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Tuesday, August 18, 2009Blue Jays recall Travis SniderTravis Snider was recalled by the Toronto Blue Jays today after scorching Triple-A pitching to the tune of a .337/.431/.662 line in 175 at-bats. As has been clear for a while now, Snider was recalled once his potential eligibility for Super Two arbitration status expired, ensuring that the Jays get him for one additional year at or near the major league minimum. 21, Snider has the ability to become a franchise-changing hitter for a team that could desperately use one. He'll see ample time in right field with Alex Rios off to Chicago. He had a poor .242/.292/.394 line earlier in the year for the Jays, but that clearly looks like the aberration given his dominance in Triple-A and handling of big league pitching last year (.803 OPS). Prior to this recent promotion, Snider was limited to facing mainly right-handers as the club wanted to ease him into a big-league role. Not anymore. He'll be playing against both right- and left-handed pitchers as the Jays start looking ahead towards their 2010 team. Whether this 2010 team will be designed to compete is anyone's guess. With J.P. Ricciardi's insistence on a high-profile deal for Roy Halladay, Halladay could very well open the year in a Toronto uniform. While Edwin Encarnacion shouldn't go anywhere near third base, he could serve as the Jays' left-fielder or designated hitter this coming year as Josh Roenicke emerges as a late-inning reliever. (Encarnacion, Roenicke and top prospect Zach Stewart were acquired for Scott Rolen at the trading deadline.) If Ricciardi looks to add, Snider becomes crucial to their ability to field a playoff-caliber team with the humongous Vernon Wells contract sucking up center field. While the team has done well in purging themselves of Rolen and Rios' deals, they still can't walk out and start tossing money out left and right. Snider's success the rest of the way in 2009 could be a large factor into the decision on how to approach next year as they simply can't hope to compete without him. Pudge to the RangersJust when I was about to put together something about the catching core of the Rangers that has thus far failed to live up to their expectations, Texas goes out an acquires former golden boy Ivan Rodriguez. But back to him in a moment. The three young studs, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Tyler Teagarden, and Max Ramirez, were all thought of as impressive, major league catchers. Here were their lines from 2007: Saltalamacchia (22 years old): .452 wOBA (AA), .318 wOBA (MLB) Teagarden (24): .456 wOBA (A+), .387 wOBA (AA) Ramirez (23): .411 wOBA (A+ Rangers), .417 wOBA (A+ Indians) And now, their 2009 lines: Saltalamacchia (24): .290 wOBA (MLB) Teagarden (26): .278 wOBA (MLB) Ramirez (25): .294 wOBA (AAA) That's quite a downfall. Although they aren't quite busts yet, all three have been largely disappointing, and it has been especially hard for a Rangers team fighting for a Wild Card spot. So, today they decided to go out and deal for a player that the fans in Arlington know quite well in Ivan Rodriguez. I'd say that the Rangers would at least be producing some jersey sales from the trade, but Texans just have to dig into their closets and grab their I-Rod jerseys from years back. Right now, Pudge is just not that much of an upgrade for the Rangers. He has a .285 wOBA on the year, and his BABIP (.302) can't be blamed. Rodriguez is striking out at the highest rate of his career. His OBP (.280) is barely better than it was his first season in the majors in 1991. He's slugging at the lowest rate he has since 1992. He's been worth just .6 WAR on the year, and the value is mostly derived from his being a catcher. ziPS gives Pudge a .299 wOBA for the rest of the year. Teagarden, who has been extremely unlucky with balls in play (.260 BABIP), is projected to have a .319 wOBA the rest of the way. Right now, unless some magical Nolan Ryan pep talk gives Rodriguez a rejuvenation, Pudge will probably continue to be a below average player. Unlike Teagarden, he's not the future of the organization (in fact, he's the past). Adding insult, the Rangers gave up a 22 year-old reliever with a 50:15 K:BB ratio in A ball and a second baseman who hit .297/.341/.394 as a 21 year-old in Double-A. The great Rany Jazayerli says that "sometimes things can happen in a small sample size that are so extraordinary that you learn a lot about the quality of a player from that small sample." I think I learned a lot from Pudge when he struck out swinging against Livan Hernandez not once, not twice, but thrice in a game against the Mets on July 26th. That's tough to do, and unless Rodriguez goes back to his old form, the Rangers' Texan next-door neighbor may have just pulled one over on them. Random research inspired by today’s Treder columnSteve Treder has a fun column up today. It's the second part of one of his specialties: imagining an alternate-universe team, in this case the 1961 Indians if a series of trades had not been made in the preceding years. In it, he figures Cleveland would've posted a pythag mark of 104-58. One thing I found odd/interesting: despite winning 104 games as a team, no single pitcher personally claimed more than 16 victories. I know this shouldn't be taken too seriously, but I wondered: has this ever happened? Has a team ever won that many games without anyone picking up his 17th win? As a matter of fact, yeah. Among the 33 teams who won at least 104 games, it's happened twice. Most recently, the 2004 Cards, who went 105-57, did it. They had a trio of 15-game winner and their big winner tallied 16 wins. (Care to guess the name of the big winner on this 105-win squad? It's recent enough so you have a shot? I'll list him on the bottom of this THT Live blurb). Please note the Cardinals allowed fewer runs than any other team in the league that year. An even more impressive incident happened in 1975, when the Big Red Machine went 108-54 despite lacking anyone who won more than 15 games. Even Treder's Virtual 1961 Indians had someone do that. Instead, Cincy had six guys win double digits, including three tied at 15 victories. The big winner on the 2005 Cardinals was Jeff Suppan. Yup, that's right - Suppan was the top dog in the win column for a team that won 105 games in a season. Awesome. THT Daily: Strasburg signsRead all about last night's signings at Baseball America. Click for more... Monday, August 17, 2009Are the Yankees trying to hit more fly balls?The title of this post posits an intriguing question, and although we cannot truly get to the answer (apart from delving into the minds of the players), the numbers are interesting. The new Yankee Stadium has turned out to play like a bandbox, and the Yankee players may not just be taking advantage of it serendipitously. Below are some of your 2009 New York Yankees accompanied by the relevant stats: Player 2009 FB% 2008 FB%Career FB%2009 IFF%Career IFF% Teixeira 45.5% 36.5% 39.5% 9.4% 10.1% Damon 44.6% 34.2% 35.0% 14.6% 15.9% Swisher 44.2% 44.5% 45.1% 10.9% 10.7% Posada 43.4% 39.7% 37.8% 7.1% 6.6% Matsui 41.8% 34.5% 35.9% 13.2% 7.3% Molina 41.0% 33.0% 33.7% 4.0% 5.8% Rodrigue 38.1% 39.9% 40.1% 8.6% 10.7% Cano 32.7% 33.2% 31.0% 6.9% 8.1% Cabrera 31.7% 34.9% 32.2% 10.2% 12.4% Jeter 25.4% 23.8% 23.8% 0.9% 2.9% There are a lot of things you can take away from this, and by no means does one of the things have to be that the Yankees have a conscious effort to try and hit more fly balls in hopes of getting more homers. While these players definitely stood out, Alex Rodriguez, Robinson Cano, and Melky Cabrera have all seen drops in their FB% from last season. However, it is hard to ignore the numbers, especially when the jumps from last season for guys like Damon, Matsui, and Teixeira are so big. It could be that the lefties are trying to get as many big swings as possible thanks to the hitter-friendly dimensions, and to be honest, it seems to be working. All three are seeing improvements in their slugging, with Damon and Matsui up about sixty points each from last year. Jorge Posada and Derek Jeter are up less from last year, but these are fly ball frenzy years for them relative to the rest of their careers. Posada is slugging eighty points better than last year and better than he did from 2004-06. Jeter is up about sixty points from last year and has a better wOBA than he did from all of 2001-2008 in all but one year. The new Yankee Stadium has become a haven for fly balls to leave the park, and the Bronx Bombers are certainly taking advantage of it. I can't say for sure if the Yankees are purposefully trying to hit more fly balls, but if they were, could you blame them? Thanks to Fangraphs.com for the data. UPDATE: The great Tom Tango, over at his The Book Blog, wrote that I should include all the data when doing something like this. I agree, and I assume he meant to include all the Yankees, so I'll include the rest of the starters/players with enough service time for the numbers to mean anything, and update the list to include the player's career FB%, which is right after last year's mark, along with their 2009 and career infield fly numbers. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||