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November 20, 2009

Kevin Millwood or Luis Castillo: Who is more valuable?

Kind of a weird topic, right? But I have my reasoning.

News broke Friday of a potential three-way deal that would send Milton Bradley back to Texas from the Cubs. Chicago would receive second baseman Luis Castillo from the Mets as their reward for shedding the malcontent, with Kevin Millwood heading to the Big Apple to complete the trade.

This has been debunked by several sources, such as MLB Trade Rumors, T.R Sullivan and Jon Heyman. However, it's sparked a debate between Heyman and other people on Twitter whether or not Castillo or Millwood is valuable.

So, is Castillo valuable? Is Heyman on the mark that Millwood is more valuable than Castillo?

The easiest way to find out is to look at Fangraph's valuation of both players in a dollar figure. Castillo was worth $7.2 million this past year, drawing a salary of $6 million. Last year, he was valued at a paltry $2.6 million, going to show how awful Castillo and his contract looked just a year ago.

Millwood, on the other hand, posted a very good season with a 3.67 ERA. His FIP was 4.80, so there's cause for concern as to whether Millwood is smoke or mirrors. I'm not putting all my eggs into the FIP basket, to use an analogy, but I'm certainly not relying on his ERA either. Millwood was valued at $10.9 million, so right off the bat there is an easy answer to the question as to who is more valuable.

When you think about it, too, isn't it obvious that Millwood is more valuable?

Let's toss out some comparisons.

Castillo has 2 years and $12 million remaining on his contract. He plays second base, a position where offense is not particularly relied on, and will enter his age 34 season. At this point in his career, all Castillo has going for him is his plate discipline and an ability to hit for an average hovering in the .280-.300 range. He's not adept defensively according to UZR. If I had to select Castillo or Chris Getz to be my second baseman next year, I'd select Getz. (All else NOT equal.)

My point here is that Castillo and his production -- with his contract heavily factored in -- is rather replaceable. The only thing Luis has going for him at the moment is that his bad contract can be swapped for another bad contract. (Give me Milton Bradley any day of the week over Castillo, Carl Everett attitude be damned.)

Millwood will be 35 and can hit 200 innings pitched a season. He's a solid, if erratic pitcher who will keep a team in the game and will make $12 million in the final year of his contract. He is best used as a No. 3-4, although the Rangers currently cast him as their ace. Millwood is not replaceable. While you might be able to get away with calling up a AAAA player and having him perform to or over Castillo's abilities, you can't say the same of an AAAA pitcher with respect to Millwood.

That's where this trade breaks down. A Bradley for Millwood swap makes more sense talent-wise, but Castillo being considered on the level of these two players is fallacy at its finest. If true that Mets GM Omar Minaya overvalues him -- even when trying to trade him -- then you can bet on Castillo being the Mets' second baseman in 2010.
Posted by: Evan Brunell

October 04, 2009

What should we call Rivera’s other fastball?

Mariano Rivera is famous for his cut fastball. So famous, in fact, that it's a common misconception that he only throws one pitch. Of course, from PITCHf/x data, as well as some newspaper reports, we know he throws another type of fastball. I've often seen it referred to as a sinker or two-seam fastball, but its spin deflection certainly looks like a classic four-seamer.

In a discussion about Dave Allen's post about Mariano Rivera that took place at the Book blog, I had the occasion to look for images of Rivera's two fastball grips. I thought I'd share them here for yuk-yuks with the other two of you in the world who care about what to properly name Rivera's "other" fastball.

First, here's his cutter grip, with index fingertip and middle fingertip on the seam. As far as I can tell this is close to a typical cutter grip--a four-seam grip with the ball set a little off center in his hand. (There's a better picture here, but I don't have permission to post the image.)

Rivera throws a cut fastball against the White Sox, July 16, 2006. (Icon/SMI)

Now, here's the other fastball, the one I tend to call a four-seamer because of how it moves. It's the one others call a two-seamer, though I'm not sure why. If you look at how many seams he's holding, should we call it a one-seamer?

Mariano Rivera throws his other fastball against the Rangers, August 7, 2008. (Icon/SMI)

Posted by: Mike Fast

September 26, 2009

Ichiro strike three

Ichiro Suzuki was ejected in the fifth inning of today's game against the Toronto Blue Jays after demonstratively arguing a called strike three. In addition to comments to the umpire, Suzuki drew a line on the ground with his bat to show Brian Runge where he thought the pitch had gone.



I grabbed some still shots of the pitch crossing the plate, but with camera angles, it's impossible to tell whether a pitch so close to the edge of the plate was a strike or not. So what did the PITCHf/x tracking system say?



The path of the baseball as tracked by PITCHf/x is shown by the red lines. (The baseball is 2.9 inches in diameter.) PITCHf/x has been shown to be accurate within half an inch, so the gray lines outside the red lines indicate the possible location of the baseball given the margin of error inherent in PITCHf/x measurements near home plate.

It's close enough that Ichiro Suzuki probably shouldn't have taken the pitch. The umpire's going to call that pitch a strike to a left-handed batter at least half the time. The cost of a strike in that situation was the second out of the inning with a runner on third base, costing the Mariners something like 0.6 runs on average. The gain from taking a ball, moving the count from 0-2 to 1-2, is miniscule by comparison, something like 0.025 runs on average.

In this case, he was bailed out by a wild pitch that scored Adam Moore from third during the next at bat, but it wasn't a good bet on Ichiro's part, nor did he have a particularly good case with the ump.

Posted by: Mike Fast

July 24, 2009

What did Mark Buehrle throw?

During the season, Mark Buehrle used his change-up about 15-20% of the time. In yesterday's perfect game, it was his go-to pitch, particularly against right-handed batters, who saw 40 change-ups out of 90 pitches. He notched 15 outs with the change, seven with the four-seam fastball, and five with the cut fastball.

In the last three innings, he went even more heavily to the change-up, throwing 24 changes compared to 18 pitches of all other types combined. This while he was ramping his fastball speed from the mid-eighties to the upper eighties, touching 90 mph with his final pitch.

After the jump is a chart showing the speed of all his pitches, with the pitch type and result of the at bat indicated.
Click for more...

Posted by: Mike Fast

June 09, 2009

Which batters hit the hardest balls in April?

With the release of Sportvision's HITf/x data for April 2009, we can look at who hit the ball the hardest in April. Since batted ball speed does not decrease much even when the batter hits the ball off center, it is more instructive to look at batted ball speed in the horizontal plane. In other words, hitting the ball very hard straight up is likely to turn into an out, while hitting the ball very hard straight toward the outfield is likely to turn into a hit. In fact, we find that batting average is maximized at an elevation of 11 degrees, so we'll look at the average batted ball speed for batters in that plane. We should also remove bunt attempts since they purposefully attempt a low batted ball speed.

Here are the results for the 303 batters with 20 or more non-bunt batted balls recorded by HITf/x. Average batted ball speed for a non-pitcher was 75.1 mph. When pitchers were batting, their average batted ball speed was 66.1 mph.
Click for more...

Posted by: Mike Fast


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