I’m putting up a post tonight that I intend to be the first in a series of posts so I thought a little background was in order. My girl friend, even before we ever started dating, liked baseball in the same way that most girls do. She liked going to the games, in her words “mostly for the beer and hot dogs.” She had played softball in her youth and understood the basic rules of the game, but anything more advanced than balls, strikes and outs went right over her head. I, on the other hand, love everything about baseball and try my hardest to understand all the intricacies and statistics of the game. Naturally, I talk about this stuff a lot, especially when we are at a game together, and naturally she doesn’t understand some of it, so I try my best to explain it to her. Out of those conversations, I had an idea to write a series of posts explaining some advanced statistical concepts as I would explain them if I was talking to my girl friend. The goal is to have a set of primers that can be used to help explain these concepts to anyone unfamiliar with them, breaking everything down into its component parts, and then building back up to a level of basic understanding. In light of my post the other day about Zach Duke’s performance before and after August 1st, I thought FIP would be a good place to start and that will be posted shortly. I’ll try to keep this post updated with a list as I add more to the series, although don’t expect a new post every day, or even every week. I’ll write them as a I feel like it, and hopefully, overtime, develop a rather complete set of primers/tutorials. As always, I welcome any feedback, good or bad, and you can leave that in the comments or by emailing me.
A few quick notes
Feb 24
I posted a few weeks back about an nl-only keeper league I’m starting. That post can be found here, and I’m stilling for a few more players to round out the league, if your at all interested, let me know and I’ll send you an invite.
Also, I really enjoyed this feature in today’s Post-Gazette about Brandon Moss. Maybe I never heard about his knee surgery in late 2008, or maybe I had just completely forgotten about it, but that info helps put into light some of his struggles last year. Due to those very struggles, he’s going to have an awful lot to prove in order to make the team this spring (and since he’s out of options, if he doesn’t make the team he will almost certainly end up with another organization). If he can somehow make the team though, he strikes me as a very like-able player who could become a fan favorite if he can just take advantage of his considerable talent. Where he fits in the corner outfield mix along with GFJ, Church, Milledge, Tabata, etc. is anyones guess, all I’m saying is that I’m rooting for him.
Spring Training Ramblings
Feb 23
Spring training is almost a week old at this point. All the players are in camp, and today was the first full squad workout, so I thought it was time I posted on what’s been going on so far down in Bradenton, mostly by linking to various other outlets.
About a week ago I posted about Joel Hanrahan’s injury. Today we got some good news on that front, as it was announced that his latest MRI revealed no structural damage to his injured throwing elbow. There is still no hard time-table given for his return, but the terms “dissipating inflamation” and “no structural damage” are both very good things, and should mean he’ll be back sooner rather than later.
This one is behind a pay-wall, ESPN insiders only, but Buster Olney seems very bullish on the potential of this Pirates line-up, especially the power potential of Garrett Jones and Pedro Alvarez. There is also a note in there about Paul Maholm altering his pre-game routine to conserve his energy for later innings.
Just heard this now, literally as I was writing this post. Charlie Wilmouth of BucsDugout is going to be on the FanGraphs Audio podcast (they mention it at the end of the linked episode) on Thursday.
I’m not quite sure what it is about this pirates administration, but I think they have a tendency to get caught up in the moment and speak a bit more freely than they should be. The latest example of this, Frank Coonelly today says that “2010 is the beginning of the next dynasty of the Pirates.” Really? I truly believe this team is heading in the right direction, but Dynasty? As they say on NFL PrimeTime, Come on, Man! Edit: I forgot to note this originally, but in that same post, Chuck Finder also adds that Neal Walker is being turned into a super-utility player, something I’ve speculated about in the past.
Finally, something I really enjoyed seeing this week was this tweet from Rob Biertempfel about the energy CF Andrew McCutchen gives this team. Looking back to when he was called up last year, and that was expected of him at that time, he has met or exceeded all of it. Its easy to dream on how great a player this kid can be, and I’m glad to hear that he’s the one providing the team its energy.
Aside from meaningless calls for Bob Nutting to sell the team, one of the biggest complaints I’ve heard this off-season has been about giving the 1B job to Jeff Clement. The line of argument goes something like this: If management wants to preach accountability how can they just hand a key offensive position to a guy who has never proven himself, either offensively or defensively, at the major league level, especially when “proven” players like Russ Branyan and Hank Blalock are available cheaply as free agents, and the team has money to spend (based upon a comparison of last years opening day payroll to the current payroll). Blalock remains unsigned, but Branyan just inked a deal with the Cleveland Indians, so I thought it would be an interesting exercise to compare some projections on Clement and Branyan, in light of their contracts, and see if it reveals anything worthwhile. For the purposes of this exercise, I’m using CHONE projections, available at fangraphs.com. I chose CHONE because it’s freely available at a public facing website, and while the exercise I go through below could be performed using a different projection system, or even an average of a bunch of projections, I think the ultimate conclusions are the same no matter which projections you use.
Before I jump into an analysis, lets just lay out the raw numbers. CHONE projects Branyan to post a .243/.335/.497 line for 2010 with a wOBA of .359. It (Is “It” the proper pronoun for a projection system?) also gives Clement a line of .264/.342/.460 and a .350 wOBA. Branyan is clearly the superior offensive player with an OPS 30 points higher and a wOBA almost 10 points higher. But how much are those offensive differences worth in terms of runs and wins? Thats where this get’s interesting.
When you look at rate stats like those above, it is that important to remember that their impact on runs, and in turn wins, increases proportionally to the number of plate appearances a player logs. I’m not sure how CHONE projects plate appearances, but it does so, projecting Clement for 402 and Branyan for 337, a difference of 65. Those 65 trips to the plate serve to negate the entire offensive difference (and even a slight defensive advantage as well) between the two players, projecting them both as 1.2 win players. I could probably stop there, say that both players are of equal value, and conclude that it would make no sense for the Pirates to pay Branyan $2 Million dollars this year when they can get the same production from Clement for the league minimum. However, I’d like to go a bit deeper than that.
As I said, I have no idea how CHONE projects plate appearances, but I have to imagine that is a very volatile projection, especially for these two players. Branyan logged 505 PAs last season, the first time he topped 400 since 2002. Similarly, Clement has logged a grand total of 243 big league plate appearance in his career. Granted he is being given the chance to prove himself as a capable first baseman, but there’s no guarantee he’ll be able to keep that job all year. If Branyan’s back is healthy and he can duplicate last years durability, he’s obviously a lot more valuable than CHONE projects. Similarly, if Clement can field his positional well enough to stick at first base, his batting totals are going to be higher than what CHONE projects. Lets say both players manage 140 games, 550 PAs, then where do their values fall? By simply scaling the values fangraphs already provides, I came up with the following. Over the course of a 550 PA season, Russ Branyan is a 2.1 win player, while Clement, over the same 550 PAs is a 1.6 win player. If they both remain completely healthy and perform up to expectations, Branyan is worth only half a win, 5 runs more than Clement.
So, is that difference worth $1.5 Million, the difference between what the two players will make this season. Actually yes. This years free agent market has shown that a marginal win is worth about $3.5 Million dollars so in order to justify the salary difference, Branyan has to provide only an extra .43 wins. But should the Pirates have signed him? Probably not. Given his injury history, it’s a very risky proposition to hope he can log enough playing time to provide that half a win over what Clement will give the team. Further, The Bucs need to find out what they have in Clement sooner rather than later, so if he can’t muster being an everyday first baseman, they can find someone else capable of doing so.. He is either going to prove himself in the bigs this year, or prove once and for all that he’s just another AAAA player. Bringing in someone like Branyan would prevent that from happening this year, and that would only serve to hurt this franchise in the long term, not help it.
Chuck Finder posted over on the Post-Gazette’s PBC blog that Pirates pitching coach Joe Kerrigan has suggested that SP Zach Duke wore down late last season, perhaps due to overwork. Kerrigan specifically notes August first as the cut off date for where these troubles began, and based on raw ERA, that seems to bare out as Duke posted a 3.26 ERA before that date and a 5.80 ERA after. I was curious, and wanted to see if the a similar differential existed in his FIP, or if such a large difference was caused, at least aprtially, by things beyond Duke’s control, ie some defensive regression due to 2 key middle infielders being traded. Lucky for me, the formula to calculate FIP is here (yes I realize that formula isn’t perfect, as true FIP involves a league and season specific factor, and not a generic 3.2 scaling factor, but it will work for my purposes since were talking about one pitcher, in one league, during one season) and baseball-refernce.com makes available game logs with in context summations here. using those 2 source, I came up with the following.
Pre Aug 1: 146.1 IP, 75 K, 35 BB, 13 HR, 4.05 FIP
Post Aug 1: 66.2 IP, 31 K, 14 BB, 4.85 FIP
So, did Duke’s true performance level get worse late in the season? Absolutely. But was it as bad as raw ERA would indicate? No. He wasn’t as good prior to August 1st as the 3.26 ERA would indicate, nor was he as bad after that date as the 5.80 ERA would indicate. He was somewhere in the middle the whole time.
Note: While I can’t be entirely sure, I have reason to believe that the 2 month sample size post Aug 1 is too small to be statistically significant, and even the 4 month sample size prior may also be a bit too small to truly matter. I’m publishing it despite being aware of that because the PBC blog post (linked above) peaked my interest enough to look up these numbers and I figured maybe someone else might have the same thoughts I did upon reading that post.
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