Anaheim Angels all the way

2010 Hitter Projections

2009-11-15T11:34:00.000-08:00

Are available on Baseballprojection.com.

The Pitcher projections are still in process, and will be several weeks away. I have the hitter overall projections on the team pages, but do not have the individual hitter pages like last year's. The 2009 Projections are all intact, just look for the archived projections section. I've moved from using excel to generate these to a database. This has it's advantages, but will require a lot more work. I'm not sure if I'll be able to show as much detail as my pages had last year. I'll probably replace the pages piece by piece in the coming months.

First on the list: Get a good list of primary position for all players on my list. For now, all players have "H" for hitter as a placeholder under position. I hope the free agent projections, when combined with knowledge about their defense, can help as a discussion point as the free agent season heats up.

Lack of recent posts

2009-09-30T18:19:00.000-07:00

Mostly, it's frustration with the comments. The spamming jackoffasaurs who post what look to be automated requests to come visit their stupid little scam site. I tried comment verification, I tried requiring registered users. Nothing worked. I don't have the time to clean up posts by deleting these comments. So I might as well just turn all the verification off. I'm allowing anonymous posts, as not doing so seems to put more barriers in the way of my friends than stopping the morons.

For the immediate future, I'll most likely post in other places:

1. Any ideas worth turning into a full length article will most likely be sent to Hardball Times, or Fangraphs.
2. Angels related items will be posted as fanposts on Halos Heaven
3. Random baseball related ideas will go to appropriate threads on Baseballthinkfactory or Insidethebook.

I'll keep this blog around as there's no cost to it, and I do find it interesting to look through the archives. Both to see how right I was on something (like the Rays in the preseason of 2008) or how completely wrong I was.

Fill out your scouting report

2009-08-28T16:01:00.000-07:00

Check out the scouting report by and for the fans. This is a great resource, really every bit as good as having access to the scouting reports teams keep secret.

Link

Kazmir is an Angel?

2009-08-28T15:50:00.000-07:00

In what looks to be mostly a salary dump, the Angels pick up Scott Kazmir, who was one of the better young pitchers in baseball from 2005 to 2008. I knew he was having a down season, but didn't realize he was 5.92 ERA bad. He missed a month due to injury. Since he came back, he's made 11 starts, 65 innings, 61 hits, 21 walks, 56 strikeouts. I think we can work with that. He'll make 20 million over the next two years, and should be worth it unless he's injured. His strikeout rate is 7.4 per 9 innings. That's well down from where he was 2005-2008, but that is still a good rate.

Unlike most pitchers having down years, he can't blame it on unlucky balls going for hits. His BABIP is .310, almost exactly his career rate of .311. I think what we have traded for is a guy who was hurt, maybe has lost a bit of zip on his fastball, but still has lot of ability, and the Angels get him without committing for more than 2 years or giving up premium talent. Another thing: He's made 23 starts in his career against the Red Sox, 9 more than he's had against any other opponent, and comes out of it with a 3.59 ERA. Considering that's who the Angels would have to face in the playoffs if the season ended today, I like having Kaz on our side.

Edit: Now I see some reports that the deal fell through. I have no idea if he's actually going to be an Angel.

Angels Come to Camden

2009-08-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

I went to see the Angels and Orioles play on Saturday night. It was a well pitched game by John Lackey and a solid Angel victory. I met Matt Welch and his dad at the game, along with a friend of mine from college who's also an East Coast Angel fan, and attended the game with his wife. Strangely enough, while my friend did not know Matt going into the game, they just so happened to have tickets in the same section, and I was able to get a seat there just walking up to the box office half an hour before the game. It worked out well, our small section became Anaheim Stadium East for the game.

The Number of the Beast

2009-08-17T09:36:00.000-07:00

Woe to you oh earth and sea
for the devil sends the beast with rath
because he knows the time is short
let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast
for it is a human number
its number is six hundred and sixty six

-Iron Maiden

This is not the first time I've quoted Number of the beast on this blog, and probably won't be the last, because I like it. Yesterday the beast that the Angel offense has become waited until the 13th inning to send its rath. When the carnage had subsided, the earth shook, many thousands lie dead, and 9 Angels had scored. They now sit atop the American League's offensive leaders with 666 runs scored.

Updated Angel Projections

2009-08-13T21:03:00.000-07:00

I did this on Halos Heaven.

Link

How to Evaluate Catcher Defense

2009-08-04T18:25:00.000-07:00

At least part of it. I remain agnostic as to how much impact a catcher's game calling has on pitchers. I use retrosheet, though you can make a reasonable approximation with data from Baseball-reference, Fangraphs, or Hardball Times.

Data needed: Innings caught, Stolen bases allowed, caught stealing, passed balls, wild pitches, errors, and pickoffs. I have totals of these data for each catcher by pitcher handedness, one total for lefties and one for righties.

1. Find the league averages per inning caught for each of the data elements above, by pitcher hand.

2. Compare each catcher's totals to the league average prorated to his innings. If a league allows .12 steals per inning with RHP, a catcher has 1000 innings and allows 80 steals with RHP, then he has allowed 40 steals fewer than average. Do this for all data elements.

3. Apply run value. For recent years I use:

SB -0.20 ....CS/Pick 0.47 ....WP/PB/Err -0.275

Sum up the run values for all events and both righties and lefties, and you've got catcher runs. Modify as you wish (Don't believe a catcher can have any impact on preventing wild pitches? Leave that out).

Minor League Defensive Stats

2009-08-03T18:46:00.000-07:00

I've worked with Jeff Sackmann from Minor League Splits to apply the TotalZone defensive calculations to the minor leagues. We've done all the full season leagues through July 31st. Jeff provides the raw data, which he gathers from MLB gameday files, and I run the calculations.

Some highlights are offered at Hardball Times. All the player data can be found on minor league splits. The numbers are not park adjusted, and I have my doubts about the consistency of the scorekeeping, but the results are interesting nonetheless.

No Roy Halladay

2009-08-01T13:24:00.000-07:00

I really like Roy Halladay. I would have loved to see him add to the Angel staff, and I still hope to one day see him win his 300th game in an Angel uniform for real, as he has already done in one of my MLB the Show video games.

But I can't complain about the Angels holding on to prospects. The reason this team is in first place right now is because they have resisted trading prospects in the past. You can't win on the backs of a few 12-15-18 million dollar players alone, unless you are the Yankees. There isn't enough room in a moderately large market payroll in the 100 million range to pay enough of those guys to field a winning ballclub. Especially when you choose poorly in who to pay those contracts to, like Gary Matthews Jr. The Angels certainly have not seen all of their prospects pan out, nobody does, but they get enough solid contributions at a below market value to fill out the winning team.

It's tough to tell which prospects will wind up showing the most value. A few years ago the Angels probably would have surrendered Mike Napoli in a trade before Casey Kotchman or Brandon Wood, but Napoli is the one delivering the most value now. It seems wise to play the numbers game with unsure prospects, believing that some will turn into solid big league regulars but not knowing exactly who.

It will hurt to not have Halladay in the rotation. At the rumored offer of Wood, Saunders, and Aybar, Wood is no loss for 2009 since they won't play him, Halladay is an obvious upgrade on Saunders, and Aybar could be replaced by Izturis. What does that give us? A slightly better chance at winning a best of 5 series. As Mark Teixiera showed, getting a big time upgrade in one player, and having that player come through in the postseason, still is no guarantee for success.

I think the Angels passed on upgrading their chances at first round advancement from say, 48% to 52%, or something like that. But they are in better shape to keep turning out the winning seasons in 2010 and beyond, as Wood, Aybar, and Saunders will combine to make less than Halladay, and probably leave room for a decent free agent as well.

The Value of Bobby Abreu

2009-07-16T20:08:00.000-07:00

According to Fangraphs, he's already earned more than double his 5 million 2009 salary, at 10.5 million. He hasn't hit too many homers, but with a .396 OBP, 19 steals, and 58 RBI, he's been a joy to watch. His value goes beyond the stats though, as Torii Hunter gives him some credit:

Having Bobby Abreu here has been big for me. I'm more disciplined at the plate than I've ever been, and I can thank Bobby for that. He's a master up there, and he's a great guy to play with, because he's so willing to share his knowledge. He's also a really funny guy, helping keep things loose.

With 33 walks so far, Torii has the best walk rate of his career, and getting better pitches through improved patience sure hasn't hurt his power or batting average.

Top 500

2009-07-11T18:46:00.000-07:00

The top 300 lists have been replaced by a top 500 list.

Timelining

2009-07-11T14:28:00.000-07:00

Are the players of today better than players of the past? If so, how much better? These are not easy questions to answer. It is possible to construct a study to estimate it. David Gassko did such for The Hardball Times two years ago, and did a good job, producing very reaonable results. Unfortunately, it is far from conclusive and very sensitive to whatever assumptions you use to set it up.

The approach, which I have played around with, is to compare how players do from one season to the next. But how much of it is age decline, and how much is the change in league strength? You really can't tell, since the same process we're using here is what we use to compute aging factors in the first place.

It is necessary to regress to the mean as well. Take two average players, but one is +15 by luck and the other is -15 by bad luck. The next year, player 1 should be average. But player 2 may not play, or else be limited to a bench role, so as a group you would see decline even if there was no real change at all.

Some criticized David's study for regressing too much, including some Baseball Prospectus Authors, who apparently didn't see the need for regression at all. They are demonstrably wrong about not needing regression*, but may be right in that David did too much. It's pretty much impossible to tell.

I tried to get around the regression issue by choosing only players who were average in year one, or very close to it. Even with that, what age ranges should I include? I tried using ages 26-28 in year one (27-29 year 2). This would work if it were true that on average, 28 year olds were equal to 27 year olds. I also tried looking at ages 25-28 and 26-29, which would look at, on average, ages 26.5 and 27.5. This works if age 27 is indeed the true peak. The difference in results is tiny, but become huge when chained to look at seasons 100 years apart.

Another issue that isn't even touched is improvements that affect all players. We're assuming that the player is constant from year 1 to year 2 and any changes measured represent the league changing around him. What if some new, illegal or legal, nutritional supplement makes every hitter and pitcher better? This study would not pick that up at all. I'm not sure it even matters. If there are great advancements making everyone a better player then we should not penalize great players from the past for not having these advantages. If they played today, they would have them just like everyone else. I think we want to look at the greatness of the player, not what improved circumstances allow him.

One thing that can should be considered is game improvements from using a greater pool of the best available players. Major Leaguers before 1947 would not have dominated their leagues to the same extent if they had not excluded players of darker skin color.

*Honus Wagner is the case in point. The no-regression time lines would make him a replacement level hitter (and Ty Cobb not much better I guess) in today's game. Here are some factors that determine how great a ballplayer is, in order from the ones that seem to have changed the most over the years to the least:

1. Size and Strength
2. Speed
3. Throwing Ability
4. Hand/eye coordination, reactions.

No question that players of today are much bigger and stronger than players 100 years ago. But Wagner was an exception, 5'11, 200 pounds, and was one of the earliest players to work out with weights. He would not be out of place in today's game. I'm not sure how his speed would rate today. His arm would be one of the best among shortstops, as Wagner is known to have made some incredible long distance throws, I believe near 400 feet. I don't think it is possible, even under the most favorable circumstances, to throw a baseball that far without being able to throw at least 90 MPH. I can't think of any reason why #4 would change that much, unlike muscle mass and speed throw better nutrition. Wagner was the best of his day in this regard, and would almost certainly at least be among the best today.

Best Player, pound for pound

2009-07-06T08:13:00.000-07:00

This post got me thinking. Is Ichiro the best player pound for pound?

The answer is no, it's still Albert Pujols. But Ichiro does come in second. I took each player's career wins over replacement, and converted to a rate stat, wins per 12000 plate appearances. In other words, the number of PA a great player would put up in a long career.

Albert is the best player, of course, at 152 WAR per 12000. Ichiro does rank very high among active players, about 16th place at 93 WAR. Divide this by weight and we get the best pound for pound players:


WAR/Wt Player
0.659  Pujols   
0.578  Ichiro   
0.565  A-Rod
0.558  Mauer
0.529  H Ramirez
0.522  Utley
0.502  Sizemore

Updated Wins Above Replacement

2009-07-05T06:17:00.000-07:00

I've made a few changes:

1. Add a column for reaching on errors for batters.

2. Cap the replacement column, which is based on plate appearances, at 4 PA per game. The batter will be evaluated as if he has the lessor of 4 PA per game, or his actual plate appearances. This eliminates the leadoff bonus, where leadoff hitters may have added 1-2 runs per year to their rating just because they bat at the top of the lineup and get more bats. One reason for this is that in evaluating runs over replacement, you have to assume that the replacement player will not bat at the top of the order, but the bottom, with the other hitters moving up.

3. Pitcher's hitting and pitching records are all on the same page.

4. Pitchers have a new set of columns, showing how far above/below average they were in several independent categories. This is meant not as a value measure, but more a descriptor. Not "How great a pitcher was he?", but "What kind of pitcher was he?" This shows that practically all of Randy Johnson's value came from his strikeouts, he was essentially an average pitcher if he didn't whiff you. Roger Clemen's value lies more in a mix of strikeouts and homerun prevention. Tom Glavine, on the other hand, was below average in strikeouts but excelled in keeping the ball in the park and stranding runners.

5. Pitcher's hitting records include a position adjustment, so his WAR Total shows how valuable he was relative to the average pitcher. (For pitcher's hitting, average and replacement level are the exact same thing.)

6. And finally, the numbers go all the way back to 1871 for hitters and 1876 for pitchers. Some of the estimates used to fill these stats in, like the baserunning regression formula or the JAARF fielding numbers, are not to be trusted as anything more than a reasonable guess. Catcher defensive ratings are based on passed balls and errors only. It is not worth it to even try to estimate performance against the running game by catcher assists. Mike Piazza had about as many assists per game as Johnny Bench. Enough said.

7. The 300 lists have not been updated. When I do, it will probably be a 500 list since so many more players are added.

Highest Leverage Index of All Time

2009-07-03T11:03:00.000-07:00

...Or at least 1954, the years retrosheet has play by play files for.

I sorted my career pitcher log by career leverage index, which measures the volatility of a game (1 is average, 9th inning, 1 run lead is high, 7th inning, 12 run lead is low). Since there are some pitchers who came up for a cup of coffee, might have for some emergency found themselves in a crucial sitation, and never pitched again, I was expected to see a lot of 2-5 inning guys before I got to the real careers.

In reality, there are only a few of them. Bruce Sutter ranks 8th with a 2.0 leverage index, behind 7 guys who pitched no more than 3 innings each. A few pitchers come in at 1.9, K-Rod, Percival, John Franco, and Trevor Hoffman among them. Mariano Rivera is at 1.8.

Only one pitcher has a leverage index of 3.0, hitting that on the nose. Surprise is, it wasn't even a real pitcher, but catcher Brent Mayne for one inning on August 22, 2000. The game between the Rockies went 12 innings, and the Rockies had already used 9 pitchers before handing the ball to Mayne. I don't remember the whole story, maybe the last guy got hurt and Mayne had to pitch since there was nobody left. The 6 pitchers before him didn't work very hard, throwing between 3 and 12 pitches each.

Anyway, Mayne faced Tom Glavine and got a ground out. Walt Weiss flew out to center. This pitching stuff ain't that hard, is it? A single, wild pitch, and walk later, Mayne found himself staring down the reigning NL MVP, Larry Wayne Jones, who had already homered in the game. No big deal, Jones grounded out to third, the Rockies won the game in the bottom of the inning, and Mayne's legend as the most leverage pitcher of all time was established.

Updated Hitter Projections

2009-06-30T20:47:00.000-07:00

The player pages haven't changed, but I did add a hitter update in an excel spreadsheet on the right hand side of Baseballprojection.com.

Some things that are not yet in the new program: Runs, RBI, SB, CS, and any estimate of playing time. For every player I just project 350 plate appearances, which is about what they'll get if they play every day from here on out.

The projections include all the pre-2009 minor league data that went into last winter's projections, but no 2009 minor league data. Exceptions are Brandon Wood, Sean Rodriguez, Matt Wieters and Jake Fox, who I entered by hand.

David Wright

2009-06-24T21:26:00.000-07:00

I've been reading this thread on David Wright. It made me wonder what the proper weights are for projecting a player, varied by the component. I looked at strikeout rate, walk rate, homer rate, and BA on balls in play. The hitters I used are guys who had 400+ AB in 4 straight years from 1982 to 2005. I'm using the first 3 years to try and project year 5. The weights are year-1, year-2, year-3, and LG average.

For K, the weights I get are 7/3/2/1, which yields a new .235 K rate for Wright.

BB: 9/5/4/1. Not a whole lot of regression needed when you have 3 full years of these players. Wright comes in at .133 per PA, the only part of his game where he's playing at his normal level.

HR: 11/7/5/2. For David, a .043 rate per contact (AB-K) which means 12 more homers, and a projected season total of only 16.

BABIP: 10/7/6/10. Here's where regression plays a big role, but still gives a rest of season figure of .368. We can do a better job by considering batted ball data and player speed, but that's it for tonight.

I didn't do extrabase hits, but assume 20 2b and 3 3b, put the pieces together, and I get a rest of season line of 303/395/475. That does surprise me a bit, I didn't think his power projection would drop so much. But he's still a great player, even if that's all he does from here on out.

Outfield Ratings for pre-Retrosheet

2009-06-22T18:28:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I asked people to rate, on a scale of 1-5, the defensive play fro some outfielders who played from 1900 to 1950. Only 3 people answered the call, but I'll take what I can get (thank you to those who helped), and compare them to my system, JAARF (Just Another Adjusted Range Factor).

I'll score my results as either hit if it reasonably matches the subjective rating, foul if it isn't horrible, and whiff if it's too far off. There were a few misses, but overall I'm happy with the results given the crude data I worked with. Even with today's advanced defensive stats, there are still a few whiffs where either the numbers or the impressions of observers are way off. Take Torii Hunter. His UZR is a bit below average though he regularly amazes Angel fans, including this blogger. I'm not going to go on an anti-UZR (or anti-TotalZone) diatribe, but I'm still quite content to have Torii in CF every day.

Anyway, the ratings. First is a number, 1 to 5, average reader response. 5 is better, 3 is average. Second is career JAARF runs at the position.

The hits:
Averill, cf, 2.3, -59
Carey, cf, 4, +103
Cobb, cf, 3.3, -15
Dom Dimaggio, cf, 5, 74
Goslin, lf, 3.7, 66
Heilmann, rf, 2, -70
Hooper, rf, 5, 150
Joe DiMaggio, cf, 5, 81
C Klein, rf, 2, -57
L Waner, cf, 4, 33
D Lewis, lf, 4.5, 48
Speaker, cf, 5, 182
P Waner, rf, 4, 55
Cy Williams, cf, 2.5, -16
T Williams, lf, 2, +3

I counted Williams as a hit since this stat only shows him through 1954, after that TotalZone takes over and rates him below average for his remaining years. It looks like a normal career progression, and Ted was an OK fielder when he was younger, and 20 years too early for the DH role after that. I'm proud of having Speaker with the big rating.

The fouls: Not good ratings, but not clearly wrong:

Crawford, rf, 3.7, -48
Bob Johnson, lf, 2.7, 46
Kiner, lf, 1, -16
Manush lf, 2, 28
S Rice, rf, 3.7, 91
Simmons, lf, 3, 105
Slaughter, lf, 3, 40
Z Wheat, lf, 3.3, 109
Cramer, cf, 2.7, -70

Perhaps these can be explained partially by position, most of these are corner outfielders who rate about average but have good numbers - They weren't especially good, thus they were stuck in corners, but might have been better than some oafs out there. Cramer is the opposite in center, he was a bit below average, but compared to much better outfielders his run rating is very low.

The ones who don't fit the pattern are Crawford, who probably should rate better, and Kiner, who should rate worse.

The whiffs:

Medwick, lf, 2.5, +97
Nicholson, rf, 1, +26
Mel Ott, rf, 2.5, +87
Roush, cf, 4, -8
Ruth, rf, 2.3, +103
Veach, lf, 2.7, 72

Mostly bad fielders who rate well by some flaw. I don't think Ott was a bad fielder, but I tried to keep my own opinion out of it. Roush was considered a great defensive centerfielder, perhaps the best in the NL of his day. Ruth? I've got some thoughts on this but with his high defensive ratings (justified or not) he and Bonds have very similar profiles on the WAR charts. Except for pitching, of course.

So overall, the ratings are probably right 50% of the time, wrong 20% of the time, and inconclusive 30%. I'm only doing themjavascript:void(0) because it has become an obsession, to rate every damn player who ever played the game.

Praise for a few announcers

2009-06-20T13:47:00.000-07:00

The normal thing for bloggers to do is wait for announcers to say something stupid, then write a post explaining exactly how they are stupid. Whole websites have been built around this concept. Sometimes, though, credit is due.

Today's game of the week features Tampa Bay and the Mets. David Wright is currently hitting .350 but is on pace for 170 strikeouts and only 10 homers. It is certainly a weird season. Ken Rosenthal brought these numbers and mentioned Wright's .480 BABIP. Even Tim McCarver seemed to grasp regression to the mean, as he (rightly) doesn't think Wright will continue striking out at a 170K pace. It was a discussion you'd be more likely to read at a site like the Hardball Times.

Wright is having an odd mixture of good and bad luck. There's some bad luck in that he's not making contact with balls he normally hits. Some bad luck in that balls he normally hits out of the park are staying in. And quite a bit of good luck in that balls he does contact are dropping in for hits. The thing about Wright is that he's not the best at any aspect of the game, but is well above average at just about everything. It's weird to see him with an extreme BABIP, and an extreme whiff rate.

I would think Wright will almost certainly hit more like his .300, 30 hr, 115K self from here on than the statistical freak he's been so far. He's having as good a season as he normally does, but it is difficult to see how one could consciously trade off one's abilities to get to where he is now.

Want a higher BA at the expense of homers? This can probably be done by shortening your swing, going with the pitch, etc., but that approach should decrease your strikeout rate, not increase it.

If you consciously swing harder, and do so at the expense of strikeouts, I can see where such an approach could increase your BABIP and your K rate at the same time. But that would approach should not kill your power, should it?

I'll add a little batted ball data from Fangraphs. Wright is hitting slightly more line drives (25% to 23% career) at the expense of ground balls. Not a big enough increase to explain the huge BABIP increase. He's hit 3 more line drives than his career averages would expect, yet has 20 more hits in play. His flyball percentage is unchanged, so it's hard to see why he's stopped hitting homers.

Just a weird season for Wright, but I expect him to display his normal profile of skills going forward.

Fact Check for Rob Dibble

2009-06-16T17:34:00.000-07:00

I generally try to ignore most of the blabbering from the announcer's booth during games. But sometimes they just get on their points and just keep hammering at it, getting on my nerves. So I have to put my 2 cents in through the small forum I have into the baseball world, this blog.

Today it's Rob Dibble, talking about the greatness of Derek Jeter's defense. He's telling us that Jeter didn't win a gold glove until 2004 because Omar Vizquel was in the league.

Fact: Omar Vizquel won AL gold gloves every year from 1993 to 2001.

Fact: When Omar's streak was broken, the new gold glove shortstop was a guy who currently plays on the left side of the infield for the Yankees.

Fact: It was not Derek Jeter.

A-Rod broke the Vizquel streak, and had Vizquel declined/gotten hurt/been traded to the National league earlier, it is likely that A-Rod would have had a gold glove earlier, not Jeter. Jeter did break A-Rod's streak, of course, with some help from his manager and team, who decided to take A-Rod out of the competition.

Raw Power

2009-06-13T18:51:00.000-07:00

I was checking out some of the new data released by MLB, hit f/x, which tracks the ball after it makes contact with the bat. I'm not going to be able to attend their conference in San Francisco, and I don't know how to do all the perl coding that downloads the games and parses the xml into databases, but on this thread at Inside the Book, Harry Pavlidis was kind enough to post the data in CSV format.

Anyway, I was looking at average speed off bat as an estimate of raw power, but that isn't clean enough. If a player has a low average speed off bat, it could be because he is swinging weakly, but it could also be that he is not making solid contact, making too many popups or weak grounders and not enough solid line drives.

It appears that the optimal angle of the ball off the bat for real solid contact is about 11 degrees, this represents a slight uppercut that will get you some extra bases. So for raw power, I looked at average speed off bat when the angle is between 6 and 16 degrees. This will tell us how hard a player hits it when he connects. The sample size is very small, it looks like the dataset only covers a portion of the 2009 season, so I'm looking at players with at least 8 of these "solid contacts"

The ones who hit the ball the hardest:

102.5 Scott Hairston
102.2 Albert Pujols
101.2 Miguel Cabrera
98.8 Mike Cameron
98.1 Robinson Cano
96.9 Jason Bay
96.8 Adam Dunn
96.6 Vernon Wells
96.3 Justin Morneau

Cano and Hairston are surprises, the others are legit long distance hitters.

Average seems to be around 90 MPH.

The lowest:
78.5 Geoff Blum
79.3 Ichiro! (So much for his supposed raw power)
80.9 David Eckstein
81.5 Jason Giambi (is his bat speed lost to age?)
82.0 Joe Thurston
82.4 Mike Aviles
82.8 Kelly Johnson
83.0 Magglio Ordonez
83.5 Nate McLouth
84.4 Dexter Fowler
84.9 Nyjer Morgan

David Ortiz is below average at 87.4, but he ranks right between Carlos Pena and Evan Longoria. This is not what I would expect since those two are hitting for tons of power. It makes me wonder how consistent the data are, and if there are some quirks in ballpark setups.

Torii Hunter didn't make the list as only 5 of his hits are included in the dataset and meet the angle off bat criteria. His average is 87.8, which seems strange to me as Torii has hit a bunch of homers this year (including one as I type). From watching just about all of his games, when Torii hits one, he crushes it.

The Angel Lineup, small samples be damned:
C Napoli 95.4 (one hit)
1B Kendry Morales 96.6 (4)
2B Howie Kendrick 89.5 (3)
SS Erick Aybar 89.1 (8)
3B Chone Figgins 91.5 (6)
RF Bob Abreu 89.7 (9)
CF Hunter 87.8 (5)
LF Juan Rivera 102.5 (6)
DH Vlad Guerrero (no hits qualify)

Without any minimum amount of hits, Lance Berkman takes the top spot (109.3, 4 hits). Manny Ramirez (103.6, 7) is up there too.

At the other end, Kevin Millar (71.6, 6 hits) and Alexei Ramirez (73.4, 6) are not making things happen. A few pitchers make the list with numbers in the 20's, these have to be bunts, I don't think it's possible to take a full swing, make solid contact, and get that result.

2009 Draft

2009-06-09T17:55:00.000-07:00

Picking back to back with the 24th and 25th picks, the Angels take a pair of high school outfielders. At #24 it's Randal Grichuk from Texas, and at #25 Michael Trout from New Jersey. I don't know anything about either, but I like the names and the idea. The Angels haven't taken an outfielder in the first round since Darin Erstad in 1995. The result is that they've had to spend the big free agent bucks on outfielders. Sometimes it works (Guerrero, Hunter, Abreu) and sometimes it doesn't (Finley, Matthews). I like the idea of taking position players here, as most teams went after pitching, and pitchers can be such a crapshoot anyway. With 7 more picks in the first 5 rounds, the Angels will have their chances to add some arms anyway.

As for the names, they both bring back memories of Angel greats from the past. Grichuk will probably have to answer to "Bobby" at some point, and Trout will be known as the "little fish".

1970 World Series was Tainted

2009-06-08T18:17:00.000-07:00

I was watching an Orioles classic game, game3 of the 1970 world series against Cincinnati, when the announcer said this, very matter of factly, about Red's pitcher Tony Cloninger:

Striken with a mysterious eye ailment in 1967. A reaction from steroids, and uh, he was nearly blind in one eye. His vision's all right now.

He threw ball four to the hitter and the announcers found other things to talk about. Not a hint of anything possibly wrong.

He was probably roided up for this game. I'm sure they were talking about corticosteroids. But you never know.

Randy Johnson 300 Wins

2009-06-04T20:17:00.000-07:00

I wanted to see this game, going down to Nationals stadium last night only to have the whole thing rained out. I didn't try again today but at least got home in time to watch most of the game. Johnson pitched great for 6 innings, making a great defensive play nad watching Brian Wilson get a very close call in the 8th with the bases loaded, a 3-2 count, and a one run lead.

I believe some active pitcher is going to win 300, but damned if I know who, and it's likely at least a decade away unless Jamie Moyer can keep making 30 starts a year to age 51.

There are now 4 pitchers to win 300 while pitching in the era of the 5 man rotation, Maddux, Clemens, Glavine, and Johnson. A few pitchers are ahead of Johnson's pace, but he got a late start (first win at age 25) and nobody can be expected to match his late peak.

Looking at the average wins by age of those 4 pitchers I get:

Age Wins
28 106
29 124
30 137
31 152
32 165
33 181
34 201
35 219

CC Sabathia, 28, is ahead of Glavine, behind Maddux and Clemens, and ahead of the average.

At age 30, Buerhle is 9 behing the average, and Santana is 21 back.

Roy Oswalt, 31, is 21 back, and Roy Halladay is 25 back of the 32 year old average.

Tim Hudson, 33, is 35 back of the average, and hasn't pitched yet this season.

Take any one individually, and the odds are stacked against him, but I think one of these guys will come through.

Request for Help

2009-06-01T19:15:00.000-07:00

On rating some outfielder defensive ability. I'm looking for students of baseball history here, because most of you never saw these guys play. I'm guessing most of you were not even alive to see these guys play.

I'm working on a rating system for defensive ability for the days before retrosheet data is available. The players below started their careers no earlier than 1900, and I am rating them through 1955. What I need is an opinion on how good they were, compared to the average player at their position (so if I were to ask how good Carl Crawford was, you compare him to the average left fielder, don't bother trying to figure out how he stacks up against Carlos Beltran or Torii Hunter. But I won't be asking about Carl Crawford. Sam Crawford maybe).

What you can do:

Rate these players from 1 to 5, with 1 being a terrible defender, 3 about average, and 5 being a great defender. I can't ask you to ignore stats for players who you never saw play, but try as best you can to base your rating on what opinions you might have read about them, instead of running off to Baseball Prospectus or open a copy of Total Baseball to see how they rate there. And consider their ability compared to the position I list them at, even though many may have played multiple outfield positions. "I don't know" is an acceptable response, if you have knowledge of some players and are reading the names of others for the first time. Rate them based on your opinion of their careers defensively.

The left fielders:
Sherry Magee
Zach Wheat
Duffy Lewis
Bobby Veach
Charlie Jamison
Goose Goslin
Heinie Manush
Al Simmons
Joe Medwick
Bob Johnson
Ted Williams
Ralph Kiner

center field:
Ty Cobb
Clyde Milan
Dode Paskert
Tris Speaker
Max Carey
Cy Williams
Edd Roush
Lloyd Waner
Sam West
Earl Averill
Doc Cramer
Joe DiMaggio
Dom DiMaggio

Right field:
Sam Crawford
Harry Hooper
Babe Ruth
Sam Rice
Harry Heilmann
Paul Waner
Mel Ott
Chuck Klein
Wally Moses
Bill Nicholson
Enos Slaughter

If you want to help, please post in the comments section below. I'll give a week, hope to see some responses, then post my ratings for this group.

Angels and Defense

2009-05-28T19:08:00.000-07:00

So far the Angels are playing above average defense, with a +5.1 team UZR figure according to Fangraphs. I was a bit worried coming into the season, especially with the outfield being on the wrong side of 30.

Most defensive metrics have shown a decline in Torii Hunter's game in recent years. Torii is aware of this, and is doing his best to prove them wrong. He's been amazing so far this season. The numbers say only +0.7 runs, but at least it's positive. In addition, the American League has some outstanding defensive talent in center right now. There's nothing wrong with being average among an elite group. If you were compared to only Babe Ruth, Mike Schmidt, Lou Gehrig, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Jimmie Foxx, Frank Robinson, and Ken Griffey Jr., and among that group you were found to have average power, you'd still be a great homerun hitter.

Juan Rivera is +4.9 in left. That surprises me, as he's not the fastest. I don't remember him failing to make many plays, but this may not continue. Bobby Abreu has done a fine job despite coming over with the reputation of a butcher. Bobby is a total of +1 between right and left. There have been a few plays where he has shown his reluctance to go to the wall, but he's also shown excellent speed in running down balls in the gaps.

Gary Matthews Jr. has played all 3 spots, and poorly, with at least a -2 UZR at each, and a total of -6.9. I wouldn't have guessed that. He did have one ridiculously pathetic play, dropping an easy fly that would have ended a game, but that's just one play.

In the infield, Figgins has been a bit above average (+2.5) after really settling in at third in 2008. Aybar has been average (-0.1) and hasn't made as many flashy plays as last year, but has all the tools to really be a good one. Kendrick has the top UZR on the team (5.1) and has been especially good at turning the DP. Kowbell Morales started the season looking shaky but has been just fine recently. His UZR is about average at -0.2.

It's been a good enough defense to help a few marginal pitchers hold the fort while the Angels dealt with injuries.

Updated Projection on Jake Fox

2009-05-20T15:07:00.000-07:00

Dude is absolutely killing the ball at AAA, as David Cameron at Fangraphs points out.

I ran a projection for him and get 268/326/485, which is a bit underwhelming for a 1B but represents a substantial improvement from his preseason projection. He deserves a shot somewhere, though it would be interesting to see what kind of numbers he can put up at AAA.

Brandon Wood's projection is slowly coming around, 235/300/429. He's looking like a much improved player so far, but damn, it takes way too long for these projection thingies to recognize a change in performance level. His MLE for 2009 is 314/401/697, but that is only 21 games.

Buying my Data

2009-05-17T13:09:00.000-07:00

If you are interested in getting the Wins Above Replacement data in csv format, then just click here: baseballprojection.com

If you just want to check on a player now and then, no need to buy anything, just go to the site and look up his page. But if you want to do some sorting and calculations, this might be for you. The cost is $15 for the pitcher or hitter file, or $25 for both.

Pitcher's Duel

2009-05-09T20:13:00.000-07:00

I love these games. Joe Saunders beats Zach Greinke 1-0, with both pitchers going the distance. Chone Figgins didn't have a hit, but still had a huge game. His sac fly drives in the only run, makes 2 great defensive plays in the 8th with the tieing run on third, and starts a DP to end the 7th.

Angels finish a west coast game at 11:13 PM eastern time. If they could do this during the week, I'd get a lot more sleep.

Hitters on the Mound

2009-05-08T15:11:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite things to watch. Just for the novelty of it, but I find it satisfies my curiosity a bit too, about how hard a non-pitcher can typically throw. Thanks to the wonders of Fangraphs, the average fastball velocity is available from 2002 to last night. Identifying hitters on the mound is easy with the Lahman database or Baseball databank. Just do a query for players who have at least one batter faced as a pitcher, but have more batting plate appearances than BFP while pitching. Here's the list, for the ones with data (a few players are missing pitch data)

90.0 Tomas Perez
89.8 Tony Pena
89.2 Paul Janish
86.5 David McCarty
85.0 Abraham Nunez
84.5 Josh Wilson
84.3 Wiki Gonzalez
83.9 Scott Spiezio
83.0 Jamie Burke
81.7 Jeff Cirillo
81.3 Cody Ross
79.2 Tim Laker
79.0 Frank Menechino
78.5 Augie Ojeda
78.0 John Van Every
75.6 Todd Zeile
75.4 Nick Swisher
75.2 Sean Burroughs
73.2 Jason Wood
72.8 Aaron Miles
69.1 Mark Grace

Up until this year, all were infielders or catchers except for McCarty, but we've had three outfielders (Ross, Swisher, Van Every) take the mound. Their arms, as a group, are not as good as the utility infielders, with catchers being in the middle, and Mark Grace being the one who couldn't average 70.

It would be interesting to see some of the great arms on the mound, guys like Tulowitzski, Yadier Molina, Jose Guillen, Ichiro, or Mike Cuddyer. We aren't likely to see a real star out there though, thanks to the example of Jose Canseco.

Random Thoughts on the Angels

2009-05-02T12:57:00.000-07:00

- Brandon Wood is in the lineup today, has two hits and a walk. The only players in the park wearing number 3: Brandon Wood and Babe Ruth's statue.

- Mark Teixiera came into the game hitting 189/358/351 and is 0-4. Kendry Morales came into the game at 269/313/500 and has added a single and homer. Don't expect that to continue, but so far the Angels are better off losing out on Tex, especially since they probably would not have signed Bobby Abreu if Tex took Arte's money. They also may not have had the budget for Brian Fuentes, which might have been a good thing, but the rest of the bullpen hasn't been any better.

- After Matt Palmer pitched 6+ strong innings, the cameras cut to see him watching from the dugout, wearing his wedding ring on his left finger. The Yankee announcers muse about whether having that on the field is illegal. The obvious implication is that no minor league vet can shut down the Yankee offense unless he's scuffing the ball.

Balls in play, by count

2009-05-02T11:34:00.000-07:00

I'm sure I'm not the first to look at this but I had to see it for myself. I'm looking at the results on balls in play by different counts. Is a hit ball more likely to be a hit when the count is 3-1 as opposed to 1-2? The answer seems obvious, and it is in fact true, but I still needed to quantify it. The numbers presented here are "safe percentage", which is hits (excluding homers) plus reach on error divided by balls in play.

I divided the numerous possible counts as hitters, pitcher, and neutral:

Hitter's counts: 3-1, 3-0, 2-0
Pitcher's counts: 0-1, 1-2, 0-2
All others are neutral.

The results, first for ground balls:
Hitters: .294
Neutral: .273
Pitcher: .252

Line Drives:
Hitters: .734
Neutral: .728
Pitcher: .719

For fly balls you actually see a better safe% in pitcher's counts, but that is an illusion, since by looking at balls in play I'm removing homeruns. And the hardest hit flyballs in hitters counts turn into homeruns. Adding back the homers I get:

Fly balls:
Hitters: .305
Neutral: .274
Pitcher: .260

So a pitcher who maximizes pitching ahead in the count (think Greg Maddux in his prime) can have a 20-40 point advantage on balls in play over a guy pitching behind (Brian Fuentes recently). This is a potential enhancement for TotalZone, but in practice it barely makes a difference. It is not a difficult thing to add into TotalZone, and I will use the ball/strike count as a parameter in the future, it makes very little difference. Most player-seasons are unchanged, at least once the results are rounded to the nearest run, and didn't find any player season where the result changed by more than one run. Probably

The change is not worth it to rerun and repost all the TZ numbers I've already put on the web, so they will stay, but I will use it in the future. It doesn't have a huge effect on fielding ratings, but might help explain the difference among pitchers of balls in play.

Yovani Gallardo, Game of a Lifetime

2009-04-29T18:55:00.000-07:00

It's hard to do more than this kid did tonight to singlehandedly win a ballgame. Over 8 innings, he allowed two hits, one walk, and struck out 11. Oh, and he also provided the only run of the ballgame with a homerun.

He didn't complete the game, that's his only blemish. It reminds me of a similar game 27 years ago where Steve Carlton shut out the Cardinals for his 20th win and belted a homer. But checking Baseball-Reference, the Phillies won that one 2-0. Mike Schmidt doubled in a run in the first, and Carlton's homer simply added on. He went on to pitch a complete game 3 hitter, no walks, and 12 strikeouts.

Good thing at least one league has the sense to resist the abomination called the DH so games like this can happen.

Angels 7 Orioles 5

2009-04-28T20:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a pic of my view watching the Angel bullpen watching the game.

Angels came out to visit me for two days, their only two games in Baltimore until late in the summer. Orioles took the first lead, but the Angel bats were strong, including a two-run homer by Howie Kendrick.

Joe Saunders pitched just well enough to win, and Arredondo, Shields and Fuentes preserved the lead. I spent most of the game in the picnic area behind the bullpens. It was hard to hear exactly what he was saying the whole game, but Justin Speier sure is a lively personality. Most of the bullpen seemed content to sit and watch the game, aside from the times they needed to throw. Not Speier. He was either having fun with his teammates, dancing around between innings, even chatting with the fans some.

Pitcher Wins Above Replacement

2009-04-26T12:51:00.000-07:00

It is here.

For pitchers who pitched during the Retrosheet era. Thanks to Tom Tango of Insidethebook.com for providing win expectancy charts for calculating leverage index.

Starters and relievers are compared to different replacement levels. Replacement level considers ballpark, league, defensive support, and mix of opponents. Pitchers get partial credit for the situation leverage they pitch in. Click on the Stat Definition link from any player to see what goes into these pages.

And like the hitters, I have a top 300 list for the pitchers.

Starting and Relieving

2009-04-19T18:22:00.000-07:00

Pitchers who pitch in both roles usually do better as relievers. Without having to pace themselves in a starting job, they can go all out for an inning or two. Fastball is usually higher in a relief role, and the stats are better all around.

I looked at all pitchers who pitched in both roles in a season from 1993 to 2008. I looked at matched plate appearances, and the change in rates for walks, strikeouts, homeruns, and hits on balls in play. The results:

BB .99
SO 1.15
HR .87
HBIP .95

So as relievers, they walk about the same number of hitters per plate appearance, but strike out more, give up fewer hits, and fewer homers.

Modern relievers pitch less than ever before, it has become common for relievers to have more games than innings pitched. Some of the workloads of relievers of the past were far higher. Mike Marshall pitched 100 games and 200 innings in relief. He was an extreme outlier even then, but relief aces throwing 130 innings were not uncommon at all. With much higher workloads, I wondered if the starter/relief adjustment could be applied to pitchers of the past, and if so, to the same magnitude.

I looked at two time periods, 1977 to 1992 (From the time Bruce Sutter closed for the Cubs to the last year before the offensive explosion) and 1953 to 1976. The numbers were surprisingly similar:

1977-1992

BB 1.00
SO 1.17
HR .83
HBIP .96

1953-1976

BB 1.01
SO 1.16
HR .85
HBIP .96

I would have guessed that starters who move to the bullpen and throw 65 games and 60 innings would get a bigger boost than those who go to the pen for 80 games and 130 innings. But everything's relative. Today's starters pitch less than pitchers of the past as well, so the relative difficulty of starting and relieving has not changed much.

Levels of Suckitude

2009-04-19T10:36:00.000-07:00

There is no limit to how bad a pitcher could be. Take an 80 year old who can't throw the ball further than 25 feet, and he'll just walk everyone, never record an out, and his ERA will be infinite. Among those who are capable of throwing at least in the mid 80's and in the vicinity of home plate, how bad is it realistic for a pitcher to be?

I present, levels of suckitude, in ERA:

6.97: Lower 50% of pitchers who made their MLB debuts in 2008
7.01: Worst 10% of CHONE 2009 Projections
8.27: Hitters taking the mound at the end of blowouts, 1993-2008
8.55: 2009 Angel bullpen
15.75: Allen Travers, 1912 (replacement pitcher during one-day player strike)
34.50: Chien-Ming Wang, 2009

If the Angel bullpen can't do better than this, the team would be better off giving some relief appearances to some strong-armed position players, probably Aybar and Rivera.

Keeps getting worse

2009-04-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of question about what the Angels did wrong last night, but for me the biggest one is walking Justin Morneau to set up the grand slam by Jason Kubel off Jason Bulger. Putting the go ahead run on base makes little sense, because Kubel can now put the Twins on top with any extra base hit, while Morneau would have had to homer. Last season, Morneau hit 23 homeruns in 623 AB. Kubel hit 47 extra base hits in 463 AB.

Also, both are lefties. This would have been a perfect time to ask lefty closer Brian Fuentes to get 4 outs. If Scot Shields continues his complete inability to throw strikes though, it's not going to matter. There are a ton of holes in this bullpen right now.

The Angels came into the year with what looks like a decent lineup. The bullpen appeared strong, and the big question mark was the starting pitching as Lackey, Santana, and Escobar were all out.

According to the Hardball Times Team page, the Angel bats have been worth 0.11 wins (it was negative before yesterday's 9 run outburst). The bullpen has cost -1.55 wins, and the only saving grace has been +0.44 wins from starting pitching (4th best in league).

With those three still out, the #6 starter leaving early yesterday due to elbow troble, and the #7 starter dead, Darren Oliver steps into the rotation tonight. And we'll still need another starter from AAA if Moseley can't pitch. Can we sign Pedro Martinez already?

Now with Guerrero out at least a month, this is looking like a lost season. Like 1983, 1996, or 1999, when everyone gets hurt. Even in the AL west it's going to take a miracle or three to stay on top.

Tonight's Starting Lineup

2009-04-13T15:11:00.000-07:00

There have been 4 days of rest since Nick Adenhart's start. Somewhere, his arm is ready to take the hill again. So here's his lineup:

CF Lyman Bostock
2B Chico Ruiz
RF Bobby Bonds
LF Leon Wagner
1B Jim Spencer
3B Aurelio Rodriguez
C Ed Sadowski
SS Mike Miley
P Nick Adenhart

Some good production at the top of the order, but the lineup doesn't go very deep. Nick is going to have to pitch a strong game. What about the designated hitter? Doesn't work that way. This lineup is in Heaven. You want a DH rule in the afterlife, you'll have to watch a game in Hell.

What a week

2009-04-12T16:03:00.000-07:00

One week into the 2009 season, and this one has already been as emotionally draining as the entire 2008 season, playoffs included. Most of that is the result of the tragic loss of young pitcher Nick Adenhart. But the games have been something else too.

The Angels have played 6 games, and probably should have won at least 5 of them. Game 3 had Shields and Fuentes blowing a 4 run lead, despite neither one pitching poorly. A few costly mistakes (Figgins throwing to the plate) and weirdly placed balls (Suzuki's single between catcher and pitcher) did them in. Game 5 had the Angels losing a probable run as Jason Bay recorded an out on Torii Hunter off his glove, off the wall, and back into the glove. Should have been ruled a hit, but wasn't. They still battled back against Papelbon, and Howie Kendrick would have won it if his line drive was not right at the RF. It's a good sign, I don't remember the Angels ever doing anything against him. (Just checked, 1st run off him in 18 innings).

Angels survived a shaky bullpen today though, as Scot Shields went through the heart of the Red Sox offense, completely unable to throw a strike, and somehow came away with a scoreless inning. Then Brian Fuentes made it interesting in the 9th. I'm already starting to wonder if Arredondo would be the best option as closer, if he was used in that role Fuentes/Shields could split the 7th/8th depending on who had the favorable matchup and who was able to throw the ball over the plate.

Through it all, the Angels are 3-3. Seattle is up next, and they are in first place. Nobody expected that, but the Angels will have every opportunity to knock them right out.

Nick Adenhart, 1986-2009

2009-04-09T15:32:00.000-07:00

I don't know what to say about how horrible I feel about what happened to Nick and 3 other occupants of his car last night. I've never met Nick, but have followed his career for a few years now. Because he was a highly regarded talent, that was one reason to follow his career closely, and that he was from Maryland, where I live, was a bonus.

I'd check the minor league box scores every 5th day to see what kind of progress he was making. His initial numbers were outstanding, but he developed some trouble with his control in 2007 while pitching at Arkansas. His 2008 season stats weren't pretty, either in AAA or in 3 major league starts. You could see the fastball, but he was always behind in the count, and the batters seemed to know what was coming. Still, the ability was there and I looked forward to seeing what kind of major league pitcher he might become.

In spring training 2009, he made huge steps forward. And last night, we got one glimpse of the kind of pitcher he could be. A good low 90's fastball with movement, a changeup that hitters didn't identify until it was too late, and a big breaking curveball. His control was still kind of shaky, but he was able to create enough deception with his pitches to work his way out of jams on the way to pitching 6 scoreless innings.

It was a good glimpse of what he might have become, but that's all we ever get to see. My prayers go to his family, and the families of the other 2 young people who lost their lives in that car last night.

Until the Angels play their 7th game, the league ERA leaders will look like this:


Earned run average
NAME TEAM ERA
Adenhart Los Angeles 0.00
Saunders Los Angeles 0.00

Opening Day Angels Win

2009-04-06T20:58:00.000-07:00

That was a sweet game. The A's only threatened seriously once, in the second inning, and Joe Saunders got out of it with a double play.

Howie Kendrick brought the big bat with a single and homer. Last year Howie didn't hit his 1st until July. I wasn't impressed by the AB's Kowbell had, coming off a monster winter league and spring training, but his defense at first was nice. We didn't need his bat tonight anyway, here's hoping he gets 3 hits next game.

Everyone's been expected Joe Saunders to collapse. Something about not striking out enough guys. I'm guilty, even my system shows a 4.30 ERA (though at least that is still slightly above average in the AL.) Sometimes lefties with good control come along and make fools of the projections for 20 years. Let's see how long Joe can do it.

Top 20 Rookies for 2009, Position players

2009-04-04T09:28:00.001-07:00

I'm rating these guys based on their CHONE projection for 2009, not for future potential. Defensive ratings are included. Some manual tweaks to the ratings were done as well, such as if I didn't believe the defensive number or for some reason thought a player should be ranked differently. To be eligible players must be 25 or under and have less than 100 PA in the majors.

1. Matt Wieters. The difference between #1 and #2 is greater than the difference between #2 and #20. And that is using CHONE, the least optimistic forecast for Wieters, as explained in my last post.

2. Colby Rasmus, OF, STL
3. Chris Getz, 2B, CWS
4. Taylor Teagarden, C, TEX
5. Andrew McCuthen, OF, PIT
6. Cameron Maybin, OF, FLA
7. Reid Brignac, SS, TBA
8. Alcides Escobar, SS, MIL
9. Max Ramirez, C, TEX
10. Matt LaPorta, 1B, CLE
11. John Jay, OF, STL
12. Kellen Kulbacki, OF, SD
13. Dexter Fowler, OF, COL
14. Lou Marson, C, PHI
15. Kila Kaaihue, 1B, KC
16. Matt Gamel, 3B-DH, MIL
17. Jordan Schafer, OF, ATL
18. Aaron Cunningham, OF, OAK
19. Gaby Sanchez, 1B-3B, FLA
20. Brian Bogusevic, OF, HOU

Matt Wieters

2009-04-03T18:21:00.000-07:00

The super prospect Oriole catcher has not yet played a major league game. He is projected to hit 274/352/439, which combined with strong defense behind the plate makes him already one of the 30 best players in the game.

And that's just going on my projection, which is the most pessimistic among those that I've looked at. Most systems have him around a .380 OBP and .480 slugging, which probably puts him in the top 10. Those projections aren't enough to get him a big league job as the Orioles will send him to AAA for service time reasons.

Having such a low projection on him makes me wonder if I'm missing something, so I looked at the best hitters I could find in the Eastern league who had at least 200 AB there and were age 23 or younger (Wieters was 22). By OPS, they are:

Ron Kittle, 1981 1.119
David Wright, 2004 1.086
Wieters, 2008 1.085
Nick Johnson, 1999
Pat Burrell, 1999
Vladimir Guerrero, 1996
Sean Casey, 1997
Scott Rolen, 1996

All of these players had an OPS of at least 1.030. Kittle went to AAA the next year and hit 50 homers, then won the 1983 rookie of the year award for the White Sox, hitting 35 homers, but lack of ability to make contact prevented him from doing much else for his career. Nick Johnson got hurt (duh) and missed the whole 2000 season, was less impressive in AAA, mediocre as a rookie 3 years later, but eventually proved to be a great hitter in between DL appearances.

The other 5 played in the majors the following year, and on average posted an .839 OPS. They all were able to improve on the rookie numbers and range from outstanding hitter for brief periods of time (Casey) to HOF level hitters (Vlad, probably Wright). That bodes well for Wieters, but it's probably not a good idea to expect the 900 OPS right off the bat.

The 791 OPS that my system projects, however, might be a bit low. Wieters hit better in AA than he had at a lower level. Nick Markakis did the same a few years ago. David Wright's AA performance was way better than his 2003 season in the Florida State league. Perhaps players who show abnormal improvement when jumping to AA should be looked at a little differently.

Defensive projections

2009-03-29T15:09:00.000-07:00

I've updated the position player pages with defensive projections. These are based on 4 years of TotalZone data, including minor league defensive ratings. I have not included catchers yet. The numbers tell you how many runs above/below average player should be for every position that he played at least a game in.

Example

The infield numbers (excluding 1B) are dependent on each other - if a guy plays short and second his rating at short uses all infield data as an input. Outfielders are similarly lumped together. I use MLE's based on the work I presented here.

The numbers will disagree sometimes with previous defensive projections published on my site, the difference is input data used. Previously I used average Zone rating data.

Top 10 Players ever

2009-03-24T20:48:00.001-07:00

On a recent ESPN chat, Keith Law was asked who he would put into the Hall of Fame if it were starting from scratch and he could only put 10 in. Kind of got me thinking, and I decided if I were to do it I'd go with one player per position, and with both a righty and lefty pitcher to round out the 10.

Furthermore, I'm not limiting my picks to eligible retired players, and I'll even pick an active player. Because this is a pointless diversion and I can make up my own rules. So my lineup, the greatest to ever play their positions:

C Josh Gibson (or Matt Weiters :-)

1B Albert Pujols - Lou Gehrig is considered the greatest 1B ever, but I think Albert may change that. He's not quite as good a hitter as the iron horse was, but he's not that far off either, and Pujols has just tremendous defense. I think Gehrig was generally considered an average defender.

2B Rogers Hornsby - Bill James made a good case why he shouldn't be #1, but the bat is just too hard to ignore.

SS Honus Wagner

3B Michael Jack Schmidt - Considered A-Rod, his career will surpass Mike overall, but A-Rod just hasn't been that great defensively at 3rd. Particularly on bunts. I can't put A-Rod at short, because Honus dominated his era more than A-Rod did. So A-Rod will have to wait for 11-20.

RF Babe Ruth

CF Willie Mays

LF Barry Bonds

RHP Satchel Paige

LHP Lefty Grove

Who would you pick?

Angels in Spring Training

2009-03-21T20:13:00.000-07:00

I saw two Angel games on my trip to Arizona. The first was an ugly loss which I wrote about in the comments of a previous post. The second was last Tuesday against the Padres in Peoria. I tried writing about that from my iPhone but the comment got lost in cyberspace, so I waited until I got home.

John Lackey pitched 5 strong innings, looking like the horse that he is, and has been for his whole Angel career outside of last April. I hope they work out an extension soon. The Angel bats jumped all over the Padre pitching but Brian Fuentes came in and coughed up the lead in the 6th inning before the Angel bats got going again, winning 12-7 (from memory, it was 4 days ago and I'm old). Brandon Wood looks very good, making a lot of solid contact. It remains to be seen how much playing time the Angels can offer him. In 38 at bats, he has 3 walks and 4 strikeouts to go with a .711 SLG. Compare this to his 2008 spring stats, where he struck out 22 times with no walks. I think the kid is making some progress.

One cool thing is that a very nice gentleman seated next to us found an obviously game-used baseball somewhere, and presented it to my 11 month old daughter as a present. She gets her first souvenir baseball before her daddy does, though at least I did have my hands, briefly, on a Nick Markakis homer 2 years ago.

We were considering another game at Tempe on Friday on the return trip from the Grand Canyon area, but decided not to push it. You can't just drive 4 hours straight with a baby in the car.

This Probably Makes Me an Enemy of the Country

2009-03-11T18:46:00.000-07:00

But tonight I was rooting on team Venezuela to the same degree that Hugo Chavez must have been. In baseball, I just can't get into nationalistic rooting. My loyalties lie with the Angels, and seeing no Angels on team USA, and Bobby Abreu on Venezuela clinches it for me. As the game went to the late innings, I did root for USA to pick up a few runs to make sure the game was close.

Which of course meant that K-Rod would pitch. Even though he's left for the Mets, I will always root for the kid who pitched the 2002 Angels to the World Series, winning 5 games that postseason. It's just icing on the cake tonight as 2 of the 3 outs in the 9th inning were against Red Sox hitters.

After K-Rod struck out Youkilis to end the game, I did the pointing to the sky thing in celebration. Just like old times.

Spring Training

2009-03-11T14:16:00.000-07:00

I will be heading to Arizona to see a few Angel games next week. I won't be able to make any blog posts during that time, but I can leave comments on my blog. That's the way my iPhone works. I'll be posting my Spring training observations on this thread.

300

2009-03-06T21:15:00.000-08:00

Why, all the armies of Xerxes would tremble when the 300 best position players from 1955 and on gather for WAR. Wins above replacement, that is.

Lou Whitaker ranks 26th, Alan Trammell 44th. I think it's a joke that neither has been elected to the Hall of Fame, but I would have preferred that they rank back to back instead of 18 apart. Here are some cool situations where linked players do rate back to back:

Wade Boggs and Cal Ripken, 1982 Rookies
Jeff Bagwell and Frank Thomas, May 27 1968
Paul Molitor and Robin Yount, longtime teammates
Jim Edmonds and Albert Pujols, though this one won't last long
Graig Nettles and Willie Randolph
David Ortiz and Mo Vaughn

2008 Projections

2009-03-06T18:51:00.000-08:00

My 2008 Projections, run in December 2007, have been found. They are now on the site. No idea yet on the 2007 projections.

Happy Birthdays Vlad

2009-03-06T18:46:00.000-08:00

Apparently, Vladimir Guerrero is one year older than he's generally listed, though apparently this was known.

It affects his projection slightly. His age has been corrected in my system.

Most overpaid players

2009-03-05T19:28:00.000-08:00

I started with Tim Dierke's list of 45 bad contracts, and tried to see how much value a player has for the length of the contract, compared to the money left on the deal. I started with the CHONE projection of wins above replacement and assumed that players will lose 0.5 wins per year (except for pitchers, where I go by the CHONE 6 year forecast which includes a win value each year). And 10% inflation, which may or may not actually happen.

Percentage wise, it's hard to beat Andruw Jones who still has 18 million coming his way for no value at all (at least to the Dodgers, who are paying that contract). But I'm looking for gross dollar value, so a really good player worth 100 million will show up if his contract pays him 150.

And the worst:
1. Barry Zito. He still has 5 years and 101.5 million left as he provides #5 starter value, worth 24 million over 5 year. I think that is being generous.

2. Vernon Wells. Worth 41 million over 6 years, but will be paid 117.

3. Soriano. He's worth 51 million over 6 years, but has 106 million to go.

4. Carlos Lee. Worth 20 million over 4 years (he's no better than Bobby Abreu) and will be paid 74.

5. Mike Young. Will be paid 80 million over 5, but is worth about half that.

Juan Pierre and Gary Matthews Jr. don't show up. Pierre has almost no value, and Matthews is only worth 6 total over the next 3 years, but they will only be paid 28 and 33 million each. Really bad percentage wise, but the won't make enough to get into the top 5.

What to do about A-Rod?

2009-03-05T18:44:00.000-08:00

A-Rod apparently has a torn labrum in his hip. If he requires surgery, he may miss up to half the season. If this forces the Yankee's best athlete into the lineup, they lose runs at a rate of 55 per season. Of course, there are other options, plenty of third basemen the Yankees could trade for. I'm sure the Orioles would love to send them Melvin Mora. If Brandon Wood has a great spring Chone Figgins could be available. Maybe even Scott Rolen, if the Blue Jays decide they have no chance this year.

It's too bad A-Rod couldn't have broken the news a few days earlier, then the Yankees might have considered Nomar Garciaparra. That would have been cool to see all three of the great young shortstops of the 90's together.

Update on WAR values

2009-03-04T21:00:00.000-08:00

I reloaded the player pages today, in some cases the TotalZone changed because I realized I had not used the most current database and park factors. On fairly large change is Manny Ramirez for 2005-2007, my previous numbers had him only a bit below average, now he is in the -10 to -20 range those years (though better last year for both of his teams). This puts his defensive ratings in the same range as his Fangraphs UZR ratings, though nowhere near as bad as his STATS UZR values.

Another correction I made was to have the offensive runs adjusted by a league specific runs to win converter, but the defensive ratings (and position adjustments) to use a standard 10 runs = 1 win. The reason is that the TotalZone ratings use a standard plays to runs value over the last half century. A play saved by Luis Aparicio in the 60's counts as .75 runs, just like one saved by Omar Vizquel in the 90's.

This is a conscious decision to better allow comparisons of fielders, in runs saved, across time. Now since little Louie played in a lower run environment, an extra play could be counted at a lower value than one in the high offense 1990's. But then, the win value of that run would be greater. Maybe Brooks Robinson didn't save 268 runs, he only saved 230 because runners would have been less likely to score. But his defense was worth about 27 wins.

Maybe the two exactly cancel out, maybe not, but I figured it was close enough, and the simplicity and ease of comparison led me to stick with this decision.

The player win totals will change a bit here and there - I apologize to anyone who has spent a bunch of time trying to compile a greatest of alltime list, but soon I will add a leaderboard page. No reason not to make it very extensive, such as top 300 or so.

Player of the Day: Manny

2009-03-04T18:31:00.000-08:00

The Dodgers started the offseason by offering Manny 2 years and 45 million. After a few months, and the Dodgers upping the offer to 2 years and 45 million, Manny returned with a counteroffer: 2 years and 45 million.

Much haggling was needed to find a midpoint acceptable to both parties, but in the end, they were able to settle on 2 years, and 45 million dollars.

The Dodgers are now clear favorites to repeat in the NL west, and it will be interesting to see if Manny's incredible finish last year was due to some good luck, or if he's experiencing a Bonds-like late career burst (disclaimer: I'm not trying to make allegations of any kind here).

Donate to this site, if you want

2009-03-03T19:48:00.000-08:00

I've added a paypal buttonon the left side of Baseballprojection.com. If you find these projections, or the historical wins above replacement pages of value please consider donating.

I certainly understand that these are not the best economic times, so no pressure if it's not in your budget. But anything helps. And if the money allows me to buy nice things for my wife, that means she'll tolerate me spending more time in the stat dungeon creating more features.

If you play fantasy baseball, find these projections useful, and win your league, consider sharing some of the prize money*.

*Disclaimer: If you lose your fantasy league I will not be sending you any refund.

Fantasy Baseball Values

2009-03-02T15:10:00.001-08:00

I've added fantasy baseball values to the position player projections. They are based on a standard 5x5 league with a $260 salary cap, and 12 teams. I've added values for the 20th, 50th, and 80th percentile projections. You can see the values for an NL or AL only league, or a mixed league.

I will not have a spreadsheet available for these dollar values on my site, but I suggest using the price guide from Last player picked. That site, which is so cool that it's super sweet, allows you to customize the output to your league, and already includes the CHONE projections, as well as other systems.

Wins above Replacement, 1955-2008

2009-03-01T17:19:00.000-08:00

I've added pages for all players who had at least 50 career plate appearances from 1955 to 2008. Wins above replacement combines:

Batting (linear weights baseruns)
Baserunning (stolen bases/caught stealing, plus more)
Fielding (TotalZone range, turning DP, outfielder throwing, catchers)
Position adjustment
The difference between average and replacement, based on strength of league

Example: Chone Figgins

This is something I have worked on, in some form or another, for about 15 years. I'm glad that I finally can combine the minimal technical ability with a website that can handle the volume.

Future enhancements will be, with no definite timetable:

Pitchers
Leaderboards
Team Pages
Players before 1955 - I'll need to develop a crude stand in for defensive ability.

Dreams and Nightmares: Jeff Mathis

2009-02-27T18:58:00.000-08:00

For the second string catcher, Jeff Mathis a nightmare season would include a sub .200 batting average, much like Napoli's nightmare. The difference is Mike has enough power and walks to have some value even at that level. Mathis does not. It is highly unlikely that Mathis will get the playing time that any of his CHONE percentiles list him at.

For playing time, the question the system is trying to answer is "how much playing time has this guy demonstrated he could handle". This is an easy question to handle through a program. Another question would be "how much major league playing time will player X get". This cannot be answered as easily, as it not only requires knowledge about the player, but knowledge of how 30 team management structures will make their decisions.

As for the Mathis dream - In his 90th percentile, Mathis would essentially be a league average hitter, excellent for a catcher. A .257 average, 17 homers if regular playing time, and a .334 OBP/.441 SLG. It would be a nightmare for Angel fans if Mathis got that much time, as it would mean Napoli must have suffered a serious injury.

Dreams and Nightmares: Mike Napoli

2009-02-27T18:48:00.000-08:00

As I get ready for my trip to Arizona for some Angel spring training games, I've decided to take a look at the range of possibilities for Angel players using the brand new percentile projections of the CHONE system.

I'll start with the man behind the plate. Mike Napoli had an excellent 2008 when he was able to get into the lineup, and followed it up with a pair of homers off Josh Beckett in the only Angel postseason win.

A Napoli dream season looks like 276/401/568. That actually isn't much different than Mike's actual rate stats from last year. The dream is that he does it while staying healthy. In 456 at-bats, he'd hit 33 homers while taking 85 walks.

The nightmare is a .195 average as his swing for the fences approach results in little contact, and injuries prevent him from ever finding a groove.

Full list of Projections

2009-02-23T20:09:00.000-08:00

The projection .csv files are updated through 2/23/2009. I've left the December 2008 files on Baseballprojection.com in case anyone wants to compare them.

Power Rankings and More

2009-02-22T18:00:00.001-08:00

I've posted a page with the projected standings, and these differ slightly from the standings I have shown in the blog posts of the last week. I've updated the recent signings, and run the pitchers again to account for new defensive configurations, and a few I have overlooked. Texas is the big beneficiary, going from 69 wins to 72, as I had added Omar to the lineup but had not added his glove (and Young's move to third) to the pitching projections.

In addition, I've ranked the teams from 1 to 30, if they were all playing the same schedule. The American League has better teams, so an 81 win team in the AL will rank higher than an 81 win team in the NL.

The link

Also, Garret Anderson signs with the Braves. Good luck GA, you had a great career for the Angels. From the Angels point of view, they had to add better offensive production and did so with Abreu, but there are plenty of outfields Anderson can help, and I'm glad he found one in Atlanta. I'll be rooting for him and Kotchman this year.

Projected Standings: NL West

2009-02-20T19:42:00.000-08:00

I've saved this one for last since the Dodgers are the favorites to eventually sign Manny Ramirez, and the Giants are the only other team mentioned as a possible fit. Ramirez once again could easily be the difference maker in a mediocre division where the spread in talent from top to bottom is not that great. As of today, after the Dodgers sign Orlando Hudson:

Dodgers 82-80
Padres 80-82
Arizona 79-83
Rockies 78-84
Giants 77-85

All 5 teams have a shot in 2009, but if the Dodgers reach an agreement with Ramirez it will transform them from slight favorites to clear favorites. If Manny is a Dodger, add 4 wins to their total, taking one off every other team in the division.

Projected Standings: NL Central

2009-02-18T20:07:00.000-08:00

My bad on the Griffey situation. It doesn't change the Braves team projection, as without him they'll score less but also allow less. The Mariners should pick up a win in the AL West.

As to the NL Central:
Cubs 88-74
Cards 83-79
Reds 82-80
Brewers 81-81
Pirates 73-89
Astros 72-90

The big surprise to me is the Reds. I wouldn't have guessed they'd be over .500 but they do have a very talented starting rotation. Arroyo and Harang had off years in 2008, and Cueto has a lot of promise. A strong defense is just what these pitchers need to make improvement more likely. The Brewers have some bats but will miss CC and Sheets. Cubs are still the best in the division.

I Jumped the Gun

2009-02-18T15:35:00.001-08:00

On Ken Griffey Jr. He's headed to either the Mariners or the Braves. Right now my site lists him with the Braves, but I'll change that if necessary.

Projected Standings: NL East

2009-02-17T17:09:00.000-08:00

Phillies 87-75
NY Mets 86-76
Braves 86-76
Nationals 76-86
Marlins 75-87

The Phillies and Mets battling for the top spot is no surprise, but the Braves coming back from three seasons of non-contention is. It has little to do with the signing of Griffey, who will probably platoon in left with Matt Diaz. Griffey will give back on defense whatever he contributes on offense. That is, unless Griffey can post a .900 OPS season batting primarily against right-handed pitching. The projection doesn't know anything about platoon splits, and projects only a .764. If it did know about platoon splits, it could go a bit higher, maybe the .800 range, but I think .900 is dreaming at this stage.

I'd be happy if Griffey did have one last great season in him, but at his age it is highly unlikely. The big reason behind a contending Braves team will be a rebuilt rotation featuring Derek Lowe, Javier Vazquez, and Kenshin Kawakami. Vazquez always disappoints the projections, which always love his K/W ratio. In his favor, he'll be pitching in a reasonable park with a decent defense for the first time in his career. He and Lowe are as good bets for 200 innings as you can find, and it will be appreciated.

The Nationals could have a very impressive offense this season. With Adam Dunn, Ryan Zimmerman, Josh Willingham, and Elijah Dukes they have the makings of an excellent middle of the order. Their defense should be really bad (what do you expect when you add Dunn and Willingham and don't have a DH spot to hide them?). Don't expect much from an unimpressive pitching staff in DC, but there should be plenty of souvenirs for fans in the bleacher seats.

The Phillies have not improved the team from last year, as they kept most of the team the same while going for less power, more age, and equally crappy defense in left field. Sure, they won the world series so they don't need to improve, right? Wrong. The history of World champions who do not take steps to continually improve the team is not filled with repeaters.

Mets didn't really act like a big market team heading into a new stadium this offseason. While they have a talented core, they have done little to surround it with the kind of players to make a postseason appearance likely. I guess they could still make a surprise big for Manny Ramirez, otherwise Mets fans just have one more reason to hate Bernie Madoff. Marlins? I just don't see it this year.

Team Projection: AL East

2009-02-16T20:10:00.000-08:00

Yankees 97-65
Red Sox 96-66
Rays 89-73
Blue Jays 76-86
Orioles 74-88

The Yankees just absolutely dominated the offseason and it might just be enough to get them back into the position of being favorites. Of course to do this they will probably spend more money next year than the Rays and Red Sox combined. The Red Sox still have an excellent team, second in this division equals second best in baseball. Last year a prediction of 89 wins was a bold one for the Rays. This year, 89 wins and third place will be a bit of a disappointment. The Blue Jays, and even the Orioles, are not terrible teams.

The AL East is so tough that just playing half your games in this unbalanced schedule will knock a few games off your win total. And the AL is 5-10 games better than the NL. The Orioles and Jays are probably as good as projected 2nd and 3rd place teams Oakland and Minnesota, and any of those teams would be contenders in the National league.

If I ranked the teams in this division among all MLB teams, and everyone played the same schedule, here is the overall rank of the AL East teams:

1. Yankees
2. Red Sox
3. Rays
12. Blue Jays
15. Orioles

Team Projections: AL Central

2009-02-14T21:05:00.000-08:00

Cleveland 90-72
Detroit 85-77
Minnesota 78-84
White Sox 73-89
KC Royals 73-89

This is pretty much how I picked these teams last year, and aside from the Royals they finished in close to the opposite order. I'm going out on a limb here and say they do as expected this time. If the Royals and White Sox are fighting it out for the division lead, then it will be another opposite year, and my suggestion is to approach the first beautiful woman you see and introduce yourself as "Hello, my name is George. I'm unemployed and I live with my mother".

Cleveland has a lot of talent, but they need the bats of Travis Hafner and Victor Martinez to be healthy this time, to go along with superstar Grady Sizemore, the emerging Shin Soo Choo, a solid Jhonny Peralta, and the addition of very steady vet Mark DeRosa. If Matt LaPorta emerges as the first baseman, the Indians should have a powerhouse lineup. They'll need it, as the rotation behind Cliff Lee is not impressive, and Lee is not really as good as he looked last year.

Team Projected Standings: AL West

2009-02-14T12:17:00.000-08:00

I finally have them ready. The projected standings come from the same source that told you, one year ago, that Tampa Bay would win 89 games and be a contender. That projection was wrong. They weren't just contenders, but American League Champions. At the time I think the Vegas over/under was in the mid 70 win range. I should have put some money on them, but I'm not that into gambling and missed that opportunity.

My method is slightly improved from last year. Last season I assigned playing time to all the hitters and pitchers based on what I thought was most likely, added up the runs scored and allowed, and generated Pythagorean W-L records. Then I looked at how far over I was on the league as a whole (did I project the league to play at a .515 percentage?) and removed the same number of wins per team to make sure the leagues add up to .500. I call this removing the Lake Wobegon effect.

For this year I've gotten a bit more advanced. I've compiled a team schedule spreadsheet, telling me how many games each team has against each opponent. Then I match up each team's initial W-L% and see how they will play each other head to head using the odds ratio. For example, Boston and New York are both behemoths, but in the 19 games they play they will of course combine to go 19-19.

I have the American League going 137-115 in interleague play, a .544 percentage. This is how they played in 2007 and 2005, but the AL was even more dominant than that last year and 2006 (a .611 percentage that season). I consider my .544 prediction realistic but on the conservative side. I wouldn't trust any prediction made that puts the two leagues as equal. They may have reasoning that shows why the NL will catch up this year, but more likely they are just being lazy and are not recognizing the disparity between leagues.

So, finally the AL West:

LA Angels 86-76
Athletics 81-81
Mariners_ 78-84
Rangers__ 69-93

Bobby Abreu is a two win upgrade over playing Matthews or Willits in the outfield, or playing Wood or Rodriguez at third with Figgins in the outfield. A's have improved the offense but the pitching is unproven and questionable (check out the 2nd half ERA of last year). In addition, they will have at least one defensive hole, you can't hide both Cust and Giambi at DH. Mariners have greatly upgraded the defense, and have intelligent management for a change. They don't have the bats to contend, but could be a challenge in the future because they have money to spend and will likely spend it on better players than Richie Sexson, Jose Vidro, and Carlos Silva. Rangers have, through position changes, effectively replaced Milton Bradley with Omar Vizquel in the lineup. They won't score runs like last year, and still have no pitching.

Here's my track record on the AL West:

2008: Angels, 91 wins, first by 8 games (In my Feb 2008 archives)

2007: Cannot find, I know I picked the Angels but not by how much. I was writing for MVN but I think the archives have been lost, or at least are hard to find)

2006: A's 90 wins, 6 ahead of the Angels. This shows I'm not biased in my predictions, if another team appears to be stronger, I will report that, however distasteful I find it.

So far I'm 3 for 3, if I made predictions before that it was before the blog started, and I have no idea where to find them.

Could Bobby Abreu Get his Wings?

2009-02-10T19:37:00.000-08:00

I've been reading that they had interest, and things could be getting close. Then I check Halos Heaven for the latest news and I see a link to a report from Jonah Keri that he has been signed. I hope it's true.

Abreu is not a good outfielder, but he should see plenty of time as a DH for the Angels. He no longer has the big time power, but we should expect him to replace the good things Garret Anderson did for us (15 homers, 35 doubles, 85 RBI) and throw in an additional 60 walks above Garret's average. He's a perfect fit for the middle of our order. OK, Mark Teixiera was perfect, but Bobby's not too bad himself. In a lineup full of free swingers, it's nice to have somebody who can work a pitcher.

Amazingly, despite his age (35), stocky build, and decline defensively, Bobby reamins a very good basestealer. Last year he stole 22 bags, the 10th year in a row he's been over 20. This will make him an especially good fit with the Angels.

I've still seen nothing official, but it's looking good.

Shame on MLB channel

2009-02-07T19:33:00.001-08:00

Today they let us know that A-Roid used steroids, testing positive back in 2003. Big news, to be sure, but damn did they have to hammer that bit of news in. They were scheduled to show a game from the 90's when Randy Johnson struck out 19, and later a special on Roberto Clemente, or at last that's what the info on my TV menu said.

Instead, they gave us constant coverage of the news that A-Roid did steroids, even rerunning the same commentary and Bob Costas interview at least 3 times, instead of showing the scheduled programming.

Note to MLB: This type of news is what your bottom of the screen ticker is for. Tell us once. We do not need to hear it 30,000 times in a day. I had been very happy with the MLB channel. They have great ideas, and have brought in outstanding on-air talent. But today's programming decision simply sucked a whole ton of ass. Whoever is responsible for that decision, I hope you are reminded that it sucked ass at least as many times as you informed us that A-Roid used steroids.

On the bright side, I don't think anyone will bother calling him A-fraud again.

Pitcher projection update

2009-02-07T14:17:00.000-08:00

I've rerun all the pitcher projections after adding in minor league data for batted ball types, and updating the team defensive projections based on player changes of the offseason. About half the pitchers had some change in ERA, for the most part they were not huge changes.

I hear Howie

2009-02-06T16:13:00.000-08:00

Howie Kendrick and Mike Butcher are on Angels tonight, on AM 830 KLAA. Looks like the time is 7 PM on the west coast, so 10 PM for me.

Angel fans who are too far from Angel Stadium can tune in to the website.

Player of the Day: Orlando Cabrera

2009-02-04T16:31:00.000-08:00

The OC has the misfortune of costing his signing team a draft pick. Last time he was a free agent, this didn't matter. Didn't matter to the Angels, who gave the Red Sox Jacoby Ellsbury and Jed Lowrie to sign him. The Red Sox turned right around and gave their first rounder to the Cardinals, and while those two Red Sox have turned out pretty well, the player the Cards got, Colby Rasmus, has much more upside. Things like this have been going on as long as there has been free agent compensation.

The year I started following baseball, and became an Angels fan, the Angels failed to resign their DH, Don Baylor. He went to the Yankees. The compensation pick? Wally Joyner. The fact is it just doesn't make sense to give up a first rounder for a type A free agent unless that free agent is a great player- the Teixiera/Sabathia types. The second tier of free agency just simply isn't worth it. You should excuse Orlando if, after 30+ years of the same old same old, if he though nobody would care about draft picks this year.

But this is the year all the teams woke up, and Orlando is f***ed. He'll have to give his team a steep discount to compensate them for the lost pick, or wait until after the draft to sign. What teams could he improve?

Orlando projects as a -13 hitter, with a pretty good glove, so he should normally be worth 7-10 million. Here are some teams where he would be an upgrade, among those that might be close enough to contention and want to sign a 30+ shortstop:

Oakland: 6 run offensive upgrade on Bobby Crosby

Detroit: He'd be a 17 run offensive improvement on Everett, but the Tigers appear to be focusing on defense. Considering defense, OC probably has just a slight edge, less than 5 runs.

Baltimore: 13 runs on Cesar Izturis

That's pretty much it. Looks like slim pickins, and the OC should jump on the first halfway decent offer he can get.

Player of the Day: Jason Kubel

2009-01-31T14:26:00.000-08:00

The Kube signed a two year extension for 7 million, with a team option for year 3. On Fangraphs David Cameron questions the move, saying Kubel is not that different from Eric Hinske, who signed for under 2 million with the Pirates.

Reading through the comments, I see that I'm not the only one who noticed similarities to David Ortiz. Kubel, 26, hit .272 with 20 homers and 78 RBI last year, with a walk every 10 at bats. In his last season as a Twin, Ortiz was 26 and hit .272 with 20 homers and 75 RBI, and a similar walk rate.

Even my 90% optimistic projection, 304/378/537, does not have Kubel breaking out like Ortiz, but I can understand why they want to keep him, and it's not like we're talking about a huge contract here.

Player of the Day: Jason Varitek

2009-01-30T18:33:00.000-08:00

Yep, when offered arbitration he should have done what Greg Maddux did with the Braves one year, and Barry Bonds did after breaking the homerun record: Accept the gift. He's forced to settle for about half of what he otherwise would have.

While the arbitration amount would not have been guaranteed, releasing him in spring training would have been a tough sell, mostly to other players on the team who always speak very, very highly of their captain. As for the fans, from the Red Sox fans I see posting on sites like Baseballthinkfactory.com however, they would probably praise such a move and worship their Theo for displaying a set of balls.

From his player page, Varitek is valued at 7 million considering average defense. The Red Sox underpay him approximately to the same extent that he would have been overpaid through arbitration.

He's essentially a league average catcher. His -10 Runs per 150 games exactly matches the position adjustment I use for catcher. While a league average player should be worth between 8 and 10 million, as a catcher (and especially a 37 year old one) he obviously doesn't play everyday, I have him projected for 120 games. I looked at the catchers who I think are most likely starters for every team, and order them by R150, Varitek ranks 16th. Once again, the definition of average in a 30 team league.

Rank all catchers by R150 and he comes in 24th, the difference is that some players ahead of him will not start. Some, like JR House, probably don't have the defensive skill needed. Others, like Kelly Shoppach behind Martinez or some of the Ranger catchers, are just in a situation where not everyone can be the starter.

Some people are going to read this and go off on how crappy a hitter Varitek is, and how there's no way he's an average catcher. Yes, he is a crappy hitter, but so are so many other catchers. The 14 catchers no better than Varitek, as hitters, who have starting jobs:

Bengie, Yadier Molina
Carlos Ruiz, Chris Snyder, Michael Barrett
AJ Pierzynski, Justin Towles, Kenji Johjima
Brian Schneider, John Baker, Gerald Laird
Nick Hundley, Jason Kendall, Jesus Flores

Minor league Defensive Ratings

2009-01-27T20:17:00.000-08:00

Recently Jeff Sackmann of Minor League Splits have teamed up to create minor league defensive ratings for all players from 2005-2008. Jeff provided the data, and I applied the TotalZone calculations. Here's Sean Rodriguez, who has not only been a pretty good defender, he shows ability at several positions.

I'm hoping at some point to have defensive player pages here as well, and at some point, defensive projections for minor leaguers.

Hardball Times Season Preview

2009-01-26T21:11:00.000-08:00

This is the third season of the book, and the third season I've written the section for the Angels. I grew up waiting for the Bill James abstracts to come out, for many reasons, but player comments were a big reason. Bill doesn't do those anymore, he has gone over to the dark side. It takes 30 people to (attempt to) fill his shoes, and I'm proud to say I'm one of them.

Read more about it here, and hopefully you'll be inspired to order a copy.

Updated player lists

2009-01-25T17:32:00.000-08:00

I've added a new section, retired players. This includes guys like Jeff Kent, Sean Casey, Greg Maddux, and Mike Mussina, who have announced their retirements. It also includes players that may say they want to play, but I strongly suspect they've already played their last game. I will update this if they actually sign a contract somewhere.

I've found it's hard to keep up with minor league free agents. I try to keep up with transactions through the log at MLB.com, which only includes big league contracts, and by reading MLBtraderumors.com, but I've missed a lot of minor league free agent signings. I tried to update the ones I could find information on them signing a minor league deal. For other players, sometimes all I found was that they cleared waivers back in October. Players like this I put back on their original teams until I find out otherwise. This makes the free agent page significantly less crowded, and at this point has the major league free agents who are still looking for work.

Ballplayers and their Marginal Revenue Product

2009-01-24T14:34:00.001-08:00

This post is in response to this thread going on at Tango Tiger's site, which is a response to some curious salary valuation by JC Bradbury. The summary is that Bradbury has come up with an economic model that says Jeff Francoeur, who used up 652 plate appearances for the Braves last year (and made 479 outs) was worth 12 million dollars. The voices on Tango's site are trying to convince him that the proper place for such a model is the porcelain bowl that sits in the smallest room of your house.

Let's suppose that you own a factory with some great automated processes that produce a great product. You can sell these products and make 25 million dollars per year. The only thing you need is workers to push a few buttons at specified times. It's a very simple job, practically anyone can be trained to do it, but for some reason it has to be done by humans, and you need 25 of them to do it. With no workers, you can't make any products, and your revenue will be zero.

Do you put an ad in the paper for 25 entry level positions paying near 1 million dollars? (a little less than $1M obviously to account for overhead).

I don't think so. You are going to just pay enough to attract reliable workers. Maybe a bit more if you are generous, since you are making so much money yourself, but you aren't going to give all of that to the workers. Most of the money is earned by the capital expenditure, the factory.

An MLB franchise is that money producing factory. To make a lot of money, you need a big, expensive stadium (while most of those are public expenitures, not from the owner's capital, that is another debate. The MLB owner benefits from it) You also need the tradition, the big city location, the national TV contracts, and all the benefits that come from being a part of the exclusive club of 30 teams that get to call themselves major league baseball.

Add to this mix 25 replacement level players, by our definition players who are between 15 and 30 runs worse than average over a full season, and you will make money. We are talking about a major league team that wins 40-50 games, a really bad team. The last team this bad was the 2003 Tigers, but even they were able to draw 1.3 million fans. Say this replacement level team makes 100 million dollars. Should the 25 replacement players be considered responsible for that revenue?

I don't think so, for two reasons:

1. They are by definition replaceable. There are many more players who are a step below average than there are above average or average players. There are hundreds of players in the minors who are just as capable of contributing to a 45 win team, and would jump at the chance to do so for the major league minimum.

2. These players, outside of the money making context that is major league baseball, could not come close to drawing 100 million dollars in revenue. A good AAA team would likely be as good as this 45 win major league team, but the difference in money is staggering. A few AAA teams have drawn 1 million fans, but even those teams do so with ticket prices that are a fraction of what MLB tickets cost.

This is why replacement level players do not add significantly to revenue in major league baseball, and why no team would ever pay them more than the league minimum. That is, as long as the team recognizes them as replacement level players, errors in judgement will always exist. Major league baseball is set up as a huge money maker as long as they can get minimally acceptable players to show up and play. They increase their revenue beyond this minimum by acquiring the good players, the rare talents that are average major leaguers and better. These are the players who earn, and receive, the rewards of the game.

Player of the Day: Jeff Kent

2009-01-23T10:18:00.000-08:00

As you probably know, he has retired. By most accounts, he was an ass, but one heck of a ballplayer. I checked to see where he ranks in wins above replacement, among second basemen of the retrosheet era:

1. Joe Morgan 101.6
2. Rod Carew 80.5
3. Lou Whitaker 70.6 (one of the HOF voters' most egregious mistakes)
4. Bobby Grich 67.0
5. Craig Biggio 66.9
6. Roberto Alomar 65.9
7. Willie Randolph 61.2
8. Ryne Sandberg 60.7
9. Jeff Kent 59.6

So he's the lowest of the 2B who have HOF arguments, but #3 through #9 are relatively close. There is a pretty big gap between this group and the next 2B - It's hard to find career 2B for the Hall of Very Good. There are some who had great careers, and the rest either weren't that great, or didn't last very long.

The next group:
10. Tony Phillips 50.6 (played everywhere but 2B was probably his most natural position)
11. Chuck Knoblauch 44.2 - had a chance to be as great as Alomar/Biggio but really crapped out early.
12. Julio Franco 42.0 - another case of what position do you classify him? But his best years were at second.
13. Davey Lopes 39.2
14. Dick McAuliffe 35.2
15. Ray Durham 34.2
16. Junior Gilliam 32.3

New Logo

2009-01-23T10:14:00.000-08:00

A graphic designer emailed me with a new logo for the site, now at the top of the page. If you like it, or don't, let me know here.

Personally, I don't have a strong preference, but I thought it give it a try. I'm not the best person to judge, as I would be perfectly happy with plain text to go with lots of data.

Player of the Day: Jonny Gomes

2009-01-21T17:34:00.000-08:00

Look out Jay Bruce, you are no longer the best hitting outfielder on the Reds. Jonny is. He's signed to a minor league contract for only $600,000.

The negatives on Jonny are that he only hit .182 last year, strikes out a ton, and plays brutal defense. Still, the guy has serious power. He's got 1264 big league at bats, and 66 homers to go with a .455 slugging percentage and 105 OPS+. His minor league track record says the same thing, the dude has power.

In his favor, he's moving from baseball's toughest division to the National League central, a very good homerun hitting park, and some other good hitter's parks among his divisional opponents (Wrigley, Houston). I think Jonny is going to win a starting job in spring training (Reds OF then being him, Tavares in center, and Bruce in right), and hit a bunch of homers. If he plays every day I think he'll hit 30. He'll also strike out 150+ times, and play crappy defense. They've pretty much replaced 90% of Adam Dunn for a little over the league minimum. Jonny is a good player to watch for if you wonder if there will be a Ryan Ludwick of 2009.

The Contract from Hell

2009-01-19T20:38:00.000-08:00

"Woe to You Oh Earth and Sea
for the Devil sends the beast with wrath
because he knows the time is short
Let him who hath understanding
reckon the number of the beast
for it is a human number
its number is six hundred and sixty six."

-Iron Maiden

Nick Markakis signs with the Orioles for 6 years and 66 million dollars. The title is not in any way a reference to it being an unwise contract, merely the numeric terms of it. Markakis is a very good fielder, so my chart shows him worth about 16 million per season. The Orioles are buying out 3 arbitration years, so he would have been a bargain anyway for those, and 3 free agent years, where he most certainly would not.

It is a very good sign that the Orioles will be able to keep one of the best young players in baseball around for a few more years, instead of watching him play for the Yankees in 2012. He's about as complete a player as you can get. And hopefully next time he hits a homer in my direction, I won't drop it like I did in September 2007.

Executive of the Day: Tony Reagins

2009-01-15T19:33:00.000-08:00

Congratulations Tony, on being named American League executive of the year by the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

Obviously he's not the only person responsible, as most of the team was already in place when Tony took over, but 100 wins is a damn good start for a rookie GM.

Worst contract ever?

2009-01-14T18:20:00.000-08:00

Looks like the Dodgers will release Andruw Jones soon. He gets paid 36 million for one season of a .158 average 3 homers, and a defensive contribution that was a cruel joke of what he once was.

It's not the highest amount of money wasted, that would have to go to Mike Hampton or Barry Zito, who were paid over a hundred million for contributions probably worth 10-15 million over the life of the deal (I'm just guessing Barry will continue that path, 2 years into his deal). Considering baseball inflation, maybe someone like Wayne Garland is the worst free agent signing ever.

But Jones deserves some kind of recognition for his big contract and lack of production. The Dodgers would have been no worse off last year sticking the previous night's starting pitcher in the outfield for Jones' atbats.

Angels and White Sox Rumors

2009-01-14T17:54:00.000-08:00

I found this on MLB Trade Rumors.

There have been an awful lot of rumors involving the Angels and White Sox the last few years. My absolute least favorite was after the 2006 season and involved Freddy Garcia and Joe Crede going to the Angels for Chone Figgins and Ervin Santana. From an Angel perspective that would have been a killer, as Garcia and Crede were headed towards a lot of injuries in 2007, not to mention they made a lot more money.

Interestingly enough, the only major trade the two teams pulled off was the Jon Garland for Orlando Cabrera trade, a swap of soon to be free agents that ended up fitting the needs of each team in their 2008 division title seasons.

I think the lesson to be learned here is that Kenny Williams and Tony Reagins keep their intentions secret, and the rumors that you hear are most likely just being made up by imaginative reporters and bloggers.

Player of the Day: Derek Lowe

2009-01-13T18:40:00.000-08:00

Derek Lowe signs with the Braves for 4 years and 60 million. It's a bit more money than my system evaluates him, but pretty close. The Mets' offer of 3 years and 36 million wasn't in the same ballpark. The Braves have put together a pretty good rotation with Lowe, Kawakami, Vazquez, Jurrjens, and Campillo, even if Tim Hudson misses the entire year.

With Lowe, the Braves could be planning on winning by never letting the ball out of the infield. He always gets plenty of groundballs, and the Braves have an outstanding infield and catcher. Lowe could keep the outfielders from having to participate on defense, but unfortunately they still have to bat their outfielders. And last year they only hit slightly better than the pitchers.

On the Kawakami projection, I should point out that the system used is the same one that nailed Hiroki Kuroda's stats last year. I don't see players coming over from Japan as unknowns. Sure, sometimes a guy is supposed to be great and turns out to be a fat toad, but American pitchers don't always pitch like you expect them to either. I've seen enough pitchers come over from Japan that I'm as confidant in their projections as I am for MLB pitchers - and more than I am for minor league pitchers.

Player of the Day: RICKEY!

2009-01-12T20:39:00.001-08:00

Rickey Henderson makes the Hall of Fame on his first try. Let's count the ways that Rickey was great. I'm using the same resources and methodology that I used to compare Brian Downing and fellow new Hall of Famer Jim Rice in this article.

1. Rickey was 584 batting runs above average for his career. His power was a bit above average, with a .419 slugging average compared to a league .401, but his ability to get on base was his main skill. He had over 3000 hits and 2000 walks. He was a very good friend with first base.

2. But he didn't wear out his welcome. Once on first Rickey didn't stay long at all. He adds another 162 runs with his speed. A lot of that is his record of stolen bases, but it also includes advancing on hits, outs, wild pitches, and every other event that a baserunner can take advantage of.

3. Rickey hit into an average number of double plays given his DP opportunities.

4. Rickey put his speed to good use in the outfield with a career +85 TotalZone rating. His arm wasn't very good though, and cost him 19 runs.

5. Add it all up, and Rickey was 812 runs above average. To get value over replacement, add another 432. Subtract 120 because he played mostly left field, where players are expected to hit more than average and the defensive responsibility is not that great. Rickey was 1124 runs better than replacement.

6. That's worth 115.9 wins, Only Bonds, Mays, Aaron, and Mantle have more in the Retrosheet era.

Player of the Day: Jim Edmonds

2009-01-11T09:30:00.000-08:00

Watching the MLB network's Prime 9, they have Jim Edmonds as the 8th greatest center fielder since the year 1900. All of the others on the list, including #9 Kirby Puckett, are in the Hall of Fame or else still playing.

Edmonds, despite playing well for the Cubs last year, does not project very well for 2009. I don't think teams are still considering him as a starting centerfield option. To keep playing he may have to accept a bench role. There is also a chance he gets Loftoned.

But I'm not here to talk about the future. Unlike McGwire, I'm here to talk about the past. One thing that strikes me from the Prime 9 special is how similar Jim was to Duke Snider. They even look alike, Jim could be Duke Snider Jr., for all I know.

Edmonds has not passed the 400 homer mark yet, Snider finished with 407. For their careers, 162 games of Edmonds looks like .284, 32 HR, 99 RBI, and 82 walks. For Snider it's .295, 31, 101, and 73. Snider comes out ahead on OPS+, 140 to 132.

Both played centerfield despite not being big basestealing threats. We've all seen that Edmonds covered plenty of ground in the outfield. It seems like Snider was regarded as a good defender, though nobody would confuse him with Willie Mays. TotalZone rates Snider as above average in Brooklyn, but a bit below average when they went to LA, with a below average arm as well. I don't have the data for his 1949-1952 seasons, and those are when he should have been at his fastest and defensive best. TotalZone has rated Edmonds as generally above average until 2006, and with a tremendous arm. If we had complete data to compare them, I think Edmonds would rate higher defensively than the Duke, and edge a bit into the Duke's offensive advantage.

I think MLB got the order right, and I hope in time it means that Edmonds' HOF plaque rests in the same Hall as Snider's and Puckett's.

Player of the Day: Adam Dunn

2009-01-09T19:49:00.000-08:00

There aren't many real hitters left on my free agents page. There are three hitters left who project to at least 10 runs above average per 150 games and have a snowball's chance in hell of actually playing in 2009. There's Manny Ramirez, who's probably going to eventually go back to the Dodgers, Adam Dunn, and Bobby Abreu.

I'd like to see Dunn sign with the Angels. The Angels don't look like they have much of an offense in 2009. They'll start the season and immediately wish they had that "big bat behind Vlad". Well, there have been plenty of big bats out there this offseason, and some are going pretty cheap. The Angels have an opening at either DH, 1B, or LF, the easiest spots to hide a lumbering power hitter. Signing a bat would not even block Juan Rivera or Kendry Morales. Get a 1B, Kendry plays DH. Get a DH, Kendry plays first. If Vlad needs to DH, Kendry plays OF instead and the new slugger plays first. Get a LF, Rivera plays right and Vlad gets to DH. It's easy. Angels also have no lefty bat on the roster. Perfect opportunity to sign Dunn. What are they waiting for? Sign him now, and you don't have to give up anyone in a trade later.

Alternatively, I'd like to see Dunn sign with the Orioles. They need a first baseman, and it would be fun to see him take shots at the warehouse next summer.

Back in business

2009-01-08T20:51:00.000-08:00

The problems with the site seem to be fixed, though my latest help email has not been returned. I'll take that trade. Back to baseball...

Jason Giambi to the A's. It's hard to pass up a bat like this for only 4.5 million. His projection as a poor fielder is worth almost twice that. He's not going to improve the A's all that much though, as one way or another a young player with league average offense but good defense will be forced to the bench or minors. I'm not sure if the odd man out is Travis Buck or Daric Barton, but you can't DH both Giambi and Cust. Once a few more of the major free agents sign, I'll update team defenses and rerun the pitcher projections. The A's pitchers will take an ERA hit - this team looks more like the 97-99 team than the recent pitching & defense A's.

The Red Sox get John Smoltz and Rocco Baldelli. Smoltz is 42, not likely to pitch before June, and coming off shoulder surgery so there is a bit of RISK here. Baldelli is a wild card. He's a damn good all around player when he can play. But how much can he play? If he was able to play everyday I think he'd want to go to a team that had room for him to do so.

Tampa Bay was a good situation for him because they let him play when he was able, and had depth to cover when he was not. If his health is shaky, he's not a good caddy for JD Drew. If Drew went down for a month or two, Baldelli is not the guy who can step in and play every day. Could Baldelli play twice a week against lefties? Maybe, but remember Tampa played to Rocco's schedule, he wasn't necessarily available when they needed him. That he didn't start game one of the WS against Cole Hamels makes me wonder if a straight platoon might be a problem - other teams are not going to have their lefthander skip a start until Rocco is ready to play.

And the all-time saves leader signs with the Brewers. The projection thinks he's a bit overpaid at 6 million, but my personal take is the Brewers will be happy with the signing. He's not elite anymore but I think Hoffman can get through another year of reliably pitching the 9th inning. And the Brewer fan expectations have to be set pretty low after the last couple of closers they had.

Web problems

2009-01-08T19:05:00.000-08:00

Sorry about this, but I can't update right now due to problems with my web host. Some of the team pages only loaded halfway. This will be fixed, well, whenever I can get a response from Doteasy.

Greatest pitchers, 1954-2008

2009-01-06T20:58:00.000-08:00

A few days ago in "The ten win pitcher" I explained what goes into the system, so I won't explain that again. Here are the pitchers with the highest wins above replacement:

Clemens 128.1
Seaver 104.8
Maddux 96.0
P Neikro 95.5
G Perry 93.9
R Johnson 91.9

BERT BLYLEVEN 89.8

Nolan Ryan 83.0
Bob Gibson 82.6
Steve Carlton 82.4
Fergie Jenkins 82.0
Mike Mussina 76.8
Pedro Martinez 76.5
Curt Schilling 72.2
Don Sutton 70.9
Tom Glavine 67.0
Don Drysdale 64.8

RICK REUSCHEL 64.7

Kevin Brown 64.5
Jim Palmer 64.5
Juan Marichal 64.2
John Smoltz 64.0
Dennis Eckersley 61.3
Jim Bunning 60.3

Other than the two in bold, every pitcher on this list is either a hall of famer or has not yet been eligible for the vote. Blyleven really stands out - he is the single most deserving player who has been rejected by the HOF voters. A truly great pitcher. Wins over replacement rewards guys who played forever. League average picks up 2 WAR per year, so an average pitcher who threw a knuckleball and lasted 25 seasons could earn 50 WAR. Phil Niekro was no average pitcher, he was really good, but not as good as Bob Gibson at his best. I'm a bit surprised that he rates so high. Part of it is he's getting credit for surviving some bad Atlanta defenses that are estimated to have cost him 108 runs over his career. All in all, a really good job by the voters, with the glaring exception of Blyleven.

Sixty wins looks like a magic mark. There are 13 pitchers between 50 and 60 WAR, and only one of them is in, Sandy Koufax (53.9). And Koufax is obviously not in for his bulk career value.

About 30 pitchers are in the 40-50 range, and the only Hall of Famers are guys who I'm only looking at half their careers (Warren Spahn, Robin Roberts), relievers (Wilhelm, Gossage), and Whitey Ford, who I'm only missing 2 seasons on. Ford comes in at 48.3 and probably would be around 55 with his first 2 years.

The real outlier is Catfish Hunter (32.9) who pitched in front of some great defenses yet only barely cracked a 100 ERA+ at 104. He was a real workhorse for a few years, and did pitch well as part of 5 world champions.

I should note that this database is not set up to properly handle relievers, only starters. Relievers should be judged against a different replacement level baseline than starters, and they should get credit for leverage if they are pitching the late innings of close games. I've got all pitchers lumped together.

Player of the Day: Koji Uehara

2009-01-06T17:04:00.000-08:00

Signs with the Orioles, now with him and Guthrie the O's should have two pitchers who can keep them in games. His Japanese numbers show excellent control. A Japanese Brad Radke maybe. The 2009 CHONE projection shows a pretty good middle of rotation pitcher. I wouldn't pay much attention to the low 87 innings projected, as that's a result of him being shuffled between starting and relieving the last few years.

I kind of liked him better as a reliever - check out the Eckerslyan 66-4 strikeout to walk ratio in 2007. But the Orioles definitely need him more as a starter in their drive to not totally suck in 2009.

I've also updated the pages for Jason Marquis as a Rockie, Luis Vizcaino as a Cub, and Carl Pavano as an Indian. Unlike Uehara, Pavano's projected 43 innings is no accident, he's that injury prone. He'll be lucky to avoid elbow surgery from signing his official contract. Marquis projects to hit 215/253/342 with 2 homers. Oh, you wanted his pitching projection?

Player of the Day: Milton Bradley

2009-01-05T17:49:00.001-08:00

I love this guy. He is one of the very best players in the game when he can play. Similar to Carlos Beltran. Or Mark Teixiera. Except that he can't keep himself in the lineup. The CHONE projection thinks he'll find Wrigley to his liking.

If Bradley were able to play 150 games a year, he'd be a 20 million dollar per year player. He's got power, a very high on-base average, and has always been a good defensive outfielder, though after a year as DH his current outfield ability is a bit unknown. Projected as an average defender at his 114 game level, he's worth 13.6 million. The Cubs sign him for 10 million a year, so their break-even point here is 84 games. If Milton can play that many, they get their money's worth.

His 90th percentile season shows a glimpse of what a healthy Bradley could do in a career year: .330 average, 35 homers, 100 walks, .450 OBP/.600 SLG - that would earn an MVP vote or two. We'll probably never actually see that season, though Milton came pretty close to those rate numbers last year, just missing on the playing time.

Milton would have been my #2 free agent target had I been in charge of the Angels. But what do I know. If I had been in charge I would have spent the extra 3 million and gotten J.D. Drew instead of Gary Matthews Jr.

Runner up on player of the day is Pat Burrell, leaving the World Champs to sign with the AL champs. I can't help but notice the parallels to Greg Luzinski, who left the Phillies after their last championship. Like Burrell, Greg was a huge slugger who walked and struck out a lot, and had little range in the field. Like Burrell, he left to become a fulltime DH in the other league. Luzinski gave the White Sox 3 good years of DHing before he was finished, so the Rays should be safe with a two year contract.

The Ten Win pitcher

2009-01-04T18:14:00.000-08:00

No, not a pitcher credited with 10 wins in a season. Obviously no big deal, as thousands of pitchers have done that. I'm talking about a pitcher whose season rates as ten wins above replacement level. It is an extraordinary accomplishment, and the next pitcher who does so will only be the 10th since 1954.

I've been working on pitcher ratings, and have gone farther in adjusting for what needs to be adjusted than I've ever done before. I'm sure there are still more things that can be adjusted for, but here is where I am right now:

1. Start, simply, with runs allowed (total, not earned) and innings pitched. I'm not looking at any kind of defense independent stats or component ERAs or anything like that. Such measures are useful for projections going forward, but not necessary for evaluating what happened in the past.

2. Find out how many runs a theoretical replacement level pitcher would have allowed, given the ballpark, the defense he pitched in front of, and the opponents he faced.

Ballpark factors are the pitchers park factors from the database available from baseball databank. I may consider using another source, or reworking them later, but here I took them as is. Defense is a combination of Totalzone, outfield throwing, infield DP, and catcher ratings, all calculated from retrosheet data. A pitcher's share of the team defensive rating is simply the team rating multiplied by the pitcher's percentage of contact allowed, or (batters faced - strikeouts - walks - hbp - homeruns).

Say a replacement level pitcher, based on league average and park factors, would have allowed 110 runs. The pitcher pitched 10% of his team's contact allowed, and in front of a +50 defense. Replacement level would be adjusted downward to 105 runs, as a replacement level pitcher would also have benefited from the good defense.

Instead of using league runs allowed per game, I use a weighted average, by inning pitched, of the runs scored per game for all of the opponents a pitcher faced. Roy Halladay a lot against Boston, New York, and Tampa Bat, while Cliff Lee pitched quite a bit against Cleveland. The opponent adjusted league figures for the two are 4.85 for Halladay, and 4.62 for Lee, though even with that adjustment Lee rates as the AL top pitcher last year.

3. Once I've done all that to get runs over replacement, I figure a custom runs to win conversion - in a low scoring run environment fewer runs are needed to get an extra win.

So, without further ado, here are the 10 win pitchers:

9. 10.1 Bob Gibson, 1969 - 20 wins, 2.18 ERA, 314 innings

8. 10.3 Pedro Martinez, 2000 - Amazing year, 1.74 ERA in an hitter's park, in a high offense league. He's got the best rate stats ever for a starting pitcher, and saved 115 runs above replacement, the record from 1954-2008. And he does this with only 217 innings pitched, most of the other pitchers on this list had over 300. The thing that drops him down to 8th is the runs to win converter - in his high offense environment it takes 11.2 runs to convert to a win.

7. 10.4 Sandy Koufax, 1963 - 25-5, 1.88 ERA

6. 10.7 Wilbur Wood, 1971 - What a horse, 334 innings of a 1.91 ERA. He's getting some credit for doing this in front of a subpar White Sox defense.

5. 10.7 Roger Clemens, 1997 - 264 innings of a 2.05 ERA with the league going homer happy.

4. 10.8 Sandy Koufax, 1966 - His last season, 27 wins and a 1.73 ERA.

3. 11.0 Doc Gooden, 1985 - This one goes to 11. 1.53 ERA and a 24-4 record. He did it against a tough schedule too. His opponents averaged 4.16 runs per game, against a 4.07 league average.

2. 11.2 Bob Gibson, 1968 - The 1.12 ERA season, even in the year of the pitcher, was one of the greatest pitching feats ever. Gibson saved 85 runs above replacement, but it only took 7.6 runs to earn an extra win that year.

1. 11.6 Steve Carlton, 1972 - 27 wins on a 59 win ballclub. 346 innings, 1.97 ERA.

While there are two pitchers from the recent high offense era represented on the list, most of these guys pitched in the late 60's/early 70's pitching years. A low run environment allows pitchers to keep pitch counts down, coast through the Ray Oyler/Roger Metzger/opposing pitcher part of the order, and throw a larger percentage of their team's innings.

As a consequence, a pitcher like Koufax will be more valuable to his team, in the sense of earning more wins, in a pitcher's league. As long as we measure greatness in wins added, I don't think there is any way to get around this.

Players of the day: Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa

2009-01-02T12:35:00.000-08:00

1382 career homeruns between them (counting postseason), both players are over 40 and didn't play a game last year.

Sosa doesn't have a lot to offer a major league team. He might be OK as a platoon DH against only left-handed pitching, but that is such a limited role that I doubt a team would have use for him, and there are plenty of players who can fill that role.

Bonds likely still has the ability to help a team, or at least did last year. But a one year layoff at his age, combined with hip surgery, makes him a real longshot. That doesn't even consider that he'll be facing perjury charges at some point.

But what the hey, let's see what projections for these two look like.

Barry Bonds still projects as one of the best hitters in the game. Due to age, CHONE doesn't think he'll hit for average anymore, but he still has enough power and walks that he'd be worth 9-11 million to a team as a DH if he was healthy enough to play, and a team was willing to break the collusion and give him a job.

Sammy Sosa, one the other hand, is done. Stick a fork in him. He was OK at age 38, playing in one of the better hitter's parks in the game. But being essentially a league average hitter as a DH is not a recipe for continued employment, you expect more from that from somebody who doesn't have to field. Two years of aging make it very unlikely that Sosa can play acceptable baseball again.

I'm not hesitant to project players who have missed a year, because when I've done it in the past my system has done so reliably. In January 2007, I had Sosa pegged as a 241/313/424 line. He then hit 252/311/468 - very close on the BA/OBP, and not a terrible projection for slugging.

But in these two cases it's academic, I don't expect either to play MLB in 2009.