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Saturday, February 27, 2010Motown’s up-the-middle talentFollowing Rick Porcello's big league promotion, the Detroit Tigers' farm system is considered rather fallow by prospect evaluators. Baseball America has the Tigers ranked 26th in the publication's annual talent rankings, and ESPN's Keith Law places the club 17th in his organizational rankings. But with Curtis Granderson in the Bronx, Placido Polanco patrolling the hot corner in Philadelphia and Gerald Laird eligible for free agency following the 2010 season, the Tigers are in the process of breaking in a new trio of up-the-middle position players. What can we expect from second baseman Scott Sizemore, center fielder Austin Jackson and catcher Alex Avila? Here's a brief look at Detroit's new starters at the keystone spot and in the middle garden, as well as the team's catcher-of-the-near future. Click for more... Friday, February 26, 2010The write-in candidates for Stock Watch 2010Wednesday, I wrote about the ten players I'm keeping a close eye on this season. Or, rather, the first eight. In the spirit of creating this list in a way that enables us to follow along together, I opened up the last two spots for commenters' nominations. The original eight were: 1. Manny Ramirez 2. Nick Markakis 3. Billy Butler 4. Brandon Wood 5. Roy Oswalt 6. David Price 7. Derek Lowe 8. Erik Bedard You guys did a great job suggesting players to be included on the list. For the last two spots, I tried very hard not to replicate the type of players above--i.e., I'm very interested in how David Ortiz does, but he has very similar questions to those facing Manny Ramirez. I'm also trying to not load up on players from the same team, though it was very hard not to pick Miguel Tejada, Matt Wieters, Russell Martin, or Clayton Kershaw. The last two spots on the Stock Watch go to: 9. David Wright 2009: .307/.390/.447 (144 games) 2010 projection: .305/.391/.502 (149 games) This is a cliche choice, but a fun one nonetheless. While Wright wasn't nearly as bad last year as the worrymongers might suggest--a player who posts 3.5 WAR in a very down year can play for me any day--it'll be fun to see if the power switch can get flipped back to the "on" setting. Slugging .447 makes Wright a very, very good player. Venturing into (or very close to) .300/.400/.500 gets him into superstar territory. And while we know UZR is subject to pretty wide fluctuation on a year-to-year basis, the stat just can't decide if Wright's above- or below-average. While Wright's 2010 won't be career-defining in the way that Brandon Wood's will be, it will certainly tell us a great deal what to expect from the Mets' third baseman going forward. 10. Yovani Gallardo 2009: 3.97 FIP (185.2 innings) 2010 projection: 3.62 FIP (145 innings) Uber-prospect? Check. Bizarre injury? Check. Gigantic leap in innings pitched? Check. Chance to be among the game's best? Check. I love the idea of tracking Gallardo through 2010. There's no questioning his talent; there aren't too many 23-year-old pitchers striking out 204 batters in 185.2 innings. Granted, Gallardo does give up his share of walks (4.46) and home runs (1.02) per nine innings, but those numbers don't necessarily portend doom. If he's FIPping to the tune of 3.97 with those blemishes, imagine how good he can be if he improves those figures while still striking out over a batter per inning. What's more, every pitch he throws with regularity is above-average. Combining his age, stuff, performance, and injury history produces a player I'm very excited to watch closely in 2010. If your suggested player didn't make the cut, fret not. I've kept all the submissions and recorded their CHONE projections. It's quite possible one of the players on the list will miss extended time in 2010, and I'm grateful to have a stable of players ready to insert in the stock watch. Thanks for all the nominations, and we'll check back in on these guys as the season progresses. Thursday, February 25, 2010Projecting individual prospectsBryan Smith wrote an interesting and thought-provoking article earlier today over at Fangraphs. Basically, Smith is trying to formulate a method to predict a median future performance for an individual prospect (he used Cubs shortstop Starlin Castro as his example). This is certainly an worthwhile idea and one that could potentially revolutionize the way prospects are viewed. As we know there is a sizable risk involved in almost any prospect, but if we could somehow quantify this risk we could more accurately project future performance. One way to do this would be to develop some type of confidence intervals for a prospect's future performance during his first six major league seasons. However, to do this would require estimates of injury risk and potential "bust factor". I'm not sure how probable or realistic this would be to do but it is still an exciting idea nonetheless. The guys over at Sons of Sam Horn have been putting together something along these lines. They are compiling a "community success probabilities" for Boston prospects. This is a good start to trying to predict a prospect's future role and having a variety of opinions may yield better results, although obviously the younger and further away a player is from the majors the more difficult this becomes. I'm sure there is plenty of proprietary work done by clubs regarding this type of analysis and for good reason. If a team can narrow their estimates of a player's future ceiling they will be better prepared to develop or possibly trade this player. I expect there to be major strides in this area of prospect valuation and projection as the decade progresses. Wednesday, February 24, 2010Yadier Molina, hit-and-run plays, and ideas for a studyWhat you get here is a little like an asteroid collision in progress, such as that recently observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. A couple ideas from different places crashed together in my head, a few parts stuck, and others went shooting off in random directions. I haven't corralled them into nice orbits, yet. Instead you get to observe the messy collision and its immediate aftermath in all its glory, or lack thereof. The first idea came from a FanPost at Beyond the Box Score that asked why teams even bother to attempt steals against the best-throwing catchers when the net result is below break even. Trip Somers suggested in the comments that some of the plays recorded as caught stealing may be failed hit-and-run plays. I decided to look at video of all the runners caught stealing by Yadier Molina in 2009, using Retrosheet to identify all the plays. Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference list Molina as allowing 32 stolen bases against 22 caught stealing in 138 games played as a catcher in 2009. However, the play-by-play accounts indicate that six of the runners caught stealing were caught by the pitcher, either as the result of a pickoff throw, or in one fascinating case, when the pitcher Chris Carpenter simply held onto the ball while the runner Michael Bourn broke for second. Carpenter threw to shortstop Julio Lugo, who applied the tag, and umpire Paul Emmel called Bourn out and immediately ejected Bourn for arguing. Television replays appeared to show that Bourn had beaten the tag. Accuracy of umpire calls notwithstanding, that leaves us to account for 16 baserunners caught stealing by Yadier Molina. How many of them were caught on broken hit-and-run plays? That turns out to be a little bit harder to answer than I expected, even with the excellent resource of MLB.tv video archives available for every game. My best interpretation is that at least nine runners were caught stealing by Molina on straight steal attempts, and at least five and possibly as many as seven runners were caught stealing on failed hit-and-run plays. Date Opp Runner Pitcher Score Inn Out Count Pitch Type Batter Action Comments 4/11 Hou K.Matsui A.Wainwright 0-0 1 0 1-1 slider low and outside take for a ball straight steal attempt 4/16 Chi K.Fukudome A.Wainwright 1-1 3 1 3-2 slider down the middle swing and miss possible hit and run, no look back to home 5/9 Cin A.Rosales K.Lohse 2-2 4 2 2-2 fastball high-middle take for a ball straight steal attempt after 0-2 pitchout 5/25 Mil C.Counsell C.Carpenter 0-0 7 0 1-1 cutter low-outside corner swing and miss hit and run 5/31 SF F.Lewis D.Reyes 3-5 8 1 0-0 pitchout take for a ball straight steal attempt 6/23 NY L.Castillo J.Pineiro 1-0 6 0 0-0 sinker low and outside swing and miss hit and run 7/1 SF T.Ishikawa A.Wainwright 1-0 5 1 0-0 slider low-outside corner swing and miss hit and run, squared to bunt but swung 7/5 Cin B.Phillips C.Carpenter 4-0 4 1 3-2 cutter high-outside corner foul tip possible hit and run, also running on 2-2 7/30 LA C.Blake B.Thompson 3-3 8 1 1-0 fastball outside foul tip hit and run, weak swing 8/4 NY A.Cora J.Pineiro 4-7 5 2 0-0 curve low-outside corner take for a ball straight steal attempt 8/4 NY A.Pagan D.Reyes 4-7 6 2 1-0 fastball low-inside corner take for a strike straight steal attempt 8/20 SD T.Gwynn J.Pineiro 0-0 1 2 0-0 fastball low-middle take for a ball straight steal attempt 8/20 SD E.Cabrera J.Pineiro 4-1 3 1 2-0 fastball low-inside corner take for a ball straight steal attempt 8/28 Was W.Harris J.Smoltz 1-1 3 2 1-1 slider outside take for a ball straight steal attempt 9/15 Fla J.Cantu A.Wainwright 0-0 2 0 3-2 fastball low-inside corner swing and miss hit and run 9/25 Col E.Young C.Carpenter 0-1 5 1 1-0 cutter low and inside take for a ball straight steal attempt after 0-0 pitchout
In the spirit of this thread at the Book Blog, I'm simply going to present my ideas for how one might go about identifying hit-and-run plays. The idea is to have a section where anyone can post a suggestion for a study that they can’t do themselves for whatever reasons. Then maybe someone else can take these ideas and run with them, perhaps writing an article on one of the various sabermetric web sites. (Of course, if there is already some research in that area, someone can point that out too.) When evaluating a play using the data available from MLB Gameday, here's my ranking of how confident we can be that the play was a hit and run. This list is not exhaustive. For example, I left out some uncommon plays like the pitchout that is swung at by the batter. All of these scenarios assume a runner on first base. I'm not considering the situation with runners on first and second base, although I suppose a hit-and-run play might also be executed occasionally in that situation. What I'm looking for here is a basic framework and a reasonable approximation. The data we currently have, short of getting real-time baserunner information from a system like FIELDf/x, doesn't allow us to get anywhere close to perfect information on when hit-and-run plays occur. Yes, a hit and run is highly likely to have occurred. An air ball is caught and the runner is doubled off. Yes, a hit and run is fairly likely to have occurred, but we can't be sure. The batter swings and misses and the runner gets a stolen base or is caught stealing. The batter fouls the pitch off and the runner was going. The runner goes to third on an outfield single (we may be able to assess the probability in a more fine-grained manner by looking at the location where the ball was fielded.) Yes, a hit and run may have occurred, but the likelihood is questionable. Ground ball double play turned 6-3 or 4-3. Ground ball out with runner advancing to second. The runner thrown out at third on an outfield single (we may be able to assess the probability in a more fine-grained manner by looking at the location where the ball was fielded.) We can't tell with any accuracy either way. There are three balls and the batter takes ball four or is hit by pitch. An air ball is caught in the outfield or a popup is caught on the infield. Batter hits an infield single, runner to second. Batter doubles, runner scores or is thrown out at home. Batter triples or hits a home run. Batter is safe on error. No, a hit and run is unlikely to have occurred. 3-2 count, 2 outs. The batter takes the pitch with less than three balls. A line drive is caught on the infield and there is no double play. Ground ball double play unless it is turned 6-3 or 4-3. Batter hits an outfield single, runner to second. Batter doubles, runner to third. This isn't a terribly satisfactory article for me in terms of the lack of conclusions. However, rather than letting this work molder on the substantial pile of research I have started but never finished, I decided to share my results anyway in the hopes that my ideas will spur further analysis. By the way, from among the trivia I learned from Retrosheet during this inquiry, did you know that all three Molina brothers have the name Benjamin? Benjamin Jose Molina, Jose Benjamin Molina, Yadier Benjamin Molina. Really creative with the naming there, Mom and Dad. (It should come as no surprise the Molina brothers' late father was named Benjamin.) Tuesday, February 23, 2010Olympic quote of the dayRead the quote below, and think about how strange this sounds if applied to a sport like baseball: “I have seen skaters forget to change lanes, but I have never seen a coach forget to tell a skater to change,” said Dan Jansen, who won the 1,000-meters gold medal for the United States at Lillehammer in 1994. “I really like [Netherlands Speed Skating coach] Gerard Kemkers, but unfortunately I think this was his mistake.” Put into baseball terms, that reads something like, "I have seen players make mistakes on the basepaths, but I have never seen a coach make a mistake." There are of course many different versions of that same analogy. But can you even imagine that sentence being spoken on an MLB postgame show? Updates: Forgot to include the link. And Geoff Young had probably a better analogy than I did in the comments. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
