rios is a three-win player in 2010 and 2011, then declines a half-win per year thereafter (2.5 WAR in '12, 2 WAR in '13, 1.5 WAR in '14). In that scenario, Rios would provide something like $54 million in value, while making around $60 million (and that's without considering any sort of salary inflation over that time period).

Overall, the White Sox figure to get what they paid for. Alex Rios might not be a bargain, but he's not a toxic asset, either.

A journalism student at Duquesne University, David Golebiewski is a contributing writer for The Hardball Times, Fan Graphs, Inside Edge, Rotoworld and Baseball Daily Digest. Feel free to e-mail him with any questions or comments.

Busy day for Athletics

Posted by Evan Brunell
The Oakland Athletics had a busy day today, shaking up their 40-man roster.

For starters, the team traded Aaron Miles and a player to be named later to the Cincinnati Reds for outfielder Willy Taveras and infielder Adam Rosales.

Miles is due for a $4.9 million salary in 2010, although the Cubs sent along $1 million to the A's in the offseason's previous trade that landed Miles with Oakland. (Jake Fox and Miles to the A's for RHPs Jeff Gray, Ronny Morla and OF Matt Spencer.) Thus, Miles and Taveras are essentially a wash in salaries with Taveras and his $4 million pricetag being immediately designated for assignment.

While the Reds wanted to clear up outfield space and were disappointed in Taveras' production and hoped to save some cash, Oakland had no problem absorbing Taveras at a loss to get Rosales, who fits better on Oakland's roster. The 26 year old had a rough year off the bench for the Reds, batting .213/.303/.317 in 230 at-bats. He has a strong history of offense in the minors, however, so GM Billy Beane is likely hoping that Rosales just needs time at the big league level. It's shades of Marco Scutaro and his big break with Oakland, although Scutaro's break came at an older age. With Rosales' ability to play shortstop, he has a chance to log a good number of at-bats and might be a candidate to morph into a league-average starter.

With Taveras immediately designated for assignment, Beane will get to work trying to swap Taveras. Given the price tag, however, Beane will have to chip in a significant amount to move him unless he takes another similarly overpaid player, much like he just jettisoned in Aaron Miles. If any team claims Taveras and his $4 million salary off waivers, it should be considered a coup for Oakland as Willy is nothing more than a fourth outfielder. He boasts solid defense and speed but not much past that.

Oakland also designated Dana Eveland, a left-handed pitcher, for assignment after claiming infielder Steven Tolleson off waivers from the Minnesota Twins. Eveland, as a 26-year old lefty, still has value despite a disastrous 2009 campaign in which he posted a 7.16 ERA in 44 innings along with a 2.18 WHIP. In 2008, Eveland made 29 starts and threw up a 4.34 ERA over 168 innings. He's exactly the type of young, left-handed cost-controlled starter that other teams should take a chance on, particularly in the National League. His xFIP was 5.20, which while not pretty, is a sight better than the 7.16 ERA he tossed up. This may be too much to hope for, but throwing him in the mix for a spot on the Mets would be intriguing. Nothing to lose.

Tolleson has a career line of .276/.368/.400 hitter in 2,132 minor league plate appearances. He cracked Triple-A for the first time at age 25 last year and will be eligible for minor league free agency after 2010. He boasts zero chance of making the big-league roster out of spring training but will provide depth at infield for Triple-A Sacramento. Given the club has a bunch of moving parts at second base and shortstop with no clear long-term answer at both starter and backup, Tolleson was a logical claiming.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

Self Promotion

Posted by Dan Novick
Jesse Spector over at the NY Daily News has been running an interview series with bloggers from around the web, called "Blogger Nine Innings." I participated in the most recent edition, representing the THT Live crew. Questions ranged from personal blogging experiences to this winter's busy off-season. If you're looking for a diversion from all the Johnny Damon drama, head on over and check it out.

Dan Novick is a lifelong Yankees fan, and still gets the chills every time Enter Sandman plays from the Yankee Stadium speakers. He welcomes comments and questions via e-mail.

Analyzing the MLB draft using WAR

Posted by Alex Pedicini
There has been plenty of work published regarding the value of draft picks, most recently the work done by Victor Wang. Wang's previous studies (part 1 and part 2 ) on the draft were a major help for me in conducting this study. He was recently honored by Beyond the Boxscore for the Best Novel Research Article/Project. The basic idea was to test his hypothesis and findings using WAR and more recent draft results.

Using the first 100 picks from the 1992-1999 drafts I came up with a sample of 388 players who reached the major leagues. Of these players 212 were drafted out of college, 167 out of high school and nine from Junior College or Community College. I used Wins Above Replacement as my benchmark for evaluating players. The WAR data was obtained from baseballprojection.com’s historical database . I took the average of the player’s WAR over their first six seasons. I chose six seasons as the cutoff because a team retains control of a player for this amount of time before they are eligible for free agency. For a small sample of players I used their 2010 CHONE projections in instances where they did not yet complete six years of service.

Similar to Wang's study I broke the data down into first round picks (1-30), second round (31-70), and third round selection (71-100). I have broken down the data based on school below. Please note junior college/community college players are excluded due to a small sample size.

Please leave your feedback in the comments section below.

First Round
College hitters-- 1.336 WAR/year
High School hitters-- 1.204 WAR/year
College pitchers-- .649 WAR/year
High School pitchers-- .878 WAR/year

As noted in prior studies college hitters hold the edge in terms of production, although were are only talking about .1 WAR per season over high school batters. One thing I found surprising is that my study shows that high school pitchers have actually outperformed college pitchers. Previous studies focusing on earlier time frames found an advantage for college pitchers although as one knowledgable poster from the Sons of Sam Horn message board points out, this trend seems to have balanced out in more recent seasons. This may explain the difference in results. I found the standard deviations for college pitchers (1.049) to be slightly lower than the SD for high school pitchers (1.261) in this round.

Second Round
College hitters-- .773 WAR/year
High School hitters-- .672 WAR/year
College pitchers-- .087 WAR/year
High School pitchers-- .084 WAR/year

Here we see a noticeable drop of in pitcher's WAR/year for both college and high school players. College hitters are still the most productive in this group. The SDs for pitchers in this round was much lower than in the first round (.617 for college and .497 for HS).

Third Round
College hitters-- .115 WAR/year
High School hitters-- .424 WAR/year
College pitchers-- (.023) WAR/year
High School pitchers-- .058 WAR/year

In this round we see high school batters hold the edge in terms of production. College pitchers actually had a negative WAR in this range, which means that on average they were below replacement level during their first six seasons.

Conclusion
We can see clearly that hitters are the safest picks, particularly college batters within the first two rounds which goes along with Victor's previous studies. Victor Wang hypothesized that the best strategy would be to draft hitters early and then stock up on pitchers in the later rounds. I won't argue that hitters are much more productive draft picks on average than pitchers although it would seem to me that taking a pitcher in the first round is not such a bad idea especially if an organization is thin on pitching prospects. You can see the noticeable decline in WAR from pitchers taken outside of the top 30. Obviously pitchers have more risk and variation due to injury and such than hitters which makes them a riskier selection.

Focusing on the First Round

Here is the WAR/year based on draft position within the first round:
1-10-- 1.417 WAR/year
11-20-- 1.115 WAR/year
21-30-- .353 WAR/year

There is a drastic drop in performance between picks 11-20 and 21-30. The difference between the top 10 and 11-20 is not nearly as large. What does this mean? There is likely a general consensus of the top 20 or so prospects each year. After this however, the talent quickly becomes more diluted and it becomes increasingly tougher to find players who might contribute in the major leagues.

Position by Position
Here is the WAR/year broken down by position. I only used the positions listed in the Baseball-Reference draft database although many players surely switched positions. This is something I did not take into account so please keep that in mind. I also did not include two-way players Brooks Kieschnick and Rick Ankiel. For ease I combined first baseman and third baseman into a group of corner infielders and second baseman and shortstop into middle infielders. In parenthesis is the amount of players in each position.

outfielders (64)-- .977 WAR/year
middle infielders (48)-- .561 WAR/year
corner infielders (41)-- 1.046 WAR/year
catchers (29)-- .829 WAR/year
right-handed pitchers (151)-- .314 WAR/year
left-handed pitchers (55)-- .404 WAR/year

I think the most interesting note from this is that lefties outperformed righties. This could obviously be due to the fact that there are far fewer lefties than rightist which makes them that much more valuable to a team and there is also greater variation among southpaws. We should also note the low WAR/year amount for middle infielders compared to other position players.

Alex is a student in Boston. He welcomes all questions and comments here

Sunday, January 31, 2010

2010 Caught Stealing Projections

Posted by Chuck Brownson
As we all know, catcher defense is difficult to quantify and probably even more difficult to predict. Nevertheless, one of a catcher's most important jobs behind the plate is to prevent base runners from swiping bases. Dan Turkenkopf's article over at Beyond the Boxscore about a month ago projected catchers' block percentages for the upcoming season and it gave me the idea of attempting to project catchers' ability to prevent runs by preventing the stolen base.

For this experiment, I used essentially the same methodology used by Turkenkopf in his article, specifically the Marcel based 5-4-3 approach to projecting runs prevented for the 2010 season. This means that I used catcher data from the last three seasons to project caught stealing percentage as well as the number of stolen base attempts against each catcher if they all played 120 games (1080 innings) behind the plate. For the run values, I used those identified in The Book -- plus 0.467 runs per caught stealing and minus 0.175 runs per stolen base. Then I determined the average number of runs prevented by the catchers over those 1080 innings and figured each catcher's runs above or below average. For those catchers with less than three full years in the league, I used minor league caught stealing percentages and major league attempts against over a 120 game period.

The table below shows the results. (For purposes of conciseness, I'm only including primary backstops. The full google spreadsheet may be found here.) ProjSBA is projected stolen base attempts. ProjCS% is projected caught stealing percentage. SBRAA and CSRAA are stolen base and caught stealing runs above average, respectively, based on their respective run values. 2010RAA is simply CSRAA minus SBRAA and 2010RAA is 2010RAA/120 based on 120 games of work.

Pittsburgh Pirates vs St. Louis Cardinals

**Yadier Molina would be much further ahead of the pack if runners dared to run against him more frequently.** (Icon/SMI)

**2010 Catcher Caught Stealing Projections**
Catcher	ProjSBA	ProjCS%	SBRAA	CSRAA	2010RAA	2010RAA/120
Gerald Laird	104	36.6	11.5	17.8	6.2	6.2
Yadier Molina	55	42.4	5.5	10.9	5.4	5.3
Ryan Hannigan	91	35.9	10.2	15.2	5.0	4.9
Rod Barajas	83	34.6	9.5	13.4	3.9	3.9
Joe Mauer	75	35.0	8.5	12.2	3.7	3.7
Miguel Olivo	86	33.3	10.1	13.4	3.3	3.3
Matt Wieters	126	31.2	15.2	18.3	3.2	3.1
Ivan Rodriguez	76	33.0	9.0	11.8	2.8	2.8
Russell Martin	94	29.8	11.5	13.0	1.5	1.5
Benjie Molina	99	28.1	12.5	13.0	0.5	0.5
Geovany Soto	106	27.8	13.4	13.7	0.3	0.3
Kurt Suzuki	85	27.4	10.8	10.9	0.1	0.0
Ryan Doumit	116	27.3	14.8	14.8	0.0	0.0
Carlos Ruiz	104	26.9	13.3	13.1	-0.2	-0.3
Kelly Shoppach	85	26.4	11.0	10.5	-0.5	-0.5
Victor Martinez	97	25.6	12.7	11.6	-1.1	-1.1
Jason Kendall	88	25.1	11.5	10.3	-1.2	-1.3
Chris Iannetta	86	24.6	11.4	9.9	-1.5	-1.5
Rob Johnson	132	24.7	17.4	15.2	-2.2	-2.2
Miguel Montero	98	23.2	13.2	10.6	-2.6	-2.6
Brian McCann	101	22.9	13.6	10.8	-2.8	-2.9
A.J. Pierzynski	111	21.7	15.2	11.2	-4.0	-4.0
Greg Zaun	97	20.7	13.5	9.4	-4.1	-4.2
Jorge Posada	159	22.8	21.5	17.0	-4.5	-4.6
Mike Napoli	122	21.0	16.8	11.9	-4.9	-4.9
Jarrod Saltalamacchia	121	20.4	16.9	11.6	-5.3	-5.4
John Baker	116	20.1	16.2	10.8	-5.4	-5.4
Jason Varitek	106	17.3	15.4	8.6	-6.8	-6.9

Some observations:

First of all, this is based on historical catcher data over the previous 3 years and pays no attention to new pitchers on the catchers' respective teams and their ability to hold runners on. Second, Yadier Molina -- the best defensive backstop in the game -- would be much further ahead of the pack if teams were willing to run against him. The fact that many catchers have twice as many stolen base attempts against tells us that teams realize that running against Yadi is a risky proposition. Third, I was surprised at how high Wieters and Mauer finished on this list. The primary reason, beside the fact that they are respectable at throwing runners out, is that they may be better than their reputation. That is, by risking running against them, teams make them better. Ryan Doumit and Kurt Suzuki are projected to be roughly league average catchers at throwing out base runners. The difference between the best and worst in the game is just more than one win per year.

Chuck is a lifelong Cardinals fan who welcomes comments below or via email at chuckbtht AT gmail DOT com.

Friday, January 29, 2010

The Raines Delay

Posted by Dan Novick
Some links for the fast-approaching weekend....

This one is for all you Rich Lederer fans out there.

Think that player salaries always go up? Not so fast. Shawn Hoffman at BP examines the relationship between player salaries and America's GDP, concluding that the free agent class of 2012 should start cashing in while the best deals will happen in 2011. This one's a little old, but it won't go bad for another 10 months.

Murray Chass goes after Patrick Sullivan for making statistics-centered arguments. Chass prefers his arguments centered around ERA, Wins, and opposing on-base percentage--you know, anti-statistics. Sullivan responds as only he can.

Saw this one Tango's blog. The article linked makes it sound very interesting, but the comments from Tango's post made me less inclined to read it. You decide.

Do you have an something interesting you'd like to share? Send a link to any one of THT Live's authors and we'll do our best to include it here.

Dan Novick is a lifelong Yankees fan, and still gets the chills every time Enter Sandman plays from the Yankee Stadium speakers. He welcomes comments and questions via e-mail.

Looking at the remainder of the free agent market

Posted by Evan Brunell
With a plethora of free agents all finding new homes, the amount of players on the free agent list is dwindling fast.

Players now off the board include: Jim Edmonds (Brewers), Miguel Batista (Nationals), Randy Winn (Yankees), Chad Tracy (Cubs), Tim Redding (Rockies) Fernando Tatis (Mets), Xavier Nady (Cubs) and Josh Fogg (Mets), Orlando Cabrera (deciding between Reds and Rockies).

There are still some intriguing names on the market. Let's take a peek at three, plus where they could be a fit.

JOHNNY DAMON, LF

New York Yankees' Johnny Damon gets ready to bat against the Chicago White Sox

Damon's plight has been well-chronicled recently. At the beginning of the offseason, Damon and superagent Scott Boras badly misread the market, asking for a salary in eight figures annually, over three years. As the market moved forward, Damon's price dropped -- but not at a rate that spurred a signing. Finally, the Yankees "gave up" (still not convinced they actually have a budget) and signed Randy Winn. With most teams set in outfield, homes for Damon are now in short supply.

The 36 year old cranked 24 home runs last year in homer-happy Yankee Stadium, putting up a .376 wOBA. While his -12/1 UZR/150 in 2009 indicates he was a bad left-fielder, UZR typically should be evaluated over the past three years, which indicates Damon was at worst, an average left fielder. His offense was undoubtedly aided by the new Yankee Stadium, but even his road numbers indicate he can still contribute -- he posted slash lines of .284/.349/.446 over 278 road at-bats.

What teams could -- or should -- be a fit for Damon?

The Seattle Mariners are one. Right now, it looks as if the DH position will be shared by Milton Bradley and Ken Griffey, Jr. with left field split between Milton Bradley and Michael Saunders. All due respect to Griffey and his illustrious career, but he should be a strict bench player at this point in his career, as his 2009 .323 wOBA indicates. In addition, Michael Saunders has great promise to evolve into an above-average outfielder, but should really get extensive playing time in Triple-A as to not waste on the bench. With the departure of Russell Branyan and the importing of Casey Kotchman at first, the Mariners are lacking in power potential -- even gap power. Signing Damon using him along with Bradley in a left-field/DH position would give significant value.

Another fit could be Cincinnati, who currently have a bunch of candidates to man left field. Frankly, none of them are appetizing. The Detroit Tigers could also be a potential fit, although it would push Ryan Raburn to the bench and extend their budget, something that the Tigers are unwilling to do by all indications. Then you have the Rays, who have been linked to Damon lately. Having Damon as the Rays' DH instead of Pat Burrell would create a roster crunch, but aside from that, the upgrade would be clear.

YORVIT TORREALBA, C

Yorvit Torrealba is not a bad catcher. He is, by all indications, a "tweener" -- a great backup who is stretched when asked to start. As a result, he hasn't found any team willing to guarantee him extended playing time. The 31-year-old veers between solid plate discipline (8.7 percent in 2009) and poor (4.6 percent in 2008). He's not a great defender, but he's not a poor one either. Torrealba best fits on a team that has no clear-cut option at catcher, allowing multiple players to battle for the job. While fellow free agent catcher Rod Barajas has better power, he's likely to come at a higher price and has absolutely no plate discipline to speak of. (The last four years, Barajas' OBP is .289 with a whopping 75 walks... or one less than Joe Mauer in 2009.)

Seattle and the Mets jump immediately to mind. I'm not sure why the Mariners haven't been linked to any catchers of consequence and seem to content to move forward with Rob Johnson and Adam Moore. Johnson and Moore, both completing their age 25 years, have a chance to stick as backup catchers or more in the future, but their current value shouldn't preclude GM Jack Zduriencik from seeking out improvements. If he can bring in Torrealba on a one-year deal worth $2 million, they should jump at the opportunity.

The Mets also have a bunch of unimpressive names vying for the spot. Unlike Seattle, most of their catching candidates are old: Chris Coste and Omir Santos are on the wrong side of 30. They possess slightly more offensive upside than the Mariners trio, but also are stretched into starting spots and are at bigger risk for injury or attrition. They have youngster Josh Thole, but Thole is best off getting a full year in Triple-A with an eye towards becoming the full-time catcher in 2011. Stretching Thole into a significant 2010 role seems like a liability. (I mused on this recently, thinking Chris Snyder could be a fit for the Mets.)

Toronto has John Buck and Raul Castro as its current top two catchers. With names like those atop the depth chart, Torrealba would easily break the Opening Day roster. Having a platoon/battle between Torrealba and Buck might be the best thing for the Jays.

ORLANDO HUDSON, 2B

Poor Hudson. He's been one of the best defenders in the game for years now, although he's slipped recently. With the bat, he still contributes despite losing his job to Ronnie Belliard late in the 2009 season. Hudson is currently he key to the whole middle infield market, with Felipe Lopez, Adam Kennedy and Melvin Mora all waiting for Hudson to drop off the board. He's been closely linked to the Nationals, although latest word is that Washington isn't ready to bow into O-Dog's salary demands, which are probably around the two-year, $5 million annually range.

Hudson's numbers in 2009 with Los Angeles were surprisingly close to his career slash stats of .282/.348/.431 and entering his age-32 year indicates a steep decline certainly isn't around the corner. Hudson, much like he was last year, figures to be a bargain for whatever team can snap him up for one year. One such team could be the Chicago Cubs, and it's surprising the team hasn't been more strongly linked to the former Diamondback and Blue Jay. The club seems content to move forward with Mike Fontenot and Jeff Baker battling for time at second in what would essentially amount to a platoon. Chicago has been perhaps one of the more disappointing teams this offseason, opting for largely lateral moves and not getting creative in actually improving the team. While Fontenot and Baker are good players in their own right, adding someone of Hudson's caliber would mark a significant upgrade.

The Twins are a more logical landing spot, however. The club has been searching for a third baseman to no avail, and the names are fast dwindling into replacement-level options, of which they have plenty. Currently, it seems the arrangement would have Nick Punto at third with Brendan Harris at second. Alexi Casilla and Matt Tolbert would figure in the equation there as well. It's a bunch of underwhelming names, and adding Hudson would instantly boost the team both defensively and offensively. It jampacks players together to battle for third between the names above, but when you have those uninspiring names, it's best to have them limited to one position battle. Minnesota already is going to have its hands full trying to get Jim Thome and Jason Kubel in the lineup, but it's far better to have a problem getting good players enough at-bats rather than hoping one bad player can get into a hot streak.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Is Kenny Lofton a Hall of Famer?

Posted by Pat Andriola

Thanks to a lack of support for those suspected of steroid use in their Hall of Fame pursuits, a set number of players have used their squeaky clean record in a push for Cooperstown. We can now add Kenny Lofton to that list based on his comments upon being elected to the Cleveland Indians Hall of Fame:

In light of Mark McGwire's admission to using steroids and human-growth hormone while setting home run records, and with other high-profile players being suspended for banned substances, Lofton's statistics may be viewed differently by Hall of Fame voters once he becomes eligible for induction.

Lofton hopes so...

"I was not a cheater, so hopefully they'll take a look at that and see what I did under that period and hopefully they take that into account."

Lofton's biggest challenge is most likely going to be the fact that he doesn't "feel" like a Hall of Famer. What does this "feel" nonsense mean? Here's Hall of Fame voter Mike Nadel to explain:

How strongly should the "feel test" be used, especially pertaining to Steroid Era candidates? Along with a long, hard look at stats, this always has been part of my process: Does so-and-so "feel" like a Hall of Famer? Maybe guys I eliminated before, such as Baines and Murphy, rate a better look now in relation to the juicers who put up ridiculous numbers.

Two interesting positions are expressed here by Nadel that each line up on different sides of the debate. On one hand, Lofton certainly doesn't "feel" like a Hall of Famer (at least outside of the Cleveland area), which may be due to a few factors:

1) He played for eleven different teams
2) Had a skill-set extremely similar to, but dramatically overshadowed by, Ricky Henderson
3) Hit singles and stole bases in an era in which homeruns were the main source of offensive prowess
4) Had a skill-set that has been typically pegged for solid "contributing players," and not the stars that follow later in the lineup
5) Was relatively quiet in the clubhouse and with the media
6) Never won an MVP
7) Never won a World Series

I wish voters would realize that it is reasons like these that contribute to "feel," and not some intricate, instinctive light bulb above their heads. Lofton doesn't "feel" like a Hall of Famer because many of the traits listed above are not ones you typically find with Hall of Famers; that's all.

Anyway, back to Nadel. He does give credence to the reexamination of players with new steroid evidence emerging, but with so many high quality players becoming eligible in the upcoming years, Lofton still may be pushed to the back. Chris Jaffe recently explained the hill Lofton would have to climb:

Then comes 2013-14. when arguably the greatest glut of candidates in history arrive. The first wave in 2013 will feature Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Craig Biggio, Mike Piazza, Curt Schilling, Sammy Sosa, Kenny Lofton, David Wells, and Julio Franco. The next year has a class about as strong with Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Frank Thomas, Mike Mussina, Jeff Kent, Jim Edmonds, and Luis Gonzalez arriving.

In judging his numbers, Lofton has 65.1 WAR according to Rally's BaseballProjection.com, which puts him 80th all-time, in between Willie McCovey and Tim Raines, and above Ozzie Smith, Ernie Banks, Roberto Alomar, Mark McGwire, Jackie Robinson, Yogi Berra, and Harmon Killebrew. He's fifty spots above Andre Dawson.

Unfortunately, we don't have UZR numbers for Lofton during his prime, but Total Zone (TZ) really likes him. He only won four gold gloves, but was well known as a terrific defensive outfielder with blazing speed. I'll take the minor gamble that TZ and the public perception were correct and Lofton was good defensively.

Offensively, Lofton had a career line of .299/.372/.423 with a wOBA of .359. Over the course of a long career those are solid numbers, especially for a centerfielder. What also cannot be overlooked is Kenny's speed on the basepaths. He stole 622 bases at an 80% success rate, obviously excellent numbers. Rally gives Lofton eighty-one Base Running Runs for his career, indicating talented basepath ability apart from steals (i.e. moving from first to third on a single, scoring from first on a double, etc.).

The case for Lofton is pretty strong statistically, but as Jaffe noted earlier, the upcoming Hall eligible class is crazy good. Sure, Lofton doesn't "feel" like a Hall of Famer, but if he makes Cooperstown one day, he'll sure as hell look like one.

Pat Andriola is a junior at Tufts University. You can contact him at Patrick.Andriola @ tufts.edu or follow him on Twitter @tuftspat.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Padres sign Jon Garland

Posted by Evan Brunell
Jon Garland inked a one year deal worth $4.7 million with the San Diego Padres. The deal holds a $6.75 million mutual option for 2011. It's startling that no other team was interested in Garland at that price.

Arizona Diamondbacks vs St. Louis Cardinals

Garland isn't an ace, but he's a nice back of the rotation starter to have. For San Diego and its spacious park, Garland might be able to turn in a year shades of 2005 when he went 18-10 with a 3.50 ERA in 221 innings (without the wins, though).

The right-hander has taken a hit in recent years in perceived value, and I'm not sure why. He's an innings-eater who can soak up over 200 innings and do so without embarrassing the team. This past year, he was a Diamondback to start the year and posted a 4.27 ERA (4.79 xFIP) over 27 starts before moving to the Dodgers, where he had a 2.72 ERA (3.87 xFIP) over six starts. His 33 starts continued an eight-year trend of receiving either 32 or 33 starts and is remarkably durable.

He flashes a 90-mph fastball while mixing in a changeup and -- in a departure from recent years -- a cut-fastball, something he had only experimented with marginally in years past. The cut-fastball, albeit with a small sample size of 2009, reduced the amount of line drives (just over 22 percent from 2007-2008 down to 19.8) while seeing his flyball tendencies spike up from 27.8 percent in 2008 to 35 percent. The cutter ws responsible for most of his success in 2009, as it was far and away his best pitch according to Fangraph's pitch run values. He also serves up a slider he's put on the back burner and a curve ball.

Garland isn't quite a flyball pitcher, but he can't be called a groundball pitcher either as he trends towards a majority of hits given up in the air (54.3 percent in 2009), something that should benefit him greatly in San Diego. He gets enough balls on the ground that teams in hitter's havens shouldn't shy away from (and didn't, as Arizona showed last year). He's certainly not able to strike out any hitters with aplomb, but has solid control and has lived within a .300 BABIP for the last four years. In short, his numbers the last few years are no fluke.

Garland is what he is. An innings eating pitcher who can rack up a mid-4.00's ERA (more or less, depending on the park). Given that the Mets were in need of a durable pitcher and had a pitcher-friendly park for Garland to go to, the Mets missed out on an opportunity here. Perhaps they can rectify that at the trade deadline if (or more accurately, when) the Padres start looking to sell off their veterans.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

Climbing out of the hole

Posted by Dave Studeman
Random fact: The Angels were 33-44, with 85 ties, after the first inning. They finished the season with a 97-65 record, which means that they were 64-21 after the first inning. They were not only slow starters during the season, they were slow starters during their games.

The team with the worst first-inning record was the New York Mets: 31-45 with 86 ties. Suffice to say that they didn't climb out of their early-game holes nearly as well as the Angels did.

Dave was called a "national treasure" by Rob Neyer. Seriously. Comments about this article can be sent to him through the miracle of e-mail.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Athletics sign Ben Sheets

Posted by Evan Brunell
The Oakland Athletics have signed RHP Ben Sheets to a one year deal worth $10 million, an allocation of assets both uncommon for the club and yet intriguing.

Oakland has been trying and failing to sign several players, namely Adrian Beltre and Marco Scutaro, so the fact that the A's had $10 million (Sheets can earn an additional $2 million with incentives) to spend is not a surprise, as rare as the occasion may be. Given the dwindling resources on the free-agent market, the Athletics invested in the player with the most to contribute, albeit at a high risk.

The 31 year old missed all of 2009 due to elbow surgery, but prior to that was one of the best right-handers in the game. He boasts a career ERA of 3.72, which plummets to 3.24 when you discount his first three full years of starting, all with an ERA over 4. It's no fluke either, as his career xFIP is 3.55. Moving to the spacious park the A's call home, Sheets shouldn't have much difficulty transferring to the American League -- doubly so when you consider he will have two division rivals (Los Angeles, Seattle) that won't be powerhouse offenses.

The knock against Sheets is his injury history. Starting in 2005 through 2007, Sheets has hit the disabled list six times, all but one with recurring right shoulder strain problems. Perhaps the surgery to correct his common flexor tendon in his right elbow will alleviate much of these symptoms. Perhaps not. With Sheets, you don't quite know, so sinking a guaranteed $10 million into him is a risky proposition.

That said, Sheets has comfortably been worth around $10 million, if not significantly more, every year of his major league career. His lowest WAR was 2.2 in 2007, when he pitched a total of 141.1 starts and was worth $9 million, according to Fangraphs' valuation. Sheets threw for interested teams earlier this year, and reports came away that he looked very impressive. Sheets' market jumped dramatically after the showing, indicating that many teams had their concerns assuaged.

It's possible the club might only be on the hook for half the salary as well, as there's a school of thought that GM Billy Beane would flip Sheets for prospects at the trading deadline, if (or when) the team is out of contention. Assuming Sheets stays healthy, there's a great chance of that happening. Don't discount Oakland as a dark horse, though -- their burgeoning defense and young, emerging pitching staff behind Sheets could make this team a dark horse contender in the division. If that bears out, Sheets could very well remain in town and contribute value for a contender.

There's always a risk in signing a pitcher like Sheets, but for a team like Oakland, it's a risk well worth taking.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

Cubaball 2010

Posted by Steve Treder
This Thursday, I'll be departing for Havana. I'm taking part in Cubaball, an annual cultural exchange tour of Cuba, focusing on baseball and history. Our group (comprised of about 20 Americans and Canadians) will watch six baseball games, visit numerous historic sites in Havana and elsewhere on the island, meet Cuban ballplayers and various others, and talk baseball, culture, and history (late into the night, no doubt!).

One suspects that perhaps a bit of rum and cigars will be involved.

I've been warned that internet access from Cuba will be, well, unreliable, so I'll make no promises to provide any real-time updates, but upon my return I'll let ya know how it went.

Adios!

Steve Treder can often be found spending way too much time talking baseball at Baseball Primer. He welcomes your questions and comments via e-mail.

Introducing the 5 Tool Analyzer

Posted by Kevin Dame
I've always been intrigued with the concept of the "5 tool player" and have been experimenting with ways to visualize what such a player looks like. The 5 Tool Analyzer maps a player's skill (relative to his peers) across 5 offensive and defensive measures. The resulting map reveals a few things at a glance. First, the overall size of the map indicates how good the player is. Big glob of color = good. Small glob = bad. Second, it shows where they are strong and where they are weak. And finally, it also shows how balanced a player is. Circular glob = well-rounded (literally and figuratively). Weird-shaped glob = some strengths and some weaknesses. Let's start with a quick visual introduction:

Now that we're clear on what we're measuring, let’s take the 5 Tool Analyzer for a spin. To start with, I was curious to see if I could find a player who was “perfectly average” in 2009 and I think I found him in Dave Murphy (he’s roughly at the 50th percentile across all 5 dimensions).

By now you’re probably wondering if there is a “perfect player” in baseball (a player who is the best across all 5 dimensions). Using the 5 Tool Analyzer, the perfect player would be represented by a perfect circle filling out to the 100th percentile. What I discovered was that most all-star players have at least one weak (or average) area. But there were a few players who came close to perfection, and you’ll be surprised to see the one who came closest:

Chone Figgins was an intriguing example of a player who truly excels in all but one category (in his case power):

Adam Dunn’s visual map paints a classic portrait of an “all bat” player. He has DH written all over him:

Jack Wilson represents the inverse of Dunn – an “all glove” player.

So that's a quick tour of the 5 Tool Analyzer. if you like it and want to see more players visualized, name your player!

Monday, January 25, 2010

Remembering Curt Motton

Posted by Bruce Markusen
Curt Motton was hardly a household name; if you’re a baseball fan under the age of 40, it’s probable you never heard of him. Yet, he was a good enough player to become an important backup on those great Baltimore Orioles teams of 1969-1971. Motton, who died last Thursday at 69 after a yearlong battle with stomach cancer, became one of Earl Weaver’s talented understudies. He batted .303 as a part-timer in 1969 and delivered several key postseason pinch-hits during the team’s long playoff and World Series run from ‘69 to 1974.

Unfortunately for Motton (pronounced MOAT-in), he arrived on the major league scene about ten years too early. If only he had come up in the mid-1970s, he might have been drafted by the expansion Seattle Mariners or Toronto Blue Jays. With his right-handed power and solid defensive skills in left field, Motton would have looked attractive to an expansion club. During his major league career, he hit a home run every 22 at-bats, making one wonder what might have been with more playing time.

As it was, Motton came up with the Orioles in the mid-1960s, at a time when the franchise was stacked with talent at both the minor and major league levels. Though he put up big offensive numbers in Baltimore’s system, Motton did not make his big league debut until 1967, when he was already 26 years old. He found his outfield path blocked immediately, from left to right, by Curt Blefary, Paul Blair, and Frank Robinson. Even after Blefary was traded, Don Buford and Merv Rettenmund provided Motton with even more outfield competition. There was simply no room for Motton to play as anything more than a pinch-hitter and spot starter. That’s why he never came to bat more than 217 times, and usually settled for fewer than 100 at-bats per season.

By all accounts, Motton was one of the game’s nicest men. Nicknamed “Cuz” because of his friendly manner, Motton became especially popular with teammates (and Weaver). Outgoing with a strong sense of humor, Motton was active in the team’s famed Kangaroo Kourt, headed up by “Judge” Frank Robinson, which lightheartedly fined players for acts of embarrassment and general stupidity. Hall of Famer Jim Palmer, upon learning of Motton’s death, praised his teammate for his engaging personality and ability to “light up a room.” Orioles fans, who came to know him through promotional appearances and life-after-baseball, universally regarded him as a caring and kind gentleman.

Quite clearly, there are lots of people in baseball who will miss the good guy named Cuz.

Bruce Markusen is the author of seven books on baseball, including the award-winning A Baseball Dynasty: Charlie Finley’s Swingin’ A’s, the recipient of the Seymour Medal from the Society for American Baseball Research. He has also written The Team That Changed Baseball: Roberto Clemente and the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates, Tales From The Mets Dugout, and The Orlando Cepeda Story.

Philly extends Blanton, Victorino, Ruiz

Posted by Evan Brunell
The Phillies have extended three of their arbitration eligible players, all to three-year contracts, locking up the complementary core of their team through the window of opportunity for the club.

Philadelphia Phillies Center Fielder Victorino Triples Against Chicago Cubs

The 31-year old Carlos Ruiz has a $9 million contract extending through 2012, at a salary that Matt Klaassen over at FanGraphs deemed to be a free agent value of $16.3 million and at a slight bargain. The contract buys out all three of the right-hander's arbitration years. Ruiz's warts are readily apparent with a career-high of just 117 games behind the plate. Given the Phillies' fascination with Paul Bako last year, I fully expect a similar fascination with Brian Schneider, limiting Ruiz to 120 games, tops. At 31, age is doing him no favors coming off a career year of .255/.355/.425 while posting a career-low groundball percentage (42.3) percent. What intrigues me about Ruiz is that according to xBABIP, he has been criminally unlucky his entire year, nevermind 2009. His career BABIP is .264, while his xBABIP indicates a .318 mark. 2009 saw a mark of a .266 BABIP with a xBABIP of .309. He has strong plate discipline and low strikeout numbers, but his power leaves much to be determined. It's entirely possible that Ruiz's lack of power is what deflates his BABIP, but at the very least, I can't see Ruiz underperforming his contract.

The Phillies' centerfielder, Shane Victorino, saw two of his arbitration years bought out plus one at a total price tag of $22 million. The "Flyin' Hawaiian," similar to Ruiz, saw a career year in 2009, at least according to OPS. The .803 OPS over 620 at-bats is four points over his second-best year in 2008, but his wOBA of .355 bests 2009's total by one point. Victorino is a player that gives you above-average tools in every aspect of the game. According to UZR, he had a -4.1 year in centerfield, but looking at UZR over three to four years of data is recommended. With that in mind, his 9.4 UZR over the four years he has started indicates a strong ability to patrol the green grass. Offensively, Victorino is good for an average just under .300, with solid plate discipline and some pop, although most of his pop comes with his wheels. He posted a league-leading 13 triples in 2009, eight in 2008. Once his wheels go, he'll slip to a fringe player, but with his age 29-31 years coming up, the Phillies don't need to worry about that happening anytime soon.

The final player extended is starting pitcher Joe Blanton, who sees his final arbitration year bought out followed by two free agent years. Blanton's average annual value at $8 million makes one wonder why they settled for Blanton and not Cliff Lee at $9 million for 2010. It's a legitimate thought, but the Phillies clearly felt it was more important to have a long-term solution -- even at a lesser player -- and restock the farm system with players closer to the majors than the two compensatory draft picks Lee would have netted. Blanton is generally good for around 200 innings pitched on the year, a great trait to have as a middle of the rotation starter. The move from Oakland's spacious park to Philly's confined stadium hasn't affected him as much as some may have thought, although the transition of leagues may have had something to do with it. The 29-year old posted a 4.05 mark in 2009, along with a 4.07 xFIP, indicating his year was stronger than thought. Taking away the park-adjusted home run values and looking at FIP, Blanton's mark was at 4.45 which jives nicely with 2008's 4.54 mark. Either way you cut it, Blanton is a solid No. 3-4 starter who should represent, at the very least, market value for his services over the next three years.

Speaking of the next three years, I don't think the length of the contracts is any accident. The club's core is getting older and more expensive by the day, and the back-to-back NL Champions (with a ring in 2008, of course) have approximately that amount of time left to compete: three years. Ryan Howard is a free agent after 2011, where he will have played his age-31 season at $20 million. Raul Ibanez, Brad Lidge and Ryan Madson all expire following 2011 as well. Placido Polanco will join the three players who just inked extensions as free agents after 2012. Chase Utley will be sticking a bit longer than Howard, being tied up through 2014 while new acquisition Roy Halladay is in town for at least four more years. Using Cot's Contract's salary database (which has not put in Carlos Ruiz's numbers yet), we see the Philles on the hook for $134.6 million so far in 2010. That drops to $129.8 million in 2011, which is not that much of a drop when you consider they'll have to replace or resign Jayson Werth, as well as other arbitration-eligibles or free agents. In 2012, the salaries tumble to $61.2 million, then $32.9 million in 2013. They have no one under contract for 2014.

The Phillies are ensuring that their current core of star and complementary players can stick together for at least two more years and have hedged against Ryan Howard's departure by having it's other core players locked up through at least 2012. Given that all of their important players at that point will be in their mid-30s, it will be exactly the right time to flip the roster over. Whether they can do so seamlessly with their prospects or have to go through a rebuilding phase is yet to be seen, but it's nice to see Ruben Amaro correctly identifying the window of opportunity and taking steps to maximize production over said window.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Oakland’s three CF alignment

Posted by David Golebiewski
Commenting on Oakland's projected outfield alignment of Rajai Davis in left, Coco Crisp in center and Ryan Sweeney in right, A's left-hander Gio Gonzalez told the San Francisco Chronicle, "anything hit in the air is going to be caught."

Gio's got a point. Following Crisp's one-year, $5.25 million free agent deal and the four-player trade that shipped Scott Hairston and Aaron Cunningham to San Diego, the A's have three center field-worthy fly catchers penciled into the lineup.

Davis, a former Pirates prospect claimed off waivers from the Giants, has a career +12 UZR/150 in 1,700+ innings in center field. Crisp checks in with a +5.8 UZR/150 in 5,000+ frames in center, with a +23.5 UZR/150 in 1,800+ innings in left field. Sweeney has a +3 UZR/150 in 800+ innings in center, with a +25.6 UZR/150 in more than 1,300 innings in the corner outfield. These guys can cover the gaps.

How will a Davis/Crisp/Sweeney outfield produce in 2010? We can get an idea from Jeff Zimmerman's 2010 projected UZR totals. Zimmerman took four years of UZR data, did a 5/4/3/2 yearly weighting regressed to 125 games, and then applied a -0.7 UZR aging factor (more details here).

Davis has rarely played the outfield corners during his big league career, but he has a projected +6 UZR/150 in center field. Center fielders playing the outfield corners generally perform between 8 to 10 runs better in the corners than in center, so Davis' UZR/150 could be something in the neighborhood of +14 in left field. Covelli projects to be a +4 UZR/150 defender in center, while Sweeney has a +14 UZR/150 forecast in right.

But this trio won't hit enough, right? Davis and Sweeney aren't exactly your archetypal corner outfielders, and Crisp doesn't pack a whole lot of punch, either. It's true, Davis, Crisp and Sweeney aren't likely to be huge assets at the plate:

Davis' projections

CHONE: .319 wOBA
Bill James: .323 wOBA
The Fans: .324 wOBA

Crisp's projections

CHONE: .319 wOBA
The Fans: .323 wOBA
Bill James: .330 wOBA

Sweeney's projections

Bill James: .332 wOBA
CHONE: .335 wOBA
The Fans: .337 wOBA

For the sake of argument, let's say each gets 600 plate appearances. That's obviously a stretch, considering Davis has Michael Taylor breathing down his neck and Crisp is coming off of a season-ending shoulder injury, but let's go with it for the moment. Davis projects to be about three runs below average with the bat. Crisp is about two runs below average, and Sweeney roughly +4 runs.

There's nothing special about those totals. But, when you consider how many runs these guys will save with the leather, the alignment doesn't look all that bad. Davis would be worth about 1.9 Wins Above Replacement, with Crisp at 2.1 WAR and Sweeney compiling 2.5 WAR. So, Davis and Crisp figure to be average players, while Sweeney comes in a little north of that range.

Davis and Sweeney don't fit the cookie-cutter image of lumbering, slugging corner outfielders. Neither figures to be a liability in 2010, though. The shape of their production is atypical, but plus defense helps compensate for a paucity of power. Oakland's outfielders won't blow up the scoreboard, but they should save enough runs defensively to be viable everyday players. Smile, Gio.

A journalism student at Duquesne University, David Golebiewski is a contributing writer for The Hardball Times, Fan Graphs, Inside Edge, Rotoworld and Baseball Daily Digest. Feel free to e-mail him with any questions or comments.

Friday, January 22, 2010

Something you don’t see every day

Posted by Alex Pedicini
MLB.com is reporting that Oakland Athletics prospect Grant Desme will be retiring from baseball to become a priest.

The 23-year old was a second round pick in 2007 and missed nearly all of 2008 due to a wrist injury but he emerged as a premier prospect last season and was the only player in the minor leagues in 2009 to produce at least 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases.

Desme was ranked as the number eight prospect in Oakland's system this year and he was recently named the Arizona Fall League MVP. Desme is coming off a season in which he hit .288/.365/.568 with 31 home runs and 40 stolen bases between Single-A and Advanced-A levels. This is a particularly tough blow considering the organization's lack of depth in quality outfield prospects.

I do have doubts about how well he would have performed as he progressed through the minors and faced tougher opposing pitchers. Desme has put up huge strikeout numbers (30.4 percent) and a high BABIP (.360) in his first full season on pro ball last year. However, his power (.280 ISO) and speed (40 out of 45 SB attempts) would have made him an interesting follow this season.

Alex is a student in Boston. He welcomes all questions and comments here

On Rick Ankiel and Dayton Moore

Posted by Joshua Fisher
Rick Ankiel's an odd duck, and not in the Long Island sort of way. While it wouldn't surprise me if he eventually latched on with the famed Atlantic League outfit, Ankiel can thank Scott Boras for finding him an even zanier huckleberry: Dayton Moore. Coming off a 0.1 WAR age-29 season, Ankiel will earn $3.25 million to play center field for the Kansas City Royals next season. And in a brilliant negotiating ploy, Moore secured a mutual $6 million option for the 2011 season. Setting aside the obvious silliness of a mutual option--every single free agent contract signed could be termed a "mutual option," right?--Ankiel's just another punchline in the legendary stand-up routine that is Dayton Moore's tenure.

I can't beat up Moore with Rany Jazayerli's unflappable passion or Joe Posnanski's surgical precision, but I can tell you that signing this particular mediocre defensive center fielder coming off a .285 OBP season doesn't even make a top ten list of Moore blunders. The fact is that it could be worse. Rick Ankiel, for his considerable warts, does have his attractive traits. As a 28-year old with fewer than 300 career plate appearances, Ankiel posted a .264/.337/.506 line. To put that in perspective, the 2009 Royals whiffed, tapped, and popped their way to .259/.318/.405. Though what many will latch on to this morning is his dismal, injury-riddled 2009, Ankiel seems a decent gamble for a team with absolutely nothing to lose.

Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple. As the Lawrence (Kansas) Journal-World's Jesse Newell notes on a message board, Ankiel's signing wreaks havoc on roster flexibility. David DeJesus and Ankiel will surely flank newly-acquired Scott Podsednik in the outfield, and Royals brass is already pumping up Chris Getz at second. He's the next David Eckstein, you see. This leaves Jose Guillen and Alberto Callaspo battling for the DH spot. Their 2009 wOBA's were .304 and .352 respectively. Callaspo's seven years younger. Easy, right? But Guillen will make $12 million in 2010--thanks, Dayton!--and Callaspo a fraction of that. So, to recap, the much better player is now extraordinarily devalued trade bait.

I think the real question at this point has to be "Why do we even care?" Why do fans care what Moore does at this point? A tiger doesn't change its stripes. Moore's never going to be any good, and neither will be the Royals under his leadership. And why does the baseball community care? Dayton Moore is baseball's Lindsay Lohan. A young star incapable of handling a bigger role whose drastic errors are so routine as to be barely newsworthy. At some point, his entire general managership becomes an episode of 24--explosions everywhere, but, you know what, that's the show.

Rick Ankiel is a classic Dayton Moore signing, and not in the way you might think. While his .285 OBP fits right in with this dismal squad, he's well worth a few million bucks. 2008 Rick Ankiel was worth two or three times what the Royals will pay him in 2010. Even a bargain, though, can be quintessentially Moore. A good signing makes the Royals worse, thanks to the laughably-constructed roster. Only Dayton Moore.

Joshua operates http://www.dodgerdivorce.com and welcomes feedback via Twitter (@DodgerDivorce) and e-mail (Joshua [DOT] Fisher [DOT] baseball [AT] gmail [DOT] com).

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Center Field Defense: A Closer Look

Posted by Sean Smith
Last year my TotalZone ratings gave Torii Hunter an excellent +12 rating. Due to an injury Torii only played 115 games in center, most of the other starts went to Gary Matthews Jr., who TotalZone absolutely hated out there for a -18 rating in only 435 innings. If both of their ratings were prorated to 162 games, Torii would be an unbelievable 80 runs better than Matthews. Let's look into some of the detail available through retrosheet:

Fly Balls: Of the flyballs hit to center field (fieldedby =8, either the CF catches the ball or eventually retrieves it and returns it to the infield) Hunter caught 85%. Matthews only caught 72%. Matthews gave up slightly more singles, but many more doubles (15.6% to Hunter's 6.5%). Matthews allowed a few more triples, though in either case we're talking about 1% of flyballs.

Line Drives: These are, as you might guess, much harder for an outfielder to catch. If it's not hit right at you or at least pretty close, you aren't going to catch many line drives. But of the ones hit to center against the Angels, Hunter converted a much higher percentage, 14% to only 6% for Matthews.

Totalzone cannot tell us if Matthews had much tougher chances than Hunter did. These numbers are so extreme that it is very likely Matthews faced a tougher set of flyballs and linedrives, and the difference in their skill level is not quite this extreme. I wondered about scorer bias. Maybe the stringers hate Matthews (like many Angel fans) and if he misses a borderline play it's called an easy fly ball, where if Torii missed the same chance it would be condidered a tough line drive. This is probably not the case, there were more line drives (31%) among Hunter's chances than among Matthews' (28%), but not enough to explain the results.

How do these ratings correspond to actual team runs? With Hunter in the field, the Angels gave up only 4.12 runs per 27 outs. With Matthews, they gave up 5.33. I wondered if the mix of pitchers could explain this. What if Hunter was playing behind Jered Weaver more often and Matthews was chasing lasers hit off Santana? I looked at the runs allowed by pitcher for every pitcher who had at least 15 innings in front of both, and 11 of 12 Angel pitchers prefer Hunter. Only Sean O'Sullivan pitched better with Matthews behind him. For John Lackey the difference was small (.06 R/G) but for Weaver (2.72 to 5.72) and Saunders (3.70 to 7.90) the difference was enormous.

I'm not telling you that Matthews really costs a run per game compared to Hunter, random effects are likely a big part of this observation, but I'm convinced that Matthews' days as an Angel should come to an end. They still owe him 23 million over the next 2 years, but the Angels will be better off with Reggie Willits, Chris Pettit, or Terry Evans backing up in the outfield. their chances of winning another AL west title would be even better if Matthews is released and signs with a division rival.

Sean Smith is a lifelong Angels fan despite never visiting the west coast until April 2006. His work can also be found at baseballprojection.com and Anaheim Angels All the Way and he can be contacted by email.

Why Nelson Figueroa is good

Posted by Pat Andriola
The title is the hypothesis, and I'll take this portion to try and prove it. For those unfamiliar with Nelson Figueroa's story, it's a good one. Figueroa attended Lincoln High School in Brooklyn, which normally churns out basketball players such as Stephon Marbury and Sebastian Telfair. A great student, Figueroa took an interesting path to reach the major leagues:

Figueroa’s journey begins back in 1992 when the Brooklyn native spurned offers from Division One schools and joined Pete Varney’s baseball squad. While at Brandeis, Figueroa took courses in Engineering and American Studies while hanging out at the radio station at times from 2-4 am, playing unedited NWA records. Figueroa finished his major in 1998 but did not receive his diploma until [2008].

He was taken by the Mets in the 30th round of the 1995 draft and was subsequently dealt in consecutive deals for Bernard Gilkey and Curt Schilling, winding up with the Phillies. However, after journeying around in Pittsburgh and Milwaukee thereafter, he found himself playing in Mexico and Taiwan in 2007. Fortunately, Figueroa seems to have the mindset to fit in anywhere:

"The key to survival is assimilating in any environment," he said. "I've always been able to do that. Being bilingual helps. I get a lot of people asking me, 'What are you? Are you Puerto Rican, half-black, half this, half that?' I always answer, 'I'm educated.' "

Pretty smart guy, huh? Anyway, back to proving his worth. Figueroa would get a chance to fill in as a spot starter for the Mets in 2008, pitching well. Last year, he was afforded ten starts and sixteen appearances for a total of 70.1 innings pitched. Here were his numbers:

4.09 ERA, 4.31 FIP, 4.50 xFIP, 4.88 tERA, 4.76 tRA*, 0.6 WAR

(For the difference between tRA and tRA*, go here. I'd also be interested to know why Statcorner's tRA is slightly different from Fangraphs'). All in all, it was a good year for Figueroa, who was unfortunately stuck in Triple-A Buffalo for a large chunk of it. He dominated the minor leagues with a 2.77 FIP and 134 tRA+. Unsurprisingly, the baseball forecasters have predicted that Figueroa should continue his current trend of success:

CHONE: 4.29 FIP
Marcel: 4.47 FIP
Bill James: 4.42 FIP
Fangraphs Fans: 4.06 FIP (just to clarify, there's only five of them, and they tend to be overly optimistic thus far)

Again, not too shabby. But just how does Figueroa get it done? By some really nasty movement (nasty in this sense). If you can withstand the thirty-second advertisement at the beginning of the clip, just take a look at how he mowed down the Astros with some serious breaking pitches this past October. Fangraphs says that Nelson threw a fastball just over 56% of the time, relying heavily on his slider, curveball, and changeup. Fangraphs also has Figueroa throwing an unknown pitch 10.8% of the time, most likely due to scorer confusion thanks to his wicked movement.

What can we expect from Figueroa in 2010? Well, considering that four out of the Mets five current starting pitchers took a trip to the DL last year, we may get to see him start once again. Or, more likely, he'll spot start here and there and split time between Triple-A and the bullpen. Hopefully, however, he gets a chance to pitch, because Nelson Figueroa is good.

Pat Andriola is a junior at Tufts University. You can contact him at Patrick.Andriola @ tufts.edu or follow him on Twitter @tuftspat.

Should the Mets look into Chris Snyder?

Posted by Evan Brunell
With catcher Bengie Molina returning to San Francisco, speculation about a possible fit between Diamondbacks catcher Chris Snyder and the Mets have heated up.

MLB: Arizona Diamondbacks at Los Angeles Dodgers

Following the 2008 season, Snyder signed a three-year, $14.25 million extension with the Diamondbacks. The then-27 year old was coming off a .237/.348/.452 season at the plate, a burgeoning reputation as a defensive catcher and life was good.

Just a year later, Snyder has been relegated to backup duty as the Diamondbacks are moving forward with prospect Miguel Montero. Snyder's .200/.333/.352 line in 202 plate appearances has made him all but untradable, and a trade sending him to Toronto earlier this offseason fell apart when the Jays expressed concerns about Snyder's lower back. (Snyder underwent surgery to repair an herniated disk on September 23.)

With the Mets' assumed need for a catcher and their large market, this particular rumor was inevitable.

The Mets currently have Josh Thole, Henry Blanco, Omir Santos and Chris Coste under contract, and while these names may not be impressive, they aren't bad enough that the Mets should be desperate to acquire a catcher. After all, they stared Bengie Molina down to the point where he ran back to San Francisco.

Blanco, entering his age-38 year, has a career .739 OPS against left-handers (.652 against right-handers). With a stellar defensive reputation, slotting him against left-handers is very conceivable, with the right-handed platoon partner being Thole. Thole is coming off a campaign that leapt him into "Mets future catcher" territory. While Snyder wouldn't block Thole if the situation warranted it, Thole looks like an intriguing option currently. He's coming off a .328/.395/.422 campaign for Double-A. Upon a promotion to the majors, he continued his .300 batting average, albeit in just 59 plate appearances. CHONE, Marcel and Fangraphs fan projections peg him for essentially a .285/.350/.390 line, which would be quite valuable.

While Coste and Santos are better utilized as Triple-A depth, they have enough experience at the major league level that they could contribute on the strong side of a platoon. (Both have a low-.700s career OPS against right-handers.)

Snyder was a bit unlucky in 2009, as he posted a .241 BABIP with an expected BABIP of .299, so while 2008 will likely remain his career year, Snyder remains a good bet to settle into a .250/.340/.430 line over the next several seasons. Snyder has too much risk attached to him at the moment for the Mets to entertain anything less than half the contract being covered and marginal value going back to Arizona. Anything past that, and they should move on with the catchers they already have in the organization.

Although they'll probably sign Rod Barajas and give him 400 at-bats.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

Angels sign Joel Pineiro

Posted by Nick Steiner
For 2 years and 16 million according to ESPN.

In 2009, Piniero put up some pretty insane numbers. He struck out 4.42 batters, walked 1.14 and allowed just 0.46 home runs per 9 innings last year. That's good for a 3.27 FIP in 214 innings, making him one of the best pitchers in baseball last year.

I wrote about Pineiro a little while back, specifically looking at his improvement from 2008 to 2009. Some general notes for those who don't want to read through the article.

He threw more sinking fastballs in 2009

He attacked the bottom of the zone more in 2009, especially early in the count

He threw a higher percentage of fastballs in 2009

Got more groundballs

Got fewer whiffs (swings and misses)

Got more "extra" strikes called

So this is a guy who clearly changed his approach last season. The fact that he threw more sinking fastballs and more pitches in the bottom of the strikezone implies that his insane GB rate last year is in large part due to a change in talent rather than random variation. His improved BB rate is a result of him throwing more pitches in the strikezone overall and allowing more contact, especially early in the count; however, he also got a few more called strikes go his way last year.

Last year, Pineiro was worth 4.8 WAR according to FanGraphs. Given his awful 2007 and 2008 numbers, we can expect some pretty big regression from that. A typical Marcel's approach, which consists of basic weighting of previous seasons and regression to the mean, would have Pineiro at about 3.0 WAR next year. However, given his obvious change in approach in 2009, we should weigh his 2009 season more heavily than we otherwise would.

A 2/16 deal is essentially paying him as a 4-4.5 WAR player over the life of the contract. He should be able to clear that pretty easily.

Nick is a Cardinals fan living in LA. He also writes for Viva El Birdos under the handle vivaelpujols. He welcomes questions and comments via email

Another Annual Review

Posted by Dan Novick
Apparently the English know baseball. Matt Smith at Baseball GB (Great Britain) has penned the most recent review of the THT annual. He closes the review with this:

The Hardball Times Annual is an excellent concept for stat-minded fans and this 2010 edition matches the quality of previous efforts.

Can't say that I disagree. Follow this link if you'd like to read the whole review. Click this link if you'd like to purchase a copy of the book.

Hat tip: Tango

Dan Novick is a lifelong Yankees fan, and still gets the chills every time Enter Sandman plays from the Yankee Stadium speakers. He welcomes comments and questions via e-mail.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Brewers bring Doug Davis back to town

Posted by Evan Brunell
With the signing of left-hander Doug Davis to a one-year deal worth $4.5 million, the Brewers have completed a makeover of a rotation that was in dire straits for all of 2009.

In a process that began with cutting Braden Looper loose and snagging Randy Wolf, perhaps the best starting pitcher on the market, Milwaukee is now primed to contend for the NL Central.

Davis' value to the Brewers is simple: durability.

Randy Wolf should turn in a fine season, but betting on him to crack 200 innings again like he did in 2009 with 214 frames is foolhardy. His last time over 200 innings pitched was in 2003, right before he embarked on a four-year, injury-plagued journey.

Likely sandwiched between Wolf and Davis, right-hander Yovani Gallardo, a rising star, pitched 185.2 innings over 30 starts for the Brew Crew. Of the pitchers set to battle for the final two spots in Manny Parra, Dave Bush and Jeff Suppan, only Bush seems like he has a chance to reach 200 innings.

Davis, on the other hand, has reached over 200 innings in five of the last six seasons, starting no less than 33 games. Davis' fastball may average 85 mph, but there's something to be said for taking the ball every day. The Brewers needed this, and was familiar with Davis due to his previous stint with the club, from 2003-2006.

The 34-year old just finished up a 34-start campaign with the Diamondbacks, posting a 4.12 ERA. Davis isn't as good as a 4.12 ERA, and xFIP recognizes this in assigning him a 4.68 value. For a No. 3 starter who eats up innings, that's pretty good.

Davis is a flyball pitcher, getting 35.4 percent of all batted balls in the air, something that should play more to his advantage now that he's out of Chase Field. (It should be mentioned here that Davis performed roughly a full run better via ERA at Chase Field in 2009.) Milwaukee replaced Mike Cameron with Carlos Gomez in center field, so at least the Brewers aren't taking a step back in their outfield defense.

Davis is a one-pitch wonder, so the wheels may fall off eventually. Looking at Fangraphs' pitch type values, it shows that Davis once had his curveball as his bread-and-butter pitch, but that's gone the wayside as of late and with the exception of one pitch, is at negative run values along with the fastball, slider and changeup in 2009. Where Davis excelled at was his cut-fastball, a pitch that seems to have been developed following the 2003 season, when he started his first full season with the Brewers. The pitch saved his bacon in both 2007 and 2009, so he needs to hope he can keep it up in 2010. The Brewers certainly hope so, as a mutual option of $6.5 million for 2011 is attached to the deal, with a $1 million buyout.

All in all, it's a good signing that addressed a major concern of the Brewers: durability. This guy can take the ball day in and day out, although I am concerned about what seems to be a fine line Davis is walking between being a good pitcher and losing all value entirely.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Master of his domain

Posted by Chuck Brownson
Once upon a time, there was a man named Jack. Jack was an ordinary man working for an ordinary beer maker in the upper Midwest when it was decreed by the king that Jack should move westward. "Go west, through Fargo and Butte, Missoula and Coeur d'Alene, and make a left at Spokane," he was ordered and Jack obeyed. "Continue on I-90" he remembered, and "stop before you fall into Puget Sound." You see, Jack was a good boy but Jack had been cursed since he was young. From the time of his birth, Jack was stricken with a last name no one could pronounce. While all the other boys and girls got to be Smiths, Johnsons, and Bavasis, Jack was a Zduriencik. As one of the few "Z kids" in the school, he was always last when roll was called, last to go to recess and eat lunch, and last in the yearbooks -- right next to the teachers. When the Bavasis, the Sabeans, the Minayas and the Moores got to be general managers, Jack was forced to be an assistant in ... Milwaukee. His only friend was Bernie the Brewer.

Because no one liked Jack (or perhaps because everyone did), Jack was sent to Seattle to reform a team that had recently afflicted with heavy contracts to bad baseball players such as Richie Sexson, Carlos Silva, and Jose Vidro. Yuniesky Betancourt was his starting shortstop and Jeff Weaver made 27 starts and had a 6.20 ERA. It seemed as though all was lost in the Great Northwest. The sun began to set earlier than in other parts of the country, the basketball team skipped town in the middle of the night for (gasp!) Oklahoma, and people looked forward to (gulp!) professional football. (They had to because their college football team was awful, too!)

But Jack was a sly one, he was! While the Minayas, the Sabeans and the Moores were working on their P.R. skills, spending spending money without consequence, and cozying up to the media, Jack was studying baseball. Jack figured out what few in his profession knew before him -- that defense was undervalued and that he could rebuild more quickly by focusing on playing defense well. And Jack had more chips left than others realized. He still had King Felix of the Great Northwest, Ichiro-san, and The Cupless Wonder.

Few paid attention when Jack traded a broken pitcher and a replacement level outfielder (if that) for Franklin Gutierrez and stuck Gutierrez in center field. Some heads began to turn, however, when he took advantage of Jarrod Washburn's incongruous first half and traded him to the Tigers, inexplicably managed to extricate the abominable Betancourt from the club, and replaced him with Jack Wilson, the majors' best defensive shortstop by UZR. Still, the Mariners ended up with just 85 wins and most just patted Jack on the head and said, "Good job, son! But you were over your head last year! You'll regress to the mean next year," not knowing really what "regress to the mean" (ahem!) means.

**The extension for King Felix has made Jack Z the new Lord of the Manor** (Icon/SMI)

The season ended and most expected the teams from the large cities to gather up all the bounty in the land, as they usually did. Jack made some inquiries into signing John Lackey but was stymied by the big boys from Boston. It was seen as a nice signing when Jack was able to deal for Chone Figgins, disentangling him away from his demonic division adversary. Though 32 years old, Figgins is an excellent hitter, base runner, and defensive player who should be well worth the nine million dollars per year Jack will pay him. Many scoffed, however, when Jack signed the arbitration-eligible Gutierrez to a four year, $20.5 million contract. The critics fail to realize, unfortunately, that it will likely be Jack who has the last laugh as Gutierrez has averaged more than 20 runs above average defensively each of the last three years, according to UZR. He's been nearly valuable on defense on average over the last three years as Raul Ibanez was on offense last year.

He signed Wilson to a team-friendly two year contract but heads really turned when he managed to rescue Milton Bradley from exile in the City of the Wind while managing to get Jim Hendry to take Silva and most of his contract. Unfortunately, Jack still wasn't taken seriously by many until he was able to trade three decent prospects for the tremendous Cliff Lee, a true ace for the rotation.

Most thought Jack was through. Jack was tired. He'd been working long hours and had done more than anyone had ever expected. Most told him it was time to rest. "It's ok, Jack! You've made it! You've proved to those Bavasis, Sabeans, Minayas, and Moores that you belonged here with them," they told him. But Jack was undeterred. "No! I must continue," he insisted. "I will not stop until I bring a contender to the woebegon lands!" (henceforth known as Seattle). And when most thought that Jack had nothing left, when they thought that he couldn't top the deals for Bradley or Gutierrez or Lee, the signings of Figgins or Wilson, Jack showed those men what true will really was.

"You see, in order to rule," he began, "you don't have to have guns or weapons or money. (Ok, a little money helps!) You don't have to have shortstops or center fielders or closers! You just have to have the will to do what the others won't." And he struck. He signed King Felix of the Great Northwest to a contract smaller than the one the big boys from Boston doled out to Lackey less than two short months earlier. Felix is another true ace, one of magnificent ability, sporting a blazing fastball and a wicked change up. He's just 23 years young and should get better and he's already better than Lackey, no slouch himself. "But Lackey's a veteran with a track record. He's a workhorse!", the naysayers exclaim. Little did they know that King Felix actually has thrown nearly 40 more innings over the last four years than Lackey. His strikeout to walk ratio is better, his home run rate is better, and his ground ball rate is among the best in the game.

While it's true that no one else had the opportunity that little Jackie Z had to sign him, King Felix could have opted not to sign as well, banking on a much larger payday down the road. And Jack now has two aces instead of just a few poker chips; he has great defense all over the diamond, and an improving offense. Once everyone else's bug, Jack is now baseball's windshield. Though others may still be unable to pronounce his last name, (the "d" and "i" are silent!) everyone now knows who he is, for he is Jack Zduriencik, king of baseball's general managers.

Chuck is a lifelong Cardinals fan who welcomes comments below or via email at chuckbtht AT gmail DOT com.

Huston Street or Carl Pavano?

Posted by Evan Brunell
Earlier today, it was revealed that the baseball version of Humpty Dumpty, Carl Pavano, signed for $7 million, avoiding arbitration with the Minnesota Twins. Elsewhere in the great expanse of the midwest, the Colorado Rockies struck an accord with closer Huston Street to the tune of three years and $22.5 million.

There are those that believe paying Street $7.5 million annually is a joke, while others are baffled how Pavano got $7 million. Thus, the question becomes: would you rather Carl Pavano or Huston Street (2010 only)? Here's one man's attempt to answer.

Let's go through each player and a nice, simple pros and cons list.

CARL PAVANO

Twins Pavano pitches during game 3 of the ALDS in Minneapolis

Pro: For all of Pavano's faults, he made 33 starts last year, albeit with just 199.1 innings, a poor 6.03 innings per start. Pavano split the 2009 season between the Indians and Twins, the former allowing him to pitch just 5.96 innings per start, likely due to his overall poor performance for the club. The Twins were kinder, allowing Pavano to pitch 6.1 innings per start. Over 33 starts, that would translate to 201.1 innings. A reason for Pavano's durability has to do with his actual performance, posting a 5.37 ERA for the Indians and 4.64 ERA for the Twins (5.10 total). His xFIP and tERA are kinder to his overall production, claiming his ERA should have been in the high 3s (xFIP: 3.96, tERA: 3.65). Pavano's WAR was 3.7, which is a great number and his BABIP was .335, so he was decidedly unlucky.

Con: While his xFIP and tERA posit an ERA under 4, the fact remains that 4.77 is his lowest ERA in his time in the American League, so we're looking at a four-year span (he missed all of 2006) over 345 innings. It's not a lot of innings over a timespan, but it's enough to draw a few conclusions from. Additionally, Pavano's xFIP in 2009 was the lowest since ... well, since before we have data for it. (Fangraph's xFIP goes back to only 2002.) You're welcome to posit that Pavano's 2009 season was better than any of his 2002-8 seasons, but you won't find me in that camp. Bill James, CHONE, Marcel and Fangraphs' fan projections tab Pavano for the following respective ERAs: 4.46, 4.50, 4.97, 4.64. What are we looking at here, then? A No. 3 starter, tops... more likely a No. 4 starter. I should mention here that when I say No. 3 or 4, I'm not doing so in the lens of the Twins' personnel -- I'm doing so based on Pavano's actual value. Finding someone to throw 200 innings of 5.00 ERA-ball is not difficult, and there are still some starting pitchers on the market currently that can -- and will -- do that for less money than Pavano.

HUSTON STREET

Atlanta Braves vs Colorado Rockies in Denver

Pro: While I'm not sold on Fangraph's valuation of closers, the 1.5 WAR credit Street gets directly translates to Street being worth $7 million on the free agent market, using the idea of $4.5 million per win. Thusly, at the very least, Street is worth his contract. The 26 year old posted his best K/BB ratio (5.38) of his career in 2009, doing so in Colorado. He had a very low BABIP of .257, and while that ascribes a fair bit of luck to Street's production, I have noticed that BABIP in elite closers tends to stay low. Street's xFIP was 2.92, with a tERA of 2.24.

Con: Of course, the difference between Street and Pavano is that Pavano will affect roughly 200 innings of the Twins' season, while Street can only hope for 70. That's really it -- that's the major con facing Street at the moment in comparison to Pavano.

Yes, innings pitched is a significant difference, and a big reason why starters are valued more than relievers and closers -- and for the most part, they should be. When we're getting to No. 4 starters and elite closers, however, the ability to replace Street is more difficult than the ability to replace Pavano. How many people can step in to replace a top closer? How about a back-of-the-rotation starter? Dave Cameron spoke about bullpen chaining and why Fangraphs' valuations of closers are so low. (Briefly: closers are valued less because if they're lost for the season, the next-best reliever steps up, not a mopup replacement... this limits the original closer's value, as his production has been replaced.) He makes a compelling argument, although I think the same concept can be applied to starters. In addition, I'm not sold on the whole "chaining" argument just yet. (Former THTer Colin Wyers tweeted about this, and I look forward to his thoughts when he puts them together.)

In the end, I'm leaning towards Huston Street. I think that No. 1 starters should always be paid far and away more money than the best closer, but I also think the best closer brings more value to a team than the prototypical No. 4-5 starter. Anyone else agree? Disagree? Would you rather Pavano or Street?

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

Avatar Sequel

Posted by Pat Andriola
Nah, just kidding, it's actually some really cool baseball links! Here they are:

-Keep on voting for those BtB Sabermetric Awards (and keep your favorite THT writers in mind).

-Our friend Jack Moore takes a neat look at how much teams are paying per win in the arbitration market.

-Just how much do farm systems provide monetarily? Doug Gray tries to provide the answer.

-Sky Andrecheck is asking a similar question.

-Phil Birnbaum dissects the J.C. Bradbury-Tango aging curve controversy with a holistic take on peer review in scientific analysis.

-Project Prospect has a great guide coming out that is a must-have for prospect enthusiasts.

-Here's a look at how the AL East may play out in 2010.

-Bleed Cubbie Blue does a wonderful job explaining linear weights in the first of hopefully many in their sabermetrics primer series.

Pat Andriola is a junior at Tufts University. You can contact him at Patrick.Andriola @ tufts.edu or follow him on Twitter @tuftspat.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Introducing TRX

Posted by Pat Andriola
As a lover of sabermetric pitching analysis, two of my favorite stats are unsurprisingly xFIP and tRA. xFIP wisely takes into account the factors that a pitcher has control over, while tRA looks at the "quality" of batted balls given up. Both are summed up into nicely-packed numbers that resemble ERA (although one must multiply tRA by .92 to get tERA). In a mild attempt to see what happens when you mix two completely different statistics, I entered my laboratory and came up with a crazy concoction: TRX. It's literally just the average of each starting pitcher's xFIP plus tERA. Can one simply look at both stats in gauging a pitcher's performance? Sure, but isn't it more fun/interesting/easy to have one number? The sample size used is the the seventy-five starting pitchers that come up on Fangraphs for league leaders. Here are the results:

2009 Top 10 TRX

Tim Lincecum    2.74
Justin Verlander  2.92
Zack Greinke    3.03
Chris Carpenter  3.08
Javier Vazquez   3.10
Jon Lester      3.22
Felix Hernandez  3.24
Roy Halladay    3.24
Josh Johnson    3.27
Adam Wainwright 3.32

Nothing all too surprising, although Greinke a "distant" third in any ranking is odd, and we get to see how good Verlander really is. According to TRX, the bottom five pitchers in baseball last year were Jeremy Guthrie (worst), Braden Looper, Doug Davis, Trevor Cahill, and Kevin Millwood. I ultimately think this could be a nice quick-and-easy way to evaluate a pitcher for those who love DIPS theory, but also value knowing just how the ball came off the bat.

TRX has an R^2 value of .45 when compared with ERA (similarly, FIP has a .47 correlation and xFIP is .31, both based on the same seventy-five pitchers used).

trx.xls

Pat Andriola is a junior at Tufts University. You can contact him at Patrick.Andriola @ tufts.edu or follow him on Twitter @tuftspat.

Outlining my BtB awards ballot

Posted by Dan Novick
For the past few weeks, our friends over at Beyond the Box Score have been doing some work putting together their "Sabermetric Writing Awards." Readers nominated articles and authors for seven different categories, some of which included best applied research article, best researcher or writer, and best new online resource. The voting works like this: 50% of the weight goes to the online balloting, which is going on right now. The other 50% of the vote is an "internal" vote. Because many of BtB's writers were nominated for awards, they were ineligible to vote on the category. As such, some guest voters were asked to be part of the "internal" vote. I am honored to be one of those people included.

In the spirit of Hall of Fame voting, I would like to go through my ballot category by category, explaining some things along the way. What kind of sabermetrician would I be if I didn't? Don't answer that.

The voting was done more like Hall of Fame voting than, say, MVP or Cy Young voting. We were asked simply to check off a box (as many as you wish). Despite that, I did have my favorite in each category. So what I'll do here is show which choice was my first, and then show a "best of the rest" for each category. Feel free to criticize my choices in the comments.

1. Best novel sabermetric research article or project
My pick: Josh Kalk, The Injury Zone
Also chosen: Victor Wang—Valuing a Draft; Mike Fast—Confessions of a DIPS Apostate

In choosing Josh Kalk's piece here, I feel that I'm really emphasizing the "novel" part of this category. Kalk's piece is so unique and potentially groundbreaking, that for me it had to be the choice for his category. Nobody (that I know of) has done anything since with regard to pitch f/x and injuries that even approaches what Kalk did in this article. I picked this not so much the conclusions he drew, but for the process. Victor Wang 's draft valuations are a great resource as well, and were a big step in our ability to better quantify amateur and minor league player values.

2. Best applied sabermetric research article or project

My pick: Jeremy Greenhouse, Holliday-Bay: Visual Scouting Reports
Also chosen: Nick Steiner—What do stats tell us?; Sky Kalkman—Which is Better Compensation: Prospects or Draft Picks?

Read Jeremy's piece and you'll know exactly why I voted for him. There weren't a whole lot of innovative techniques, but the sheer volume of information you can get from one of Jeremy's "visual scouting reports" is incredible. To paraphrase one of the comments: This is the kind of information people would pay for.

The presentation of Nick Steiner's article is such that the reader is able to look at his graphs and charts and attempt figure out answers for himself. Though it's just a start (he's only gotten to looking at Burnett and Washburn so far), this series could go a long way. Sky Kalkman's article fits this category perfectly. He uses the work of others (mainly Wang and Sky Andrecheck) and puts it to the test to answer a pretty important question.

3. Best sabermetric primer or review article/series
My pick: Tie between Dave Cameron's Win Value Series and Alex Remington's "Everything you always wanted to know about..." series

Picking between these two is really a matter of philosophy, and so I figured I'd just call it a tie. In my mind, both are nearly flawless. The problem is, they cater to different market segments, making a comparison difficult. Cameron's is more for the person who already knows a little something about sabermetrics, while Remington's is intended as an introductory series explaining several advanced stats. I'm curious to see which of these wins in the actual balloting.

4. Best sabermetric commentary article
My pick: Matt Klaassen (devil_fingers): Ken Rosenthal, ‘Sabermetric Group Think,’ and the 2009 American League MVP Debate
Also chosen: Colin Wyers—Replacement level, again; Dave Cameron—The Marginal Value of a Win

This category gave me the most trouble, probably since the choices were on such a wide variety of topics. I ended up going with the writer formerly known as devil_fingers' take-down of Ken Rosenthal's anti-sabermetric stance. Gotta show some love for someone who's willing to take a stand for his people in the face of one of the MSM's biggest names. And he managed to keep it civil. Colin's and Cameron's articles were actually on similar topics, and I thought both were good reading. Before you criticize your team for paying a player more than his fWAR says he's worth, read those two articles.

5. Best sabermetric researcher or writer
My pick: Colin Wyers
Also chosen: Jeff Zimmerman (Tucson Royal), Dave Allen, Dave Cameron, Sky Andrecheck, Max Marchi

I'll do this section bullet-point style (no particular order after #1):
—Colin Wyers: Combination of writing ability and technical research made him an easy choice for me
—Jeff Zimmerman: Consistently puts out high quality material with several good original ideas
—Dave Allen: Tons of original, innovative pitch f/x presentations and "other stuff" that isn't found anywhere else. Awesome work.
—Dave Cameron: You'd be hard pressed to find a writer with a better feel for the pulse of the baseball analysis world.
—Sky Andrecheck: Almost every article he writes seems like it would take weeks to accomplish.
—Max Marchi: Always an interesting read. He seems to look at pitch f/x in a way that few else do.

6. Best sabermetric writing/research website
My pick: The Hardball Times

You may think I'm biased, and there's a chance you're right. But I firmly believe that THT's combination of blog-style postings, in-depth fantasy analysis, and feature-length articles set us apart from any other sabermetric website.

7. Best new online sabermetric resource
My pick: Rally's rWAR,
Also chosen: FanGraphs' implementation of UZR, wOBA, wRC, wRC+, and WAR

Rally's WAR database is and will be a valuable resource for years to come. It is the only one of its kind, and it is loaded with tons of information. I don't think there has been a dissatisfied user yet.

If you'd like to share your vote, please do so in the comments section. Or just rip my choices, whichever works.

Dan Novick is a lifelong Yankees fan, and still gets the chills every time Enter Sandman plays from the Yankee Stadium speakers. He welcomes comments and questions via e-mail.

Where’s Pat’s bat?

Posted by David Golebiewski
Last January, the Tampa Bay Rays inked Pat Burrell to a two-year, $16 million contract. The long-time Philadelphia Phillie garnered a reputation as a potent hitter and a plodding fielder (they don't call him Pat the Bat for nothin'), seemingly making him a good fit as Tampa's DH.

The price tag appeared reasonable. Burrell posted a 131 wRC+ from 2006 to 2008, meaning his offense was 31 percent better than average, once park and league factors are accounted for. He was heading into his age 32 season, so some decline could have been foreseen. But even so, the first overall pick in the 1998 draft looked like a good bet to be a two-win player in 2009.

Instead, Pat's bat went missing. Slowed by a neck injury that required a lengthy DL stint, Burrell was 15 percent worse than average with the lumber last season (85 wRC+). His Isolated Power, .250 from 2006-2008, checked in at .146. Burrell compiled -0.6 Wins Above Replacement for the Rays.

Normally a prodigious pull hitter, Burrell didn't thrash the ball to left with the same force or frequency in 2009. He also made plenty of weak contact to the middle field:

Again, we could have anticipated some decline. Burrell was transitioning from the NL to the AL. He was also moving from a ball park that boosts right-handed slugging to a venue that depresses righty power. According to the 2010 Bill James Handbook, Citizens Bank Park has a 117 three-year park factor for right-handed homers, while Tropicana Field has a 96 HR park factor for righty dingers.

But even so, Burrell pulled the ball less often and didn't do near as much damage when he did hit to the pull field. Instead, Burrell hit more pitches to the middle of the diamond, with sub-par results there as well.

Whether due to age, that nagging neck injury or some combination of those factors, Burrell couldn't catch up to fastballs in 2009. Pat the Bat smacked heaters for run values of +1.48 per 100 pitches in 2006, +1.93 in 2007 and +1.27 in 2008. But last year, he was at -0.48 runs per 100 fastballs seen. Burrell's performance against gas, coupled with his decreased pull percentage, paint the picture of a hitter who isn't turning on the ball as quickly these days.

Burrell is owed $9 million next year, and he's currently penciled in as Tampa Bay's starting DH. Here are his 2010 projections:

CHONE: .223/.338/.395
ZiPS: .230/.337/.415
Bill James: .237/.356/.439
Fan Graphs' Fans: .251/.356/.467

That's a pretty wide range. If Burrell logs 500+ plate appearances in 2010, that CHONE projection would peg him for about 0.3 WAR. The most sanguine forecast, from the fans, would make Burrell worth closer to 1.5 WAR. At this point, the Rays have to hope that Pat's slack performance was due to a bad neck, not diminished bat speed.

A journalism student at Duquesne University, David Golebiewski is a contributing writer for The Hardball Times, Fan Graphs, Inside Edge, Rotoworld and Baseball Daily Digest. Feel free to e-mail him with any questions or comments.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Does anyone see a pattern here?

Posted by Chuck Brownson
The tables below reflect twelve free agent signings this off-season. The columns show the respective players' 2009 WAR, the average annual value of the contracts they've signed this off-season (in millions), and the dollars paid to the player per '09 win.

**Table 1**
Player	'09 WAR	AAV	$/WAR
Player 1	1.7	$6	3.53
Player 2	2.4	$5.75	2.40
Player 3	2.4	$5	2.08
Player 4	4.3	$7.25	1.69
Player 5	6.1	$9	1.48
Player 6	4.5	$6.25	1.39
Totals	21.4	$39.25	1.83

**Table 2**
Player	'09 WAR	AAV	$/WAR
Player 1	0.3	$5.5	18.33
Player 2	0.4	$7	17.50
Player 3	0.7	$7	10.00
Player 4	0.7	$5	7.14
Player 5	0.9	$6	6.67
Player 6	2.0	$7.25	3.63
Totals	5.0	$37.5	7.50

The two tables look like they're comprised of signings from two different eras, like one from this economy and one from those halcyon days when owners showered free agents with money, jewels, and keys to the kingdom. But all twelve signings occurred this off-season. The first table clearly shows contracts that are favorable to their respective teams. Around a year ago, free agents earned on average about $4.4 million per win above replacement and the worst of those six contracts to the team will pay the player just over three and a half million per '09 win. The second table shows the best contract being slightly worse than the worst contract from the first table and the worst contract being...well...horrendous. Paying a player who's only slightly better than a replacement level player $5.5 million? Why? It makes no sense.

Now I'm going to modify the two tables to reflect projected WAR based on CHONE'S projections for the 2010 season rather than the players' WAR for '09.

**Table 1**
Player	'09 WAR	AAV	$/WAR
Player 1	2.2	$6	2.73
Player 2	1.7	$5.75	3.38
Player 3	2.3	$5	2.17
Player 4	2.3	$7.25	3.15
Player 5	3.9	$9	2.31
Player 6	4.0	$6.25	1.56
Totals	16.4	$39.25	2.39

**Table 2**
Player	'09 WAR	AAV	$/WAR
Player 1	0.0	$5.5	----
Player 2	0.6	$7	11.66
Player 3	0.7	$7	10.00
Player 4	0.7	$5	7.14
Player 5	0.5	$6	12.00
Player 6	0.7	$7.25	10.36
Totals	3.2	$37.5	11.72

It doesn't look much better for the group in Table 2, does it? So what explains this disparity? I'm now going to make one more change to Table 2, using last year's numbers. Maybe this will shine a light on what's going on here.

**The Astros will pay the guy above the same as the Cubs will pay the guy below...for a lot less production.** (Icon/SMI)

(Icon/SMI)

**Table 2**
Player	'09 WAR	AAV	$/WAR	'09 Saves
Player 1	0.3	$5.5	18.33	37
Player 2	0.4	$7	17.50	0
Player 3	0.7	$7	10.00	25
Player 4	0.7	$5	7.14	3
Player 5	0.9	$6	6.67	10
Player 6	2.0	$7.25	3.63	27
Totals	5.0	$37.5	7.50	102

The six players in table 1, whose average annual values of their salaries are roughly equal to those in table 2, are Mark DeRosa, Nick Johnson, Marlon Byrd, Mike Cameron, Chone Figgins, and Marco Scutaro. The six players in table 2 are Fernando Rodney, Billy Wagner, Jose Valverde, Brandon Lyon, Mike Gonzalez, and Rafael Soriano. The obvious reason why the six players in table 2 will be paid about the same as those in table 1 is the fact that they were signed to close baseball games, to pitch the ninth inning. Why else would the Angels pay Fernando Rodney, basically a replacement level pitcher, nearly the same as the Giants will pay Mark DeRosa or the Red Sox will pay Marco Scutaro?

Yes, I know that Rodney blew just one save last year but I also know his career BB/9 is 4.64 and his career FIP is 4.15. I also know that he was a solid ground ball pitcher last year but his 57.9 ground ball percentage was ten points higher than his career average ground ball rate. I also know that his strikeout rate was the lowest of his career last year. I also know that the average leverage index when Rodney entered the game was just eighth among AL closers. And I also know that the Angels are gambling big bucks on Rodney just a year after doing the exact same thing on Brian Fuentes and seeing it backfire. What's the definition of insanity again, Mr. Einstein?

Let's compare Brandon Lyon to Marlon Byrd, two men receiving the exact same contracts. Lyon will be the Astros' closer while Byrd will man center field for the Cubs. Last year Lyon pitched to 314 batters in 78.2 innings. Byrd came to the plate 599 times AND made 341 plays in the field. Byrd affected games more on defense, even if he hadn't taken one plate appearance for the Rangers in '09, than Lyon did pitching for the Tigers. It's not that Lyon's a bad pitcher, he isn't; it's that by pitching only in the ninth inning, he only affects one-ninth of the game every two to three games. Byrd will affect most every inning of most every game for the Cubs this season.

Now, Byrd certainly isn't a great player. But he is a league average defensive player at a premium defensive position as well as being about a league average offensive player. You could do a lot worse in center field than having a league average center fielder, particularly when you're paying him the same amount as a division rival is paying someone else to pitch to 300 hitters all season.

While the economy seems to have hit some teams hard, and they're making decisions accordingly, others are still overvaluing closers. None of these guys is Mariano Rivera or even Joe Nathan. The only one of these contracts that appears to even come close to being a beneficial contract to the team is the one doled out to Rafael Soriano. The others are examples of how some teams continue to overvalue saves. Most of them are pretty good middle relievers who just don't do enough throughout the course of a season to earn six or seven million dollar contracts when above average shortstops and center fielders are getting the same amount of money.

Chuck is a lifelong Cardinals fan who welcomes comments below or via email at chuckbtht AT gmail DOT com.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Baseball Reference announces e-Reader database

Posted by Evan Brunell
Sean Forman, the overlord at Baseball-Reference.com has created an e-reader version of Baseball Reference that will allow anyone to look up statistics while on the go. Forman was assisted by John Burnson of Heater Magazine, who also contributes to THT.

The goal here was to put all player statistics in a handy format to be used on-the-go or even as an offline version of Baseball Reference on a computer. There is a clear need for these type of things, as I am unable to use my mobile browser on my Blackberry to view statistics on either B-R.com, FanGraphs or other sites in a readable format. As a baseball fan and writer, I'm constantly thinking about baseball, even when away from the computer. It has long frustrated me in my inability to look up statistics anytime, anywhere. That's starting to change now.

Baseball Reference has formatted these PDFs to work specifically for the Amazon Kindle, although it can work in many other settings. In fact, having the PDF visually geared towards the Kindle makes it an aesthetically pleasing document in all respects. If you don't know what a Kindle is, think of it as an electronic book. You can carry the Kindle around -- much like you carry books around to read -- but instead of having a physical copy of the book, you can download multiple books to the Kindle and read to your heart's pleasure. Books are often very cheap compared to buying physical versions of the book -- new books cost $9.99 as opposed to shelling out over $20 dollars for a brand new hardcover. (To use the B-R Player Folio, you must have the Kindle 2 and download the latest firmware, version 2.3, which is free with a Kindle 2.)

There are different versions of the e-Reader Baseball Reference Player Folio available for download. You can download the complete encyclopedia in three batches, sorted alphabetically. You can also elect to download a version that holds only players that competed in 2009. This latter version is probably the one that comes in most handy.

As I mentioned earlier, it's rather difficult to find data on a player if one doesn't have a computer nearby. (Perhaps the iPhone has no such problems, but I don't have one, so... doesn't help me.) Having a reference tool like this will make it a lot easier for myself to research players. As a writer, things often strike me while I'm out and I'm forced to wait until I get home to research the topic, at which point I may have lost my initial burst of thought, even if I hastily jot down the concept on a napkin (okay, trying to be too old-school there, I usually use the 'Memopad' feature on my BlackBerry to jot notes down). As a fan, I'd also find use for this. Say you're out at dinner and news broke that the Tigers signed Jose Valverde and you're just itching to look up Valverde and what he's done. Provided you've brought your Kindle along with you, that itch can be scratched to your heart's content.

Unfortunately, the file size of these encyclopedias (unsurprisingly) dictate that I can't open them on my BlackBerry. Having a slimmed down version of the encyclopedias that I could open on the BlackBerry would be even better, as I always have my phone on me when I'm out. Can't say the same about the Kindle. As someone who generally uses the Kindle at home, I have more use for an e-reader version that can be opened on the BlackBerry. If I'm home, instead of using the Kindle, I'd just hop onto the computer.

Speaking of this function being geared towards the Kindle... while a PDF version should always be offered to allow for maximum use across multiple platforms, there should be a Kindle-only version (.azw, instead of .pdf) that would allow for highlighting or creating notes in the Kindle, a feature unavailable in PDF format. It would be useful in copying-and-pasting instances, as well as putting notes next to certain players. In addition, the PDF format causes me to be unable to click the link in the PDF that would send me to the player's page on the internet. If I'm doing research on a player using the Kindle, leveraging Amazon's wifi network, Whispernet, would allow me to check additional statistics if I so chose on the player.

One other nitpick has to do with a player playing for multiple teams in one year. Forman and Burnson seem to have elected to combine this into one single line denoted as "2tm" (meaning they played for two teams in a specific year) with no mention as to what these teams were, or the sample sizes for each team. This can be very valuable information that gets lost in the shuffle. Take Matt Holliday, for example (picture, up and to the left). In the Kindle version, we only get the complete showing of his 2009 season, whereas showing the split out of Oakland and St. Louis would show a stark contrast in effectiveness on either team. Not to mention that someone with no knowledge of Holliday's history would have no idea he didn't open 2009 with Colorado. It would add several pages to the PDF to include this data, but I think it's very much needed.

I think that Forman and Burnson are onto something here, and in a few years from now, e-reader versions of baseball databases will be available in many different formats across many different platforms. What Forman and Burnson have accomplished here is a great start.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

MLB draft versus International free agent market

Posted by Alex Pedicini
The recent singing of Aroldis Chapman for $30.25 million has got me thinking. The number one pick in this year's draft, Stephen Strasburg, is almost universally regarding as a better pitching prospect yet he signed for "only" $15.1 million. I say "only" because this was a record amount of guaranteed money for a draft pick. Still, why is it that the better pitcher in Strasburg received half as much money as Chapman?

The problem with this current system is that the International free agents hold a significant amount of bargaining power, where as the draft picks are subject to the team's will and the MLB's slotting system. The international players are free to negotiate with any team they wish which causes bidding wars thus driving up contract values. Chapman took up residence outside of the U.S. upon defecting Cuba just so he would not be subjected to the MLB draft and it appears this was a wise move on his part.

My question is at what point will we see American players leave the country and play in foreign leagues so they will be able to skip the draft and become free agents. We have already begun to see this is high school basketball where players have chosen to skip college and play overseas for a season or two before coming back to play in the NBA. Obviously, the competition levels, degree of difficulty and other factors are much different in baseball but for a supreme talent like Strasburg or an up and coming phenom like Bryce Harper, this could possibly be a lucrative avenue to pursue.

I am not suggesting this is feasible or even a good idea but it just goes to show the vast inequalities that exist between the two markets.

Alex is a student in Boston. He welcomes all questions and comments here

Thursday, January 14, 2010

LaRoche to Diamondbacks, Valverde to Tigers

Posted by Evan Brunell
The Arizona Diamondbacks made a fantastic signing in first baseman Adam LaRoche while the Detroit Tigers took a step forward with the inking of closer Jose Valverde.

LaRoche reportedly rejected a two-year, $17.5 million offer from the San Francisco Giants in December, badly misreading the market. As a result, he tucks his tail in between his legs and goes to Arizona, inking what is presumed to be a one year deal worth $4-$6 million for 2010, along with a possible 2011 option.

The move gives the Diamondbacks a slugging first baseman to put in the middle of the order while shoving Conor Jackson to left field and Brandon Allen down to the minor leagues. Jackson, 28, had a lost 2009 due to valley fever but had three straight years of a potent bat, serving mostly as a first baseman. His ability to play left field enabled the club to explore solutions at first base past prospect Brandon Allen, who received 104 at-bats in the majors this past year, whiffing an unbelievable 40 times. While Allen still has a chance to be a 40-home run hitter out of first base, it was the right move to put him back in Triple-A for more seasoning.

LaRoche, 30, has a well-deserved reputation for being a second-half player. With six seasons under his belt, it's tough to toss out the small sample size argument. His first half slash stats rest at .252/.326/.447 over 1,587 at-bats. In the second half (1,290 AB), the slash stats spike to .300/.363/.546. LaRoche should comfortably be worth two wins over the season, nevermind if he can put together a full year of second half numbers. I've tabbed Arizona as my sleeper pick (reasons which we'll save for another time) in 2010, and signing LaRoche further cements that belief.

Jose Valverde, on the other hands, cements nothing but does raise Detroit's potential to have a successful 2010 season. The Tigers attempted to pull off some cost-cutting moves earlier by dealing Curtis Granderson and Edwin Jackson away. As I discussed, I'm skeptical of the return from Detroit's end, although their competitive window was certainly extended. With Valverde in the fold, the Tigers see their short-term prospects rise. Not to the level of the pre-Granderson trade, but an A.L. Central division title might just happen.

A two-year deal worth $14 million was what it took to bring Valverde to town after an offseason where he turned down an offer of arbitration from the Astros, potentially costing himself about $10 million in 2010 in the process. A third-year option is in place at $9 million, so Valverde still makes out pretty well.

The 30-year old was one of the better closers from 2007-8 and didn't miss a beat in 2009 after missing time after right lower leg compartment syndrome in June. (As someone who had surgery on both legs for compartment syndrome in February and April of 2009, I can tell you it's very impressive how quickly and effectively Valverde returned from the injury.)

The knock on Valverde is his poor command, posting a 3.50 BB/9 last year and career 3.61 mark. However, his 1.03 career home runs per nine innings might be improved by the switch to Comerica Park after spending his career in two hitter's parks.

Strictly from a financial point of view compared to previous and expected output of Valverde, $7 million seems like a steep price to pay. In the last two years, Valverde hasn't even reached 1 WAR and his career high is 2005's 1.7. Assuming that one WAR is worth $4.5 million, it's obviously a lousy deal. If you think one win is worth around $6-8 million, the deal ends up making more sense. (Sky Andrecheck did a two article study earlier this offseason that contends that the $4.5 million figure is outdated, and I tend to agree with him. In all my articles, my analysis will be influenced by his findings, although I will mention the $4.5 million figure as the commonly accepted number.)

What I don't understand is why the club deigned to move Curtis Granderson if they were just going to end up taking the saved salary, adding on a few million and then chucking it at Valverde. The team would have been better off trying to swap Edwin Jackson and prospects for Scherzer alone instead of moving Granderson as well if they were going to end up doing this.

Putting that aside, assuming the deal was market value, it doesn't mean the Tigers had to pay it. As the offseason winds along, players are becoming more and more desperate. Heck, we just talked about Adam LaRoche and his settling of a one-year deal worth around $5 million. It's difficult for me to believe that any other team would have given Valverde close to two years and $14 million -- and that a team like the Tigers did just that while also coughing up their first-round pick, which now heads to the Astros.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

Thursday morning links

Posted by Dan Novick
On this day in 1952, NBC's "Today Show" premiered. For some reason, I think there was less controversy about that programming change than there is this time around. In other news...

J.C. Bradbury writes up his aging study at Baseball Prospectus. I look forward to the impending Colin Wyers takedown... What's that? Oh, well that's a shame.

Awesome graphics here by Dave Allen, charting the trend of Hall of Fame voting over the years for specific players.

This article seems to claim that the Red Sox and Mets are "trend setters" in the Latin American market. Red Sox? I wouldn't put it past them. Mets? I think I might.

One of the most interesting takes on the McGwire admission is how Bud Selig treated it so very differently from the way he treated Alex Rodriguez's admission. Also tangentially related is Fack Youk's claim that JoePo is being inconsistent in his views regarding the admissions of McGwire and A-Rod, and JoePo's subsequent response.

Just how smart are dolphins, you ask? Oh, you didn't ask, did you. Well if you're curious, they seem to be pretty damn smart.

Do you have an something interesting you'd like to share? Send a link to any one of THT Live's authors and we'll do our best to include it here.

Dan Novick is a lifelong Yankees fan, and still gets the chills every time Enter Sandman plays from the Yankee Stadium speakers. He welcomes comments and questions via e-mail.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

In appreciation of Brendan Ryan

Posted by David Golebiewski
Brendan Ryan covers some serious territory. The stirrup-wearing, mustachioed shortstop quietly posted 3.2 Wins Above Replacement for the St. Louis Cardinals last season, dazzling with his range and athleticism. While Ryan won't blow anyone away at the plate, he's an asset to the Cardinals as a premium defender at an up-the-middle position.

During his major league career, Ryan has a +13.9 UZR/150 in 1,200+ innings at shortstop. John Dewan's Plus/Minus system credited the Lewis-Clark State College product as saving +19 runs with his leather in 2009, trailing only Seattle's Jack Wilson at the position. The Fans Scouting Report rated Ryan as the 5th-best shortstop in the majors. There's a consensus between the numbers and the naked eye: the man is a human vacuum. CHONE projects Ryan to be worth +15 runs defensively in 2010.

Washington Nationals vs St. Louis Cardinals

That plus defense should help him remain a quality starter, even with an anticipated decline at the dish. Ryan was basically a league-average batter in 2009 (99 wRC+), hitting .292/.340/.400 in 429 plate appearances. Odds are, that's on the high end of what we can expect from him offensively.

St. Louis' 7th-round pick in the 2003 draft doesn't draw many walks and has little pop, making him a batting average-dependent player. Ryan's BABIP last season was .335. His expected BABIP (xBABIP) was .322, and his career BABIP in the majors is .317. If his BABIP reverts back his career average, then Ryan is more of a .270-ish batter. CHONE forecasts a .270/.323/.374 triple-slash next season, with an 87 wRC+.

Even if his offense dips, Ryan figures to be an above-average starter. CHONE calls for a 2.8 WAR season for Ryan in 2010, ranking 10th among shortstops. That would make the 28 year-old worth about $12.3 million, while earning little more than the major league minimum as a pre-arbitration player. Inexpensive, effective contributors make it possible to retain the Matt Hollidays of the world at full market value. Brendan Ryan might not be a star, but he offers the Cardinals much more than bold fashion statements and chest-bumps.

A journalism student at Duquesne University, David Golebiewski is a contributing writer for The Hardball Times, Fan Graphs, Inside Edge, Rotoworld and Baseball Daily Digest. Feel free to e-mail him with any questions or comments.

It’s not just about major league payroll

Posted by Evan Brunell
On Tuesday, news broke that the Major League Baseball Player's Association chided the Marlins for not spending enough on major league payroll, invoking an heretofore ignored aspect of the Collective Bargaining Agreement struck between the players union and baseball owners in 2006.

In a quid pro quo for instituting the luxury tax that has essentially provided low-revenue baseball teams with money from the New York Yankees, the agreement includes the following provision:

A principal objective of the Revenue Sharing Plan is to promote the growth of the Game and the industry on an individual Club and on an aggregate basis. Accordingly, each Club shall use its revenue sharing receipts (from the Base Plan, the Central Fund Component and the Commissioner’s Discretionary Fund) in an effort to improve its performance on the field. (Article XXIV(B)(5)(a) - PDF)

Essentially, the MLBPA took the Marlins to task for the low payroll the club has had for years, despite a clear ability to continue contending. Below are the Opening Day payrolls for the 25-man roster (salaries plus pro-rated signing bonuses) as measured by Cot's Contracts (this figure is misleading, as it doesn't include major league salaries for the non-25 man rosters, those that might have been on the disabled list, those that joined the club after Opening Day, amongst other considerations, but it remains a good barometer):

2009	$36,834,000
2008	$21,811,500
2007	$30,507,000
2006	$14,998,500

Except for 2007, when Florida finished a titillating 29th, those payrolls have been the lowest in baseball. Annual roster purging and the occasional fire sale have become commonplace in town, although that might change once the team is renamed the Miami Marlins in 2012, after the new stadium is built.

That wasn't enough for the MLPA and new head Michael Weiner, however. They wanted results now.

It's hard to fault Weiner and the players for growing concerned over the way the Marlins do business while pocketing at least $20 million in revenue sharing. However, remember this: the player's union is concerned only with things that impact the livelihood of major league players. They couldn't really care less if the Marlins are investing $60 million into their minor league development department, their scouting department, their international department... all that matters is major league payroll, because that's where the players make their money.

I say this not to defend Florida: there have been numerous occasions over the past several years that I have been perturbed at their business decisions. I'm glad someone finally gave Florida a kick in the pants.

However, moving forward, it should be important to understand that it's not just major league payroll that drains a team's resources. In some cases, it would be prudent to avoid spending on major league payroll.

Take the Kansas City Royals, for example. Without regard to whether or not the Jason Kendall signing was motivated, in part, by this clause, would you rather give Jason Kendall a two-year contract at $6 million (true story) or put the money towards an international free agent like Aroldis Chapman or a high-impact amateur draft player that fell into later rounds due to signing bonus demands?

I hope that in the next Collective Bargaining Agreement, this clause will be adjusted to reflect that spending to improve the quality of a baseball team isn't tied directly to increasing the major league payroll. Good luck convincing the MLBPA of that, though.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

If you want to know who the Hall of Very Good is…

Posted by Brandon Isleib
...Then check out the three Most Similar Batters charts for this guy. I'm sure several others have similar lists of similar players, but they seem to be congregating around Mr. Magglio.

Brandon Isleib is a stat geek in all his endeavours, which makes him naturally inclined to baseball. He can be reached via the electronic mails.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Brett Myers lands in Houston

Posted by Evan Brunell
So far this year, the Astros have committed $24.6 million to the likes of Brandon Lyon, Pedro Feliz and now Brett Myers.

In other words, the Astros are more than content spending for mediocrity. Lyon is a middle reliever, while Feliz is a no-hit band-aid at third base. At least Myers has some upside.

The 29-year old joins an Astros rotation that desperately needed another starter behind Roy Oswalt and Wandy Rodriguez.

From 2003-2006, Myers was a young, up-and-coming starter capable of throwing 200 innings and serving as a No. 3 in the rotation. The next three years would see injury struggles and just plain ineffectiveness rear its head. Indeed, the last two years have seen Myers' K/9 the lowest since 2004, when he posted a 5.52 ERA in 31 starts.

Myers' peripherals have always been strong, however, as his career 3.90 xFIP would suggest (career 4.40 ERA). The downtick in fastball velocity from 1-2 mph has been enough to depress his strikeout numbers although his command has firmed up.

He missed over two months with right hip surgery and had a recurrence of a right shoulder strain, which knocked him out for most of 2007 as well. Assuming his velocity was impacted by these developments in 2009, he should reach 91-92 mph consistently with his fastball again. If he can do that, he has a chance to vault back up to a No. 3-caliber starter. The curve is his money pitch, but it abandoned him in 2009 -- which may be connected to his hip troubles.

Myers represents a risk. Is it the type of risk the Astros should be taking? The minor leagues are one of the worst in the games, and this is a team intent on competing.

As a strict one-year deal, I wouldn't fault this signing. Problem is, it's not a one-year deal.

At $5.1 million ($3.1 million in 2009, followed by a $2 million buyout of a $8 million mutual option), Myers' value in 2010 should provide a return on investment -- one win at the least.

The mutual option is what turns me off. Sure, the option is essentially a $6 million deal because the buyout would be paid no matter what, but it seems like an awful lot to commit to someone whose contributions in 2010 are questionable.

Being on the hook for 2011 could end up being a headache for general manager Ed Wade.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

The union acts

Posted by Dave Studeman
I just received a press release from the Ballplayer's Union that touches on a financial angle I've often thought about: revenue sharing and the obligation of teams receiving a share of payroll tax to spend it on ballplayer salaries. This obligation was part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement that put revenue sharing in place, and it was the "quid pro quo" given to the Union in the negotiations.

It has seemed to me that this clause gives an inflationary push to mediocre players. The Royals, to pick on one of the more extreme examples, receive a share of the payroll tax, so they have to participate in the free agent market in order to justify the tax—even if they're not in a position to really gain anything from the market. However, only players like Jason Kendall are apparently willing to play in Kansas City. The net effect is a better salary for the Jason Kendalls of the world.

I've been told that this clause hasn't really been a factor, because it hasn't been enforced. Until now. The Union has apparently been concerned about the teeny amount of money the Marlins spend on free agents, so they've used the clause to bring some leverage to the situation. Here's what the press release says:

In response to our concerns that revenue sharing proceeds have not been used as required, the Marlins have assured the Union and the Commissioner’s Office that they plan to use such proceeds to increase player payroll annually as they move toward the opening of their new ballpark. Today’s agreement, which covers the period 2010 through 2012, calls for ongoing communication among the Marlins, the Commissioner’s Office and the Union as the Marlins proceed with that plan. It also permits, after consultation among all parties, adjustments in the Marlins’ plan to respond to unforeseen developments, and calls for arbitral intervention if disagreements arise. We greatly appreciate the willingness of the Commissioner’s Office and the Marlins to engage with us and ensure that all terms of the Basic Agreement are met.

If I'm reading this correctly, if the Union feels that the Marlins are not spending enough on player salaries, they get to take the team to binding arbitration.

The bottom line? That little clause actually does have some teeth, which partially explains some of the bizarro free agent signings you see by small-market teams.

Dave was called a "national treasure" by Rob Neyer. Seriously. Comments about this article can be sent to him through the miracle of e-mail.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Giants bring in Aubrey Huff

Posted by Evan Brunell
Some consider the San Francisco Giants' signing of first baseman Aubrey Huff (CBS5, via MLB Trade Rumors) to a one-year, $3 million deal uninspiring. While Huff should provide a return on investment, it is hard to disagree.

The Giants are able to boast a payroll of $80-$90 million, but with Tim Lincecum hitting arbitration as well as the incredibly short-sighted contracts of Barry Zito and Aaron Rowand, payroll flexibility is a difficult thing to come by.

Back when Barry Bonds was part of the club and the team was advancing to the 2002 World Series, general manager Brian Sabean threw money at the major league system with no regard for the minors, likely dictated from up top. In a switch once the team fell flat on its face (equally both Sabean and the previous ownership's fault), the minor leagues have taken on increased importance in the post-Bonds era, and the Giants have slowly built up into a contender again, no thanks to the Zito and Rowand contracts. In fact, Sabean got burned yet again last offseason, signing shortstop Edgar Renteria to a two-year, $18.5 million deal that was a disaster from day one. Renteria himself wasn't a bad option at the time, but Sabean struck too quickly -- he could have ended up with Renteria at significantly less dollars if he had waited the market out into what ended up a recession.

Coming into the 2010 offseason, it was clear that Sabean would be hamstrung financially with a need to upgrade multiple offensive positions in order to chase down a NL West title. It's questionable if the club could even have afforded Matt Holliday or Jason Bay, but assuming they did, the loss of draft picks and long-term flexibility didn't make sense for a club already grappling with two big-money players not living up to expectations. With multiple positions needing help (namely first base and left field), Sabean went with flexibility and platoon advantages, which -- while not necessarily preferred -- is generally a surefire way to cheaply upgrade your team.

After bringing Mark DeRosa and Juan Uribe into the fold, the next goal was to bring in another bat who could preferably play left. Enter Aubrey Huff, a first baseman.

Huff has stark platoon splits and is best off facing right-handers. While Pablo Sandoval eventually will need to move to first, the Kung-Fu Panda is on a crash diet to bring down his weight. Assuming he can shed some of it, he might be able to stick at third for a couple more years. By slotting Huff at first, Sandoval at third and making DeRosa a left fielder against right-handers, the lineup starts looking like it could do some damage.

Most projections seem to think Huff will bounce back to roughly an OPS no lower than .750. If the Giants platoon him against right-handers, that .750 OPS would have to be considered the low end Huff's expected value. At an expected 1-2 WAR on the season, $3 million represents a win on the Giants' part, at least according to Sky Andrecheck, who found that one win (WAR) was worth about $6 to $7 million. Applying this to Huff's case, $3 million represents an expectation of .48 WAR, something Huff should have no trouble eclipsing.

The only question here is if Huff's signing, even as beneficial as it may be, was the right idea.

Take Adam LaRoche, another first baseman on the market. He has been reportedly seeking a deal around three years and $30 million and probably won't settle for anything less than two years and $16 million. Projected to be around 2-3 WAR, it seems as if Huff is the better choice.

Don't forget about Ryan Garko. The Giants dealt minor league pitcher Scott Barnes -- who has some upside -- to the Indians last July for Garko, who has a right-handed platoon split as well. Garko's 115 at-bat stint with San Francisco was enough for the team to cut ties with him, and yet they're turning to an older, likely more expensive version of Garko.

How about internal candidate Travis Ishikawa? Ishikawa is a genius with the glove, at least according to 2009 UZR numbers (which needs the small sample size caveat), and at only 26 still has a chance to contribute with his bat. Indeed, he has a platoon split against right-handers similar to Huff. He doesn't have the upside against them that Huff brings, but at the major league minimum salary, will provide far more bang for the buck than Huff.

For a club focused on improving it's offense, though, Ishikawa wasn't a logical choice. Plus, at the league minimum and just 25, the team has a fallback option should Huff fall flat on his face, like he did after being traded to Detroit for the end of the 2009 season. (San Francisco also has John Bowker in Triple-A, where he hit .352/.469/.652 against right-handers last year.)

Speaking of defense, by signing Huff, the club may have inadvertently improved the team's defense. The Huff signing moves DeRosa to left field, where DeRosa boasts a career UZR/150 of -1.1 (59 G) as opposed to -6.5 at third (311 G). (DeRosa posted a 21.6 UZR/150 in right field over 160 games.)

At the end of the day, while Huff may end up providing a return on investment above and beyond the $3 million, the deal just goes to show that GM Brian Sabean and Co. still don't understand that throwing money at veterans doesn't mean you're improving the club.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

Aroldis Chapman signs with Reds

Posted by Alex Pedicini
21-year old Cuban phenom Aroldis Chapman has agreed to a six-year deal worth $30.25 million with the Cincinnati Reds. Chapman is a highly regarding left-handed pitching prospect with a fastball that reached triple digits during the World Baseball Classic. He threw 6.1 innings in the WBC striking out eight while walking four and allowing six hits.

Chapman is extremely raw and has only been pitching for a few years, however, his overpowering and impressive velocity and stuff has scouts drooling. As it stands right now he is more of a thrower than a pitcher. He does not have the poise or secondary pitches that one might expect from a $30 million dollar pitcher but he has the potential to develop into a dominant pitching force. He held a workout in Houston in December in which he flashed an above-average slider in addition to his fastball. His third pitch, a change-up, is a major work in progress and must be developed further. Chapman's command has come under scrutiny but his immense potential and project-ability had garnered notice from nearly every team.

The Reds were considered a bit of a dark-horse candidate considering their need to cut payroll this year. They managed to outbid the Red Sox, Angels, and Blue Jays among other clubs. The Cuban defector is not considered to be major league ready. He will likely require at least a year, possibly more, in the minor leagues to become a more polished and complete pitcher. The Reds will have to be patient with his development, particularly because he does not speak English and will probably face a steep learning curve playing baseball everyday in the U.S. This is a steep investment for the Reds organization but with time and effort they may have just landed a future ace.

Alex is a student in Boston. He welcomes all questions and comments here

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Your 2010 Royals starting lineup

Posted by David Golebiewski
In 2009, the Kansas City Royals were an offensive monstrosity. The club ranked second-to-last in the American League in runs scored, while also placing second from the bottom in walk rate.

Once you consider park factors, the Royals fielded the worst lineup in the Junior Circuit. The Seattle Mariners plated fewer runs, but the M's play in a run-suppressing environment. Per the 2010 Bill James Handbook, Safeco Field deflated run-scoring by six percent compared to a neutral ball park from 2007-2009, while Kauffman Stadium boosted runs by two percent. According to Fan Graphs, Kansas City's batters collectively posted a league-worst -66.2 Park-Adjusted Batting Runs last year.

When the team wasn't busy making outs at a dizzying pace, they were playing wretched defense. Per 150 defensive games, Kansas City was -6.5 runs below average with the leather. Only the Minnesota Twins and New York Mets fared worse among major league clubs.

But GM Dayton Moore has not rested on his laurels. Quite the contrary, in fact. With the additions of Jason Kendall and Scott Podsednik, the Royals again figure to be a plodding, out-making juggernaut in 2010.

Just for fun, here are the CHONE offensive projections for Kansas City's starting lineup. For the defensive numbers, I included Jeff Zimmerman's projected 2010 UZR/150 totals. Zimmerman used four-year UZR totals, then did a 5/4/3/2 weighting regressed to 125 games and added a -0.7 UZR/150 aging factor. Ladies and gentleman, your 2010 Kansas City Royals:

C: Jason Kendall, .245/.315/.306, -25 runs per 150 games
1B: Billy Butler, .307/.372/.478, +24 runs/150 games, -4 UZR/150
2B: Alberto Callaspo, .289/.349/.412, +3 runs/150 games, -3 UZR/150
SS: Yuniesky Betancourt, .273/.303/.387, -16 runs/150 games, -10 UZR/150
3B: Alex Gordon, .267/.353/.435, +11 runs/150 games, -1 UZR/150
LF: David DeJesus, .278/.351/.410, +4 runs/150 games, +11 UZR/150
CF: Scott Podsednik, .275/.336/.368, -9 runs/150 games, -3 UZR/150
RF: Jose Guillen, .254/.309/.398, -8 runs/150 games, -11 UZR/150
DH: Josh Fields, .252/.335/.412, +1 run/150 games

Some of these names and positions could change, but you get the point. Here are some other candidates for significant playing time:

Chris Getz, .275/.338/.370, -8 runs/150 games, -4 UZR/150 at second base
Willie Bloomquist, .265/.323/.351, -17 runs/150 games, -1 UZR/150 in right field, -5 UZR/150 in center field, +2 UZR/150 in left field, -4 UZR/150 at shortstop, -2 UZR/150 at second base
Mitch Maier, .262/.326/.368, -11 runs/150 games, -1 UZR/150 in center field, -2 UZR/150 in right field
Mike Aviles, .270/.305/.403, -12 runs/150 games, +6 UZR/150 at shortstop
Brayan Pena, .282/.326/.415, -1 run/150 games
Kila Kaaihue, .240/.353/.388, +6 runs/150 games

Fan Graphs doesn't currently have defensive stats for catchers, so there's no projection for Kendall. The departed Miguel Olivo is widely panned for his defensive shortcomings. A study on catcher defense by Matt Klaassen (AKA devil_fingers) found that Olivo was 8-9 runs below average in 2009. Kendall was better, but only in relative terms (-4.5 runs). Once an offensive asset, Kendall now plays the banjo at the plate.

Podsednik figures to be slightly below average in center field, while regressing with the bat. His BABIP was .342 with the White Sox, boosting his 2009 line.

Butler is a quality hitter who won't turn 24 until April. Callaspo isn't likely to slug near .460 again next season. However, he's not a total zero like his double-play partner. Gordon hasn't lived up to expectations yet, but he was basically a league-average starter in both 2007 (2 WAR) and 2008 (2.4 WAR) before a hip injury derailed his 2009 campaign. DeJesus is deceptively valuable: he doesn't fit the cookie-cutter image of a corner outfielder, but a decent bat and great range have allowed him to average 2.8 WAR over the past three seasons. Outside of that quartet? These guys look like court jesters.

Shield your eyes, Zack Greinke.

A journalism student at Duquesne University, David Golebiewski is a contributing writer for The Hardball Times, Fan Graphs, Inside Edge, Rotoworld and Baseball Daily Digest. Feel free to e-mail him with any questions or comments.

Saturday, January 09, 2010

Good Riddance to Randy Johnson!

Posted by Kevin Dame
Randy Johnson's retirement prompted me to create this word cloud. It shows all his strikeout victims over the years, with larger fonts indicating higher strikeout totals. While Ricky Henderson leads the way with 30 K's, Dean Palmer's 25 strikeouts are more atrocious considering he had 42 at bats against Johnson. Sort of fun to scan through the list and see names from a LONG time ago (eg. Danny Tartabull). It puts into perspective how long Randy Johnson dominated the game of baseball. Apologies that you can't zoom into closer and get a sharper image on the smaller fonts. Wordle's export function doesn't allow for that unfortunately.

Friday, January 08, 2010

Linkadink

Posted by Jeremy Greenhouse
I believe my introduction is allowed to be unrelated to baseball, so I submit the funniest YouTube clip I saw today. It's real and it's spectacular. As for baseball,

Dan Shaughnessy, scourged by the taint of Sullivan Patrick. Or something like that. I'm not so good at the phrases of turning.

And TSJC at RAB similarly FJMs Jon Heyman.

Bert Blyleven is now knocking on the Hall of Fame's door, thanks in no small part to Rich Lederer. Even Bill Shaikin acknowledges the role Rich has played.

Carson Cistulli on Ryan Sweeney, Franklin Gutierrez, and selling jeans. Making glib comments about Moneyball is the new market inefficiency.

Do you have an something interesting you'd like to share? Send a link to any one of THT Live's authors and we'll do our best to include it here.

Any questions? Feel free to email me.

Thursday, January 07, 2010

Jonathan Papelbon calls a spade a spade, but what if it’s not?

Posted by Joshua Fisher
Jonathan Papelbon wants what he's got coming. The Red Sox closer told ESPN Boston's Gordon Edes:

I'm not afraid to show that, hey, I want to be with the Red Sox [in a multiyear deal]. I'd love to have that sense of security of being with a team and knowing, 'Hey, they want me, and I want them, let's have a happy marriage.'

But what do I have to give up to be in that marriage? Understand, I'm in the prime of my career. Why would I give up something? I'd give up something if it's fair to both sides, but I want to do things for my fellow closers, just like Mo paved the way for me. I want every closer out there, man, to get every penny they deserve.'

I love the honesty here, but are Papelbon's expectations realistic?

By conventional standards, he had an excellent 2009, posting a 1.85 ERA and blowing just three save opportunities in 41 chances. A closer look, though, reveals that he really struggled, as his K/BB dropped from 9.63 in 2008 to 3.17 in 2009. That crazy variance--how often does that happen with a full-season guy?--led to a FIP increase of over 50 percent. First things first, I'd suggest that both seasons are outliers to a degree. Nothing in Papelbon's past indicates the 9.63 K/BB figure was going to be sustainable. Similarly, though, I don't see him staying down in the low 3s. Neither do the Bill James, CHONE, or Fan projections on Fangraphs. Each of those forecasts a K/BB in the low 4s, well below Papelbon's 2006-08 marks but certainly better than last season's 3.17.

Stuff-wise, a quick glance says that Papelbon wasn't a great deal more hittable last year than in seasons past. Strikeout and home run figures fell in line with career norms, and velocity didn't suffer a precipitous drop--just 0.6 miles per hour slower on his average fastball. That's not totally insignificant, but he was throwing harder in 2009 than in his very-successful 2006 and 2007 campaigns. So what changed?

Well, that fastball was nearly a run worse per 100 pitches in 2009 than it was in 2008, and not even half as potent last year as in 2006 and 2007. That his fastball in the amazing 2008 season wasn't as good as in prior years seems strange. Less effective fastball, better overall results. It comes down to usage and control. Paps used his heater over 8% more in 2008 and 2009 than in the two preceding years. This worked in 2008 because he walked no one and surrendered his typically-few home runs. In 2009, though, a further decrease in splitters and a slight increase in sliders factored into that ballooning walk rate. Something was broken, but the vagaries of limited innings didn't outwardly reveal this concerning trend.

It's highly unlikely that Papelbon will return to his 2008 form even with a reversion to that year's approach, and it seems that getting back to 2006 and 2007 levels presents an uphill battle of its own. So, coming off a season where the shiny-object numbers were brilliant despite some red flags in the underlying figures, wouldn't this be the perfect time for Papelbon and his agents to seek a big payday?

From some organizations, yes. But I'd be shocked if the Red Sox, for all their savvy, see things Papelbon's way. Indeed, he might be just one more data point in the "Don't Pay Closers, Dummy!" guide to basic general managing, and the club knows that. While there's no reason to think Papelbon won't be excellent in 2010 and very good beyond, it would be foolish to believe he hasn't peaked. And it would be even more foolish to pay him as if his best days were ahead of him. The Red Sox are not where they are because they make foolish decisions.

Unlike most teams, Boston can fully justify paying Papelbon at the $10 million level, which is where the two sides might settle prior to arbitration. That would value him in between his 2008 and 2009 production figures, $13.5 million and $8.8 million, respectively. While getting equal value on a reliever contract is an inefficient use of resources, the Red Sox can absorb it without much difficulty. Flexibility, though, has its own value. Committing eight figures each year for seasons beyond his team-controlled years doesn't make sense. Not for a classically-volatile reliever on the wrong side of his peak years.

The Boston Red Sox and Jonathan Papelbon probably have very different visions of a "perfect marriage" at this point. Papelbon wants a long-term deal advancing the Joe Nathan (4/$47) and Mariano Rivera (3/$45) market, which was established in different economic times. Given that the Red Sox hold all the cards, don't expect Papelbon to get what he wants. He has two choices here: sign long-term with a team that will properly value his performance, or hit the market after the 2011 season and hope enough general managers fascinated by shiny objects still have their jobs.

Joshua operates http://www.dodgerdivorce.com and welcomes feedback via Twitter (@DodgerDivorce) and e-mail (Joshua [DOT] Fisher [DOT] baseball [AT] gmail [DOT] com).

Andre Dawson and two contemporaries

Posted by Sean Smith
Andre Dawson is in the Hall of Fame. I'm glad for him, he deserves it, even though a few superior players fell short and will have to wait to get in. Dawson debuted in 1976, the same year as Dale Murphy, and two years after Fred Lynn. All three were at times great players, gold glove winning center fielders who hit for power. All three moved to right field in mid career.

My WAR totals say Dawson was the best of the three, 57 wins above replacement compared to 47 for Lynn and 44 for Murphy. That probably isn't the best way to judge the greatness of a player though. A player who plays four seasons of 2 WAR each (in other words, average) may have the same value as a player with one 8 WAR season and nothing else, but the 8 WAR player demonstrated greatness. Exactly how to balance peak vs. career value is not an easy call, and I'm not going to suggest there is one right way to do it. Here are a few others:

Best Season:

Fred Lynn won the MVP award in his 1975 rookie year, but he was even better in 1979. He hit 333/423/637 that year, hitting 39 homeruns, and won a gold glove for his work in center field. He was absolutely robbed by Don Baylor, who spent almost half his time as a DH, and the other half as a poor fielding left fielder. He had a great year at bat, but didn't lead the league in any of the rate triple crown stats. Obviously, since Fred Lynn led in all three categories. His season was good for 8.4 WAR. Dale Murphy's best by WAR was 7.5 in his 44 homerun, .580 SLG 1987 season. His best season also might have been his second MVP year of 1983, 7.2 WAR. Dawson's best season was worth 7.3 WAR, in 1981. He had a .553 slugging percentage, a 157 OPS+, 24 homeruns, and 26 steals in 30 attempts. This might have been the best all around season of the three players though, since he did it in only 103 games during a strike shortened season. Dawson averaged 4.5 WAR per season the four years previous, so my estimate of what he would have done playing another 1/3 of a season is another 1.5 WAR, putting him around 8.5, very close to Lynn. I'll rank Lynn's 1979 first since he actually put up those wins, but move Dawson 1981 to #2 ahead of Murphy.

Five year peak:

Dawson, for 1979 to 1983, had 30.6 WAR. Murphy, for 1983 to 1987, had 26.6, and Lynn had 24.7 from 1975 to 1979. Lynn never had five great years in a row, between his two MVP-caliber seasons he had two very good years, 1976 and 1978, and a so-so 1977. Dawson wins this battle. You could go with best three year peak, best six year, look at non-consecutive or consecutive, or any number of combinations. Five year peak is just one commonly used measure.

Wins Above Excellence:

Time to introduce a new junk stat. For this measure, I'm looking at how many wins a player has above three in a season, though his season total can never be below zero. This gives a player credit for great seasons, and ignores anything where a player is average or below, it neither adds nor hurts a player's case for greatness. A great player should not be penalized if he hangs around past his peak contributing a only little bit to his teams. For this measure, Murphy pulls into the lead, with 20.7, compared to 18.3 for Dawson and 15.5 for Lynn.

I used to make the argument that Dale Murphy was less deserving for HOF honors than Fred Lynn. Lynn has the better rate stats (283/360/484) compared to Murphy's 265/346/469. Murphy did have about 1000 more plate appearances though. Now I'm not so sure, Murphy did have more great years than Lynn did. Lynn had more good years, and Murphy almost instantly dropped from a great player to a replacement level one. At one time he looked like a lock for 500 home runs, and in the end he failed to get 400.

Lynn received little support for the Hall of Fame, lasting only two years on the ballot. Murphy is still on the ballot after 12 years. He had decent enough initial support, reaching 23% in his second year, but has failed to gain any ground, getting between 8 and 13 percent each of the last seven years. He's a very unlikely candidate at this point. In my opinion, the writers have made the correct decision regarding this group of players. I can't say the same for some of their other choices.

Sean Smith is a lifelong Angels fan despite never visiting the west coast until April 2006. His work can also be found at baseballprojection.com and Anaheim Angels All the Way and he can be contacted by email.

What cap will Mike Piazza wear in the Hall of Fame?

Posted by Pat Andriola
*Initial note: I'm a Mets fan. Bias is inevitable.

As talk surrounding the Hall of Fame swirls, I thought it would be interesting to look ahead to 2012, when (barring some amazing comeback/terrible voting/Mayan-predicted apocalypse) Mike Piazza will be inducted into the Hall of Fame. The case is pretty clear cut, and the only question will be which cap Piazza is wearing on his Hall plaque. Remember, because of some shady dealings with Wade Boggs' selection, the Hall decided to choose the hat for the players back in 2001, although the player's wishes are still heavily taken into account.

Value

For his overall playing time, I decided to look at Sean Smith's WAR database (rWAR), as well as Fangraphs WAR (fWAR) for as long it goes back.

Year     Team      rWAR      fWAR
1992     Dodgers    0
1993     Dodgers    7
1994     Dodgers    4
1995     Dodgers    6.3
1996     Dodgers    6.1
1997     Dodgers    9.3
1998     Dodgers    0.9
1998     Mets       5.5
1999     Mets       4.3
2000     Mets       5.2
2001     Mets       4.2
2002     Mets       3       5.3
2003     Mets       2       2.4
2004     Mets      -0.4     2
2005     Mets       0.8     2.7

Dodgers rWAR: 33.6
Mets rWAR: 24.6
Mets rWAR (1998-2001)+ fWAR (2002-2005): 31.6

Tango and Smith disagree greatly on Piazza's years as a Met from 2002 on, so we have to look at both. Overall, it's pretty clear that Piazza played his best ball as a Dodger. While he was certainly fantastic as a Met, he put up some dominant numbers in LA. He had an OPS+of 159 while wearing LA blue and 136 donning the blue and orange. Also, if his defense was ever any good, it was most likely when he was younger and more athletic, rather than his older days in New York.

Service Time

Los Angeles: 7 seasons, 726 games, 3017 PA, 896 hits, 177 homers

New York: 9 seasons, 972 games, 3941 PA, 1028 hits, 220 homers

In terms of bulk, New York wins by a decent amount. It's not a ton, but it's enough to put some separation between the two stints.

Non-Regular Season Stuff

Los Angeles: 6 playoff games, 26 playoff at-bats, 0 playoff series wins, 6 all-star selections, 6 silver sluggers, 1 Rookie of the Year, 1 All-Star MVP

New York: 22 playoff games, 86 playoff at-bats, 3 playoff series wins (1 NL Championship), 6 all-star selections, 4 silver sluggers

It's really tough to actually weigh these things meaningfully, but the playoff time seems to push this one closer to New York.

Miscellaneous

Mike is extremely close with Mr. Dodger, Tommy Lasorda?

Piazza's dramatic post-9/11 homerun may actually be a subtle tipping point in the whole matter. In debating things with little real world significance, Mike did something that really moved a city in a troubling time, as simple or silly as it may seem.

Final Thoughts

Although he played better ball as a Dodger, he played longer while on the Mets, and exposed himself to the playoffs and the New York media, ultimately cementing himself as part of the franchise. Again, I admit personal bias, but if I had to guess, I'd say Mike goes into the Hall of Fame in 2012 with a NY cap on his head.

Pat Andriola is a junior at Tufts University. You can contact him at Patrick.Andriola @ tufts.edu or follow him on Twitter @tuftspat.

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Me vs. reality

Posted by Chris Jaffe
For the third straight year, I made my fearless (or is it brainless?) predictions for how the BBWAA vote would go. Now that the vote is in, let's see how I did:

Name	     BBWAA	Me	Dif.
Andre Dawson	78	84	6
Bert Byleven	74	73	1
Robeto Alomar	74	82	8
Jack Morris	52	51	1
Barry Larkin	52	60	8
Lee Smith	47	52	5
Edgar Martinez	36	35	1
Tim Raines	30	36	6
Mark McGwire	24	30	6
Alan Trammell	22	17	5
Fred McGriff	22	24	2
Don Mattingly	16	15	1
Dave Parker	15	18	3
Dale Murphy	12	15	3
Harold Baines	6	6	0

Good news and bad news here.

Good news: I was close on almost everyone. I'm especially proud of my guesses on Blyleven and Martinez. My margin of error was only 3.7% on average, and I was within eight percent on everyone.

Bad news: for the first time ever, I missed an induction call. I said Alomar would and the BBWAA disagreed. That said, I wasn't off by much - eight more votes and he walks in. Still, it was a miss. Also, a lot of these guys were out of order.

Final note: Repoz at BTF made a tally of HoF ballots that totaled almost one-fourth of the electorate. His margin of error was 4.96% per ballot, so I was a little closer. That's good for me because that helps justify my annual column. (I'd still do it anyway, but it would just be an exercise done for fun). Repoz was more likely to really nail a person's vote total than me, but he was also more likely to be widely off the mark, as was the case with Alomar, Raines, and Mattingly.

We both had Alomar go in, and he also had Blyleven go in. Man, it was a tough year to call the vote!

History instructor by day, statnerd by night, Chris Jaffe leads one of the most exciting double lives imaginable; with the exception of every other double life possible to imagine. Despite his lack of comic-book-hero-worthiness, Chris enjoys farting around with this stuff. His new book, Evaluating Baseball's Managers is available for order. Chris welcomes responses to his articles via e-mail.

Dawson’s in

Posted by Dave Studeman
Andre Dawson was elected to the Hall of Fame today, with 78% of the vote. Bert Blyleven and Roberto Alomar just missed making it. You can can read the full voting tally at the BBWAA site. Dawson and Blyleven both added about ten percentage points to their totals from last year's vote; Alomar was on the ballot for the first time this year.

Like a lot of sabermetricians, I'm not ecstatic about Dawson's election. His low OBP and walk totals stick out as a major negative. However, he was otherwise a great all-around ballplayer and reportedly a fine person. I will always admire the way he stuck it to Ueberroth and the "lords of the cartel" in 1987, daring owners to sign him to a contract, any contract, any salary. Dawson is certainly Hall-worthy.

Congrats, Hawk.

Dave was called a "national treasure" by Rob Neyer. Seriously. Comments about this article can be sent to him through the miracle of e-mail.

Linkage

Posted by Dan Novick
On this day in 1912, New Mexico was admitted as the 47th U.S. state. And in 1848, Samuel Morse first successfully tested the electrical telegraph. Yay for history. In other news....

Beyond the Box Score is seeking your input for their 2009 sabermetric writing awards. Nominations will be over the next few days, and then voting will take place soon after. Let's hope they can avoid the hanging chad.

The State of the Prospectus.

Patriot gives us a look at how each lineup slot hit in 2009. Strangely (to me at least), National League 3-4 batters hit much better than their AL counterparts. The OBP of the NL's No. 3 hitters is absurd. You can view the full spreadsheet here.

Is Javier Vazquez unclutch? Well it certainly appears that he has been, but there's just no way to tell if that trend will continue.

Do you have an something interesting you'd like to share? Send a link to any one of THT Live's authors and we'll do our best to include it here.

Dan Novick is a lifelong Yankees fan, and still gets the chills every time Enter Sandman plays from the Yankee Stadium speakers. He welcomes comments and questions via e-mail.

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Holliday signs

Posted by Chuck Brownson
After much discussion in the blogosphere and elsewhere, Matt Holliday signed a seven year, $119 million contract to return to the St. Louis Cardinals today. Holliday was courted by the...well, we're not exactly sure who courted Holliday prior to signing with the Cards. We know that Boston offered Holliday a five year, $82.5 million contract to play left for the Sox before turning their attention to John Lackey and Mike Cameron. Aside from that, the Orioles were rumored to have shown some interest in Holliday, though rumors of them offering the free agent outfielder an eight year, $130 contract were shot down by O's brass.

Aside from the Sox, the O's, and the Cards, no one else has seemed to have shown much serious interest in the ex-Rockie, Athletic, and Cardinal. There's this recession going on, you see, and teams are wary of nine-figure contracts and/or dealing with superagent Scott Boras. Even the Yankees, considering the potentially bountiful 2011 free agent class and the relatively negligible marginal value that Holliday would bring to the team, steered clear of the top free agent on the market.

**There's little doubt that the Holliday signing should help make the Cardinals a strong competitor for the next several seasons.** (Icon/SMI)

There will be a great deal of debate about the size of Holliday's contract but what's inarguable is that the Cardinals have gotten a legitimate middle-of-the-order hitter to place behind Albert Pujols in the Cards lineup which helps to make the team a playoff contender for the next several years. That fact, along with Pujols' godlike status in the Gateway City, will help encourage Pujols to extend his contract with the Cardinals for the remainder of his career (provided the team will be able to come up with the necessary booty now that they're giving Holliday $17 million per year through 2016). Still, what is the likelihood that Holliday lives up to his Zito-like contract?

The value of one win above replacement level has been estimated at about $4.4 million on the free agent market. The question then becomes, "how well will Holliday perform during the seven years Holliday wears the birds on the bat?". Over the last three seasons, Holliday has been worth 8.0, 6.3, and 5.7 wins, respectively. Assuming his value declines by half a win per year, we can expect him to be worth around 5.2 wins in 2010. At $4.4 million per win, that puts Holliday as being worth $22.88 million in 2010, a five million dollar surplus to the Cards. Holliday will be 30 next week, however, and we should expect some regression as he ages. If we assume his value declines by half a win per year, we can expect him to be worth 2.2 wins in 2016, the final year of his contract. Assuming a seven percent inflation rate for players' contracts, Holliday would be worth $14.5 million in the final year of his contract, about $2.5 million what the team is paying him.

What if, however, Holliday isn't quite as good as those projections suggest. After all, how many 36 year old outfielders were worth at least 2.2 wins last season? Answer: Three. Ichiro Suzuki, Mike Cameron, and Raul Ibanez. Sean Smith's CHONE projections have Holliday as approximately a 4.5 win player in 2010 and Matt Klaassen at Fangraphs has Holliday as a nearly identical 4.6 win player this season. If we use Klaassen's 4.6 win number, Holliday's total value to the Cards over seven years is about $113 million, just six million dollars shy of the amount the Cards will pay him.

Holliday's projected WAR through 2016
Year	WAR	$ Value/Year	Total Value	Team's Annual Surplus
2010	4.6	$4.4 M	$22.88 M	$5.88 M
2011	4.1	$4.7 M	$19.30 M	$2.30 M
2012	3.6	$5.0 M	$18.14 M	$1.14 M
2013	3.1	$5.4 M	$16.71 M	-$0.29 M
2014	2.6	$5.8 M	$15.00 M	-$2.00 M
2015	2.1	$6.2 M	$12.96 M	-$4.04 M
2016	1.6	$6.6 M	$10.57 M	-$6.43 M
Total	21.7	----	$112.91 M	-$6.09 M

Most people will say that coming up short by just six million dollars is a small price to pay for Holliday's production today, the increased likelihood that Pujols signs with the team, and the increased likelihood that the Cardinals will win championships during the early part of the contract. After all, flags fly forever, right? All that's true, of course and it's unlikely that the Cardinals will end up burdened with a Barry Zito or Vernon Wells-like contract down the road. Klaassen makes an excellent point, however, that "paying average market value for a win isn’t necessarily a 'dumb' move, but it isn’t 'smart' either." Though Holliday's contract appears to pay him what he's worth, this is only an "average contract" from the team's perspective.

Moreover, the contract appears to include a clause that will trigger an automatic eighth year if Holliday finishes in the top 10 in the MVP voting in year seven. Of course, if Holliday plays well enough to finish that high in the MVP voting, he's likely to be pretty productive in year eight as well. Still, one can't help but wonder why, with the ostensible lack of competition for Holliday's services, Cards' GM John Mozeliak was willing to guarantee a seventh year and offer up the eighth year option. Boras had already declined the Red Sox' offer and, though the Orioles seemed interested, there were all sorts of signals out that Holiday preferred to play for a competitive team, stay in the National League and with the Cardinals. Couldn't Mozeliak have signed Holliday to a six year, $102 million offer -- thus beating Jason Bay's average annual value and saving the team the seventh, and least valuable to the team, contract year? When Boras insisted on the seventh year and the vesting option for the eighth year, couldn't Mozeliak have just dared Holliday to go play for the Orioles instead? Isn't it likely that Boras and Holliday would have blinked and settled for the six year deal?

Though it appears as though Boras did manage, once again, to get a GM to bid against himself -- thus increasing his client's contract -- if the worst thing we can say about the contract is that the team unnecessarily is on the hook for one additional year, this is unlikely to be a horrible contract from the team's perspective. The team is better today than it was yesterday. The signing won't cost the team a first round draft pick, though neither will it net them two had Holliday signed with anyone else. The fact that the team is more likely to be competitive throughout Pujols' golden years should give him one more reason to extend his contract with the team rather than waiting to see how many millions the Yankees, Red Sox, or Mets would throw at him. The Cardinals have to be considered the favorites to repeat as champs of the NL Central. After all, flags fly forever, right?

Chuck is a lifelong Cardinals fan who welcomes comments below or via email at chuckbtht AT gmail DOT com.

Randy Johnson retiring?

Posted by Pat Andriola
It looks like Randy Johnson is going to announce his retirement tomorrow morning. If so, the Big Unit has timed this one nicely, coinciding the Hall of Fame hoopla with his trot into the sunset. Johnson will end with career totals of 303 wins, 4875 strikeouts, 3.29 ERA, 3.19 FIP, 10 All-Star selections, and 5 Cy Young awards.

What may be the most upsetting part of RJ's possible retirement is that he doesn't even seem to be done playing quality baseball. Here were his 2009 numbers:

4.91 FIP, 3.74 xFIP, 5.62 tRA, 0.4 WAR

His season was shortened due to injuries, but RJ was seriously hurt by a 19.2 HR/FB%. Remember, his past season was one year removed from when he did this:

3.76 FIP, 3.71 xFIP, 4.36 tRA, 3.9 WAR

Bill James has Johnson pinned for a 3.73 FIP next year. It looks like we won't see Unit in a big league game ever again, but we'll likely see him in Cooperstown in 2014.

Pat Andriola is a junior at Tufts University. You can contact him at Patrick.Andriola @ tufts.edu or follow him on Twitter @tuftspat.

Pittsburgh: land of exiled prospects

Posted by David Golebiewski
When asked how he passed the time during the offseason, Rogers Hornsby once replied, "I stare out the window and wait for spring."

Those with hardball on the brain can sympathize. Sure, the hot stove provides some solace, but it's not the same as kicking back and taking in a ball game or culling those box scores. Hard-core fans find strange ways to satiate their baseball appetites when the days are short and the snow is falling.

The other day, I stumbled across a stack of old Baseball America Prospect Handbooks. After regarding the players adorning the covers (Joe Mauer in 2004, Delmon Young in 2005, Jeremy Hermida in 2006, Phil Hughes in 2007), I got to thinking about the unpredictable nature of prospect evaluation. As I thumbed through the pages, the following players stood out:

Ronny Cedeno
Jeff Clement
Andy LaRoche
Lastings Milledge
Donnie Veal

What do these fellows have in common? All once ranked among the top three prospects in their respective organizations, all disappointed their first team and all now have a shot at redemption in Pittsburgh. Here's a quick rundown of what went wrong and what they future may hold for this quintet of erstwhile prospects.

Ronny Cedeno
Age: 27
Bats/Throws: R/R
BA Prospect Ranking (Cubs): #3 in 2006

Cedeno's bat didn't show much life in the low minors, but he spanked Triple-A pitching for a .357/.413/.528 line in 600+ plate appearances. A massive .393 BABIP boosted that triple-slash, but Cedeno still climbed prospect lists. Baseball America praised his smooth actions at shortstop, projecting that he had enough pop to hit 15 homers per season as well.

Suffice it to say, Cedeno hasn't reached those offensive expectations. Out of options, he was shipped to Seattle last January. The Bucs acquired him in July as part of a seven-player swap that netted the Mariners Jack Wilson and Ian Snell. In 1300+ plate appearances between the Cubs, Mariners and Pirates, the Venezuelan native holds a .240/.280/.346 line and a depressing 59 wRC+.

Pirates Cedeno Scores Against Rockies Torrealba in Denver

Cedeno hasn't controlled the zone, walking in just 4.7 percent of his plate appearances. According to Fan Graphs, he has hacked at 35.5 percent of pitches thrown outside of the strike zone (25 percent major league average). For a guy with little power (.106 ISO), he doesn't make a whole lot of contact, either. Cedeno has struck out 20.7 percent of the time, with an 81.8 percent contact rate that's right around the big league average.

He has negative run values against all pitches except curveballs. Few hitters flail against fastballs like Cedeno:

Cedeno's career run value per 100 pitches, by pitch type
Fastballs: -2.00
Sliders: -0.84
Cutters: -1.21
Curveballs: +0.02
Change-ups: -0.14

Among batters with 400 or more plate appearances from 2007-2009, Cedeno ranks as the fourth-worst fastball hitter in the majors. The guy right ahead of him? Tony Pena Jr. And he's now a pitcher with the Giants.

What about his glove? Well, Cedeno has a career -5.6 UZR/150 in over 2,200 innings at shortstop.

In the spring, Cedeno will compete with Bobby Crosby for Pittsburgh's starting shortstop job. That battle would have been much more interesting half a decade ago.

Jeff Clement
Age: 26
Bats/Throws: L/R
BA Prospect Rankings (Mariners): #1 in 2006, #2 in 2007, #1 in 2008

The third overall pick in the 2005 amateur draft, Clement was supposed to be a franchise pillar as a catcher with immense power from the left side of the dish. Clement's bat has been fairly potent in the pros: he holds a career .282/.370/.495 minor league line, walking in 10.6 percent of his trips to the plate and striking out 17.8 percent.

The former University of Southern California star was never considered a great defender, however, and lingering knee injuries have likely put an end to his chances of being an everyday backstop at the major league level. According to Baseball America, Clement had surgery in May of 2006 to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee (he had a bone chip removed from his left elbow, too).

He fell out of favor with the Mariners, batting .237/.309/.393 in 243 big league plate appearances in 2007 and 2008. In 2009, he was passed over when an injury to Kenji Johjima Johjima opened up a roster spot. Clement appeared at catcher in just 16 games for the Tacoma Rainers this past year, spending most of his time at DH and first base.

Traded to the Bucs in the aforementioned Wilson/Snell deal, Clement didn't earn a September call-up because of an oblique injury, and didn't make an appearance at catcher with his new organization.

Clement has a shot to open the season as Pittsburgh's starting first baseman, depending upon whether the Pirates are comfortable with Garrett Jones in right field. CHONE projects Clement to hit .264/.342/.460 in 2010. For reference, the cumulative line at first base in 2009 was .277/.362/.483.

As a catcher, Clement projected to be a well above-average hitter for the position. As a first baseman, he's just another face in the crowd.

Andy LaRoche
Age: 26
Bats/Throws: R/R
BA Prospect Rankings (Dodgers): #2 in 2006, #1 in 2007, #2 in 2008

A walks and doubles machine in the Los Angeles farm system, LaRoche pieced together a career .295/.382/.517 triple-slash in the minors. While his power was considered good instead of great, Adam's little brother owned the zone with an 11.6 percent walk rate and a 14 percent punch out rate.

After a sluggish trials with the Dodgers in 2007 and 2008, LaRoche was included in the three-way Manny Ramirez/ Jason Bay blockbuster in July of '08.

Pittsburgh Pirate Andy LaRoche hits a home run against the L. A. Dodgers in Pittsburgh

As Pittsburgh's starting third baseman in 2009, LaRoche hit .258/.330/.401, with a 97 wRC+. His bat heated up late in the season, but there seems to be some sense of disappointment among Pirate fans regarding LaRoche.

However, I would argue that he's actually a pretty nice piece to have. Andy combined average offense with quality leather at the hot corner, posting a +5.1 UZR/150 this past season. John Dewan's Plus/Minus system shows LaRoche saving seven runs more than an average third baseman in 2009. According to Fan Graphs, LaRoche was a 2.5 WAR player.

There's little star potential here, but a pre-arbitration third baseman capable of two to three WAR production has a good deal of value. And who knows, maybe there's a little more offense to come.

How LaRoche fits into the team's long-term plans remains to be seen, as Pedro Alvarez is nearly ready for prime time. If Alvarez can cut it at third and Akinori Iwamura isn't retained, LaRoche could take over second base in 2011. Alvarez could also slide over to first base, clouding Clement's future.

Lastings Milledge
Age: 25 in April
Bats/ Throws: R/R
BA Prospect Rankings (Mets): #1 in 2005, #1 in 2006

Now patrolling an outfield corner in Pittsburgh, Milledge must look to his left and glare enviously. He was, after all, supposed to be what Andrew McCutchen has become.

The 12th overall pick in the 2003 amateur draft, Milledge reached the majors by the age of 21. He understandably scuffled in limited playing time with the Mets in 2006 (75 wRC+), but he hit an exciting .277/.388/.440 at Triple-A Norfolk that year. Unlike previous seasons, Milledge worked the count well with Norfolk. Milledge's walk rate was just 5.8 percent in Low-A, 7.9 percent in High-A and 5.9 percent in Double-A. But in 2006, he drew a free pass a 11.7 percent.

It's been all downhill from there, however. The Mets traded him to the Nationals following the 2007 season, and the Nats included him in last June's Nyjer Morgan deal. His career big league line is a tepid .267/.327/.399, with a 93 wRC+. His ISO is .132. The biggest problem has been a reversion to those hacking ways. Millege's career major league walk rate is just 6.4 percent, and he has chased 31 percent of pitches thrown outside of the strike zone.

Milledge played his way out of center field as well. His career UZR/150 in the middle garden is a grisly -16.3. It's highly unlikely that he's that bad- we are talking about a sample of 1,300-some innings. But in Pittsburgh, he is viewed strictly as a left fielder. Milledge's career UZR/150 between the outfield corners is -2.7 in about 1,200 innings. That's not much to go on, so we'll have to see how Lastings' defense rates going forward. But the early returns aren't that promising.

The former pride of the Mets farm system did require surgery to repair a fracture to the ring finger on his right hand in 2009. Perhaps a lack of bat control helps explain part of his paltry numbers (87 wRC+, .094 ISO). But Milledge's time for excuses is over. He has compiled all of 0.7 WAR in the majors- he needs to produce in 2010.

Donnie Veal
Age: 25
Throws: L
BA Prospect Rankings (Cubs): #2 in 2007

A 6-4, 230 pound southpaw with a plus fastball, Veal once projected as a top-of-the-rotation starter in the Chicago Cubs system. He punched out 10.1 batters per nine innings between two A-Ball stops in 2006. Veal's control lagged behind (4.8 BB/9), but Baseball America noted a low-90's fastball touching the mid-90's, as well as a slow curveball with plenty of breaking action.

The wheels fell off from there. Veal's control showed no progression, as he issued five walks per nine innings in Double-A in both 2007 and 2008. Exasperated by the big lefty's lack of development, the Cubs left Veal off the 40-man roster last winter. The Pirates snatched him up in the Rule V Draft, knowing that Veal was a broken prospect. Baseball America's 2009 scouting report lamented that Veal looked "like an entirely different pitcher." That hopping fastball failed to crack 90 MPH at times, and his curveball devolved into "a sweepy pitch with little power and only occasional spin."

It's worth noting that Veal has endured more than any young man should have to. His mother passed away from cancer in 2004, and his father died in a scuba diving accident in 2007. Veal had to help raise his younger brother. Sometimes, baseball doesn't seem like such a big deal.

In 2009, Veal remained with the Pirates for the duration of the season. He spent plenty of time on the DL with groin and finger injuries, giving him lengthy minor league rehab stints. Still green as grass, Veal posted a 31/26 K/BB ratio in 27.1 innings pitched between Double-A Altoona and Triple-A Indianapolis.

It was more of the same in his rare major league appearances. Veal compiled an ugly 16/20 K/BB ratio in 16.1 innings, with a 7.16 ERA. How bad was Veal's control? He placed just 40.7 percent of his pitches within the strike zone (49 percent major league average), with a 34.5 first-pitch strike percentage (58 percent average). Veal wildly chucked 91-92 MPH fastballs, mixing in some mid-70's curveballs as well. Hitters understandably glued their bats to their shoulders, swinging just 33.3 percent of the time (45 percent average).

Happily, Veal did at least enjoy a nice Arizona Fall League season as a starter. In 21 innings, he whiffed 22 batters and walked seven, surrendering 6 runs in the process.

Now that his Rule V year has passed, Veal may well head back to Double-A or Triple-A to make up for lost development time. The Pirates could keep him in the rotation, though he has miles to go before he would be a viable major league option in that role.

LaRoche has quitely turned into a productive, cheap everyday player. Clement has a shot at being a league-average first baseman. However, Cedeno, Milledge and Veal have a long way to go if they hope to shake that failed prospect label.

A journalism student at Duquesne University, David Golebiewski is a contributing writer for The Hardball Times, Fan Graphs, Inside Edge, Rotoworld and Baseball Daily Digest. Feel free to e-mail him with any questions or comments.

Monday, January 04, 2010

Michael Taylor finds a new home

Posted by Alex Pedicini
I doubt many prospects have had a more tumultuous off-season than outfielder Michael Taylor. I profiled Taylor back in July when he appeared to be on the fast track to Philadelphia after scorching the Eastern League to a tune of .333/.408/.569. He enjoyed similar success in Triple-A where he posted a .375 wOBA in 128 plate appearances over the last month and half of the 2009 season.

However, since the end of the season Taylor has been been swapped to two different teams. He was first dealt to Toronto as part of the trade that brought Roy Halladay to Philadelphia. Toronto, in turn, shipped him off to Oakland in exchange for prospect Brett Wallace.

In Oakland Taylor has a chance to compete right away for a corner outfield spot, where the Athletics are noticeably thin. Oakland views Taylor has a Jermaine Dye type of player, both in terms of size (Taylor is listed at 6'6, 250) and skill set. He possesses a unique blend of size and speed (21 stolen bases in 26 attempts in 2009).

According to BaseballProjection.com, Taylor projects to hit .272/.324/.437 (worth roughly five runs per 150 games). These numbers are slightly above average which I'm sure Oakland will gladly accept from their 24-year old rookie. While Taylor has good athleticism his defense rates out as only average. He has a chance to become a solid everyday player with 20 home run and 20 stolen base potential.

Alex is a student in Boston. He welcomes all questions and comments here

Link-o-rama

Posted by Dan Novick
The THT Live crew is back with another set of interesting links from the last few days. We haven't overtaken Neyer (yet) like Pat hoped last week, so this will have to do for now...

Tom Tango took questions from a sabermetrics apostate. The answers are worth reading. The questions...not so much.

Capitol Avenue Club unveils a tool using Hit Tracker Online that lets you visualize how a player's home run production might stack up in a given park.

Joe Posnanski with 9,000 words about the Royals' decade. Someone read it for me and summarize.

Chad Jennings of the LoHud Yankees blog asks which players are considered local heroes but remain unappreciated elsewhere. My vote? A-Rod.

Dan Novick is a lifelong Yankees fan, and still gets the chills every time Enter Sandman plays from the Yankee Stadium speakers. He welcomes comments and questions via e-mail.

Sunday, January 03, 2010

Projecting Felipe Lopez

Posted by David Golebiewski
Free agent second baseman Felipe Lopez is fresh off a season in which he compiled 4.6 Wins Above Replacement. The switch-hitter only qualified as a type B free agent, meaning he won't cost potential employers a draft pick (the Brewers didn't offer him arbitration anyway). Lopez will not turn 30 until May, making him a relative youngster as far as free agents are concerned.

Despite all of those factors, the market for Lopez's services has been hushed. Strange, right? Lopez's WAR total tied him with Ian Kinsler for fourth-best among second baseman. Why aren't teams with a hole at the keystone position lining up to sign this guy?

It appears that GMs are wisely betting that Lopez will experience a good deal of regression in 2010.

Splitting his 2009 season between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Milwaukee Brewers, Lopez hit a robust .310/.383/.427, good for a 116 wRC+. He did a good job of working the count, walking in 10.5 percent of his plate appearances and striking out just 16.6 percent of the time. According to Fan Graphs, Lopez swung at 21.5 percent of pitches thrown outside of the strike zone, comfortably below the 25.1 percent major league average.

While Lopez displayed a good eye, he also benefitted from a .360 BABIP. Using Derek Carty's xBABIP calculator,we find that Lopez's rate of home runs, strikeouts, stolen bases, line drives, fly balls, pop-ups and ground balls suggests that his BABIP should have been closer to .330. His career BABIP is also in that range, at .323. If Lopez has a .330 BABIP instead of a .360 mark, then he's more of a .280/.350/.400-type hitter. Lopez's career line? .269/.338/.400.

MLB: Milwaukee Brewers at Los Angeles Dodgers

Sean Smith's CHONE projects Lopez to bat .272/.342/.377 in 2010, which comes to -4 runs per 150 games. He's not a bad hitter for a middle infielder, but 2009 looks like an outlier for a guy with a career 97 wRC+.

Primarily a shortstop earlier in his career, Lopez has played the majority of his games at second base over the past few seasons. In 2009, he posted an excellent +7.6 UZR/150 at the position.

Of course, using one year of defensive data is never a good idea. He was well below average at shortstop, with a career -11.2 UZR/150. Moving down the defensive spectrum, Lopez would be expected to post a better mark as a second baseman. He has, but that 2009 figure also looks like an outlier. Lopez's career UZR/150 in 2,400+ innings at second is +2.6. CHONE projects him as a +1 run defender in 2010. Again, nothing wrong with that. But Lopez isn't the defensive whiz that his 2009 numbers suggest.

With regression likely in store for both his bat and his glove, Lopez projects to be around a 2-2.5 WAR player in 2010. That's not bad, but Kelly Johnson (projected for 2.5-3 WAR by CHONE) just inked a one-year, $2.35 million deal with the Diamondbacks. Orlando Hudson, a 2-3 WAR second baseman, is still on the market and competing with Lopez for the openings that remain. Dan Uggla and Jose Lopez are trade candidates.

The supply of second baseman appears to trump the demand. The Twins (if they're uncomfortable with Nick Punto's great glove and slack bat or Alexi Casilla), Mariners (if they trade Jose Lopez or switch his position), Cubs and Dodgers could be in the market. But those teams could also evaluate Lopez's talents, look at their in-house options and say, "how much of an upgrade is he, really?"

Felipe Lopez is a perfectly acceptable starting second baseman. But, given the chilly reception that he has received on the free agent market and the other alternatives available, he could end up having to sign as a super utility-type player.

A journalism student at Duquesne University, David Golebiewski is a contributing writer for The Hardball Times, Fan Graphs, Inside Edge, Rotoworld and Baseball Daily Digest. Feel free to e-mail him with any questions or comments.

Saturday, January 02, 2010

Jason Bay lands with the Mets

Posted by Evan Brunell
The Jason Bay saga is over, as the left-fielder has reportedly agreed to a four-year, $66 million deal with the New York Mets. The deal includes a fifth-year option that would bring the total amount of the deal to $80 million.

The concern surrounding Bay, which has caused many to be hesitant to commit a five-year deal to someone entering his age-31 year, is "old people skills."

Bay cannot play defense to save his life and has a low batting average while seeing his value in plate discipline and power. Power is generally the last component to a player's game to develop -- while also being an early traits to disappear (speed is widely considered the first to go). Given this is what Bay's entire game revolves around, it is difficult to justify such a large contract. (As for Bay's power playing in Citi Field... every batter that steps into that park has to play by the same rules that Bay will, so his power will still be greater than most that enter the park.)

Bay used to hit for average, but a .267 batting average over the last three years suggests that this is a thing of the past. His defense certainly won't improve, while his speed (you can generally rely on him to barely crack double figures) will eventually deteriorate. His power figures to hold up well enough over the next four years that the contract won't be considered an albatross. Bay's fly ball rate has increased five years running, while his isolated power has remained strong sans the 2007 outlier season.

ALCS Game 3 Tampa Bay Rays vs Boston Red Sox

It's the fifth year that has all sorts of warning signs. There is no word on what the vesting criteria will be, but all indications are that it is "easily attained," likely making it a low base of games played the previous season. If so, it is unfortunate the Mets couldn't protect themselves more aggressively in this area.

The idea I want to explore here is whether or not this fifth year option should even matter. Certainly, from a market and team valuation standpoint, the fifth year matters. However, it seems like everyone under the sun assumed the Mets would eventually cave and give five years. While part of the assumption rested in the baseball world's pessimism of the job GM Omar Minaya has done to date, I think another part of the assumption dealt with that the Mets should give the fifth year if that's what it took to land Bay.

New York has come off three absolutely miserable seasons. Two historic collapses followed by the Mets' medical staff becoming a joke. This team is in need of a dramatic reversal, and fast, if it hopes to take advantage of the current window of opportunity. Said window was in desperate need of shoring up, with an additional source of power. The opening the club had in left field was rather fortuitous, as they can hide Bay's defense in there and get the power expected out of the position.

Bay gives the Mets a playoff-caliber offense in these next few years, which may prove integral towards extending the Mets' window of winning -- and profiting. Is the potential trade off of a poor season from Bay in 2014 worth the boost the Mets will get the next three years? I can see that happening: if Bay propels the team to a playoff spot (of course, everyone has to get healthy as well) or two in the next three years, the ramifications of that will shake down far beyond just Bay. The Mets will become profitable, more players will want to come to town, and most importantly given Jose Reyes and David Wright, franchise cornerstones could elect to stay (to say nothing of the team's financial ability to retain said players improving).

Not all deals can be evaluated in a vacuum like us pundits at THT, Fangraphs and other places tend to do. "This player is worth X WAR, and is thus worth Y money. He is not worth Z years due to M skillset and N indicators." Real-world situations don't work that way. The Mets needed a source of power to play left field, and they needed one now that could improve the team's chances of winning. The trade off in not blinking on the five years and signing someone like Marlon Byrd or Randy Winn instead is rather large for this particular team.

Some deals involve having to give ground to get ground. I think the Mets did rather well in making the fifth year a vesting option. It may be easily attainable, but at least it's not guaranteed. Not all deals can be completely and 100 percent "smart".

Take Neal Huntington of the Nationals and his decision to free Matt Capps, only to see him sign for $3.5 million in Washington. This is opposed to the Pirates offering Capps arbitration and seeing the right-hander get a similar salary via the process (likely slightly higher). While the financial and market valuation of Capps via the arbitration process may have taken a bigger bite out of the Pirates coffers than they preferred, there is no question they are worse off today than they would have been otherwise. I wish I could recall who and where I heard this, but someone referred to Huntington as being "too smart." That's exactly how I feel.

Neal Huntington is a smart general manager and is making the Pirates a far better team than they were when he arrived. Whenever he leaves the team, he will do so having improved the club's minor and major league talent. That is what smart general managers do. But was letting Capps go over half a million to a million dollars smart? Strictly from a dataset vacuum, it was absolutely the smart choice. Capps' production in 2009, previous and projected production along with likely arbitration salary -- in a vacuum -- made the non-tender a logical and smart choice. In real life and in baseball, it was a terrible choice.

A fifth year being handed to Jason Bay is tremendously risky. The payoff over the next few years, however, seem almost guaranteed to make that fifth year an afterthought. Take Magglio Ordonez's $18 million option vesting for 2010. It's hamstrung the Tigers in their decisions for 2010, but you certainly didn't see the team complaining while Ordonez was scraping the team off it's 119-loss season and propelling the club to the World Series. If they had to do it over again, would they have still signed Magglio to the deal or let him go to another team? I'm betting they'd do it again. The Mets are in a similar position, if not better -- New York is not at risk for a complete financial collapse like Detroit. Without the financial collapse of the town, Ordonez's $18 million albatross wouldn't be as problematic as it is today.

A couple of other notes: I don't think that this blocks prospect Fernando Martinez. Carlos Beltran's contract is ending soon, and right field has no one blocking it. Plus, I wouldn't be surprised to see Bay eventually move to first base to hide his defense as the years move on. The Mets have Daniel Murphy currently slotted at first along with prospect Ike Davis, but the two, at this moment, don't block a potential shift.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

Josh Beckett’s Colorful 2009 Season

Posted by Kevin Dame
Hi there. Here's a visual portrait (both figuratively and literally) of Josh Beckett's 2009 season. Sort of a blend of pop art and the baseball box score.

Some notes (for those curious):

First, I'm using red to indicate a quality start (min 6 IP, 3 ER or less). Sometimes I wonder about the notion of a "quality start," though. I think I'm more impressed by an 8 inning 4 ER start than a 6 inning 3 ER start. Second, for partial innings completed I rounded down (just to keep the graphic simple).

Friday, January 01, 2010

What’s the matter with Johnny?

Posted by Chuck Brownson
At the beginning of the offseason, nearly everyone had Johnny Damon pegged for a return to the Bronx. It's become apparent, however, that the likelihood of his returning to the Yankees is slim to none and slim's as likely as Milton Bradley Day at Wrigley Field. Ok, so the Yankees have decided, with the prospect of a bountiful 2010 free agent class, not to invest in a 2 year contract for a 36 year old left fielder. But with Jason Bay now a Met, Marlon Byrd a Cub, and Matt Holliday out of everyone's price range except for the Cardinals, where is the demand for Damon? Where's the love for this postseason hero?

Fans of the game have lots of complaints about Damon, many of them valid. He is 36 and looking for a 2 year deal that will take him to nearly his 38th birthday. He is represented by Mr. Snidely Whiplash himself, Scott Boras. He does have a very weak arm in left field and, for the most part, that limits him to left. His power numbers were doubtlessly enhanced by the short porch at new Yankee Stadium. It's understandable that GMs around baseball would show little interest in November and early December considering Damon's drawbacks and the likelihood that he would return to the Yankees. Since the Yankee clipper has sailed, however, I'm more than a little surprised that there's still so little interest in Damon.

Damon's RC+ has been greater than 100 (above average) every year since 2001, when he was an Athletic, and every year but one since 1998. His career OPS, wOBA, and RC+ are all above average at .794, .351, and 112, respectively. According to Baseball Prospectus' EQBRR, Damon's base running has been above average every season of his career. His walk rate has averaged 10.6 percent over the last four seasons.

**Where's the love for Johnny this offseason?** (Icon/SMI)

Damon's offense since 2006
Year	ISO	wOBA	wRAA	EQBRR	Total RAA
2006	.197	.362	17.7	5.3	23.0
2007	.126	.340	4.8	7.0	11.8
2008	.159	.373	22.9	1.6	24.5
2009	.207	.376	24.5	2.9	27.4

Even if you're convinced that part of Damon's success last year was a result of a favorable home ballpark, it's difficult to foresee a scenario in which Damon isn't an average offensive contributor in 2010 and 2011 and he'll probably be considerably better than that. Remember that as much as we bemoan the fact that Damon got to play half his games in Yankee Stadium, we also must acknowledge that he played in the tougher league and played 25+ games each of the last two years against the Red Sox' and Rays' rotations.

So GMs' collective hesitation about Damon must be because of his defense, right? Perhaps. He does have a weak arm, as scouts and statheads alike will acknowledge. And a check of his '09 UZR shows us that he was, apparently, nine runs below average as a left fielder last year. While UZR and Tango's fans scouting report seem to agree on Damon's defense in 2009, ZRDif (the difference between his RZR and the average RZR for his position) and Chone's Total Zone aren't so sure. RZR (found in THT's Baseball Annual) has Damon at .013 -- above average in left -- and Total Zone has him as a plus-six run defensive player in left.

By now we should know not to use one year defensive data in evaluating a player so even factoring in Damon's minus-nine from UZR last year, his three year average UZR is 1.7 runs above average. His speed score is above average and he has stolen at least 12 runs every full season of his career. While his arm is a drawback, there is reason to believe that his range is still there.

For their parts, CHONE's projections for Damon have him pegged for a .270/.357/.432 slash line in 2009, good for nine runs above average offensively and seven runs above average defensively. Damon's had at least 600 plate appearances every season since 1998 so, 16 runs above average would have him as roughly a three win player in 2010. The ZIPS projections at Baseball Think Factory have basically the same line: .272/.350/.436. Conservatively, there's no reason to think that Damon won't be worth 4.5 to 5 wins over the next two seasons.

Damon's value, therefore, should have him worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 to $12 million per year for two years. Even at the discounted market rate this offseason, he's easily worth $16 million over two years and yet, there's seemingly very little interest in his services. I'm surprised that neither the Mets nor Cardinals have viewed Damon as an alternative to Bay and Holliday. The Giants haven't shown any interest that I know of either. There's been talk that he'll end up in Atlanta but, to my knowledge, the Braves haven't pursued him to any real degree. It's possible that the market for Damon will pick up once Holliday signs. So while there is a lot of mystery about the demand for Damon this offseason, one thing's a lot more certain: someone's likely to get a very good bargain when Damon ultimately signs.

Chuck is a lifelong Cardinals fan who welcomes comments below or via email at chuckbtht AT gmail DOT com.

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Matt Kemp’s Comparables

Posted by Joshua Fisher
As Ken Gurnick reports, the Dodgers and Matt Kemp don't seem all that close on the concept of an extension. In the article, Kemp's agent Dave Stewart (yeah, that one), told Gurnick that Kemp has an early record similar to those of Carlos Beltran and Andruw Jones. The Jones comp works, but it's not perfect; Andruw hit a major wall in his age-24 season (94 OPS+), while Kemp exploded with a 129. Jones' age-23 season, though, is a legit reference. His slash stats that season: .303/.366/.541. Kemp's, at 24: .297/.354/.490. The difference isn't as stark as it seems--those seasons each resulted in a 125 OPS+. 23-year-old Andruw Jones and 24-year-old Matt Kemp were darn near the same player.

Stewart's clearly been doing his research (or listening to the right people), as the Beltran comparison is right on as well. His age-24 campaign: .306/.352/.514, good for a 122 OPS+. And I'll throw in another that Stewart didn't note (but really ought to, as his first long-term contract would likely serve as the touchstone for a Kemp extension): Nick Markakis. At 24, he posted a .306/.406/.491 line for the Orioles (136 OPS+). UZR /150 suggests Markakis was better in right field (11.2) than Kemp was in center (3.1). Overall, Fangraphs has age-24 Markakis as 1.3 wins better than age-24 Kemp, 6.3 to 5.0. Age-24 Markakis was one of the best young outfielders the game has seen in recent years.

So what's it mean for Kemp going forward? Well, Andruw Jones followed his pedestrian age-24 year with six seasons ranging from 'very good' to 'outstanding.' Then, as you know, he bottomed out, and hasn't been the same player since. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if we get an age correction on him at some point. I don't like him as a comparable for Kemp, and it's not just the strange "early" decline. He had old player batting skills, even as a youngster. His walk rate bounced all over the place, but he always hit for power (just one pre-"30" season with an ISO of less than .200). His BABIP never exceeded .313, which is odd for a "fast" player. Kemp's career BABIP: .366. Clearly, they're just different sorts of hitters.

Same problem with Markakis. His age-24 walk rate spiked to 14.3 percent, nearly doubling Kemp's 7.9 percent at the same age. Something was up with Markakis that year--check out his walk rates by season: 8.1, 8.7, 14.3, 8.0. We like to look at plate discipline as a stable indicator of a player's talent, but what in the world is going on here? I'm uncomfortable calling Markakis Kemp's best comparable because of how fluky his age-24 season seems. His ISO's never been higher than .185, and that magical 2008 season is just out of line with everything else we see from him. His 2009 numbers mesh perfectly with his '06 and '07 lines, and I'm inclined to think that he'll be better than he was last season. Still, though, he might never hit better than he did in '08. I don't like him as a Kemp comp, because Kemp's trends are stabler.

Which brings us to Beltran. Going into his age-24 season, Beltran had logged about 1200 major league plate appearances. 1199, to be exact. Kemp? 1134. Walk rates at 24: 7.8 percent to 7.9 percent. ISO: .207 to .193. Obviously, singling out individual statistics is always a flawed approach, but my point is that they were very similar at 24. I believe that Beltran's trends are more in line with Kemp's performance and skillset than Jones' and Markakis'. Improving plate discipline, developing power, potent running game. No comparison is perfect, and we shouldn't look at Beltran's career arc and assume that's how things will go for Kemp. But it's a start. Beginning with his age-24 season, Beltran was a complete monster. He had a fluky down year in 2005, but it's a blip. Dude's a Hall of Famer if he can stay on the field. We could see this coming way back in his early Royals days.

The two have something else in common, as well: both were superstars by 24, though neither was recognized appropriately. Beltran played for one of the worst franchises in sports, and Kemp got caught in an extraordinarily stupid story line: the kids versus the vets in the Dodgers' locker room. He's still regarded as a raw-yet-tantalizing talent, but the numbers say he's moved beyond that. He's a star. Now, not soon. Kemp has been a better young player than Beltran--their age-24 seasons were remarkably similar, but Kemp's prior performance vastly exceeds Beltran's. We're talking about a transcendent talent, one you'll want to say you saw play when he was just a colt.

Joshua operates http://www.dodgerdivorce.com and welcomes feedback via Twitter (@DodgerDivorce) and e-mail (Joshua [DOT] Fisher [DOT] baseball [AT] gmail [DOT] com).

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Another Annual opinion

Posted by Dave Studeman
Eric Simon has penned a review of the THT Annual at Amazin' Avenue. In a nutshell, Eric likes it a lot and talks in-depth about a few of his favorite articles. I was glad to see that he particularly liked Jack Marshall's article about the importance and definition of "character" in Hall of Fame arguments. It was one of my favorites, too.

Let us know if you also have a favorite THT Annual article, or if there was one you didn't feel was "Annual worthy." We accept all kinds of feedback.

You can purchase the THT Annual from ACTA Sports.

Dave was called a "national treasure" by Rob Neyer. Seriously. Comments about this article can be sent to him through the miracle of e-mail.

The Best Stuff On Earth

Posted by Jeremy Greenhouse
I've been looking at a pitcher's "stuff" using pitchf/x data recently, and here's how I would rank the top five starters of 2009 by stuff:

1. Clayton Kershaw
2. Brett Anderson
3. A.J. Burnett
4. Felix Hernandez
5. Zack Greinke

Kershaw might be a step above the field.

Relievers

1. Matt Thornton
2. Jonathan Broxton
3. Kevin Jepsen
4. Brian Wilson
5. Mariano Rivera

Small Samples

1. Henry Rodriguez
2. Daniel Bard
3. Juan Morillo
4. Joel Zumaya
5. Daniel Schlereth

Rodriguez in 75 pitches threw 90% fastballs averaging 99 MPH.

Now, if you'll allow me, I have a couple of questions for you, the reader.

First, do you think that a left-handed pitcher who throws 94 has better stuff than a right-handed pitcher who throws 94?

Also, some pitches are devastating against same-handed batters, but useless against opposite-handed batters. Should the sweeping slider be labeled a *nasty* pitch against same-handed batters and a mediocre pitch against opposite-handed batters? Or should it be regarded as a decent pitch on average, since it has the same characteristics no matter against whom it's thrown.

Any questions? Feel free to email me.

Got Those Links

Posted by Jeremy Greenhouse
The staff at THT Live has decided to crew up and start slinging links. Pat Andriola told me that he thinks we have the muscle to knock off Tommy "Prince K" Bennett, Rob "Avon" Neyer, and BBTF (the entire New-Day Co-Op) . I told him we got our thing, but it's just part of the big thing. He still wants to throw the competition into vacants. Enough of this. To the links.

Dan Turkenkopf projects runs above and below average for catchers' ability to block pitches in the dirt based on pitch f/x data from the last 3 seasons.

Joe Posnanski with two posts well worth reading, one A Christmas Story reminiscent of The Sandlot and the other on Strat-O-Matic and The Negro Leagues, reminiscent of a piece that's really well written.

Tim Kniker lays out a methodology to evaluate a manager's bullpen management. Money quote: "Ron Gardenhire of Minnesota takes the award for best bullpen manager by a wide margin, never finishing below eighth in the majors in any year, and having the best BMAR in each of the last two years." Read on for more BMAR. (Subscription required.)

Shawn Hoffman delves into matters MLBAM and piracy. Why hasn't MLB embraced YouTube yet exactly?

And be sure to check out Rally's Baseballprojection.com. The CHONE projections are out for 2010 and 2009 WAR data has been added for all players active prior to 2009.

Any questions? Feel free to email me.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Mets sign Bay

Posted by Dave Studeman
The Mets have signed Jason Bay, reportedly their #1 target of the offseason. The price tag is said to be $66 million for four years, or $16.5 million a year, with a vesting option for a fifth year. I'll leave the in-depth analysis to Evan Brunell, the folks at Fangraphs and others, but I wanted to add my own two cents as a Mets' fan.

Bay fits several key needs for the Mets. He's a power hitter who plays left field, though not particularly well. Bay is an "old" 31, with troublesome knees, so I expect his fielding to worsen over the length of this contract. He's a right-handed power hitter; the Mets need power, though they'd prefer to get it from a left-handed batter. He has no speed to speak of—Bay's value is in his powerful bat.

That price tag essentially means that Bay needs to average three-to-four wins above replacement to justify the deal. Last year, he posted 3.5 WAR, 3.1 the year before. So it's conceivable that Bay's performance could justify this contract. I wouldn't bet on it, though. He's more likely to average in the 2's for the length of this contract with perhaps significant time lost to injury. I think the Mets won't get their money's worth from Jason Bay, and while he will help the team, he won't have a dramatic impact on their pennant probabilities. That is, the extra "stretch" in money isn't clearly justified here.

On the other hand, Bay is a good fit for their needs, he won't be blocking any star prospects and shouldn't be a burden on the Mets' budget. So I'm glad they pulled the trigger on this deal. What's more, there are a lot of minor stories to follow, such as wondering how the switch to CitiField will affect his production and celebrating his return to a team that never should have traded him away.

Dave was called a "national treasure" by Rob Neyer. Seriously. Comments about this article can be sent to him through the miracle of e-mail.

2009 MLB Strike % Leaders

Posted by Pat Andriola
In a post over the summer, I looked as to whether Joel Pineiro was getting lucky with his walks. His BB/9 at the time was astoundingly low (1.00), and I figured that it would go up based on his ball:strike ratio (it did, by 14%). This isn't rocket science at all: Pineiro was maintaining a ridiculously low walk rate that resembled nothing of his skill set over his decently long career. However, it does let us look more closely at what I called EFF (for efficiency), which is basically how often a pitcher throws strikes relative to balls. So here are the 2009 Starting Pitcher leaders in the simple Strike %, which is simply just the percentage of strikes a pitcher throws out of all his pitches:

1) Johan Santana: 68.8
2) Roy Halladay: 68.6
3) Cliff Lee: 68.2
4) Ted Lilly: 68
5) Scott Baker: 67.7
6) Roy Oswalt: 67.7
7) Carl Pavano: 67.1
9) Justin Verlander: 66.9
10) Cole Hamels: 66.8

Bottom Five:

78) Trevor Cahill: 59
77) Yovani Gallardo: 59.2
76) Livan Hernandez: 59.8
75) Doug Davis: 60
74) Scott Feldman: 60.6

Attached is the excel file with all 78 names. Enjoy.

Thanks to Fangraphs for the data.

2009STRKEPRCNTGE.xls

Pat Andriola is a junior at Tufts University. You can contact him at Patrick.Andriola @ tufts.edu or follow him on Twitter @tuftspat.

Our newest writer

Posted by Dave Studeman
We're happy to welcome a new writer to the THT fold. Joshua Fisher, who maintains the wonderful (and spot-on) Dodger Divorce blog has agreed to write for us on a weekly basis. We're thrilled to have Josh on board, and you can read his introductory article here.

Dave was called a "national treasure" by Rob Neyer. Seriously. Comments about this article can be sent to him through the miracle of e-mail.

Monday, December 28, 2009

Playing chicken with Boras

Posted by Chuck Brownson
What do the dates January 13 and January 26 have in common? Those are the dates that Scott Boras clients Carlos Beltran, Derek Lowe (both 1/13), and Alex Rodriguez signed free agent contracts with the Mets, the Braves, and the Rangers, respectively. I mention it because that thumping you hear is the quickening of many St. Louis Cardinals' fans' hearts as the fear that Matt Holliday will slip from their grasp spreads throughout the Midwest.

As a resident of Houston, I saw the same sort of thing happen just five winters ago as the Astros, the ostensible leaders in the clubhouse for Beltran's services, saw the Mets whisk him away under the cover of a slightly better offer and supremely larger limelight. The Astros put all of their eggs in Beltran's basket in the winter of '04-'05 and were left with few options when Beltran signed with the Mets. (The Astros instead put utility outfielders Willy Taveras and Jason Lane in the outfield and won a National League pennant in 2005). Today Cards' fans are fearful of a similar event happening to them and point to the calendar as their evidence that Holliday, too, is slipping away.

**The Cardinals can't afford to put all their eggs in Matt Holliday's basket lest they end up with those eggs in their faces, as the Astros did when Beltran spurned them 5 years ago. ** (Icon/SMI)

It's not the calendar that Cards' fans should fear, however. The Cards should, on the other hand, fear their backup options slipping away. At this point it doesn't appear as though Jason Bay is on the team's radar, just as it appears as though Mike Cameron never was. The team's plan B seems to have fallen through now that Mark DeRosa is primed to accept a two year, $12 million contract to become a Giant.

DeRosa would have been a solid acquisition (or return) for the Cards if they are not able to sign Holliday since DeRosa would be able to play either left field or third base. The Cards are primed to begin the season with rookie David Freese at the hot corner and DeRosa would have been able to fill in at third if Freese failed or stay in left if Freese demonstrated that he could handle the demands of playing everyday. Speculation of DeRosa's return to St. Louis seems to be moot at this point as he's apparently moving westward.

The team's plan C apparently is Xavier Nady who would, unquestionably, be a big step backward from Holliday. Those who are already declaring that the 31-year old Nady will be one of the best value signings of the offseason must not have seen the numbers that indicate that Nady has only had one season since entering the big leagues for good in 2003 where he's been worth more than 1.2 wins above replacement. He's basically a league average hitter, playing league average defense, at a corner outfield position. Dan Szymborski's ZIPS projections at Baseball Think Factory have Nady projected for a .780 OPS while Sean Smith's CHONE projections at Baseball Projection have him projected for .769. Nady's career average OPS is .792. By replacing Holliday with Nady, the team would probably be going from Holliday's 5.5 to 6 wins to Nady's 1.5 to 2. A team with division, league, and major league championships on its mind is going to need those four wins. Thus, signing Nady would probably necessitate spending more money on another starting pitcher such as Ben Sheets, Erik Bedard, or possibly even bringing back Joel Pineiro.

At this point, Boras clients Adrian Beltre and Johnny Damon appear, at most, to be in the Cards' periphery though either would be better, albeit more expensive, options than Nady.

As long as Nady, Damon, Beltre, and the pitchers remain unsigned, the Cardinals can afford to be patient with Holliday and Boras. But with DeRosa's signing, the team's clock speeds up just a little bit and it will speed up quite a bit more, not as the pages of the calendar turn, but as those free agents drop off the board. The Cardinals cannot afford to be left standing with no substantial acquisitions when the music stops playing if they intend to repeat as NL Central champions in 2010. Many in Cardinal nation are ready to give Holliday a 24 or 48-hour take-it-or-leave-it offer and move on to someone else. It's too early for such a dramatic step but if many more of these free agents start to come off the board, we may not be too far from that step. At some point, the Cardinals may have to do exactly that which will put Boras and Holliday in the unenviable position of either settling for the Cards' offer or calling the team's bluff. The clock is, therefore, ticking for both the team and for Boras. In the interim, Boras has to come up with another suitor for Holliday's services before the Cardinals get tired of watching plans C, D, E, F, and G go off the board.

Chuck is a lifelong Cardinals fan who welcomes comments below or via email at chuckbtht AT gmail DOT com.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Mike Silva teaches us a neat lesson

Posted by Pat Andriola
In a post entitled, "wRC+ = Follow the Money Trail," Mike Silva of NYBD figures out the dastardly plans of the online saber community: make that money. Take it away, Mike:

We need more advanced statistics just like we needed Cool Ranch Doritos, New Coke, or a colorful cover for the iPod. What I mean is the “powers that be” in the statistical community have created a profitable industry for themselves that results in sites like Fangraphs. Just like newspapers churn out content daily, statistical analysis becomes stale if it isn’t procured with another variation of the same thing. Why have boring old Runs Created, or OPS+, when you can fancy it up with wRC+.

Tango (seen here) responded to Silva in the comments section by saying:

As I keep saying on my blog time and time again, summary opinion without evidence is the very definition of bullsh!t. And Mike’s statement here is pure bullsh!t.

And the funny thing is how right Tango is. You see, the neat lesson Silva has taught us today is the beauty of meritocracy in the online saber community. It would be near impossible for Tango or Appleman to bring out the same old stat spiced up with a different name and get away with it. Why? Because there are smart people here on the internet who would never put up with being treated like idiots. These aren't mindless hoards of consumers begging for Michael Bay to blow things up for the billionth time. These are intelligent fans, some of them specialists in mathematical and analytical fields, who demand good evidence be given at all times. If Dave Appleman were to go on Fangraphs and say, "Hey guys, we have a new stat: wUZROBA+, and it's made by doing this nonsense, etc..." people would stop reading Fangraphs! Instead, he says this:

As you may have noticed, there’s now an extra column in the “Advanced” section for batting stats called “wRC+”. You can think of this stat as a wOBA based version of OPS+. It’s park and league adjusted and it’s on a very similar scale as OPS+. The difference is that it uses wRC, which is based on wOBA.

There's the evidence. Now whether or not this is a good stat or not can be discussed. How? By actually analyzing the statistic based on its inherent merits, which Silva never does! Mike responds by saying:

You don’t need to go to an Ivy League school, create a metric, or understand science to have intelligence (looking at you Andy), perhaps if some of the people skills that, from my experience, many in the sports industry lack, were present you would be able to sell your concepts to the generally public rather than arrogantly responding (looking at you MGL) your critics.

And I agree, you don't need to have a PhD (or any degree) to be a knowledgeable baseball analyst. But you do need to demonstrate tangible proof for the claims that you make, and this is where Mike fails greatly. In fact, he admits it:

Front offices all across the country are riddled with politics, am I naïve enough to believe the advanced metric community is no different? Do I have proof? Of course not, I can’t read your mind... You will learn that many things in this world at not x +y = z...All I know is new stats continue to be churned out and sometimes I really don’t see where they are nothing more than the proverbial rocking chair.

Here's how you can uncover Tango, MGL, Appleman, and the rest, Mr. Silva: demonstrate with evidence that their stats are nonsense, and you win. Seriously. Just prove that wRC+ is utter and complete dribble and you can advance your position a lot. But Silva, admittedly, doesn't have evidence. He has a hunch. A gut feeling. He sees analogies to other entities (that aren't analogous) and creates links. And this, at its heart, is what is separating the saber community from the rest of the pack.

Pat Andriola is a junior at Tufts University. You can contact him at Patrick.Andriola @ tufts.edu or follow him on Twitter @tuftspat.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

The most underrated catchers in the game

Posted by Chuck Brownson
except during October.

Evaluating catchers is notoriously difficult. Offensively, it's no different than evaluating other position players so when discussing the best catchers in the game, we tend to look to catchers who are productive at the plate. This is true particularly because so many catchers simply aren't productive offensively. Thus, we are most aware of the very good offensive catchers: Joe Mauer, Brian McCann, Victor Martinez, and Jorge Posada.

When looking at the defensive side of the ball, we hear anecdotal evidence about how good Catcher X is at calling a game or how good Catcher Y is at blocking the plate but it's difficult for most to quantify which catchers add value to their teams behind the plate and which catchers detract from their teams defensively. There is ample evidence out there to tell us that, for example, catchers ERA is a poor way to evaluate catchers because there are so many variables involved: ballpark effects, different lineups, and of course, which pitcher is on the mound while a certain catcher is behind the plate. Jason LaRue's catcher ERA (4.46) was nearly a run higher than Yadier Molina's. Molina's clearly the better defensive catcher; he clearly calls a better game, right? Of course, LaRue's 26 starts included 10 games started by Todd Wellemeyer, 5 each started by Kyle Lohse and Mitchell Boggs, and 2 games started by Brad Thompson. Total number of games started by Adam Wainwright and Chris Carpenter among those 26 starts? ZERO. Nada. Zilch. Catcher ERA is, therefore, a poor way to evaluate catcher defense.

Catchers truly only get noticed defensively if they are outstanding at throwing runners out attempting to steal. Today, Molina is widely regarded as the premier defensive catcher in the game. He is the heir to the legacy that Ivan Rodriguez maintained for so many years. In fact, even suggesting that Molina has competition among the premier defensive catchers in the game is tantamount to blasphemy in the Midwest. Yadi won his second Gold Glove this year and most Cards' fans believe that he's owed at least one or two others.

Molina's defensive reputation is well deserved. His caught stealing percentage since he entered the league has been 47 percent, 64 percent, 44 percent, 54 percent, 35 percent, and 41 percent. Teams are wary of even attempting to steal a base against him and base runners need to be cognizant of their secondary leads from first base because if they stray too far from the bag, Molina is liable to throw behind them and pick them off. Right now, he is the catcher against whom all others are compared defensively but there are two others in the National League who hide in Molina's shadow and are at the very least nearly as good behind the plate as he is.

Carlos Ruiz is known more for his postseason offensive exploits than for his work behind the plate but he is an outstanding defensive catcher. While he's not quite Molina throwing out base runners, he has few peers blocking balls in the dirt as Dan Turkenkopf and Harry Pavlidis pointed out recently. They determined using Pitch F/X data that Ruiz saved the Phillies between 3.73 and 4.67 runs last season by blocking balls in the dirt. Over a 120 game span, that would have equated to between 5.56 and 6.19 runs saved over a season simply by preventing wild pitches and passed balls. Molina, no slouch himself, saved the Cardinals between 6.5 and 8 runs but the Cardinals allowed Molina to amass nearly 300 more innings than the Phillies allowed Ruiz in 2009. Over the same 120 games, Molina's total runs saved would have been between 4.55 and 5.13.

Ryan Hanigan isn't quite as good at blocking pitches in the dirt as Ruiz is but no catcher in the big leagues, Molina included, was better at throwing out base runners than the Reds' backstop. Unfortunately, Dusty Baker allowed (and will in 2010 as well) Ramon Hernandez to get too much time behind the plate.

**Do you know the man on the left? Apparently, his manager doesn't.** (Icon/SMI)

While Hanigan was slightly below average in blocking pitches in the dirt, he saved his team nearly five runs by his ability to throw out potential base stealers. His caught stealing percentage was a robust 43 percent. Had Dusty allowed Hanigan to play 120 games rather than the 670 innings he was permitted in 2009, Hanigan would have saved the Reds nearly eight runs simply by throwing out base runners.

**Catcher Runs per 120 games in 2009**
Catcher	CS%	BR runs	Block runs	Runs/120
Molina	41	4.674	7.22	9.13
Ruiz	27	.066	4.2	5.96
Hanigan	43	4.91	-0.77	6.35

The numbers tell us that Hanigan and Ruiz aren't quite as good defensively as Molina is, but they both would add at least half a win to their respective teams' total if their managers would allow them more time behind the plate. More importantly, the availability of Pitch F/X data allows us the opportunity to better evaluate catcher defense than ever before. When fangraphs calculates catchers' WAR, for example, they don't include defensive data. This is an obvious shortcoming that exists because of the difficulty of measuring catcher defense and while it can't be perfectly captured through caught stealing percentage and blocked pitches, this can go a long way toward telling us that it's not just the great offensive catchers who bring value to their teams.

Chuck is a lifelong Cardinals fan who welcomes comments below or via email at chuckbtht AT gmail DOT com.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Capps lands in Washington

Posted by Evan Brunell
In a marriage that made sense the moment the Pirates non-tendered Matt Capps, the right-hander has inked a deal with the Nationals.

Capps being non-tendered by Pittsburgh caught some by surprise, with their general manager defending the move saying that Capps wasn't worth what he stood to earn in arbitration... roughly $3 million.

So much for that, as Capps will ink at $3.5 million plus an additional $450,000 in incentives. The 26-year old will enter spring training the presumptive favorite to close games. Barring any late information being revealed, Washington will have the option to offer Capps arbitration after the year as the pitcher doesn't gain free agent rights until after 2011.

While Capps suffered through an ugly season, posting a 5.80 ERA, his xFIP tells a different story. xFIP, a measure of Fielding Independent Pitching that adjusts home runs based on it being a function of fly balls per ballpark, plummets to 4.37, more in line with a career xFIP of 4.14 and ERA of 3.61.

He is renowned for his control, checking in at 1.66 over his career although 2009 inflated that number with an ugly (for him) 2.82 BB/9. Provided that Capps firms up his control, he should go back to being a more than adequate closer, especially for a young, rebuilding team like the Nationals that recently inked Ivan Rodriguez and Jason Marquis.

Given that the Pirates will likely have to pay around $2-$3 million in base salary for a replacement closer (they've been linked to Octavio Dotel and Kevin Gregg), I think this was a massive misfire by Neal Huntington -- one of his rare misfires. Huntington is a quality general manager and I think stands a great chance (better than Cam Bonifay and Dave Littlefield, certainly) at turning the Pirates around, but this was a very curious decision by him. It doesn't impact his reputation, as every manager now and then will make the wrong move. Hopefully, Huntington learns from this and doesn't make the same mistake again.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Understanding the Morrow deal

Posted by Evan Brunell
The Toronto Blue Jays acquired RHP Brandon Morrow from the Seattle Mariners in a bit of a surprise, surrendering major-league reliever Brandon League and minor league outfield prospect Johermyn Chavez.

It seems like the Mariners didn't get value for Morrow back in the trade. Given that the Mariners have resident genius Jack Zduriencik at the helm who has made sensational move after sensational move, it's hard to believe.

U.S.S. Mariner seems to agree. Dave Cameron believes that this deal was just an extension of the Cliff Lee trade. It does make sense -- it makes what Seattle gave up for Lee make more sense. It makes the Phillies not shopping Lee around first make more sense.

Frankly, I do think there's something not being said, and it very well could be a completion of the Lee deal, but I can't reason why such a fact would need to be hid. Zduriencik adamantly said the two deals were unconnected, and for the purpose of this article, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Looking strictly at this trade, then, let's evaluate why Seattle might have made it.

To put it succinctly: to win in 2010.

Lost in the trade is just how good Brandon League is.

League throws a mid-90s fastball and a change up as his two primary pitches, with little else factored in. That arsenal is good enough to induce a career ground ball ratio of 62 percent, which should be gobbled up by the Mariner defense about as well as Pac-Man gobbles up pac-dots. He had a 9.16 K-rate in 2009, trimmed his walk rate to 2.53 and posted a 3.16 xFIP. That's the hallmark of a very valuable reliever who should be a fantastic set up man.

The knock against Morrow seems to be that many view him as a reliever while he agitates to start. His career 5.8 BB/9 doesn't help matters, although his stuff is of high caliber at just age 25. There are also injury concerns with Morrow and while he did struggle with forearm and shoulder issues this past season, the injuries aren't red flags for future troubles.

It was a great move for Toronto to turn League and a minor league prospect into Morrow, who at the very least should be a fine setup man, much like League. (Chavez is a 20-year old who put up pretty good numbers in mid-A ball. You can read more about Chavez here.)

I'm sure other teams attempted to get Morrow, but if Zduriencik was looking for someone who could immediately help Seattle win and do so down the road at a high level, it is difficult to imagine anyone better than League -- at his age, production and salary -- being offered.

On the face of it, this deal looks like a loss for Seattle. The thing is, if Morrow falls into the injury black hole that many -- and most certainly Seattle -- seem to believe he will, this deal might end up a win for Seattle. Relievers like Brandon League are difficult to come by, and he should pay major dividends on the west coast.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Implications of the Vazquez deal

Posted by Dan Novick
By now, you've probably heard about the trade that went down late last night between the Yankees and the Braves. The deal sent Javier Vazquez to New York, and center fielder Melky Cabrera, relief pitcher Mike Dunn, and pitching prospect Arodys Vizcaino to the Braves, along with $500K. As with the trade from a few weeks ago that brought Curtis Granderson to the Bronx, this deal once again has the Yankees coming out with the big-name player now on their side.

Javier Vazquez emerged this past season as one of the top starters in all of baseball, culminating in a 4th place finish in NL Cy Young voting. It was his best season to date in a variety of measures such as WAR (6.6, second best in the league), FIP (2.77), strikeout-to-walk ratio (5.41), and ERA (2.87). That is probably the limit of his potential, so we should definitely expect to see some regression before accounting for his move to the AL East. Regardless, he still projects to be well above average, and has shown incredible durability over his career, throwing at least 198 innings in 10 straight seasons, averaging 216 innings per year over that span.

So the Yankees rotation takes a top-5 pitcher from the NL in 2009, and puts him comfortably into the number three spot in their rotation. Now how about the guys they gave up? Melky Cabrera at this point is a relatively well-known quantity. He should be around league-average with the bat and in the field, which does have value. He could improve with the bat (he's still just 25 years old), but he could also go back to what he was in 2008, when he put up a .249/.301/.341 line, good for a .285 wOBA. For reference, that's 29% worse than league average, according to wRC+. Dunn is a lefty reliever with a big arm, big strikeout numbers, and big control problems. If he can get his control under...control, then he could be an interesting late-inning option for the Braves. Vizcaino's potential is what makes this trade not a total loss for the Braves. He has the stuff to be a top-of-the-rotation starter down the road, but that road is a long one. He'll be 19 all of next season, making his full-season debut after tearing up the NY-Penn league, showing very good strikeout numbers and above-average control (3.2 BB/9).

This trade does not leave the each team without holes, however. With Melky Cabrera now out of the picture, who will be the left fielder? What do the Braves do with their outfield depth once Jason Heyward proves he's ready? How will the Braves spend the $8-9 million they're saving by getting rid of Vazquez?

The likely scenario for the Braves would be bringing back Adam LaRoche for another season and using the remaining cash on arbitration raises. They have Nate McLouth, Melky Cabrera, Jordan Schafer, and Matt Diaz under team control, and stud prospect Jason Heyward waiting in triple-A for the call to the bigs. That's a lot of similarly-valued players for just three spots, and they could look to deal from that position.

With Melky Cabrera out of the fold for the Yankees, the left field situation becomes a bit less clear. As it stands right now, the only players on the roster available for the position are Brett Gardner and recent Rule 5 pick Jaime Hoffmann. Both players would provide excellent defense at the position, with Hoffmann being rated as the top defensive outfielder in the Yankees system by Baseball America, and UZR rating Gardner as an elite defender in center field.

According to Mark Feinsand of the NY Daily News, the Yankees could spend "roughly $5-6 million" to fill the position. Assuming that is true, could that be enough to get someone like Mark DeRosa? It's certainly not enough to bring back Damon on a 2-year deal, and Matt Holliday would laugh Brian Cashman out of the room if he offered him that. They could just stand pat for now and use that money at the trade deadline if they need an upgrade. Whether something happens soon, or at later on in the season, I don't think either of these teams are done just yet.

Dan Novick is a lifelong Yankees fan, and still gets the chills every time Enter Sandman plays from the Yankee Stadium speakers. He welcomes comments and questions via e-mail.

Debunking more fastballs in the American League

Posted by Evan Brunell
For the last several years, it's been thought that the American League is a breaking pitch league -- that is, the caliber of hitters in the AL dictate that fastballs should be relied on less. If you are a fastball hitter, you want to go to the National League where you can dominate. On the face of it, this seems not to make sense based on the fact that junkballers are the ones that benefit most from a move to the NL.

In any event, this disparity between the leagues is a commonly accepted belief.

The problem? It's just not true.

In research for my various articles to write, this question of fastball effectiveness per league came up. I did not want to state the anecdotal belief without some hard evidence, so I turned to Lee Perrault from Fire Brand (a Red Sox blog I write at) who is great with Pitch F/X.

He found no such fastball disparity between the leagues.

Over the last three years, 58.09 percent of all pitches in the National League were fastballs, amounting to 465,727 of them.

In the American League, their 428,558 fastballs ranked 59.06 percent.

Not only is incorrect that the National League is the fastball league, but the American League actually holds the edge in seeing fastballs. This is particularly significant because without the designated hitter in the NL, you would think a higher volume of fastballs would be thrown to pitchers. If we assume just that, then the fastball reliance on hitters 1-8 (or 1-7 and 9 on Tony LaRussa's team) only decreases. A junkballer's haven, indeed.

My next step was to see if perhaps this commonly held belief was based on production off the fastball, not volume. In other words, maybe the AL really is more effective against fastballs despite it being thrown more.

The AL OPS against fastballs was .745. In the NL, it was .727. Is that significant enough?

Pitchers OPS'ed at .353 over the 2007-9 span (the years the fastball data covers) in 17,771 plate appearances across both the AL and NL. NL plate appearances amounted to 300,349 over this time span, while NL pitchers were responsible for 16,800 of the plate appearances. This means that pitchers were responsible for roughly 1/18th of the plate appearances in the National League. Even if you assume a slight tick up in OPS (to account for American League pitchers being part of my sample), the math comes out to the NL OPS of non-pitchers against fastballs being roughly the same as the American League (h/t Daniel Moroz at Camden Crazies for the concept, Eric Seidman of Baseball Prospectus for the data).

My conclusion?

The anecdote of the American League being more of a breaking-pitch league is incorrect: it's the National League. That also confirms the other anecdote about junkballers benefiting from a move to the NL. However, this anecdote is strictly based on the fact that there is one less position player to pitch to: both leagues produce at the same level against fastballs.

Here is the full offensive breakdown of league production against fastballs*:

* One thing I didn't tackle but noticed is the difference between the league's OBP being rather small compared to the difference in slugging percentage.

American League
# of fastballs 428558
singles of fastballs 61557
doubles of fastballs 18592
triples of fastballs 1824
HRs of fastballs 10277
walks of fastballs 55166
HBP of fastballs 3129
INT BB 284

OBP 0.351945361
SLG 0.392781752
OPS (AL) = 0.744727113

National League
# of fastballs 465727
singles of fastballs 64258
doubles of fastballs 19671
triples of fastballs 2395
HRs of fastballs 10583
walks of fastballs 60033
HBP of fastballs 3459
INT BB 459

OBP 0.345391184
SLG 0.381100414
OPS (NL) = 0.726491598

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

Monday, December 21, 2009

A captivating Annual

Posted by Dave Studeman
John Dewan recently read the 2010 THT Annual on a plane trip and here's what he had to say:

I recently had a chance to sit down with The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 and was completely captivated by the quality writing and analysis it contains. I cannot recommend a book more highly than this year’s THT annual.

Yes, John is the Co-Publisher of ACTA Sports, the guys who publish our Annual, so he's just a tad biased. On the other hand, John sent me an email that made it clear his feelings were sincere; he's never really given us public (or private) feedback like this before. It was nice to hear.

I know you're probably already done with your Christmas shopping and Amazon is out of stock right now. Very frustrating. But you can probably find the Annual at your local bookstore, and I think the baseball fan in your house will thank you profusely for it. Plus, ACTA can ship it to you quickly.

If you've gotten the book and have some feedback for us, please leave it in the comment section. One reader left a review at Amazon, but we'd like to have more reviews posted there. Feedback is always welcome. For instance, one of the ideas I'm thinking about for next year's Annual is cutting down the size to a more manageable 6x9, which can be carried and read more easily. This was mentioned in the Amazon review, and I've toyed with the idea before. What do you think?

As always, thank you for your support.

Dave was called a "national treasure" by Rob Neyer. Seriously. Comments about this article can be sent to him through the miracle of e-mail.

Washington Nationals headed to playoffs in 2010

Posted by Evan Brunell
Well, it's official. The Washington Nationals will take baseball by storm and make the playoffs in 2010 now that they've inked starting pitcher Jason Marquis.

Why do I say that?

Because Jason Marquis' team has been in the playoffs every year of his career -- 10 straight seasons. Marquis is a Winner™ and you best recognize.

Rockies Marquis Wins 13th Game in Denver

Okay, jokes aside...

Marquis, 30, is coming off his best season since 2004, when he went 15-7 with a 3.71 ERA in 201.1 innings over 32 starts. After stumbling to a horrendous 6.02 ERA and walking in free agency, Marquis signed a three-year deal with the Cubs. He didn't set the world on fire, but he didn't embarrass himself either. However, in a misguided attempt to drop payroll (similar to shipping Mark DeRosa to Cleveland), the Cubs sent Marquis to Colorado.

Marquis helped lead the Rockies to the wild card, throwing a surprising 216 innings with a 4.04 ERA. Most of his value was tied up in the first half with a 3.65 ERA. He regressed severely in the second half (4.56 ERA) to the point where Marquis was sent to the bullpen and pitched just one game in the playoffs.

Marquis has reportedly inked a two-year, $15 million deal with the Washington Nationals and will head up their rotation.

One thing that Marquis got away from in 2006-8 was groundballs. After three straight years of a groundball percentage hovering in the low 50's, it went just under 50 percent for his final Cardinals year and Cubs tenure. That changed back in Colorado when he posted an excellent 55.6 percent rate. There was no major home/road split (in fact, Marquis pitched better in Colorado based on ERA) so he likely won't see a bump in moving to the Nationals' stadium. Marquis could actually be in trouble with the Nationals, as their infield defense past third baseman Ryan Zimmerman figures to be tepid at best.

The 31-year old certainly will have his playoff appearances streak broken, but should be a solid innings-eater in the front of the rotation for Washington, albeit without being an actual ace.

Having a mentor to work with the young pitchers can be valuable, and Marquis is young enough himself to do just that while furthering his career. This signing brings to note a common refrain repeated yearly: why spend the money on Marquis if they're going nowhere? If the Nationals are a 77-loss team, why spend the money to bring them to a 75-loss team? Answer: It's not that simple. You still need bodies out there to compete. What if their internal options were lousy? How about signing cheaper alternatives -- they're cheaper because they're riskier. Maybe they're not projected to be a good mentor (Erik Bedard would scare me in that role) or just not good, period.

Putting all that aside, for a team to win, complementary players have to be brought in at some point. You don't get to dictate when the free agent or trade market breaks in your favor. Marquis, for all his warts, does have something good going in his 10 consecutive playoff appearances: it means that 10 consecutive playoff-caliber teams felt he could help the club. Aside from 2006, he's done just that.

And he will continue to do just that for Washington.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

Saturday, December 19, 2009

2007-2009 Non-Tenders

Posted by Pat Andriola
So how much better was the non-tender class from 2009 versus 2008 and 2007? Here are your teams, folks:

2007:

C Miguel Olivo
1B Jason Lane
2B Aaron Miles
3B Morgan Ensberg
SS Adam Everett
LF Kevin Mench
CF Willie Harris
RF Emil Brown
SP Mark Hendrickson
SP Mark Prior
RP Brendan Donnelly
RP Chad Durbin
CL Kiko Calero

2008:

C Robby Hammock
1B Jonny Gomes
2B Aaron Miles
3B Ty Wigginton
SS Angel Berroa
LF Joey Gathright
CF Willy Taveras
RF Jeff Salazar/ Reggie Abercrombie
SP Chris Capuano
SP Tim Redding
RP Joe Nelson
RP Lance Cormier
CL Takashi Saito

2009:

C John Buck
1B Ryan Garko
2B Kelly Johnson
3B Garrett Atkins
SS Alfredo Amezaga
LF Jack Cust
CF Ryan Church
RF Jonny Gomes/ Gabe Gross
SP Chien-Ming Wang
SP Scott Olsen
RP Jose Arredondo
RP Mike MacDougal
CL Matt Capps

2009 clearly comes out as the winner, and I think I'd go with 2007 in second and 2008 in last, although it's really close between the last two.

Thoughts?

Pat Andriola is a junior at Tufts University. You can contact him at Patrick.Andriola @ tufts.edu or follow him on Twitter @tuftspat.

Visual Baseball: Seattle Mariners Rank-o-meter

Posted by Kevin Dame
With the additions of Cliff Lee, Chone Figgins and "Meltdown" Bradley, there's been a surge in Mariners hype. Those who aren't quite ready to hand them the AL West crown point to their weak offense. Here's a look at that offense via the Rank-o-meter. Even with the additions of Figgins and Bradley, the Rank-o-meter shows how weak they are at almost every position when compared to the rest of the AL. For each position I rank the top 14 players by 2009 OPS.

Notes / Caveats about Rank-o-meter:

1. A team might not have a player show up at a given position because (a) there's uncertainty around who will play the position or (b) the player doesn't rank in the top 14. So for the Mariners 1st base position, there's enough uncertainty (Carp? Branyan?) to leave it blank for now.

2. I'm using 2009 OPS (unadjusted) which has its flaws. If my use of simpler, more traditional measures bothers people, I may decide to start using more advanced ones. But my goal is to be experimenting with and test-driving visual approaches to communicating performance, so I'm trying to keep the measures part simple (at least for now).

Friday, December 18, 2009

Four runs a game! Or more!

Posted by Jeff Sackmann
Last year, the Mariners scored 3.95 runs per game. The rest of the league scored 4.89. Unless Safeco grew a hundred feet in every direction and the Mariners spotted their opponents five extra outfielders, that ain't just a park effect. Obviously, something had to be done.

Fortunately, you didn't have to look far to find room for improvement in the Seattle offense. Mariners left fielders and third basemen were among the worst offensive performers in baseball at their respective positions, and with Chone Figgins and now Milton Bradley, Seattle has addressed those two problems.

It's too soon to write a full analysis of where the Mariners stand going into 2010; at the very least, they'll sign a first baseman. But in the meantime, let's see how far the offense has moved toward respectability.

Using CHONE projections and the Baseball Musings Lineup Analysis tool, we can estimate the Mariners run production. It doesn't seem quite fair to do the calculation with Mike Carp at first base and Ken Griffey DHing, so I ran it with Ryan Garko at first (.343 OBP/.438 SLG) and Mike Sweeney at DH (.313/.409). The M's could do better with the last spot; they might even get more simply by handing the job to Michael Saunders.

Here's a plausible lineup, along with CHONE-projected OBP and SLG:

1. Ichiro (.340/.402)
2. Chone (.367/.352)
3. Garko (.343/.438)
4. Bradley (.381/.459) [projected for Wrigley]
5. Lopez (.314/.442)
6. Gutierrez (.325/.418)
7. Sweeney (.313/.409)
8. Johnson (.303/.350)
9. Wilson (.299/.359)

The Lineup Analysis tool says that's a 4.6 run-per-game lineup.

Last year, the M's gave up 4.27 runs per game, largely due to their stellar defense. While the defense may not be as good (Gutierrez can't possibly be so good again--can he?--and Adrian Beltre isn't likely to be back), the pitching will probably improve more than enough to counteract that with the addition of Cliff Lee.

Watching him in Milwaukee, I always knew Jack Zduriencik was good, but did anybody know he'd be this good?

Jeff Sackmann is the creator of MinorLeagueSplits.com. With Kent Bonham, he founded CollegeSplits.com, which provides data on amateur baseball to about half of the 30 Major League teams. You can also follow him on Twitter.

Seattle pulls wool over Cubs eyes with Bradley-Silva swap

Posted by Evan Brunell
Larry Stone of the Seattle Times first reported that Milton Bradley, who will go down in Cubs infamy, has been swapped to the Seattle Mariners for starting pitcher Carlos Silva. Like Bradley, Silva will go down in M's infamy as one of the last disastrous moves made by former GM Bill Bavasi... except that Silva's final parting shot was gift-wrapping the Mariners the 2010 AL Division title.

Make no mistake about it, the Bradley acquisition officially puts the Mariners over the top. Before the move, while I still had Seattle as my early favorites to win the division, I could easily see a scenario where Texas or the Angels could pull it out. I don't see such a scenario anymore.

The club still doesn't have a first-baseman or catcher (for now), but does it even matter anymore?

What Bradley brings to the team is much-needed offensive firepower.

The name of the game in baseball is to have the highest run differential possible. This means that run prevention is absolutely a tool to be used, and you're seeing an increased emphasis on defense across the board. Seattle, under the reign of GM Jack Zduriencik, has been the poster boy on this particular subject. The run prevention defense (jeez, I feel like I'm talking about football here) will stifle opposing teams.

But what about scoring runs? It's not always just about defense. You've got to score runs, too. Ichiro Suzuki and Chone Figgins should be playmakers atop the batting order, but past that there was no offensive threat.

No longer.

Bradley has his warts, but offense is certainly not one of those warts. In a season where he struggled to adapt to a new team and battle injuries, he batted .257/.378/.397 for a .775 OPS. This OPS, by the way, trails just Ichiro, Jose Lopez and Franklin Gutierrez (barely) on the '10 iteration of the team -- and that was during an off-year by Bradley.

The year before, in Texas, Bradley had an obscene .321/.436/.563 line, and while he may be hard-pressed to match that, is anyone writing off a .277/.371/.450 line? Those are his career slash stats, which Bradley should have no trouble exceeding in 2010.

Bradley's line-drive percentage in Texas was 24.7 percent, which is a figure he only reaches every once in a blue moon. He generally sits around 18-19 percent, which is among his career norms so I don't see much potential for a major backslide statistically ala 2009. A big red flag as to his problems in Chicago is his ground ball rate, which was 46.9 percent. Given his career averages at 45.5 percent, it may not seem like a big deal that his ground ball rate nearly matched that this past season. However, Bradley's two best offensive seasons -- 2007-8 -- had ground ball rates around 40 percent. Could it be injuries that prevented Bradley from getting the loft on the ball that he used to? Maybe. It's something to watch, especially at Safeco Field where Bradley will be best served getting some loft on the ball and taking advantage of the gaps.

Joining his eighth team in 11 seasons, hopefully Bradley can fit into an atmosphere that seems like it's aligned to be the home he never had. I asked Dave Cameron of USS Mariner how the Seattle media was via Twitter, and he said there is "super low pressure" -- and that Seattle's media is the kindest in baseball. While it's possible that may be hyperbole, it doesn't seem that far from the truth.

Then you have manager Don Wakamatsu, who by all indications is a player's manager. That's never stopped Bradley in the past from wearing out his welcome, but it can only help, right?

Bradley figures to toggle between left-field -- where he's a decent defender -- and designated hitter, which should mitigate his propensity for getting injured. It will pin Ken Griffey, Jr. to the bench with Michael Saunders the other beneficiary, which is a good thing.

In exchange for acquiring a middle of the order hitter -- attitude warts and all, who had a relatively tame stint in Texas and will find himself surrounded by "good guys" like Ken Griffey, Jr. -- the team gives up someone making more money than Bradley -- $24 million over the next two years, as opposed to $21. (Seattle will pay $9 million of Silva's contract which is not really much of a consolation prize.)

Silva was Bavasi's poster child for futility. He inked a four-year, $48 million deal with the Mariners after 2007. To no one's surprise, Silva's sinker backslid terribly to an ugly 6.46 ERA in 28 starts. His xFIP of 4.64 gave some fans hope, but he followed up with 30.1 innings of a 8.60 ERA in 2009 and 5.53 xFIP. Ouch, ouch and triple-ouch. (Yes, Silva went down with right shoulder inflammation in early May and did not return until late September, but it is difficult to ascribe his numbers to the injury.)

True, Silva will likely benefit from the move to the NL Central, but his success in Minnesota was simply because of his fastball flashing above-average stuff every now and then. His fastball is decidedly mediocre these days. The best the Cubs can hope for is for a Jeff Suppan-like season at the back of the rotation... and how is that going to help the Cubs? Answer: not at all. The Cubs significantly downgraded from Bradley, which, granted was inevitable. What was not inevitable is who they downgraded to. They'll be "forced" (in their opinion) to put Silva in the rotation and watch him serve up gopherball after gopherball.

The Mariners pulled off a major heist here. Yes, Bradley had to go. But we're still talking a middle of the order hitter who was jettisoned for someone who has no business being on a major league team. At this point, all Cubs fans can hope for is that Silva gets off to such an awful start that the Cubs pull the plug entirely and release him.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Christmas Holliday?

Posted by Chuck Brownson
Is anyone else having a hard time figuring out the market for Matt Holliday? He's the top free agent on the market this offseason but teams are being noticeably frugal in their spending. Few teams seem interested in paying anyone the $100 million or more that Scott Boras seems to think Holliday is worth. For his part, Boras has already compared Holliday to last year's top free agent position player, Mark Teixeira, and suggested that Holliday should receive something similar to the eight year, $180 million contract Teixeira received last year from the Yankees. (Insert eye roll here!)

Don't get me wrong, Holliday's a very good player. He is not, however, among the upper echelon of major league ballplayers and I think the Cardinals, the Yankees, Holliday, and Boras know that. It's clear that the Cardinals are interested in bringing him back and, until a few days ago, it appeared as though their primary competition for the left fielder would be the Red Sox. Then, the Sox went and signed Mike Cameron to a great contract. (By the way, there's been too little discussion about what a great job Boston's done in spending Holliday's money and getting BOTH Cameron and John Lackey.) The Mets seem to be all-in on Jason Bay. The Giants, Braves, and Yankees all seem to have no interest. So who is the Cardinals main competition for Holliday?

The Cards, indeed, have significant motivation in bringing Holliday back to the Midwest. Despite his defensive blunder in the playoffs, he was tremendous after being acquired from the A's and is a potent force in the middle of the reigning NL Central champs' order.

**Who is going to emerge as the Cardinals' main competitor for Holliday's services?** (Icon/SMI)

Moreover, with the Cards looking to extend Albert Pujols throughout the remainder of his career, signing Holliday would signal that the Cards are serious about being a contender for the next five to ten years.

But with no clear competitor for Holliday's services, Joe Strauss over at the St. Louis Post Dispatch gave the world this little nugget earlier in the week: the Cardinals have offered Holliday up to $16 million per year for up to 8 years. Apparently, bidding against themselves in mid-December, the Cards offered Holliday an 8 year, $128 million contract....and Boras passed? Does this strike anyone else as a little strange?

The next day, ESPN's Buster Olney told us that the offer is really a five year offer. In 24 hours, we went from 8 years and $128 million to 5 years and $80 million? Is it possible they're both right: that the offer is for five years but could go as long as eight? I just can't believe that it's a five year contract with three team option years added to the end. It makes more sense to believe that it's an eight year contract that would allow Holliday to opt out after five. But isn't that still a lot to offer someone for whom there's no competition?

Holliday turns 30 in less than a month. Even if there is some competition -- in fact there's word today that the Orioles may be the "mystery team" that Boras is always searching for -- eight years is too many to offer Holliday. Here is a list of all the players who are currently playing with a contract lasting at least eight years: Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Mark Teixeira, Miguel Cabrera, Todd Helton, Alfonso Soriano, and Scott Rolen. That's it. Seven players in all of major league baseball have contracts as long as the one reportedly offered to Holliday. Four of them are elite players and two of the other three are widely regarded as two of the worst contracts in baseball. The seventh? The Cardinals traded him just a couple of years ago for another bad contract. In a down market, with zero competition, an eight year offer is a terrible offer from Cards' GM John Mozeliak.

The argument can be made that signing Holliday may increase the likelihood of extending Pujols, though Pujols downplayed the significance of Holliday's contract Thursday. That has some value. Even so, how much does it increase the probability of Pujols resigning with the Cardinals? Five percent? Ten percent? It can't be any higher than that. How much surplus value will Pujols's new contract bring to the Cardinals? $50 million? That's a discussion for another post but, at $50 million, the most value this should add to Holliday's offer would be $5 million. The increased likelihood of Pujols resigning with the team certainly isn't worth 3 years and $48 million.

What about 5 years and $80 million? Going into the offseason, I'd have thought that sounded a little low. A contract in that range certainly invites other teams to get involved in the process. The Mets, should they lose out on Bay, or the Angels, having already lost Lackey to the BoSox and Chone Figgins to the Mariners and with M's acquisition of Cliff Lee, could try to get in on Holliday if they feel as though they might be able to sign him for eight figures rather than nine. Indeed, maybe the Orioles have already noticed an opportunity to add a very good player to their young and improving lineup. Maybe the Red Sox are willing and able to include Jacoby Ellsbury in a trade for Adrian Gonzalez and then get in the bidding for Holliday.

Failing that, and if the Mets do indeed land Bay, and if the Angels remain out of the bidding, I just don't see a lot of competition for Holliday. There's already some doubt as to whether Holliday wants to go back to the American League after struggling with the A's the first four months of last season. Does anyone really think he's going to go to Baltimore and play for a fourth place team for the next six years? It seems to me that the money would have to be MUCH better from the O's for him to decide to play there rather than next to the Gateway Arch. And if the Cardinals can get Holliday for five and $80 million, or even six and $96 million, that would have to be considered a pretty good stocking stuffer for everyone involved this Christmas, though it might be simply a lump of coal for Scott Boras.

Chuck is a lifelong Cardinals fan who welcomes comments below or via email at chuckbtht AT gmail DOT com.

What’s the matter with relievers?

Posted by Jeremy Greenhouse
Take it away, CHONE:



Player
Innings
ERA
RAR


Mike Gonzalez
49
3.67
5


Brandon Lyon
64
3.66
6


Rafael Soriano
52
3.29
6


Billy Wagner
37
3.41
5

So the Red Sox trade for Billy Wagner, with Wagner agreeing on the condition that they not pick up his option. However, he allows them to offer him arbitration, apparently not understanding how type-A status will put him in the Juan Cruz class. Well, the Braves had other plans. Before they even heard back from the two type-A relievers to whom they'd offered arbitration, Braves were so eager to give up their first round pick that they signed Wagner to a $7-million one-year deal, with a $6.25 vesting option. Rafael Soriano then decided to accept arbitration, and signed for $7.25 to pitch in 2010. So the Braves could have just held onto Soriano instead of signing Wagner. Wagner gives them similar production on a similar contract, but comes at the cost of draft picks. And then Brandon Lyon and Mike Gonzalez (the Braves other type A) sign multi-year contracts with uncompetitive teams that had just finally gotten out from under the costly contracts of Jose Valverde and Danys Baez. Teams are giving away draft picks and $5-7 million/year contracts for the sake of approximately five runs a year. I’m lost.

Can someone please tell me what’s going on?

Any questions? Feel free to email me.

Orioles get great value in Mike Gonzalez

Posted by Evan Brunell
The Baltimore Orioles addressed their two biggest needs in one fell swoop Wednesday, agreeing to a two-year deal with left-handed reliever Mike Gonzalez while plucking third baseman Garrett Atkins off the scrap heap pile. For this article, we're going to look at Mike Gonzalez and why Baltimore felt comfortable inking him to a contract that was worth more than he earned his team in 2009.

Gonzalez's $6 million annual salary over the next two years represents a steal on the market. In a two-part series, Sky Andrecheck looked at the correlation between WAR and salaries and found that the dollar value of a win ranged between $8 million and $5.4 million, well above the commonly accepted theory of $4.5 million per win.

Without getting into the multi-year aspect of the deal, I ran the numbers off the model that projected $6.4 million per win and found that a WAR of someone making $6 million (this data is for 2009, the dollar value for a win in 2010 will be higher -- although likely not by much) is 0.9. That just happens to be the WAR of Gonzalez in 2009, when he posted a 2.42 ERA in 74.1 innings, saving 10 games while striking out 90. FanGraphs valued Gonzalez's contributions at $4.1 million.

Let's recap quickly here to make sure the point is not lost: FanGraphs' win values showed that Gonzalez was worth $4.1 million in 2009, but we just established that a market value of 0.9 WAR gives you a $6 million salary. FanGraph's valuation has the true dollar value of Gonzalez's production in 2009 being worth $4.1 million. In that lens, he just got grossly overpaid.

Ah, but there's a difference between dollar value and market value.

Take, for example, Marco Scutaro. Scutaro inked a two-year, $12.5 million deal with the Red Sox to be their starting shortstop. His WAR was 4.5, suggesting a $28.8 million salary was commensurate for his production. FanGraphs agrees with this valuation, saying that to get Scutaro's production from 2009 in hindsight, you would have to dole out $20.2 million.

Why did Scutaro, then, get underpaid by about $12 million a year as opposed to Gonzalez's being overpaid about $2 million a year? Simple. Market value, plus expected role. Scutaro is not expected to repeat his 2009 season, which affects matters considerably. His age affects matters considerably as well, while Gonzalez was one of the premier relief arms on the market, and would have been one in any free agent market. (Scutaro was the best shortstop option on the 2009-10 market, but this was a product of availability.)

Middle relievers are paid incredibly depressed prices, mostly because of the volatility of the position plus the sheer number of talent available at that level. It's a large reason why, despite elite status as a setup man, these elite players still don't receive gobs of cash compared to the average middle reliever. Gonzalez is a great example. Even though he was worth $6 million in 2009, no one would have paid him that much money to repeat his role as a setup man -- and Baltimore took advantage of that. Gonzalez saw his $4.1 million valuation and $6 million deal affected by his status as a middle reliever. While he accepted a deal that was over his dollar value in 2009, he should be expected to return significantly more now that he's Baltimore's closer and should notch at least 30 saves.

To use another comparison, I looked for a pitcher that had around 30 saves, a 10.9 K/9 like Gonzalez, and ERA of 2.42. I settled on his former teammate, Rafael Soriano. Soriano had 27 saves, a 12.1 K/9 and 2.97 ERA. That's very close to what you can expect Gonzalez to do in 2010.

Soriano recently inked a $7.5 million deal with the Tampa Bay Rays to be their closer after accepting arbitration from Atlanta and being immediately jettisoned. FanGraphs valued him at $9.1 million in 2009 off of 2 WAR. It's amazing how much saves can add to your bottom line. Gonzalez actually settled for less money than he would have received if he had spent 2009 closing.

Why? Because saves aren't a statistic married to a player's talents. Saves are a product of opportunity. Take Detroit's Fernando Rodney, for example. 37 saves, 4.40 ERA, 7.3 K/9. His WAR was a paltry 0.3 in 2009 and worth $1.4 million because while he racked up the saves, he wasn't particularly good while doing it. I'd take Gonzalez any day of the week over Rodney, and yet Rodney had 27 more saves. (It goes to show the ever-increasing intelligence of the baseball community, then, that Rodney finds himself frozen out of the free agent market. He will be forced to sign a bargain deal after entering the winter seeking a three-year, $30 million deal according to the Boston Globe. As early as two, three years ago, Rodney would have landed a deal similar to what he was seeking.)

Baltimore paid exactly market value for Gonzalez's services -- based off his WAR, meaning that they underpaid for someone who figures to be a great closer. Baltimore should expect to walk away from this deal having gotten a fantastic return on their investment.

To dredge up a previous article, this was the point I was essentially making when reviewing Brandon Lyon's contract -- a deal that got much vitriol from the baseball community. I argued that Lyon would be considered neither under- nor overpaid by the end of his deal. I based this off Lyon's likelihood of opening the season as the Astros closer and being worth the market value commensurate with a closer's role. In essence, I looked at what he was likely to do over the next three years and reverse-engineered a contract from there. Even if he was an average closer, the salary paid would end up being commensurate with his market value.

The main difference between my glowing assessment of the Gonzalez deal and Lyon's deal is that the Orioles paid a salary that was tempered by his middle relief role and his likely high value as a closer. Baltimore paid market value to take advantage of expected return on investment. Houston did it the other way around: they paid expected market value to take advantage of return on investment.

See the difference? Baltimore's return on investment with Gonzalez can only go up. Lyon's can only go down.

Evan Brunell blogs the Red Sox regularly at Fire Brand of the American League. Stop by, or e-mail him with comments.

The best defenders of the decade by UZR

Posted by Nick Steiner
MGL gives us some great data.

So the best defender of the decade, in terms of overall runs saved, is Andruw Jones, with 161 runs saved. If you look at runs saved per 150 defensive games, given at least 500 defensive games, the leader is... Andruw Jones, at +20 per. If you combine runs saved with positional value, then the best is still Andruw Jones. Last year, Andruw played DH for much of the year... I don't think I've ever seen a player age so fast.

Scott Rolen, Adrian Beltre, Chase Utley and Doug Mientkiewicz also had great decades.

Nick is a Cardinals fan living in LA. He also writes for Viva El Birdos under the handle vivaelpujols. He welcomes questions and comments via email

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Halladay, Lee blockbuster change complexion of three teams

Posted by Evan Brunell
In one fell swoop, the Philadelphia Phillies handed the Seattle Mariners the A.L. West title while giving the Toronto Blue Jays the kick in the pants their rebuilding phase needed.

The particulars first: Philadelphia receives SP Roy Halladay and $6 million from Toronto in exchange for prospects in P Kyle Drabek, OF Michael Taylor and C Travis D'Arnaud. Seattle takes Cliff Lee from the Phillies for RP Phillippe Aumont, OF Tyson Gillies, P Juan Ramirez, all prospects. The Jays then flipped Taylor to the Oakland Athletics for 3B Brett Wallace.

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Tuesday, February 09, 2010