February 10, 2012
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Tuesday, February 09, 2010Looking at Todd Wellemeyer, Jason Pridie, Mark Hendrickson and Willy Taveras (yes, things are slow)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. Click for more... Give Chien-Ming a chanceWith Ken Rosenthal reporting that Chien-Ming Wang is going to make a decision on his (most likely) new team within seven to ten days, I decided to once again use Fangraphs' new splits data and see if there was anything that stuck out with Wang. Here are his xFIP's from 2005-2009, first versus righties and then versus lefties: 2005: 3.97, 4.46 2006: 3.94, 4.42 2007: 3.68, 4.76 2008: 3.49, 5.00 2009: 3.53, 5.54 That's 4.69 against lefties for his career and 3.78 versus righties. Although Wang has improved his performance against right-handed hitters throughout his career, he has gotten worse against lefties. While this is unsurprising for a groundball pitcher, the jump in xFIP (1.12 difference in '06 and '09) is pretty startling. Let's take a look at Wang's batted ball data versus lefties, specifically GB/FB ratio and LD%: 2005: 2.51, 11.8% 2006: 2.84, 17.0% 2007: 2.33, 21.8% 2008: 2.26, 20.5% 2009: 2.00, 25.8% So there has clearly been an increase in the quality of the ball off the bat of lefties against Wang. However, let's not forget that Wang only through 20.1 innings against left-handers last year. That tells you pretty much nothing. While Wang may be declining against lefties, he probably is more around a ~5.00 xFIP pitcher against them, which would, combined with his skill against righties, make him a valuable pitcher relative to his asking price. Finally, here are his projected FIP's for 2010: CHONE: 3.94 MARCEL: 4.29 Bill James: 3.81 Fans (24): 3.94 Not bad. Considering Wang has also consistently outperformed the league average on HR/FB% (other than his outlier '09 season), Wang could conceivably be a ~2.3 WAR pitcher next year if he recovers fully from his injury. That issue is a whole other story, but for now, non-injury Chien-Ming Wang is looking like a bargain. Job openings in ClevelandKeith Woolner, Manager of Baseball Analytics for the Cleveland Indians, has asked us to post the following job openings: Title: Data Architect - Baseball AnalyticsLocation: Cleveland, OH Description: The Cleveland Indians are currently scouting for a Data Architect to work in our Baseball Operations Department. This individual will report to the Director of Baseball Operations while assisting both the Baseball and Information Systems Departments. This individual will be a technical resource to the baseball analytics department, taking on increasing responsibility to design, implement, and manage the Baseball Department’s information architecture. Responsibilities include: • Creating data models, developing processes for extraction, transformation, cleansing, and loading a variety of internal and external data sources; • Creating and maintaining business rules and metadata to ensure data consistency, designing and implementing a data warehouse of baseball information. • Other responsibilities may include, but are not limited to, statistical analysis and baseball research, application and web development, and user interface and data visualization design. Candidates must possess: • A Bachelor’s degree (or higher) in Computer Science or a related field, along with demonstrated work experience designing and managing data warehouses, creating OLAP cubes, and using reporting tools. • Experience with Oracle (preferred) or another major database system including advanced knowledge of SQL and/or MDX is required. • Experience with any of the following are highly desirable: database administration, ETL and/or BI tools, application development in .NET and/or Java. • Proficiency in statistical analysis software packages (R, STATA, SAS, SPSS) is desirable, as is familiarity with current baseball research and analytics. For more information or to apply, visit http://www.indians.com/jobs , Requisition Number 10-0025. Interested candidates must apply online to be considered. Title: Baseball AnalystLocation: Cleveland, OH Description: The Cleveland Indians are currently scouting for a Baseball Analyst to work in our Baseball Operations Department. This individual will report to the Manager of Baseball Analytics while assisting both the Baseball and Information Systems Departments. Responsibilities include: • Performing advanced statistical analysis on large volumes of baseball-related data and implementing predictive models to aid in departmental decision making. • Creating reports, charts, tables, graphics, and other tools to deliver information to staff in concise and readable formats; • Advising and assisting other analysts and staff on proper selection and implementation of techniques in statistical analysis and data mining; • Monitoring developments in statistical fields to identify new algorithms or methods applicable to baseball problems; • Evaluating published sabermetric research to ascertain its value and applicability to internal models and processes. • Other projects may be assigned consistent with departmental needs and candidate skills. Candidates must possess: • A Master’s degree (or higher) in Statistics, Operations Research, Mathematics, Computer Science, or a related quantitative field. • This individual must possess expert knowledge of modern statistical analysis and/or machine learning techniques. • Significant experience with R, STATA, SPSS, SAS, or similar software is required. • Strong knowledge of baseball, particularly in sabermetrics is also required. • Experience with a database system such as Oracle or SQL Server, and proficiency with SQL is highly desirable. • Demonstrated ability to advise, consult, mentor, or teach others is desirable. • The ability to communicate complex concepts at an appropriate level to colleagues possessing a wide range of backgrounds is also important. For more information or to apply, visit http://www.indians.com/jobs , Requisition Number 10-0024. Interested candidates must apply online to be considered. APBA manager wantedThe North East League, the world's first play-by-mail baseball simulation league, is pleased to invite experienced APBA managers to apply for an open franchise. We're also going to name an official alternate who will automatically get the next available franchise. This is the first manager search that we've run in 12 years, so if you're at all interested in joining the NEL, now's the time! The NEL is a basic game APBA league that is just about to start its 50th season. We use the 1986 version of the boards (the white boards) with very few changes, but we do have a computerized version of the game that allows an 8-game series to be played, complete with stat compilation, in an hour or two. We hold an annual convention (this year in late March in New Jersey), and virtually every league member attends virtually every convention. The available franchise has one of the best rosters in the league, including such names as Johan Santana, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, Adam Wainwright, Ian Kinsler, Jose Reyes, Kevin Youkilis, Mariano Rivera, etc. Famous former NEL managers include Bob Fraser, APBA's former general manager; Tom Heiderscheit, the former editor of the APBA Journal; and the late Bill Linn, the long-time author of "Linn on Leagues" in the Journal. If you're interested in learning more about the NEL, please email Woody Studenmund at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), and I'll send you a packet of information about the league. Are fastballs actually getting faster?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 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. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||