February 10, 2012
Now Available for 2012 THT Essentials: Now Available The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2012, an annual "must buy" for all baseball fans, is now shipping. Read this article to learn more about it.
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Tuesday, August 31, 2010Relievers compared to StrasburgNot too long ago on The Book Blog, Tango Tiger posed the question of whether you can use closers as statistical comps for Stephen Strasburg. There just haven't been many starting pitchers who threw as hard, had such a variety of dominant pitches, and control to boot. The few who are statistical comps in the rate of strikeouts, homeruns, and walks allowed are Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling, and Randy Johnson. It's not really appropriate to compare him to guys who had well over 200 innings per year. If I want to use historical comps to estimate a range of performance for a guy with 68 MLB innings, who better than hard throwing relievers to look at? I looked at pitchers who had between 50 and 100 innings, walked between 1.8 and 3.0 batters per 9 innings, allowed between 0.4 and 1.1 homers per 9, and struck out over 11. I found 21 pitchers, and they averaged .7 homers, 2.6 walks, and 12.4 strikeouts in 73 innings for a 2.37 FIP. Strasburg had .7 homers, 2.3 walks, and 12.2 strikeouts and a 2.20 FIP. His closer comps are: Tom Henke, 1987 and 1989 Brian Harvey, 1991 Rob Dibble, 1991 Mark Wohlers, 1996 Trever Hoffman, 1997 Billy Wagner, 1999, 2001, 2006 Rob Nen, 2000 Troy Percival, 2001 Matt Mantei, 2003 Eric Gagne, 2004 Brad Lidge, 2004 Francisco Cordero, 2007 Jon Papelbon, 2007 Joakim Soria, 2009 Mike Wuertz, 2009 Joe Nathan, 2009 The following season these guys allowed 0.8 homers, 3.2 walks, and 11.0 strikeouts, not too far off from my useless projection of 0.6 homers, 2.9 walks, and 10.7 strikeouts. Useless since he's set for Tommy John surgery. Of the 21 comps, 5 suffered serious injuries the following season. Joe Nathan has missed the entire 2010 season after his Tommy John surgery. Mantei and Gagne pitched less than 15 innings, and Wagner (2000) and Harvey less than 30. Among those who were healthy, Here are the FIPs by quartile: 1-4 1.69 to 2.07 5-8 2.18 to 2.94 9-12 2.95 to 3.35 13-16 3.46 to 4.50 I think I'd be comfortable with those quartile ranges if he was going to pitch another 68 innings in 2011. If he were healthy enough to pitch 150, then the median projection should stay the same but the extremes would be closer to the mean. It's a moot point though, since we won't see him pitch much, if at all. I’m behind the numbersI was interviewed by Bloomberg Sports the other day, and you can listen to it here. We mostly talk about the Hardball Times and the work I've done here for the past six years, along with some baseball topics thrown in. I refuse to listen to it cause I can't stand the sound of my own voice, but I'm told that it's not half bad. And That HappenedAstros 3, Cardinals 0: J.A. Happ beat Roy Halladay on his last outing and absolutely dominated the Cards this time out, so yeah, it's been a good week for him. Two hits and a walk in this one, with two of those base runners erased on double plays. This says a lot about Happ's potential and maybe a bit about what the change of scenery has done for him. It also says a lot about the awful rut in which the Cardinals find themselves. It's not crazy to ask at this point whether St. Louis has played their way out of the playoff picture. Reds 5, Brewers 4: And the reason it's not crazy is that the Reds keep winning and now find themselves up six games, their largest lead since 1995. Dodgers 3, Phillies 0: Shane Victorino broke up Hiroki Kuroda's no-hit bid with a one-out single in the eighth inning, but that was all the Phillies would get. Halladay was quite hittable, but he kept the damage to a minimum by allowing only three runs. I was talking to Chris from The Fightins yesterday and he said he was having a hard time getting his brain around following a team that gets great pitching but zero offense, because that's really nothing the Phillies have ever done in recent years. It was all the Braves did for several years. And while it was obviously their key to success back in the day, it takes a long damn time to get used to it, and it lends itself to occasional frustration like this. Braves 9, Mets 3: Jason Heyward led the charge by going 4 for 5 with four RBI. And hey: an Ollie Perez sighting! He saw his first action since (I think) the Carter Administration last night, walked a dude and gave up a dinger to Brian McCann. So no, the rust hasn't affected him in any material way. Rockies 2, Giants 1: Carlos Gonzalez drove in the tying run with a broken bat triple (how does that happen?), and then came in from third to score on the play when Freddy Sanchez committed his second throwing error of the game. Tough loss for the Giants as both the Phillies and Padres lost too and thus the chance to gain some ground was squandered. Diamondbacks 7, Padres 2: Five straight losses for San Diego. The Padres scored all the runs they would score in the first inning and gave up all the runs they would need to give up to ensure the loss in the first as well. Rangers 3 Royals 0: C.J. Wilson continues his second half roll, winning his seventh game since the All-Star break. Two hits in just under eight innings for Wilson, though he did walk four. Cubs 14, Pirates 2: The Pirates spent the first part of the year getting blown the hell out when they lost and squeaking by when they won. This made me think that they weren't as bad as their run differential made them look. Know what? They probably are that bad and have been all along. Rays 6, Blue Jays 2: Wade Davis won his sixth straight decision. Carlos Pena drove in four. The game lasted a mere two hours and fourteen minutes. Yankees 11, Athletics 5: The Rays and Yankees seem like they've been tied at the top of the division forever, and tied they will remain for another day after the Bombers shelled the heretofore unshellable Trevor Cahill. Javier Vazquez gets the win in relief, though he pitched a third of an inning longer than starter Dustin Mosely did, so the pitching box score kind of looks upside down. White Sox 10, Indians 6: Bobby Jenks blew a three-run lead sending this one to extras, but then the Cleveland pen blew up, allowing a homer, a couple of RBI doubles and an RBI single in the 11th. Sadly, with Manny showing up today most of the press will be diverted from their usual "quote Ozzie Guillen threatening to ship Jenks to Siberia and then walking it back and keeping him as the team's closer" beat. Sad, really. Angels 5, Mariners 3: Sixth inning homers from Bourjos, Abreu and Matsui power the Angels. Nationals 9, Marlins 3: A three hour and ten minute rain delay followed by a three hour+ game with the last place team in town. I haven't looked yet, but I'm willing to bet the number of people who actually stayed to watch the end of this one could fit in my Honda. And we'd still have room leftover for the dog. Monday, August 30, 2010With a month to go, who are this year’s Cy Youngs and MVPs?It’s been awhile since I took a look at who Oliver projected to win the big year-end awards, so I figured I’d check-in with some numbers. Last time, we saw Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera winning their leagues’ MVP awards with Roy Halladay and Shaun Marcum as the Cy Youngs. Needless to say, three months later things have changed. To be clear, I am using Oliver’s projected end-of-season numbers as of today (August 30), and plugging them into my MVP and Cy Young model, as described in The Hardball Times Annual 2010. Listed below are each player’s triple-crown stats and his projected points on a 1,000 point scale, as per the model. Remember that the model is exponential, meaning that small differences can sometimes be magnified, as they often are in actual award voting. AL MVP Josh Hamilton | .348 | 36 | 112 | 621 Miguel Cabrera | .338 | 41 | 132 | 377 Robinson Cano | .317 | 29 | 106 | 202 In the American League, Josh Hamilton looks like the clear leader as we enter September. It’s incredible how great an effect making the postseason has on MVP voting—if we projected the Tigers to come back and make the playoffs, Cabrera would easily be in the lead with 927 points. NL MVP Joey Votto | .320 | 38 | 114 | 320 Albert Pujols | .320 | 42 | 117 | 228 Adrian Gonzalez | .296 | 33 | 106 | 117 Here again it is the playoffs which make all the difference. Votto and Pujols have just about the same exact projections, and yet Votto is comfortably ahead because we expect the Reds to make the playoffs, while the Cardinals miss the postseason. Another point working in Votto’s favor is that the writers are probably itching to give the MVP to anyone but Pujols after voting for him each of the past two years. AL Cy Young CC Sabathia | 20-6 | 3.16 | 194 | 312 David Price | 17-7 | 3.10 | 184 | 109 Clay Buchholz | 16-6 | 2.51 | 128 | 103 The American League has not had any great pitching performances this year, so a 20-win season from Sabathia should easily clinch the Cy Young. NL Cy Young Roy Halladay | 19-10 | 2.33 | 222 | 574 Adam Wainwright | 20-10 | 2.41 | 212 | 471 Ubaldo Jimenez | 20-6 | 2.80 | 197 | 468 Halladay may not win 30 games this season, or even 20, but he’s still put together a pretty incredible year, and should win on the strength of all his quality innings. Wainwright has been almost as good, but might have to settle for another top-three finish for the second straight year. Meanwhile, Ubaldo Jimenez has slowed down quite a bit in the second half, and now looks like a clearly inferior candidate. For those wondering Josh Johnson is, he gets hurt by his projected 13-6 year-end record and 0 year-to-date shutouts (Oliver doesn’t project shutouts so I just used year-to-date numbers). He has just 83 Cy Young points as it stands. The longingBill James has just posted a tremendous piece of new research and thinking on his website (subscription only, unfortunately). It's called "The Longing," and this is the opening paragraph: Major league baseball has been substantially re-created and re-invented, over the last hundred years, by the desire of major league managers to create more stable workloads for their pitchers. This desire has overridden and thus essentially eliminated platooning, has sharply limited pinch hitting, has done away with third catchers, has virtually eliminated complete games, has re-defined normalcy in roster construction, pushing us gradually from 7 pitchers per team to 13, has added dozens of new statistical measurements to the game, and has caused games to get substantially longer and slower, as managers change pitchers every more frequently.Quite an opening statement. Bill then quantifies how much more regular pitcher use has gotten since 1900 and then talks about the "whys" and "wherefores." As usual with Bill's writing, it's his thinking and writing, even more than his actual research, that is so insightful and entertaining. A special shoutout goes to our own Chris Jaffe, whose book about managers  is cited a couple of times and quoted directly. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||