The Hardball Times -- Paapfly http://www.hardballtimes.com/main Baseball. Insight. Daily. en studes@hardballtimes.com Copyright 2013 2013-06-18T08:13:15+00:00 AL Central: The Tigers are in control http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/al-central-the-tigers-are-in-control/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/al-central-the-tigers-are-in-control/#When:06:43:15 I wrote about the American League Central and cast my vote for the Detroit Tigers as the favorites in the division. Since then they’ve only improved their status, (especially after their sweep of Cleveland this weekend).

I also touched on the Twins, saying we should not sleep on them. Well, the Twins have themselves fallen fast asleep. They’ve gone 14-22 since and have been outscored by 52 runs over that period.

In the first half the Twins scored 3.90 runs per game. In the second half they’ve improved slightly, averaging 3.97. Unfortunately for them, their pitching has gone into the toilet, making their poor first half winning percentage of .461 seem decent compared to the dreadful .389 clip they’re limping at in the second half. Their ERA has skyrocketed to 4.94 in the summer’s heat and they’ve allowed a robust .818 OPS.

So the division remains a three-pony… light jog among the White Sox, Indians and Tigers while the Twins (13 games back) and Royals (17 back, as per their usual) are planning their offseason fishing trips. It’s business as usual for Dayton Moore’s Kansas City club, but it’s far from it for the Twinkies.

Similar to the National League’s Western division, the AL Central has been unimpressive. In fact, after pummeling Cleveland 10-1 on Saturday 10-1 behind a strong start from midseason acquisition Doug Fister, the Tigers needed a seven-run third inning on Sunday to (1) win and (2) get their run differential (which is now plus-one) back into the “green.”

It wasn’t a comfortable feeling for the Indians. Not only were they swept, opening up a 4.5 game lead for Leyland’s Tigers, but also those seven runs came against their big midseason acquisition, former Colorado Rockies ace Ubaldo Jimenez. In a season in which the Indians weren’t expected to do much of anything, they got off to a white-hot start, most certainly was helped by a soft schedule. That spurred their interest in going from passive rebuilders to deadline buyers and spending big, prospect-wise, for Jimenez.

In particular, it cost them their best prospect, left-handed starter Drew Pomeranz. Pomeranz was a first-rounder in 2010; he went fifth overall. He’s a big kid who can touch mid-90s. Keith Law (ESPN Insider) projects him as a “potential No. 2 starter.” Of course, Jimenez remains a good starting pitcher with great stuff and a team-friendly contract. But his worth won’t come near that of Pomeranz if the prospect touches his ceiling: An excellent or above average pre-arbitration player in the major leagues remains the best thing a general manager can hope to get his hands on.

Though Jimenez' overall peripherals are holding strong and look that of a high quality starting pitcher, his velocity is down considerably and the results—in a results-first game—aren’t there. Still, it’s hard to blame the Indians for wanting to give their fans—and LeBron-less city—a shot at the postseason. They could use some excitement.

But like their close Ohio neighbors, the Cincinnati Reds, it’s looking more and more like the Indians’ season is going to end in disappointment. Justin Verlander, who continues to improve upon his already-impressive AL Cy Young credentials, is, at a minimum, as responsible as any other for crashing the Indians’ party.

He’s remained dominant since the ridiculous stretch he was in at the end of the first half. He’s been handed the ball seven times since and gone 6-1 with a 2.79 ERA and a 57:11 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Hitters have hit just .183/.228/.288 (average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage) over those seven starts. It’s clear as day that the Tigers expect to win when the 6-foot-5 right hander is on the hill.

Verlander has probably been fortunate this season given his .234 BABiP (batting average on balls in play), but it’s extremely hard to argue that he’s not one of the toughest in the business to barrel up. He’s having a career year while striking out an excellent 9.06 batters per nine innings to a stingy 1.87 walks per nine (4.86 ratio). Because of his strikeout rate, his ability to avoid free passes, and his defense converting so many balls in play into outs, his WHIP (walks plus hits per nine innings) is an outrageous 0.88.

In terms of total value, FanGraphs has him already having racked up a 6.2 WAR (wins above replacement), just 0.1 off his entire 2010 season. He was worth 8.3 in 2009 and has a chance to match that this season with something like seven or eight starts to go. To say that he’s carried the pitching staff would be an understatement. Teammate Max Scherzer has been the Tigers’ next most valuable pitcher, and he’s not even in the same ballpark as Verlander at 2.2 WAR. As you can see, and though the conversation is without question premature, Verlander is on a Hall of Fame trajectory¹.

The Tigers have had three main contributors offensively. They are Miguel Cabrera—and I’m guessing you might have guessed that—Alex Avila and Jhonny Peralta. You may not have guessed those two would contribute so heavily coming into 2011. Each has accumulated 4.4 WAR for the Tigers with excellent seasons with the bat.

Cabrera remains a hitting machine and has a line of .322/.425/.548 for a .413 wOBA, but he’s penalized for being a below average base runner and first baseman. Still, he’s an absolute force in the lineup, hitting for a high average with lots and lots of thunder while walking more than over 15 percent of the time.

Avila (.390 wOBA) and Peralta (.373 wOBA) have hit a bunch while each playing premium defensive positions. The three have combined to hit 55 home runs, drive in 205 runs and score 180 times. Teammates Brennan Boesch and Victor Martinez have also had strong (while not great) seasons.

It’s hard to say whether the Indians or White Sox are bigger threats for the AL Central crown, but on just the player side of things, Adam Dunn remains as big a non-threat as one can be. While contributing zero value defensively as a full-time designated hitter, Dunn has “hit” .169/.297/.298 for a .276 wOBA. His transition to the AL has not been a good one, and the four-year, $56 million contract he was handed looks like an instant albatross. Had he simply put up numbers similar to those he had in the National League, it’s not inconceivable that the White Sox and Tigers would be neck and neck at this juncture. But he hasn’t, and they’re not.

He does seem a good sport about it and it remains to be seen if a rebound of sorts is in his future. The Sox’ homer-friendly Cellular Field and Dunn seemed like a match made in heaven on paper, but angelic it hasn’t been. Rather, his season has been a complete nightmare. A strikeout rate of greater than 35 percent is unsightly, even for him, and it’s giving Mark Reynolds’ 2010 season a run for its money.

The White Sox and Indians do remain in the mix, sitting at five and four and a half games out respectively, but with few than 40 games to go, and with Verlander pitching every fifth day for the Tigers, Detroit remains the heavy favorite.

¹ Speaking of Hall of Fame trajectories and players on them, how about Matt Cain? Depends who you ask. I’ve mentioned the National League West and how it’s about as poor as the American League Central this season, so why not touch on Cain? Verlander has thrown 1,267 innings in his career with an ERA+ (league- and park-adjusted ERA) of 123, albeit in the tougher American League. Matt Cain has thrown 1,268.2 innings with an ERA+ of 126. Cain is 67-71, while Verlander is 101-57.

We here at Hardball Times seek to tell the truth (so to speak) about baseball using sabermetrics. Given that, I felt it my duty to point out how run support can drastically impact a pitcher’s win-loss record, and literally alter how his legacy in the game is perceived. Bert Blyleven, anyone? Pitching to the score and “learning how to win” remains a dirty fallacy in baseball journalism.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Paapfly 2011-08-22T06:43:15+00:00 Verlander dragging the Tigers to top of AL Central http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/verlander-leading-the-tigers/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/verlander-leading-the-tigers/#When:09:09:15 we checked in on the American League Central race, the Indians led the division by a good margin with a plus-35 run differential, the Twins were left for dead, and the Tigers were the only other team within striking distance.

Detroit was the only AL Central team not from Cleveland without a losing record, but the Tigers were sitting right at .500 at the time. But as is always the case when your number-one starter has only 12 starts under his belt, it was early. And now things are getting back to normal, at least for the most part.

The Kansas City Royals purchased a one-way ticket to Terribleville—where they live—having, prior to Sunday, lost six of 10, 14 of 20 and 19 of 30. They are what we thought they would be (but at least some of their future has arrived).

On the other side of the coin, the Twins have done quite the opposite in winning seven of 10, 11 of 20 and 19 of 30, then winning again on Sunday. And run differential wise, they've been +23 since we last checked in, improving to "just" -67, but a far cry from the -90 they had on May 31. They're the only team in this division making a move, and they're sitting just 6.5 games back with plenty of baseball to go.

The White Sox are vanilla-flavored boring—aside from their skipper, that is—and five back with a -17 run differential, as their winter "splash," Adam Dunn, has flopped. And their mid-season acquisition from a few years ago, Alex Rios, remains now what he was then, a bad idea. They've been mildly successful of late, having won 16 of 30, but they've merely split their past 10.

As for the divisions' two best teams, the Indians and Tigers, well, neither of the two seem interested in (or capable of) running away with the thing. Coming into Sunday, the last game before the All-star break, Detroit had split their last 10, last 20 and last 30 games, respectively.

The Indians had won six of 10 prior to the first-half finale, but they'd also split their past 20 and were two under in their past 30 contests. To solidify their meteor-like pace toward the pack, they lost Sunday and fell half a game back of the Tigers.

Though the two are the best the division has to offer so far, neither the Tigers (-8) or Indians (+4) are inspiring much in the score-more-than-your-opponents department.

In aggregate, the division has been one of baseball's worst with a -135 run differential. And, oddly, the very team that was being scraped off the tarmac as road kill six weeks ago is the only team asserting itself in the division. Under my previous post, a comment suggested it's "hard to ever count out the Twins," to which I replied: "Not this year." With just fewer than 80 ballgames to go, I might have been dead wrong. Somehow it still feels relatively early.

That said, we learned from Buster Olney this morning (ESPN Insider) that the Twins have the third-toughest schedule among the AL's remaining contenders, while the Indians and Tigers seemingly have the easiest road ahead. The Indians play 25 more games with teams currently over .500 while the Tigers have just 23. The Twins have 41.

Just maybe, when I come back in about six weeks to update you further on the AL Central race, the Twins will have officially resurrected themselves against all odds, and I'll spill a bit more ink on them. Until then.


A one-man arm-y


Even if it doesn't seem that any of the teams wants the AL Central crown, it doesn't mean that some of the players don't. And no player has tried to push his team in the right direction more than Justin Verlander.

On May 31, the date of my last writing on this division, Verlander was 5-3, and the Tigers had won just six of his 12 starts. He'd pitched well by all accounts with a 3.12 ERA, but he hadn't been spectacular, though he did already have a no-hitter under his belt. He had a strikeout rate of 7.89 per nine innings, 2.39 free passes per nine and he'd given up too many home runs (0.93/9 IP).

But over the past eight starts, most of which took place in June? He's been spectacular. Verlander has whiffed 9.93 per nine, walked just 1.12 per nine and given up fewer long balls with a rate of .42 home runs per nine. Across eight starts and 64.1 innings, Verlander has given up just six runs for a 0.84 ERA. Both he and the Tigers are 7-1 in those eight games, the only loss coming in a 1-0 defeat to the Angels.

Unsurprisingly, Verlander was selected to represent the Junior Circuit for the Mid-Summer Classic in sunny Arizona, though he won't get a chance to pitch, as his start Sunday puts him on the ineligible list.

It's a good thing he pitched for the Tigers this Sunday, too, because Verlander, with another gem, spun the Tigers into first place with a 7.2-inning, one-run (zero earned) masterpiece to defeat the Royals. He struck out nine and walked zero, while Joaquin Benoit and Jose Valverde put the finishing touches on the game.

Verlander's stats in 2011 have put him squarely in the AL Cy Young race, an award he's not yet won—he came closest in 2009 with a third-place finish. Before Sunday, according to baseball-reference, Verlander had been worth 5.0 Wins Above Replacement (WAR), or nearly a full win better than his entire 2010 season. That's not only tops in the AL for 2011 (and tied with Roy Halladay for the Major League lead), but it's also just 1.2 wins off Felix Hernandez's 6.2 wins from 2010.

According to FanGraphs, with its fielding independent pitching (FIP) -based (and far less run-based) system, Verlander has been worth 4.0 wins. His 8.67 K/9 shows he's striking out plenty of batters this season, and his 1.95 BB/9 would be a career best for the hurler. So, too, would the 4.45 strikeouts per walk (K/BB). His 2.83 FIP is fifth-best in the AL, behind only Jered Weaver, CC Sabathia, Dan Haren, and last season's AL Cy Young winner, Hernandez.

And Verlander doesn't lead the AL in just WAR, as he's also the main man with bold black ink splashed on his B-R page while leading the AL in innings tossed, total strikeouts and WHIP (walks plus hits per nine innings) with a ridiculous mark of 0.879.

His start on Sunday stood only to improve him in each and every one of these categories, as his ERA went from 2.26 down to 2.15, for example.

It's no secret how he does it. Verlander has coupled his blazing four-seam fastball, which hasn't wavered at all in his roughly six seasons, with impeccable control this season. In fact, his average 95.2 heater doesn't vary much in the late innings, either, as it often registers higher in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings than at the game's outset.

Verlander doesn't really have a nickname, but The Specimen might be an apt one. His height, weight, mechanics, and, of course, the Howitzer attached to his right shoulder, are the stuff scouts' careers are made of. He's relentless with that fastball, and hitters probably have nightmares thinking about the fact that he couples it with a buckling, 12-6 hammer. And that's to say nothing about an extremely effective changeup he throws nearly as often as the curveball and a slider he mixes in, too.

Trouble is, despite all of Verlander's efforts, only the smelly staffs of the Orioles and Royals have given up more runs in the American League.


Scoring runs isn't the Tigers' problem


On the run scoring side of things, it's business as usual for sweet-swinging slugger Miguel Cabrera. As far as AL hitters go—at least the top three guys—there's the non-human Jose Bautista (.486 weighted on-base average or wOBA), the flourishing-in-cozy-Fenway Adrian Gonzalez (.427 wOBA), and the steady-as-ever Cabrera (.420 wOBA).

If you throw some park effects at this three-man race, Cabrera likely would overtake Gonzalez considering his away wOBA is .450 to the .386 he carries in spacious Comerica Park.

However, Gonzalez does have him licked defensively. and that certainly counts, as does base running (to say nothing of positional scarcity). That's why Cabrera gets leap-frogged by 11 players in WAR, including Jacoby Ellsbury, Curtis Granderson, Alex Rodriguez and others. But in terms of purely having a fearsome bat in your lineup, you could hardly go wrong with Cabrera. His .315/.435/.556 (average/on-base percentage/slugging) line is fantastic while hitting 18 balls out and driving in 59, scoring 63.

Alongside Cabrera, Jhonny Peralta has been a revelation at shortstop (.384 wOBA, 3.3 WAR), as has catcher Alex Avila (.378 wOBA, 2.6 WAR). Meanwhile, Brennan Boesch has followed up his quality 2010 season, in which he finished fifth in AL Rookie of the Year voting, with an even better 2011. He's hitting .306/.362/.494 for a .370 wOBA and 2.4 WAR at the break. And Victor Martinez (.359 wOBA) has more or less held up his end of the bargain (or contract), at least this season.

This contingent has the Tigers with the fifth-best offense in the AL going into the break. Clearly, they're not the reason the Tigers are having difficulty scoring more runs than they are giving up, separating themselves from the rest of the pack, and positioning themselves as the alpha male in the Central.

But if the Tigers can grab an arm or two before the July 31 deadline, they're probably well-positioned to take the division. I'll take the team with Cabrera in the middle of the lineup and Verlander throwing every fifth day.

Of course, though I wouldn't have dreamed of saying this just six weeks ago, they shouldn't sleep on the Minnesota Twins. Joe Mauer (and a mending Justin Morneau) are, as always it seems, lurking. And the Indians ought to give them a spirited run for their money, too.

It's not the best division in baseball, as that's reserved for the AL Beast. But that doesn't mean it isn't one heck of an exciting one.


Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Paapfly 2011-07-11T09:09:15+00:00 AL Central defined by Indians’ start, Twins’ stumble http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/al-central-defined-by-indians-start-twins-stumble1/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/al-central-defined-by-indians-start-twins-stumble1/#When:07:29:15

Over the past nine seasons, the Minnesota Twins have won the American League Central division six times. For that reason and nearly that reason alone—it does help to have Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer, when both are healthy—many picked the Twins to win the AL Central again in 2011. Ron Gardenhire, while frustrating for many saber-slanted Twins fans, took the reins of the team in 2002 at the start of that nine-year run and has had the Midas touch for the duration of his tenure.

Along with the six division titles, the Twins have only once finished below .500 in those nine seasons, finishing just four games under and in third in 2007. And so, in March, the Twins were well on their way to an impressive seventh title in a decade. Then a really funny thing happened: They started playing the games on the dirt, clay and (sometimes artificial) grass-covered fields instead of on paper, as they always do come spring, and stuff got weird.

The AL Central, in 2011, is a wonderful example of why baseball fans love baseball, why spring is such a hopeful time— even for Royals and Pirates fans—and why Chicago Cubs fans keep on filling the Friendly Confines year after year, even after over 100 years of despair. Heck, it’s why people love every sport; anything is possible. Just ask the Cleveland Indians.

The Indians, almost unanimously chosen to be AL Central cellar dwellers, have been one of the best teams in baseball with a five-game lead on the Detroit Tigers and a positive 35-run differential to prove their legitimacy. Meanwhile, Minnesota is abysmal, sitting at 17-35 and sinking like a rock with a negative 90-run differential that’s 34 runs worse than the Houston Astros’ negative 56. So I’ll choose to focus on the 2011 Indians, who are the 2010 San Diego Padres and the 2008 Tampa Bay Rays, a team that came out of nowhere.

I could focus on the Tigers, who are one game over .500, playing decently well and still very much in the race behind Justin Verlander and Miguel Cabrera. Or the Royals, who are maybe a touch better than we expected, but are still very much waiting for the promising fruit of their farm to grow into something real and relevant (also, for their GM to start doing anything well that doesn’t merely relate to their farm and development). And, of course, I could drone on about the Chicago White Sox, discussing the latest blowup of their social-media frenzied manager, Ozzie Guillen.

But the only compelling stories in this division, the only real stories, are the Twins or the Indians, and most people prefer a feel-good story to one of doom and gloom, so that’s where I’ll head. Otherwise we might be focusing on less encouraging story lines, like Mauer’s bilateral leg weakness which has him currently out and limited to 38 uninspiring plate appearances so far this season—backup Rene Rivera, with an adjusted-OPS of 63, has done a monumentally better job of carrying the load than backups Drew Butera and Steve Holm whom have a minus eight and minus four OPS+ in 118 combined plate appearances. Or we'd dwell on how their main offseason acquisition, Tsuyoshi Nishioka, broke his leg before the home opener, or how, no-hitter notwithstanding, Francisco Liriano had been summarily disappointing before heading to the DL. Stuff like that.

Where did they come from?


That’s probably what a lot of people are asking. The Indians are in first place, performing as one of baseball’s best teams so far. Where did they come from? Well, that holds true on an individual basis for some of their players, too. One such player is shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera. Coming into 2011, he had a career OPS+ of 100 with a line of .284/.347/.394 (average/on-base percentage/slugging). That’s not a bad line for a middle infielder, but it’s not particularly impressive. Well, Cabrera is hitting .302/.360/.532 so far in 2011, good for a .396 weighted on-base average (wOBA). The main difference in his game is the power, as he’s slugging nearly 150 points above his career average and leads the Tribe with 10 home runs.

It’s probably safe to assume he’ll cool down some through the course of the season, but then you’d expect that regression to be offset some by key performers that aren’t quite living up to their potential. Shin-Soo Choo is a fantastic player whose line over the past two seasons was a combined .300/.397/.486 for an OPS+ of 140, averaging 34 doubles, 21 home runs and 22 stolen bags. So you might expect him to improve upon his .250/.335/.380 line and .320 wOBA the rest of the way. Perhaps he will after he puts his DUI a bit further in his rear-view mirror.

Their phenom catcher, Carlos Santana, seems another safe bet to heat up. He currently has a .323 wOBA but perhaps luck hasn’t been too kind to him. His average on balls in play (BABiP) sits at .227 while his walk rate is fantastic at 17.6 percent. It seems probable he'll start squaring up more balls eventually and providing additional value offensively, above what his tremendous ability to get on base is providing now.

At the beginning of the season, I asked: Can Grady Sizemore save Cleveland? I think we’ve found that he can’t. At least not single- handedly. That being said, Sizemore had been a key contributor in the Indians’ lineup before heading to the DL with another knee injury. In 96 plate appearances, Sizemore was showing excellent power with six home runs and a .556 slugging percentage. Unfortunately, his OBP was poor at .292 with a well below-average walk rate of 4.2 percent. He’ll need to rectify that to get anywhere near where he was a few seasons ago—besides the obvious issue of staying on the field. And his seven strikeouts in 12 plate appearance since coming off the disabled isn’t exactly inspiring confidence that he’s totally healthy.

Questions remain about Travis Hafner, too. He was an offensive force from 2004-2006. He hadn't been since, but through 127 plate appearances in 2011, he was the Pronk of old with a .410 wOBA—or maybe he was just being artificially elevated with a .415 BABiP despite similar peripherals to the few seasons previous. In any case, everyone will have to wait until his oblique injury is healed to see if he can keep it up.

Smoke and mirrors?


There’s no question the Indians have surprised offensively. But for every guy swinging over his head, it seems there’s a guy playing beneath his potential, too. So if I had to choose the main question about this team going forward, it’d be about the Indians' arms.

Pitching-wise, the Indians have had a mix of some good and some bad. In the rotation, Justin Masterson has been very effective with a sinker sinking to the tune of a 55.7 groundball rate. He’s given up only three home runs, his ERA is at 3.07 and his field-independent pitching (FIP) is 3.36. (That’s good for a 123 ERA+.) Josh Tomlin has been good, too, with a 2.74 ERA and 137 ERA+. But one has to wonder if he can keep it up with a 4.40 FIP, 4.66 strikeouts per nine (K/9) and 37.9 percent grounder rate. You simply cannot ignore that his BABiP is .197. Then again, you can’t deny he’s doing a lot right with a .898 WHIP.

On the other side of the coin, Fausto Carmona has struggled with a 4.73 ERA and 4.05 FIP. That doesn’t sound too bad, but when you consider the average ERA in the AL is just 3.86 this season, you can see he hasn’t been fully on his game. He’s given up too many home runs, about one per every nine innings. Really, though, the problem is that his strand rate is terrible. He’s left only about 60 percent of those hitters who have reached against him on base, 10 percent worse than his career rate. He’d be in much better shape if he could just improve that with a solid groundball rate of 59 percent, especially if he continues to walk batters at a career-low rate of 2.49 per nine.

Perhaps where Cleveland has been most impressive is out of the bullpen. The relievers who have made 15 or more appearances for the Indians are Chris Perez, Tony Sipp, Vinnie Pestano, Rafael Perez, Joe Smith and Chad Durbin; their ERA+s read as follows: 144, 320, 269, 376, 204 and 78, with only Durbin pitching poorly to this point. But can they keep it up?

As good as they’ve been, the way they’ve done it has been odd. Most relievers survive by missing bats, but this bunch hasn’t. Only Pestano has an excellent whiff rate with a 10.42, while the others have been far less impressive. For example, closer Chris Perez has a strikeout rate of just 5.31 with an identical walk rate. That’s not good, and you have to wonder how long his ERA will hover around his current average of 2.66, rather than heading toward his 3.50 FIP, or higher.

And if you thought their ERAs and FIPs had large deltas, then you might take a peak at their xFIPs. Rafael Perez, Smith and Chris Perez have given up exactly zero home runs combined in over 50 innings, and Pestano and Sipp have home run per nine rates under 0.50. A skeptical onlooker has to wonder how long they can keep the ball in the park while striking out so few hitters.

There’s plenty of baseball to be played


It’s difficult to say for how long the Indians will keep it up. There’s little doubt they have a good team. But are they this good? For what it’s worth, they’ve already played the Royals nine times and have gone 7-2 in those contests, during which they have a run differential of plus 42. Take those games away, and they’re 24-18 with a negative run differential. What’s that mean, then? The truth is, I don’t know. You could probably pick apart any team using a similar method, even the '27 Yankees. (Well, maybe not the '27 Yankees.)

Perhaps the best thing to take away from this is that the Indians look fantastic so far, but there’s an awful lot of baseball to go. That, and the Minnesota Twins are highly unlikely to give them much trouble as the Indians do everything possible to fight off the Tigers and White Sox for the division crown.

It stands to be a fun summer in Cleveland, which is something in and of itself. I or anyone else could spend a lot of time trying to figure out why the Indians' run might not last, but it might be a lot more fun to sit back, relax, and see how it all plays out... on the field. They're hoping they won’t suffer the same fate that the surprising Padres did a year ago, ultimately suffering a terrible losing streak and losing the division.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Paapfly 2011-05-31T07:29:15+00:00 Hot and cold hitters thus far http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/hot-and-cold-hitters-thus-far/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/hot-and-cold-hitters-thus-far/#When:09:06:15 Miguel Cabrera. I could. But it would be like saying: “Albert Pujols is good at playing baseball.” So, Cabrera is hitting. Tell me something I don’t know. The stars of the American League so far are…

For starters, who is Sam Fuld? Well, he was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 10, but managed to become an All-American at Stanford University before spending the majority of his professional career in the Cubs’ minor league system. With a line of .346/.388/.513 (.404 wOBA), 10 stolen bases and phenomenal defense to go with it, he’s been baseball's best story thus far. Slipping his name into a Chuck Norris joke is a totally reasonable thing to do. The Rays nabbed Feld as a piece in the Matt Garza trade, and the Cubs look destined to be foolish in giving him up. They clearly didn’t know what they had, hardly giving him a shot the past few seasons. And behind him, the Rays sit just 2.5 back of the Yankees.

Speaking of the Yankees, their offense has been utterly explosive, scoring 6.06 runs per game entering Monday. One of the heaviest hitters has been Curtis Granderson, who is inexplicably teeing off on left-handed pitchers so far this year—he’s hitting .389 with three home runs against them—despite a total inability to do so throughout his entire career. Overall, he has a .449 wOBA and seven home runs. New catcher Russell Martin has also been fantastic, giving the Yankees plenty of cause to leave super-prospect Jesus Montero in Triple-A. Martin looked as though he forgot how to play baseball with the Dodgers last season, but he has a .478 wOBA and six bleacher balls already in ’11.

Mark Teixeira (.437 wOBA) and especially Alex Rodriguez (.516 wOBA) have been fantastic, too, but isn’t that what they’re supposed to do? All right, despite the Cameron Diaz popcorn fiasco—and the myriad other reasons to find ARod fantastically unlikable—it’s worth mentioning he’s walking nearly twice as often as whiffing (21.5 percent versus 12.5 percent).

To fill the AL Central quota, I’ll mention that Carlos Quentin has been quite good so far, hitting 11 doubles and six home runs in just 22 games coming into Monday. The .433 wOBA is, well, impressive, and it’s not fueled by an inflated average on balls in play (BABiP), as it currently sits around league average at .290. He’ll need to keep hitting to help his Sox keep up with the… Royals and Indians?!

A lot of folks figured Adrian Beltre had another huge walk-year in Boston, and that he’d descend back to “good player, nothing special” in 2011. Not so. After a slow start, he’s playing wicked-good defense—despite leaving Beantown—and hitting well with a .376 wOBA and seven blasts. He might have room for improvement even, because his .231 BABiP seems likely to jump up a bit. And in case you’re tempted to make assumptions: he’s done most of his damage on the road, i.e. not in Arlington. Seriously, look it up.

Jose Bautista is off to an unbelievable, Bonds-ian start. After the games on Sunday night, Bautista was hitting .359 with seven jacks, a .506 on-base percentage and was .slugging .750 – that’s good for a .533 wOBA. He’s already produced roughly two Wins Above Replacement (WAR) for the Jays. He then proceeded to draw two more walks – his rate was 22.9 percent going into Monday’s contest – and another long ball. Which only means that he’s getting his damage in with limited opportunities, as pitchers are clearly trying (and failing often) to stay away from him.

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As you can see, Bautista has improved some over the past two seasons.

So our big winner here is Toronto and Alex Anthopoulos, who signed Bautista this offseason when he could have played it safe and waited to see just how much of a fluke Bautista’s 2010 season was. At five years and $65 million, and if he can continue to hit even in the same ballpark as he is currently, Bautista should destroy that sum in actual value on the field. He also shed his “star” center fielder, Vernon Wells, which brings us to those American League players who have been coldest in this still-young 2011 season.

So, Brett Gardner had somewhat of a revelatory season in 2010 for the Bombers. He’s getting pummeled this season, but I won’t get into it. After getting into a couple of other AL hitters, I’ll get into another, far more obscure Yankee… one probably worth mentioning.

The Red Sox swiped Carl Crawford from the Rays—and the Angels, who were apparently just certain he was their man—but the joke is on everyone but Tampa Bay so far! Enter Sam Fuld and his legend. Crawford has a .212 wOBA and just four thefts while being caught twice. So far, UZR hasn’t liked him, which is quite unusual given that it always has and given that his calling card is splendid glove work. Perhaps he’s lost a step or two, or perhaps it’s just too early and his .194 BABiP is very unlikely to stick around. In any case, this will do little to keep Boston’s fans at bay for the time being as he looks nothing like a $145 million player at the moment; the shiny new toy doesn’t seem to have come with batteries.

Vernon Wells is back to being the unremarkable player he’s been in three of the past four seasons. He’s not hitting at all (.169/.213/.258, .213 wOBA), so he’s lucky to even been roughly a negative half-a-win player thus far, thanks largely to a positional adjustment and 2.1 UZR. The trade was a stinker from the start. If Wells is dreadful, someone’s going to be filing for unemployment in short order.

The Royals felt they need to move Zack Greinke this winter, so they did. In return, they netted a former top prospect and current shortstop, Alcides Escobar, among others. But they really needed one or two of these guys to pan out to not lose this deal in a big way, and Escobar, thus far, doesn’t appear to be up to the challenge. He didn’t hit a lick last season, but the hope was he might in ’11. With a .228 wOBA, .034 ISO and 3.3 walk percentage, the Royals have to be concerned—they might even be missing Yuniesky Betancourt, which is, frankly, alarming. His bat wouldn’t play even if he were doing one heck of an impression of The Wizard, which he’s not (-0.6 UZR).

The Mariners might have had some takers for Chone Figgins this past winter. Coulda, shoulda, woulda—that boat has sailed. Figgins’ 13.9 walk percentage from 2009 seems like a distant memory. So does the .358 wOBA and brilliant defense, also from 2009. He’s hitting .160/.207/.247 (.205 wOBA) and is the proud owner of a toxic contract. It’s wonderful for him, for feeding his family and such, but it’s deadly for general managers around baseball. They’ll stay clear of it—but it wouldn’t hurt to call his old team to see if they’re interested; they’ve been generous in this regard recently.

The Yankee captain is at it again. Derek Jeter is hitting .398 with three home runs so far this season. Wait a second, those are his March and April numbers from 2006. Sorry about that. Jeter came into Monday hitting .257 with a .270 wOBA and zero home runs and an isolated pow…er, of .027. His Jeter percentage—which is another way of saying ground-ball percentage—is at 73.5 percent, well above his career high of 65.7 percent from a year ago. He went 0-4 with three groundouts on Monday. It’s early, but this could get ugly. Thankfully for the Yankees, Cashman put The Captain in his place this winter and stood his ground. He likely overpaid the player, but not nearly to the extent Jeter desired going into negotiations.

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Jeter's ground-ball rate: Literally through the roof?

Moving on to the National League's best hitters so far...

The signing of Lance Berkman has paid huge dividends already for the Cardinals. He may continue to do so, if his body can just hold up playing the outfield every day. Speaking of non-Pujols Cardinals, Colby Rasmus is doing awfully well for a player that Tony La Russa seemed not to want at times last season. Pablo Sandoval is also off to a great start, but then again he started off hot in his disappoint 2010, too. I wanted to slip him on the list, but I just couldn’t. And I wrote about him over at Bay City Ball already – this season his quick start has been a bit different—so that’ll just have to suffice.

For an encore, at least so far, Joey Votto is smashing the ball all over the yard once again, lifting the Reds to just half a game back of the Cardinals. Entering Monday, he was hitting .395/.515/.658 for a clean .500 wOBA. With his solid defense, which has steadily improved throughout his young career, he’s been the Senior Circuit’s best player with a 1.9 WAR. His 19 walks are tied for best in baseball and are impressive next to just 10 strikeouts. Still pre-arbitration eligible, he remains one of very best deals in baseball, if not the very best of them all.

The Dodgers fell apart down the stretch in 2010 and Matt Kemp’s season was one to forget all together. Enter Davey Lopes and a fresh slate, and Kemp is off to a superb start. We should expect a drop-off given a .485 BABiP, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been great and won’t remain a fantastic player. He hit a couple of walk-off homers in the span of a couple days last week and has a .492 wOBA. Thanks to the previously mentioned Lopes, Kemp already has swiped eight bags and he’s getting on base furiously with a 13 percent walk rate. At 1.5 WAR, he’s already at nearly eight times his 2010 output. Read that sentence over again, because it’s sort of mind blowing.

The combined play of Troy Tulowitzki’s 2010 stretch run and his early 2011 have some wondering if he has supplanted Pujols as the best player in baseball. I’m skeptical, but the fact that he’s in the conversation is saying a heck of a lot. We know about the defense, I think, but the .472 wOBA to start Monday is silly good. He also has seven jacks and is getting pitched around some to the tune of a 15.1 walk rate. I cautioned earlier about assumptions, but he too is doing major damage away from the Rockies: five home runs and a .400 average with 13 RBI. Shortstops aren’t supposed to hit like this, not in the post-steroid era. Tulo’s early play is making it awfully hard to argue with Colorado’s move to lock him up for the remainder of the decade. Can you imagine the pain if the Rockies had chosen not to, only to watch him head home in a few years to San Francisco?

Speaking of locking players up for the next decade, the Brewers did more of the same with their slugger, Ryan Braun. Unlike Tulowitzki, Braun is far from a defensive wizard. He plays a less-skilled position, left field, and despite his athleticism he fails to do so gracefully. But the stick plays, and it plays nicely. He stepped into the league as a four-win player and remains on that level today, worth around $20 million dollars per year. He’s hitting .377/.479/.688 for a round .500 wOBA and has seven home runs with a fantastic 17 percent walk rate. He’s never been a huge walker in his career, so the rate thus far is surprising. If he can keep it above league average, it’d be a nice skill addition to a player that’s already an offensive force.

The final smoldering-hot offensive piece in the National League is… the Phillies’ starting pitching. As advertised. I know they aren’t an offensive piece, but a run saved is as good as a run scored. Don’t believe me? It’s science, so you should. They are giving up 3.32 runs per game so far this season. That’s crazy good. Doing his part, and more than his fair share, Roy Halladay is still the best. A pitching staff carrying a 3.07 strikeout to walk ratio and 2.78 FIP is, well, every bit as good as an offense that’s scoring a trunk full of runs (see also, New York Yankees).

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ESPN's Power Rankings has the Phillies on top in week four, thanks to that fantastic rotation.

These Senior Circuit hitters have had a frosty start this April:

Raul Ibanez is off to a terrible start. Stunned? Ya, me neither. Luckily for Phillies fans, this is the last they’ll see of him. I bet Giants fans (Rowand) and Angels fans (Wells) could say the same, to name a couple.

First basemen are supposed to hit. I guess someone forgot to tell James Loney. Coming into Monday, his .171 wOBA was understandably the worst of any hitter in baseball. He has to go up from here, but they must be panicking in Los Angeles, as they were eager to get rid of Loney to begin with. And they have other problems too. Loney is 26 years old, soon to be 27, and presumably in the prime of his career. Unfortunately, his prime appears less like prime rib and more like flank. Over 647 games and 2,531 plate appearances, he’s been worth only 5.4 WAR. It’s probably time for the Dodgers to find a legitimate solution at the position, and soon.

At the end of the 2009, Hanley Ramirez was pretty high atop the hierarchy of major league ballplayers. With less-than-stellar defense and a line of .182/.299/.242 and a wOBA of .244, he looks far from one of the game's elite this April. He has yet to hit a ball over the fence and he’s not getting many extra-base hits period, with a .061 ISO. His .218 BABiP isn’t helping and you have to expect that will improve markedly. What’s more, his 14.3 walk rate so far this season is impressive. Other than the last mention, though, he’s been far from it. His 2010 season was great when compared to nearly all players, but Hanley isn’t like most players. He’ll be a disappointment if he stays a four-win player, which speaks volumes about his immense talent. I don’t expect he’s long for a hot streak.

The Giants’ big of-season moves were to sign Miguel Tejada and re-sign Aubrey Huff. So far, no good. Tejada has looked every bit the statue at shortstop he was rumored to be. His hitting, or lack there of—let’s call it hacking—is a real problem, too. He was a short-term solution for the Giants, but I don’t think they were envisioning a shelf-life of June or July of 2011. He’s hitting .205/.241/.315 for a .232 wOBA. That’s pretty unplayable for an adequate-fielding shortstop. For a butcher like Tejada is, that’s disgusting.

Huff is doing his part to disappoint, too. It’s hard to blame him for his defensive contributions so far, as he has no business playing right field. But play in right field he did, providing some of the more… shall we say, interesting defensive plays in early 2011. Said another way, he was a circus out there. With Brandon Belt heading down to Triple-A for more seasoning, Huff went back to first base where he’s comfortable. But he shouldn’t get too comfortable, because he’s hitting to a .278 wOBA with just a 6.8 walk rate, half his mark from 2010. Career years are… career years. They come and go, never to be seen again. He’s a career slow-starter, and the Giants will need him to prove this true again or risk looking foolish for flipping him two years and $22 million after he helped win them a long-awaited World Series championship.

Tulowitzki’s Robin isn’t playing his part. Carlos Gonzalez hasn’t done much at all so far this season, after he had a blistering 2010 with some suspicious home and road splits. Perhaps a bit unlucky, his BABiP is way down this year so far to .279 from the .384 he posted a year ago. His .274 wOBA is sure to climb with a larger sample size, as Gonzalez is a very talented player. But it might be tough to again post a near-.400 average on balls in play again, though. So Rockies fans ought to be patient, but perhaps not expect the moon.

Our biggest loser is the Padres’ offense. So far, it’s making the 2010 Mariners’ offense look like the ’27 Yankees. They are averaging a paltry 2.96 runs per game following their five-run outburst and win on Monday night—it only took them four extra innings to get the five runs. Their best hitters have been Cameron Maybin and Nick Hundley. Hundley’s history basically says he won’t remain one, while Maybin’s recent history says he won’t either—but his minor league track record suggests he might. His .370 is a nice story when coupled with his solid center field defense; he's a heck of a pickup for newly christened GM Jed Hoyer this offseason. The Padres have hit just 12 home runs and have a team ISO of 0.99, which isn’t very good unless you happen to be the Twins, who are having a real tough go of it so far. But if I had to put my money on which of these teams would get the sticks going, it wouldn’t be the team by the beach.

Here's a headline:
[Halladay] dominates the Padres
Now, just insert any pitcher's name within the brackets, and you should have the theme of the Padres' season. In other news, Adrian Gonzalez is a good hitter.

Anyway, it’s still quite early in the season but that’s who is hot and who is not. Among the big team surprises and within each division, there haven’t been many in the NL. Some might be surprised just how well the Phillies’ roster has worked out in producing wins, but it’s hardly a shocker. In the AL, the big surprise has to be the Indians atop the Central. That and the rough starts of the Rays, and to a greater extent, the Boston Red Sox. That said, each of them has already resurrected itself and sits just two and a half and three games back, respectively, from the mighty Yankees.

Baseball is back and there’s plenty more of it to come.


Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Paapfly 2011-04-27T09:06:15+00:00 A warning to right-handed hitters, Cy Young hopefuls http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/a-warning-to-right-handed-hitters-cy-young-hopefuls/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/a-warning-to-right-handed-hitters-cy-young-hopefuls/#When:05:04:15 Tim Lincecum has some stiff competition in the National League if he wants to win a third Cy Young this season. Adam Wainwright won’t be an obstacle, but Zack Greinke might when he finally hits the mound. Cliff Lee’s back in the National League and likely to pitch exquisitely. Yovani Gallardo is a popular preseason pick. And Ubaldo Jimenez, assuming his velocity drop is a due to a repairable thumb injury, is always looming. So too is Josh Johnson—before he missed the end of 2010, he was a solid Cy Young contender. Oh, and we won't want to leave out the reigning winner, Roy Halladay, who is always a safe bet for the award, if not a total favorite. But I think Lincecum is as strong a contender as any of them, maybe more so, and that it won’t be either an improved fastball or that filthy change-up that’s most responsible for a return to form, of sorts.

After Lincecum’s Opening Day start, I wrote about his velocity at Dodger Stadium—it was quite encouraging for his ardent fans. He averaged about 93 mph in that start, topping out at around 95 mph. What’s more, he was able to maintain that velocity throughout the start, as the below graph shows. That might have been even more important than just throwing harder, because last year it wasn’t just the fact that he was unable to blister mid-90s heat, but that he would fall into the high-80s by the fourth or fifth inning. For those of us who witnessed him touching 100 back in 2007, it was startling indeed.

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Provided by Brooks Baseball PITCHf/x Tool

Lincecum’s second start this season was even more special. For one, he brought himself into a tie with Jason Schmidt for the second-most 10-strikeout games in Giants history. With two more, he’ll eclipse Hall-of-Fame right hander, Christy Mathewson. 2011 will only be his fourth full season with the Giants, and yet he’ll arguably be the greatest in franchise history, one that dates back more than 100 years between New York and San Francisco. I understand you may not be sold on that—I’m not so sure I am just yet—but the point is that, within a storied franchise employing the likes of Juan Marichal, Carl Hubbell, Gaylord Perry, Schmidt and Mathewson, he’s already in the conversation. He’s well on his way to supplanting them all as the Top Dog. And a bulldog he is.

The other reason it was so special was how dominant he was; a super dominant, regular season start had eluded him through virtually all of 2010 after coming off back-to-back NL Cy Young awards. This 13-whiff gem was a lot like the 14-strikeout game—with 31 swing and miss strikes, best of any pitcher in 2010—against the Braves in the NLDS. In that start, he needed 119 pitches (63 percent strikes) and nine innings to get the 14 whiffs—he baffled Atlanta’s lineup. He also walked a batter. In this start, he needed 105 (64 percent strikes) and seven innings to get 13 punch outs with zero walks. He did, however, give up a deep home run on a get-it-in fastball, but San Diego didn’t look the least bit comfortable in the box.

After Lincecum’s 14-strikeout (Van Gogh-like) masterpiece last October, Joe Posnanski, as he so often does, described it best:

At one point in Thursday’s mind-blowing game, Lincecum struck out Brooks Conrad on some sort of ridiculous super pitch—Conrad seemed to literally swing through the ball (he foul-tipped it). Bob Brenly called it a changeup. I shouted, 'Come on Bob, that wasn’t a changeup. That was a curveball.' And so I rewound the thing and watched it. And I said, 'Oh wait, maybe he was right. Maybe it was a changeup.' I rewound again and watched and said, 'No, that wasn’t a changeup. That was a slider.' I rewound again and watched and said, 'No, wait, I think that WAS a curveball.' I rewound again and finally settled on it being a slider. But really it was some sort of shape-shifting pitch. It could be whatever you wanted it to be.

This is the kind of reaction Lincecum’s stuff gets from safe and out-of-the-way onlookers; imagine your vulnerably standing inside the scuffed, rectangular chalk box as Lincecum steps back, tangles, and flings forward with a hellacious stride, delivering a 94-mph, darting two-seamer or maybe a tumbling change-up you look utterly foolish on. His pitch-to-pitch offerings aren’t graceful and effortless like Halladay; they’re just downright unsettling.

Can you imagine if he added another weapon? You shouldn’t have to, but I’ll return to that later.

It’s too early to come up with concrete conclusions, but Lincecum is showcasing a fastball in his first two starts that is much closer to the one he featured in 2009, which had plenty of velocity. In 2007 and 2008, he averaged 94.2 and 94.1 mph, and in 2009 it fell to 92.4. Despite the loss of velocity, and thanks to his menacing change, it was still his best professional season. Last season, that mark alarmingly fell again to 91.3. With improved conditioning, which was perhaps catalyzed by a midseason, through-the-media pep talk from Roy Oswalt in 2010, he’s averaged 92.8 thus far in 2011. Giants’ beat writer Andy Baggarly reported recently that Lincecum was about 15 pounds heavier since the start of spring, perhaps bolstering the weight behind his fastball further.

The loss of velocity didn’t render a huge decline in Lincecum’s stats last year, but it did probably hurt him in a couple of key areas. His strikeout rate went from 10.42 to 9.79 per nine, but the lower mark was still plenty impressive. If he can ratchet up his velocity some this season, I think that alone could get him back above 10.

His career mark for walks is 3.23 per nine, but I believe he’s capable of a lower rate like the 2.72 walks per nine he finished with in 2009. That was down from 3.33 in his 2008 campaign. I it's likely that Lincecum’s fastball woes in 2010 impacted him in the control department in addition to missing bats. When a pitcher's velocity is free and easy, it makes throwing strikes easier. He probably lost some location trying to keep his fastball above 90 mph. And there was a brief period where Lincecum altered the mechanics he’d been using since he was a kid, bringing his hands over his head while in the windup, providing further evidence he was completely out of whack. Comfort is a must for consistency in pitchers, and in 2010, Lincecum was not.

He also gave up more home runs. In 2008 and 2009, he had home run rates of 0.44 and 0.40 per nine innings—he gave up just 21 long balls in 452 innings. In 2010, it spiked to 0.76, the highest mark of his career. Unlike Matt Cain, he has strong groundball tendencies in addition to the swing-and-miss stuff. I think with improved location and velocity, we can believe his home run rate might go back to career levels of under 0.60 per nine innings, if not better.

The last thing I want to spend some time on is Lincecum’s slider. He’s not currently known for this pitch; people tend to focus on his devastating change-up, which is basically a splitter. That’s about to change.

At the end of the 2010 season, Cain taught Lincecum a new slider grip, his slider grip—it’s been a pretty excellent pitch for Cain in his career. He began using it on Sept. 12, and the results were awesome. Since he began throwing that pitch, including the playoffs and his first two 2011 starts, he’s thrown 78 innings with a strikeout rate of 10.73, a walk rate of 2.19 (K/BB ratio of 4.90) and a 1.85 ERA. He’s simply been better than ever, and half of those starts came against playoff teams in the NLDS, NLCS and World Series.

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Provided by FanGraphs PITCHf/x

You can see from the above chart that his slider has been a work in progress. He threw it less than two percent of the time his rookie season. In 2008, that went to just over five percent and then approached nine percent in 2010. From 2007-2009, it never even approached a velocity over 85 mph. In 2010, the velocity chart for his slider went wonky. What I can’t figure out is whether the PITCHf/x data are correct; I suspect not. His velocity with the pitch was all over the place, up and down, and I have a hunch some of those were change-ups, and a lot of them were actually fastballs that weren’t behaving the way they had in his first couple of seasons.

What you can take away from the chart, though, is that the slider was far from a refined, repeatable pitch he could count on every game. But starting on Sept. 12, 2010, you’ll notice the consistency of the last six dots. That’s the slider he’s been throwing ever since Cain gave him the best present a pitcher can ask for: another out pitch. So far this season, it’s been his best pitch. He’s doubled its usage to 18.8 percent and is throwing it at nearly 86 mph. It’s already been worth 2.6 runs above average as compared to the 1.8 runs above average his change-up has been, thus far. If this continues, it’ll be somewhat shocking considering his change-up has been about twice as effective as any of his other offerings since 2009.

His splits are interesting, too. A lot of pitchers have a significant split—they’re usually better versus like-handed batters. That’s not the case with Lincecum, thanks to his awesome split-finger change-up; he has a 2.98 FIP versus lefties and a 2.71 FIP versus righties. Remarkably, he’s actually wiped out more lefties in his career (strikeout rate of 10.26 versus 9.91) than righties. But, he’s walked about half a batter per nine innings more and given up a few more home runs to lefties, which shouldn’t be terribly surprising.

He’s still been extremely dominant against right-handed hitters, but I think with the addition of the slider, he’s going to eat them alive. So far this year, he’s struck out 13.5 righties per nine innings. We know that his change-up is most effective versus lefties, and that it’s the single pitch that’s propelled him into the echelon of the game's elite.

We also know that change-ups aren’t usually as useful versus right-handed hitters, but despite that it’s still been a very good pitch for him versus same-handed hitters. He’ll probably still use it against righties, but I think the slider is in particular is going to be death to them versus the contorting Lincecum—I won’t be surprised to see his split evolve this year, to where righthanders' efforts are suddenly futile versus him. This doesn’t bode well for the Troy Tulowitzkis and Matt Kemps of the National League.

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If you want to see a visual of just how differently his slider is behaving now, then look no further than the above and below graphs from FanGraphs. The top graphs show the vertical and horizontal movement, as well as the velocity and vertical movement, of Lincecum's slider on Aug. 5, 2010—the red dots are the sliders. You'll notice first that he didn't throw many of them. You should also notice that velocity is around 82 mph and not approaching the upper-80s. The below graph is a stark contrast, from less than two months after the top graph, on Sept. 24, and is more representative of what he's been doing since Sept. 12. He's throwing far more sliders, with way more velocity and far better movements, specifically vertical or downward movement. His slider is hard and biting. Comparing the below with the slider Greinke featured in his Cy Young season (2009) will show stunningly similar characteristics.

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Lincecum’s career has been one of constant change. He dominated hitters in 2008 with a blistering fastball on his way to his first Cy Young award. In 2009, he tossed change-up after change-up and won the award again. And even in 2010, amid his many struggles with command and velocity and experiencing failure for the first time in his life, he managed to evolve again with a new, radical pitch and re-ratcheted up his fastball toward the end of the season. Despite the "disappointing" season , he won a third-straight strikeout title and won the World Series, out-pitching King Postseason, Cliff Lee, in the clincher.

I’m one of the lucky few that are fortunate enough to see him pitch every five days; I can’t wait to see what he has in store for us next. He’s special. As if he even needed it, Lincecum now has a true put-away pitch for right-handed hitters. His change-up alone was unfair. Coupling it with a two-plane, buckling slider should probably be illegal.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Paapfly 2011-04-12T05:04:15+00:00 Athletics’ cheap, talented rotation the key http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/athletics-cheap-talented-rotation-the-key/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/athletics-cheap-talented-rotation-the-key/#When:09:23:15 not to start their best pitcher on Opening Day. Back in 2008, the Giants had a young Tim Lincecum in the rotation. Instead of giving him the nod to start game one of 162, they handed the pill to Barry Zito. Sure, Lincecum wasn’t established yet and hadn’t even a full season under his belt, but I don’t believe many folks would have said Zito was their best starter that day even then—and certainly not now.

A more egregious mistake came when Ron Gardenhire announced Carl Pavano would start Opening Day over Francisco Liriano this season, when Liriano finished eleventh in AL Cy Young voting in 2010 and should have finished lower.

Needless to say, this type of thing happens pretty often. I’m certain countless examples exist, but these two come to mind immediately. Maybe it’s because they are coddling their young starters, afraid they’ll fold like a wet paper bag after all the hoopla that is Opening Day – the giant American flag on the field, the Air Force flyover, the sold-out crowds in parks that… don’t sell out. Or maybe it’s some sort of a cap tip to a once-great veteran. I can’t really say.

But there’s another recent example of this that’s a bit more complicated, a bit less clear. After a breakout season in 2010, the Oakland A’s have decided that Trevor Cahill should lead their rotation. Well, maybe I should say manager Bob Geren has, because I have a suspicion general manager Billy Beane might have chosen another hurler. It’s a loose suspicion, though, because I’m really not sure.

I really do wonder how Billy Beane feels about Cahill, and how good he thinks he is now and can be in the future. It’s probably worth noting that the A’s have expressed interest in signing Cahill to an extension, though he’s not arbitration eligible until 2012. And you wouldn’t figure they’d want to do it when his value is at an all-time high, so it makes you wonder.

On the surface, Cahill’s numbers in 2010 were fantastic, and Geren’s choice to nudge him to the bump on Thursday against the M’s seems both obvious and correct. Cahill won 18 games last season and finished with 196.2 innings and a superb 2.97 ERA. What’s more, he was an All-Star and finished ninth in Cy Young voting. Unfortunately, things aren’t always what they appear—ERAs and wins often don’t tell us everything.

One of the best things a pitcher can do to help his cause is to miss bats, and Cahill doesn’t do much of that. His 5.4 strikeouts per nine innings (K/9) was well below average. And while his 2.88 walks per nine (BB/9) in 2010 was nice, it’s nothing special when coupled with low strikeout totals. Also unremarkable was his ability to prevent home runs. With a rate of 0.87 per nine (HR/9), he was neither especially good nor especially bad. But what he was exceptionally good at was putting the ball on the ground (56% in 2010). Also: converting balls that were put into play off of him – be it grounders or otherwise – into outs. His .236 batting average on balls in (BABiP) was lowest in the majors. That low BABiP is at the heart of why FanGraphs’ system – which uses fielding-independing pitching (FIP) to determine pitching Wins Above Replacement (WAR) – valued Cahill about half as much as Baseball-Reference (2.2 versus 4.1).

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Straying this far from the league average BABiP (Cahill in 2009 & 2010 above) screams for regression.

Because of this, a suspicion he was unusually lucky, there are some who believe Cahill is merely the fourth best pitcher on that staff. Dan Hennessy, an astute A’s blogger of Baseballin’ on a Budget (SweetSpot), falls into this category. But I don’t really wish to spend a lot of time hashing out why I too believe Cahill was lucky in 2010—I’ve done that elsewhere. Instead, I simply wish to convey this: if an argument can be made that a 23-year-old pitcher with 18 wins, a 2.97 ERA, and 196.2 innings in the prior season is your fourth-best starter, it’s probably a good thing.

So while we can sit and argue who should be starting on Opening Day for Oakland, there’s something else that’s not debatable: having four young, quality starters is never a bad thing.

Many, including me, would slot 23-year-old Brett Anderson ahead of Cahill. If you have an imagination, he’s the guy you can wish on. Last season, his elbow didn’t fall off but it was pretty finicky, limiting him to 112.1 innings and 22 starts. But in those innings, he was brilliant. His ERA was 2.80 and he had an adjusted ERA (ERA+) of 148, best among the starters. While his strikeout rate did suffer and fall from 7.7 in 2009 to 6.0 in 2010, his calling card of a low walk rate and an excellent strikeout to walk ratio (3.41) did not. It doesn’t take a whole lot of energy to wonder if Anderson might one day – if healthy, as is always the heartache with pitchers—compete for a Cy Young and do his very own Cliff Lee impersonation. That’s why he’s accumulated 6.3 fWAR in just 287 major league innings.

There’s also the eminently talented Gio Gonzalez, or the Athletics’ version of Jonathan Sanchez. Gonzalez managed 15 wins with a 3.23 ERA (128 ERA+) and 200.2 innings last season. He’ll be 25 in 2011. As a 23-year-old in 2009, he had a rough go of it. His strikeout rate of 9.94 was fantastic, but he walked over five per nine and gave up an absurdly high .360 BABiP. When you consider he also gave up 1.28 HR/9 … well you can see why his ERA was nearly a touchdown. But he clipped his HR/9 to 0.67 in 2010 and his BABiP fell to .274, a much more reasonable figure. He even lowered his walk rate to a more digestible 4.13. His strikeout rate fell too to 7.67, but at that he was still very nearly at a 2:1 strikeout to walk ratio. The final tally was a 3.2 fWAR in 2010. If he’s able to ratchet that K/9 back up to somewhere near a batter per inning while keeping his number of walks stable, it’s easy to see why he’d be a valuable commodity.

It seems silly to say, but the elder of these four will be Dallas Braden. He’s well known for throwing a perfect game, representing the “209” and coaxing silly quotes from Alex Rodriguez. As the perfect game would suggest, he’s also a pretty good starting pitcher. He also had a sub-four ERA with a 3.50 in 2010 in 192.2 innings (ERA+ of 118). Like Cahill, he hasn’t missed many bats in the big leagues—he struck out just 5.30 per nine in 2010. But, he also walked just 2.0 batters per nine resulting in an excellent ratio or 2.63. He’s yet another three win player on their staff (3.0 fWAR in 2010). What’s interesting about Braden—other than his antics—is that he’s able to throw so many strikes as a junk ball lefty. With his slop, he’s managed a home run per fly ball rate (HR/FB) of 6.6 percent in his career (6.9 percent in 2010) of nearly 500 innings. It’ll be interesting to see if he’s able to continue that success.

With these four, regardless of which is most talented, they have themselves in an enviable position. The A’s have four young, cheap and quality starting pitchers. Neither the Giants nor the Phillies can say that; their rotations are very expensive.

There are obvious parallels between the 2010 Giants and 2011 A’s. The 2009 Giants had an excellent pitching staff and an anemic offense, and thus needed to upgrade their offense any way they could in the offseason. Much to the complete and utter surprise of just about everyone, Aubrey Huff—and a host of other Super-Surprises—hit just enough to ride their superb pitching staff to a World Series. Billy Beane was in a very similar position this offseason and, I think, delivered. The comparison holds up. And that’s what most people will focus on: Beane’s improved lineup.

But consider for a moment the ERA+ for each of the Giants’ and Athletics’ top-four starters in 2010. We have to disregard the innings pitched, as we’re not trying to get a gage on value necessarily, but on potential. The chart below shows two teams with a similar mix of excellence in the rotation.

image

Many people will tell you that Oakland will do well this season and may even make the dance if they can just find a way to score some runs, to turn a below average offense into an average one. They’ll probably be right, but only if such an occurrence is paired with another, more important factor: quality starting pitching. I’m confident Beane can duct tape together a league-average offense—I think he’s already done that or come close with the addition of Josh Willingham, Hideki Matsui and David DeJesus. I think the real question is whether or not Cahill, Gonzalez, Braden and especially Brett Anderson can pitch extremely well again this season, this time for 200 innings each.

I’m not saying the A’s will win the AL West this season, but they might. And I’m not saying Brett Anderson will win the Cy Young award in the American League this season. But even though he’s not starting on Opening Day, he has the talent. And if his arm will hold up for 220 innings or so, he just might. You could say the two might go hand in hand.






Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Paapfly 2011-03-30T09:23:15+00:00 Scoring and run prevention of World Series teams http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/pitching-and-hitting-of-world-series-teams/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/pitching-and-hitting-of-world-series-teams/#When:20:44:15
Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Paapfly 2011-03-17T20:44:15+00:00 Pitching (almost) always wins championships http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/pitching-almost-always-wins-championships/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/pitching-almost-always-wins-championships/#When:09:00:15
Over at Bay City Ball, Chris Quick recently did something awesome. In a nutshell, he did a franchise scatter plot for the Giants (New York and San Francisco) using adjusted OPS (OPS+) and adjusted ERA (ERA+):

The idea is that we can split past Giants teams into four quadrants based on hitting and pitching. The vertical axis represents team pitching by adjusted ERA, or ERA+. The horizontal axis represents team offense by adjusted OPS, or OPS+. OPS+ and ERA+ are fairly simple concepts in baseball statistics these days – each is adjusted for league, park, and era (making them good tools to compare the 1905 Giants to the 1985 Giants). The league average is scaled to 100, meaning that if you score 110, you are 10% better than league average.

If you’re a Giants fan, I implore you to check it out—actually, I implore you regardless, as this is just one of many great graphs you’re likely to find on his page. As such, he was a great choice for Neyer’s SweetSpot.

But it was something buried in his comments on the graph that really got my neurons firing: “The old adage that, “Pitching wins championships” rings true for the Giants franchise.” It does.

In true Bill Jamesian fashion, this brings us to a question. Does pitching really win championships? This is something people have looked at quite a lot, and the results have pretty clearly shown this is the case. But using Chris’ method, we can test it once again.

I think you’ll be more shocked by the results than you might imagine.

I’ve pulled both the ERA+ and OPS+ for every modern World Series champion since 1903. There have been 106 winners: The Boston Americans won it all in 1903 and the San Francisco Giants in 2010. It’s also worth noting there wasn’t a series in 1904 because the New York Giants (John McGraw specifically) refused to play what they believed was a far too inferior team, the Boston Americans, who later became the Red Sox, of the junior league. Perhaps, this is one of the origins of the term “Junior Circuit.” The other omission is 1994, which ended in strike rather than a Fall Classic. Brutal.

The Yankees hold the record for World Series championships with 27, while the St. Louis Cardinals trail overall but lead the National League with 10. Other franchises with greater than five are the Oakland A’s—they’ve also played in Philadelphia and Kansas City—with nine, the Boston Red Sox—they were originally called the Americans—and the San Francisco Giants (formerly of New York), and the Los Angeles Dodgers (formerly of Brooklyn) are tied with six each.

I’ve labeled a few teams in the scatter plot that are particularly notable for one reason or another, but mostly because they are outliers.

.image

What you should notice immediately is the plethora of dots above the red line which delineates an average pitching team (ERA+ of 100 or more) and a below average pitching team (ERA+ below 100). There have only been three teams in 106 chances who have won a World Series when their regular season ERA+ was less than 100. They are the 1987 Minnesota Twins, the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals and the 1913 Philadelphia A’s. A team of below-average pitching has only won it all 2.83 percent of the time, which I personally find to be mind-blowing.

More often than not, the team that wins it all is going to land in the top right portion of the graph, which means they’ll have both good pitching and good hitting. But, a team can be below average offensively and still win it all, as 33 of the 106 winners have proven (33.02% percent).

I think this really hammers home the point that pitching really does win championships; that you need at least an adequate stable of arms to have a prayer. Trying to win the Fall Classic without league-average pitching has proven to be about as fruitful as attempting to drive a car without gas. You’re not going to get very far. So, if you had to choose which is more important between offense and pitching, the answer is obvious: run prevention.

I looked at the data a lot of ways, so here are some others:

• Only 22 of 106 winners had better hitting than pitching (20.75 percent)
• Only eight of 40 winners had better hitting than pitching in the divisional era (20 percent)
• Only two of 16 winners had better hitting than pitching in the dead-ball era (12.50 percent)
• Since the offensive-centric Reds of the 1970s, aka The Big Red Machine, only five of 33 have had better hitting than pitching (15.15 percent)
• The average World Series winner had an OPS+ of 103.47 and a median of 104
• The average World Series winner had an ERA+ of 113.84 and a median of 113
• Thus, on average, the winner has an ERA+ of 10.37 more than its OPS+

I also took the liberty of averaging each teams OPS+ and ERA+ to determine how much better than average they were overall. I then averaged all of those numbers, whereby I discovered the average World Series champion has graded out at 108.7, or about eight percent better than league average.

If you take the most recent champion, the San Francisco Giants, and add their OPS+ (95) and ERA+ (121) from 2010 together, you get a grade of 108. This goes to show their World Series title in 2010 shouldn’t be considered lucky or a fluke, rather, they were a perfectly average champion. What’s more, their excellent ERA+ fulfilled the pertinent requirement of at least adequate pitching. Looking at the data this way would make a lot of pundits feel silly on their pre-postseason picks, routinely expecting them to lose.

It’s also an awful lot of fun to take a look at those teams that stand out… like the 1907 Chicago Cubs. They own the biggest disparity between offense and pitching with a whopping delta of 52 (90 OPS+ and 144 ERA+). Their entire pitching staff probably required back surgery after the season.

That Cubs team was the World Series winner with the best pitching (ERA+ of 144) ever, and it’s really not even close. These guys could really throw the pill. They had four starters with 27 or more starts with ERAs under two. Anchoring the staff was 26-year old Orval Overall (great name, by the way) who threw 268.1 innings with a 1.68 ERA and a 23-7 record. He threw the most innings, anyway; his personal ERA+ was 149.

But he was accompanied by Mordecai Brown (20 wins, 1.39 ERA, 233 IP, 179 ERA+), Cal Lundgren (18 wins, 1.17 ERA, 207 IP, 213 ERA+), Jack Pfiester (14 wins, 1.15 ERA, 195 IP, 215 ERA+ and Ed Reulback (17 wins, 1.69 ERA, 192 IP, ERA+ 148).

The offense did just enough with an OPS+ of 92, and the pitchers were most certainly helped by Harry Steinfeldt… Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers and Frank Chance, which, according to Bill James, may have been the very best defensive infield in history, immortalized in “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon,” aka “Tinker to Evers to Chance.”

These are the saddest of possible words:
“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”
Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double –
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”

When you consider what James said (subscription), referring to the famous poem just this past week, there’s a good chance we should be giving that infield an awful lot of the credit:

He was putting in words what was in the air: that this was the greatest defensive infield that anybody had ever seen. And in fact it was.

I know that not everybody agrees with this. I know that there are other people who have looked at this issue and reached a different conclusion. I’ve looked at the issue myself at other times, not knowing as much as I do now, and reached a different conclusion. I’ll have to leave it up to you to weigh this analysis against the others. But it is my opinion that Joe Tinker was very possibly the greatest defensive shortstop in the history of baseball, and that he is a well-deserving Hall of Famer.

Another would be the 1910 Philadelphia A’s. The combination of their 114 OPS+ and 133 ERA+ (grading out at 123.5) makes them one of the best World Series champions of all time.

Everything for the 1910 A’s started with their brilliant, Hall of Fame second baseman Eddie Collins. He led the team that year with a .324 average, .382 on-base percentage (OBP) and 152 OPS+. He was also a spectacular fielder. Home Run Baker (another splendid name), Rube Oldring and Danny Murphy were excellent as well with OPS+’s of 126, 142 and 143.

On the pitching side, Jack Coombs led the league with 31 wins and 13 shutouts. He threw 353 innings with a fantastic ERA+ of 182. Also impressive were Cy Morgan (290.2 innings, 153 ERA+) and Chief Bender (250 innings, 150 ERA+) who helped them to capture the pennant and ultimately win their first World Series championship.

In addition to those 1910 A’s, the 1913 version of the A’s is worth a look for different reasons: They couldn’t really pitch. They hit well enough with an OPS+ of 116 but their 87 ERA+ was pretty dreadful.

Every regular posted an OPS+ of 100 or better with the exception of catcher Jack Lapp. Once again, Eddie Collins led the way, this time with an OPS+ of 163 and 10.4 wins above replacement (WAR). He was closely followed by Home Run Baker who led the league with 12 home runs and 117 RBI—this was the third of four straight years where the aptly named chap would lead the league in round-trippers. He also had a 167 OPS+ and finished with 9.4 WAR. He wasn’t as good defensively as Collins but led the offense.

But that’s not really why I’ve singled them out. I do so because they were the worst-pitching World Series champion in history. Eddie Plank, Bob Shawkey, and Chief Bender all pitched well with ERA+’s of 106, 118 and 125, but the performances of Boardwalk Brown, Bullet Joe Bush and Byron Houck brought them down terribly, with ERA+’s of 94, 72 and 67. Unfortunately, Coombs wasn’t around to help, as he caught typhoid fever in spring training and nearly died. Still, they managed to win it all without him.

Here’s a team you might recall: The 1927 Yankees. At this point, the dead-ball era is over and Babe Ruth is the ballast of the New York lineup. But, as we’ll soon learn, they had excellent pitching as well. To put their pitching into context, realize they had an ERA+ of 122 versus the 121 the 2010 Giants posted. Also, that 122 ERA+ was accompanied by Murderers’ Row (OPS+ 127).

Behind Ruth, they won 110 games, the AL pennant and swept the World Series. Among Ruth were Tony Lazzeri, Bob Meusel and another fine hitter: Lou Gehrig. Gehrig was just 24 but hit .373/.474/.765 for an OPS of 1.240 and OPS+ of 220. He also had a league-leading 175 RBI and 52 doubles to go with 47 home runs. His efforts earned him the MVP.

I probably don't need to tell you this, but 175 RBI is an absurdly high mark. But it was a golden age for driving in runs, apparently, because every single player in the top 10 of the single-season leaderboard for RBI did it between 1921 and 1938. Gehrig appears in the top 10 three times, and his 175 RBI season is tied for fourth with Jimmie Foxx's 1938 season. His 1930 season with 174 places sixth, his 1931 season with 184 places second. Hack Wilson's 1930 takes the cake with 191.

Ruth managed an even better OPS+ of 225 with his 60 home runs and 164 RBI. There really aren’t words to describe a one-two punch like Gehrig and Ruth; it’d be enough to make any right-handed pitcher wet his pants. Even Pedro Martinez, probably.

If their offense wasn’t enough to handle, their staff was also fantastic. They had five starters make more than 20 starts each, and the worst of them, George Pipgras, had an ERA+ of 95. Waite Hoyt, Herb Pennock, Urban Shocker and Dutch Ruether each finished with above-average ERA+’s: 148, 130, 137, and 115. And, coming mostly out of the pen, Wilcy Moore was their best in 50 games with a 2.28 ERA, 19 wins, 213 innings and a 171 ERA+.

It was with both the ferocity that they hit and pitched that made the 1927 Yankees one of history's greatest teams, if not the greatest. They were incredibly balanced, but it’s possible they’re not quite remembered that way considering their nickname: Murderers’ Row.

The St. Louis Cardinals of 1942 and 1944 were remarkable teams as well, led by their star outfielder Stan “The Man” Musial—he won the Triple Crown in 1943—but I’ll instead skip all the way to the “Amazin's” and 1969.

The 1969 Mets were known as the “Miracle Mets.” They piqued my interest because, well, they are the classic example of a crummy-hitting team winning it all. They finished with a dreadful OPS+ of 84, worst all-time for World Series winners. But, they had an ERA+ of 122 that saved them. It was just as well, a magical year with Woodstock, landing on the moon and the Jets, Knicks and Mets all winning championships.

Second baseman Ken Boswell was about league average with a 103 OPS+ and center fielder Tommie Agee (122 OPS+) and Cleon Jones (151 OPS+) really saved them. Agee led the team with just 26 home runs and 76 RBI. Only three players hit even 10 home runs.

But, they had the pitching. Tom Seaver led the league with 25 wins and, behind 273.1 stellar innings, would eventually win the Cy Young award with his 165 ERA+. Not far behind was Jerry Koosman who had an ERA+ of 160 in 241 innings. Each of their starters had an ERA+ greater than 100 and Tug McGraw held down the bullpen with an ERA+ of 163 in 100.1 innings. Even 22-year old Nolan Ryan got in on the fun with 89.1 solid innings. They rode those arms all the way to their first World Series title, besting the heavily-favored Baltimore Orioles in four straight wins after dropping the opener.

The last team I want to address specifically is the 1976 Cincinnati Reds, aka The Big Red Machine. And they didn’t call them that without a reason.

Their pitching was merely adequate (100 ERA+), so their hitters carried the majority of the load with an OPS+ of 120. If you’re looking for balance and stability, this team had it. Every one of their starting position players played in at least 135 games and had over 500 plate appearances. What’s more, every last one of them was an above-average hitter with an OPS+ over 100. The standout among them was Joe Morgan, one of the best second baseman of all time. He doesn’t love sabermetrics, but they love him.

Morgan hit .320/.444/.576 and finished with an OPS+ of 186. He hit 30 doubles, 27 home runs, drove in 111 and stole 60 bases to boot. He led the team by a long shot with 9.9 WAR, which is no small feat amongst Pete Rose (6.5), Ken Griffey (5.5) and George Foster (5.0). Morgan’s season earned him a second straight NL MVP award and fourth straight Gold Glove.

The pitchers did just enough with Pat Zachry tossing 204 innings with an ERA+ of 128 and Rawly Eastwick coming out of the pen and finishing with an ERA+ of 168 in 107.2 fine innings.

The last thing I’ll not are the 1987 Twins and 2006 Cardinals. They appear on the lower left corner, signifying their ability to win a championship despite both below-average pitching and below-average offense. They help to explain the fact that any team making it to the tournament has a shot to win it all. The odds are against a flawed team, sure, but all you really need is a shot.

The fact that each of these below-average winners appeared relatively recently shouldn’t surprise us. Once divisional play began, a really great team could be knocked out in the League Championship Series (seven games), versus heading straight to the World Series. A smaller sample of games will always result in more upsets, which is a simple concept. What’s more, when the Wild Card team was added shortly after the Giants won 103 games in 1993, only to find themselves outside the tournament, such an occurrence became even more likely with the five-game Divisional Series.

----

Returning to our question: Does great pitching win championships? The answer to that question is a resounding yes. History has shown that it’s not only preferred, but very nearly an absolute necessity to have, at the very minimum, a league-average pitching staff. Beyond that, a quality offense helps, but pitching is king.

With this in mind, I think the 2011 version of the Yankees is once again in trouble, the Phillies have one heck of a shot at winning it all, and the Giants absolutely have to be considered a threat to return to the Fall Classic. Those teams that can’t throw a team ERA+ of 100 out there are probably better off packing it in then heading to October.

What’s more, the A’s, who had and OPS+ of 92 and ERA+ of 116 in 2010, are probably a whole lot closer to getting back to October than anyone thinks. They’ve returned a solid bullpen and enforced it to the point that it’s petrified, and added several offensive pieces that should push them closer to a league-average offense. With that young starting pitching, much like the Giants’, they are on their way.

You might have to squint a little to see it, but you might even say they’re better positioned than the powerful Yankees. Still, if the Red Sox can stay healthy I think they are probably 2011's best bet. But that's why they play the games, because the best bet doesn't always win.

Stats throughout were pulled from baseball-reference

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Paapfly 2011-03-16T09:00:15+00:00 National League up in arms http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/national-league-up-in-arms/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/national-league-up-in-arms/#When:09:49:15
Let’s start in 2007 (salary numbers in 000s).

According to Baseball-reference (B-R), NL pitching was worth 156.3 wins above replacement (WAR) in 2007 while teams spent $534,052 on their arms. The AL spent less at $509,353 and finished with 199.6 WAR. Keeping in mind that the AL has two fewer teams (14 to the NL's 16) is important, because they out-WARed the NL despite that. On a per team basis, the AL was worth 14.26 WAR per team and spent $36,382 per staff. The NL was worth just 9.77 WAR per staff at the cost of $33,378. The delta in WAR was about 4.49 wins per team, meaning the AL pitchers were worth, on average, four and a half more wins the each NL teams’ staff.

In 2008, it got a bit worse.

The NL was worth 152.7 WAR (9.54 per team) while spending $592,426 ($37,026 per team). The AL was worth 201.6 WAR (14.40 per team) while spending $507,727 ($36,266 per team). At a WAR delta of 4.86 per team, each AL pitching staff was now worth closer to a whopping five more wins above replacement than the average NL team.

The gap decreased in 2009.

The NL was worth 150.5 WAR (9.41 per team) while spending $629,191 ($39,324 per team). The AL was worth 172.4 WAR (12.31 per team) while spending f $521,720 ($37,266 per team). The WAR delta was trimmed to 2.91 wins, but the change was due largely to the AL pitching being worse as a whole, as opposed to better NL pitching.

Last winter Roy Halladay was traded from the AL to the NL when Toronto sent him to Philadelphia for a package that, unfortunately for Canadian baseball fans, left something to be desired. I won’t say one man can have a significant impact on the quality of pitching for an entire league, but if any man could, it’d be he.

In 2010, the delta increased slightly from of 2.91 more wins per AL team to 3.23 wins, but the NL saw its average pitching WAR per team jump from the previous year of 9.41 to 11.20 WAR.

The below table shows the NL pitching WAR by team in 2010.
image
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 3/7/2011.

Meanwhile, the AL saw its pitching WAR jump too, back to the mid-14s it had seen in 2007 and 2008, going to 14.43 wins per AL team.

The below table shows the AL pitching WAR by team in 2010.
image
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 3/7/2011.

If anything, though, the fact that the delta hovered around three as it had the year prior showed some evidence that 2009 wasn’t a fluke and the Senior Circuit’s pitching was actually improving.

The below table shows the pitching WAR and salary in each league from 2007-2010, as well as those figures on a per team basis.
image

Then came the winter of 2010. The Yankees were favorites to land the hotly sought arm of Cliff Lee, but a National League “mystery team” stunned the baseball world. The Phillies, who’d regretfully shipped Lee to Seattle in the winter of 2009 amidst their acquisition of Halladay, swept in to bring back their exiled left-handed ace. Lee liked his time in Philiadelphia—apparently his wife did too, possibly in part to the simple fact she wasn’t spat upon there—and probably blushed when he contemplated his new rotation on paper.

After that, the Royals moved their ace, and 2009 AL Cy Young award winner, Zack Greinke. Greinke was another prized arm that many clubs had their eyes on, considering the Kansas City Royals weren’t expected to contend for at least the next season (or ever, if we’re being honest), and Greinke’s contract was due to expire shortly. The Brewers, with an already depleted farm system, cleaned out about everything they had left and put together a package of enough quality to acquire the quirky righthander. They saw a window in a somewhat weak NL Central and decided to take a real shot at 2011. Each and every shot at postseason shouldn’t be taken lightly for a major league club, and with Prince Fielder likely walking after 2011, the Brewers astutely struck when the iron was seemingly hot.

A couple weeks earlier, Milwaukee had landed another quality arm from the American League,sending sent second base prospect Brett Lawrie to the Blue Jays for Shaun Marcum. The Brewers had offense and sorely lacked pitching. In a span of two weeks, they got just that. They planned to lock up their second baseman Rickie Weeks (and later did), so the trade of fellow second baseman Lawrie made sense.

Suddenly, the top four of their rotation, consisting of Greinke, Marcum, Yovani Gallardo, and Randy Wolf, looked awfully formidable, able to compete with the Reds and Cardinals. And it only looks more impressive after Adam Wainwright’s unfortunate date with Tommy John surgery.

The Rays had a surplus of arms in their rotation and no luxury to hoard them given the financial constraints their market and ownership place on them. With Jeremy Hellickson likely slated to join the Tampa rotation—as he should—Andrew Friedman moved another quality arm over the NL. The Cubs were the beneficiary but sent a quality package (ESPN Insider) for Matt Garza’s services, the core of which was a promising shortstop by the name of Hak-Ju Lee.

Other arms swapped leagues too, I’m sure, but we would expect the change in wins to be considerably less without the “name brand’s” that Greinke and Lee bring. One example would be another pitcher who came back to the NL: Javier Vazquez. He had a monster 2009 but didn’t pitch nearly as well in New York after being traded to the Yankees last offseason. He returns to the NL East in 2011, though this time he’ll be with the Marlins instead of the Braves. Again, other arms almost certainly made the switch, but we’ll assume a ceteris paribus (or one to one change) for the purposes of this piece.

According to baseball-reference, Lee was worth 4.3 wins, Marcum 3.8, Greinke 2.4 and Garza 2.0. That’s a change of 12.5 wins going from the AL to the NL. Ceteris paribus, that makes the NL now worth 191.7 wins (11.98 per team) and the AL worth 189.5 wins (13.54 per team). It doesn’t change the balance of power completely, but it certainly puts a dent in what the AL once had in pitching superiority.

What’s more, there’s reason to believe the 2010 WARs of both Lee and Greinke (and Garza and Marcum for that matter) will be improved in 2011. The obvious reason is that we’ve seen recent examples of pitchers faring better when switching from the AL to the NL. We saw it with Brad Penny in 2009, going to the Giants. We also have seen it go the other way; a good example would be Vasquez’s troubles last season after being a Cy Young candidate in 2009 while in the National League. Also, these four will no longer face a DH. Instead, they’ll face a near automatic-out pitcher.

And that’s not all. Lee probably didn’t have the best of luck in 2010. The disparity in his Baseball Reference WAR—which is run-based—and FanGraphs WAR – which is fielding-independent pitching (FIP) based—would indicate as much. His 4.3 WAR according to B-R was dwarfed by the 7.1 WAR FanGraphs gave him credit for, down just 0.1 wins from his 7.2 WAR (also according to FanGraphs) that earned him a Cy Young award while pitching for the Indians in 2008.

And there’s indication that Greinke was just bored in 2010; that in addition to going to a weaker hitting league that doesn’t require facing a DH every nine batters, he’ll improve by simply getting the chance to compete in something he never has: A pennant race.

Or maybe it’s just easier to put it this way: In the span of two offseasons, the NL has added the 2003 AL Cy Young award winner in Roy Halladay—he of course already won the NL award in 2010—the 2008 AL Cy Young award winner in Cliff Lee, and the 2009 AL Cy Young award winner in Zack Greinke. And they added Garza and Marcum for good measure.

Allow me, for my final act—perhaps for dramatic effect—to throw out a list of aces in each league off of the top of my head.

National League: Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Josh Johnson, Ubaldo Jimenez, Mat Latos, Clayton Kershaw, Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Cole Hamels, Roy Oswalt, Adam Wainwright, Yovani Gallardo, Zack Greinke, Chris Carpenter, Johan Santana, Wandy Rodriguez…

American League: Justin Verlander, Jon Lester, David Price, Felix Hernandez, CC Sabathia, Jered Weaver, John Danks, Francisco Liriano, Josh Beckett, John Lackey, Clay Buchholz, Dan Haren…

The AL list appears slightly shorter and, in aggregate, of slightly less quality, but that’s just me. Also, the field of NL aces has nine Cy Young awards among them, the AL just two. Were we to have included Brandon Webb and Jake Peavy—each of whom has since gone to the AL—that total would go to four. But, each essentially has a broken wing until he proves otherwise. These awards certainly don’t mean everything, but they mean something. And if you were looking for the top fantasy starting pitchers in baseball, I suspect the list would have more NL starters.

Yes, I do believe the National League has drastically changed its position in terms of pitching inferiority, if it has not razed the previously notable gap between the two leagues completely. The change has been drastic, and it’s happened in short order. Impressive.

As for the hitters, let’s just say it’s still a work in progress. And, I should add, if Albert Pujols should find his way over to the American League after 2011, that work will become much more daunting. As with Halladay, if one man can make a significant impact, it is he. After all, the AL's edge with the bats is well-documented and, unlike with the pitching to this point, not diminishing.

Click here to learn about THT's download subscriptions.]]> Paapfly 2011-03-09T09:49:15+00:00 Aaron Hill’s uphill season http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/aaron-hills-uphill-season/ http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/aaron-hills-uphill-season/#When:05:05:15 Aaron Hill started 2010 by heading to the 15-day DL almost immediately. That would cost him a decent chunk of time as he’d ultimately play only 138 games, when he’d played in 158 in 2009. After spending way too much time on his FanGraphs page, I’m convinced there’s reason to believe that his hamstring wasn’t the only factor that hamstrung him in 2010…

Before the 2010 season, Dwayne Murphy became the Blue Jays’ hitting coach. He encouraged that his players take a new approach. His mantra, according to Tim Brown’s piece last summer:

…Get ready, get a pitch, swing hard.

“Murph’s a big believer in getting started early and letting it fly,” said Vernon Wells, the club’s resurgent cleanup hitter. “If you know anything about him, he didn’t hold anything back at the plate. He expects the same out of us.”

The result of Murphy’s imparted philosophy: a lot of home runs and a lot of strikeouts. Just ask Jose Bautista, perhaps the most significant benefactor of Murphy’s tutelage. The Blue Jays finished first in the American League with 257 home runs and fourth in strikeouts with 1,164. A year earlier, they ranked fourth in home runs with 209 and 10th in strikeouts with 1,028. The biggest difference from Bautista.

Bautista owns a career 45.8 percent flyball percentage. He hit 42.1 percent in 2009, but that figure jumped to 54.5 percent in 2010. The results for him were nothing short of fantastic. The jump in fly balls helped, of course, but he also went from a having a HR/FB rate of around 12 percent to 21.7 percent. His jump in both fly balls and the rate at which they left the yard were the main factors in Bautista’s huge 54 home run season. Further, those rates resulted in a Dan Uggla like extension for Bautista at five years and $64 million, something that was unfathomable at the outset of the season. Teammate Aaron Hill wasn’t so lucky.

Maybe there was something to Murphy’s let-it-fire mentality. But if there was, not every hitter on the roster caught it like Bautista had.

Vernon Wells had a much better season, but his batted-ball rates were pretty much within career norms. So were Alex Gonzalez’s prior to the trade to Atlanta, as well as all of the other Jays I checked. While they had quality seasons with the bat, their new hitting coach’s mantra didn’t manifest in more fly balls.

Perhaps, though, it did manifest in another, but in his case to his detriment. Hill had a horrific season and, if we take a closer look, we might just figure out why.

In looking for a sleeper to have a bounce-back season in 2010, I headed to FanGraphs to see the leaders in specific statistical categories. AL MVP Josh Hamilton led all position players with a .390 batting average on balls in play (BABiP). But I wasn’t much interested in that. No, what I was interested in was who posted the very worst BABiP. Boy did I find myself a winner—or loser, depending on which way you look at it. I was delighted to find Hill there, bruised and battered from a season that must have been truly exasperating for him.

Hill’s a heck of a second baseman whom many teams would love to have, at least those not blessed with running out Robinson Cano, Dustin Pedroia and Chase Utley, to name a few. He broke out in 2007 at the age of 25 with a .341 weighted on-base average (wOBA) and 3.5 wins above replacement (WAR). He also won the Fielding Bible award for best defensive second baseman that season. From 2007-2009 he ranks 11th among second basemen with an 8.0 cumulative WAR. But that doesn’t tell the whole story.

Hill played in only 55 games in 2008 due to a concussion incurred by slamming into David Eckstein, of all people; I wouldn’t go around telling people that if I were Hill. He missed the remainder of the season. He came back in 2009 and won the Comeback Player of the Year award by hitting 36 home runs, finishing with a .357 wOBA and 3.9 WAR. Further, he took home his second Fielding Bible award in three seasons, with his concussion rendering him virtually ineligible to win in the other. Then came his forgettable 2010 season.

Hill’s season was a disaster. You might not mind that he hit 26 home runs, but finding anything positive beyond that is a dubious task. His average was just .205, barely above the Mendoza Line. His on-base percentage (OBP) was an unconscionable .271 and his slugging percentage of .394 isn’t quite worthy of mentioning the word slugging. His wOBA of .291 stunk, to put it mildly.

In aggregate, despite another season of quality defense, his WAR plummeted from 3.9 in 2009 to 1.1 in 2010. That’s understating things, too, because one has to take FanGraphs’ UZR for Hill in 2009 (-4.9) with a grain of salt for two reasons: (1) it’s long been known it’s far better to look at two or more years of data for fielders than one to come up with a consensus of their ability, and (2) he won the Fielding Bible award for second basemen in 2009, casting further doubt on FanGraphs’ UZR for him in that particular season. In all likelihood, he was probably worth closer to five wins.

So what happened? Hill still posted a quality isolated power (ISO) of .189, which is over his .157 career mark though a bit lower than the outstanding .213 ISO he had a year prior. I think we have to assume the biggest problem was no doubt that pesky BABiP which I mentioned earlier. After all, he had the lowest mark in the major leagues in 2010. It dropped from a perfectly average .288 in 2009 (which also happens to be exactly his career mark) to .196 in The Great Crash of 2010 (as shown below). But why?

image

Maybe Ken Fidlin of the Toronto Sun has the answer, after speaking to Hill personally:

… Hill blames some bad habits that crept into his swing mechanics and just wouldn’t go away.

“I got a little too pull-happy,” he said. “I’ve always been a pull-the-ball kind of guy but there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. I just got in a funk early and never got back because I just dug myself into a deep hole.

In a funk.

“When I’m at my best, I’m taking my line drives to centre and right-centre*. Even the year when I hit 36 home runs, I was true to myself but last year I was just wide open and pulling everything.

*Yep, that’s how they spell center in Canada.

Thanks to FanGraphs, we can verify whether what Hill thinks the problem was is in fact the actual problem. I knew Hill had struggled in 2010, but I was shocked by how poor his luck was on balls in play. Looking at the data, his line drive rate fell at an alarming rate from 19.6 percent in 2009 to 10.6 percent in 2010, also a huge delta from his 18.5 percent career mark. But was it really because he became too “pull happy?”

No. It doesn’t look that way, anyway. There are slight differences, but they seem negligible. He pulled 49 percent of his balls in 2010, with 34 percent to center and 18 percent to the opposite field. In his excellent 2009 campaign he pulled 46 percent of the balls he put into play, with 34 percent headed to center and 20 percent headed to the opposite field. Finally, his career numbers are similar as he’s pulled 45 percent of balls, punched 33 percent to center, and 22 percent of his balls have gone to the opposite field. The differences, as I said, appear more random variation than a worrisome trend toward pulling everything. There has to be some other explanation.

Meanwhile, his fly bat rate jumped tremendously, much like that of teammate Bautista, and this is where the data get truly interesting. He went from 41.0 percent in 2009 to 54.2 percent in 2010, a rather massive delta from the 41.4 percent he’s posted over his career. That’s actually an even bigger change than Bautista experienced. Unlike Bautista, the increase in fly balls didn’t have a compounding effect on home run production with a parallel increase in HR/FB rate. Instead, his rate went down from 14.9 percent in 2009 to 10.8 percent in 2010. So, in a nutshell, he was hitting more balls in the air with fewer of them leaving the yard.

Heading to his plate discipline numbers, I also determined that he was swinging at more balls out of the zone than ever. It went from a career high in 2009 of 26.5 percent to a huge 31.63 percent in 2010, well up from his career 23.6 percent. There’s a good chance Hill was cheating a bit more on pitches, looking to trot around the bases rather than letting pitch location dictate ball trajectory. Just maybe, Murphy’s philosophy of getting started earlier was drowning Hill’s ability to see ball, hit ball.

Intrigued this point, I dug into his splits as well. I’m not talking about how he did at home and away, but rather where and especially how he was hitting the ball in 2010 as compared to 2009 and earlier seasons.

One thing we know is Hill is a dead pull hitter who can crush pitches left on the inner half. In 2010 his pull side (to left field) he hit 37.2 percent fly balls and 12.1 percent line drives. He hit 12.7 percent line drives to center and 62.7 percent fly balls. But if you look at his opposite field splits, you see that 83.8 percent of balls he hit to the opposite field (right field) were fly balls. His line drive rate that way was a minuscule 2.5 percent. That’s simply not good; I think a 2.5 percent line drive rate on the moon would be a bad sign.

In 2009, he hit 21.7 percent line drives to his pull side and 25.7 percent fly balls. To center he hit 16.7 percent line drives and 48.0 percent fly balls. Even to the opposite field he was still driving the ball to the tune of a 19.5 percent line drive rate that season, and his fly balls were much more reasonable that way at 64.4 percent. Hill said it himself: he hits line drives to center and right “when he’s going good.”

Instead of going season by season, let’s take a look at these numbers over his career. He’s had an 18.6 percent line drive rate to his pull side with 26.3 percent fly balls. To center he’s hit 19.4 percent line drives and 45.5 percent fly balls. To the opposite field, a 16.6 percent line drive rate and a 65.3 percent fly ball rate.

Finally, we can also take a look at his BABiP in this manner. His career BABiP to his pull side is .299, and it was .315 in 2009. It dipped to .214 in 2010. His career BABiP to center is .323 and in 2009 it was .289. In 2010 it was .211. Lastly, his career BABiP to the opposite field is .218 and it was .231 in 2009. In 2010 it was a measly .125. Suffice to say, Hill had trouble no matter where he hit the ball.

I’ve put all the data for your viewing pleasure below.

image

As you can see, his flyball deltas (in addition to the BABiP) are significant. Compared to his career averages, he hit nearly 11 percent more fly balls to his pull side, over 17 percent more to center and over 18 percent more to right field, most of which landed in a glove as you’ll see below in the Hit Tracker image. He simply doesn’t hit home runs to center or right field.

image

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that hitting the ball in the air to both center and right field isn’t in Hill’s best interest. The fact that he was doing just that, hitting more fly balls to center and right, and at an increasing rate approaching 20 percent, is startling.

His strikeout rate jumped, too. It went from 14.4 percent in 2009 (also exactly his career mark) to 16.1 percent in 2010. Couple that with a .196 BABiP and you have a recipe for ruin. That’s exactly what you would expect from a player like Hill who posts below average walk rates—his career rate is 6.7 percent, and his 7.1 percent in 2010 was about right—when a player gets hammered by the hitter's equivalent of the Bogeyman: BABiP. Where most hitters land near .300, and Hill is no exception with a .288 mark in his career, a drop of 92 points is going to wreak havoc on a player. It did just that to Hill.

Brown ended his article this summer with a quote from Vernon Wells:

“I think you ride it as long as you can. We’ll continue to have the same approach until we die trying.”

Hill died trying; his approach is certain to change. I won’t say Murphy’s to blame. Then again, it’s certainly curious how his introduction had such a magnificent impact on one player and the exact opposite on another. An emphasis on driving the ball, especially in the air, may well be the culprit. Bautista’s results cannot be ignored, and frankly they have not been—we’ve heard an awful lot about him all winter long.

On the flip side of the coin, we haven’t heard much about Hill at all. His season shouldn’t be ignored either. What I’ve offered here is at least some evidence that maybe, just maybe, we should be paying attention. Is it possible for a hitting coach to have such an enormous impact, for that impact to be wonderfully positive and disastrously negative, and all in the same season? I don’t know, but as I said: curious. Drawing conclusions about what hitting coaches are and are not doing isn’t exactly a science, but this is perhaps the most peculiar instance I’ve come across either way.

If Hill gets back to reacting to pitch location and hitting line drives to all fields, I suspect he’ll once again become a very productive player. He’ll also pull his fair share of balls over the left field fence, as he always has. His experiment to attempt to drive balls over the fence to all fields was a spectacular failure.

Hill won the Comeback Player of the Year award back in 2009 and I’ll throw it out here he may be one heck of a good bet to do it again in 2011, which would be pretty cool. Something tells me that honor hasn’t gone to the same player in two of three seasons.

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