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Posts Tagged Jeff Clement

On Major League Debuts

Jun 10

Posted by Sean H. Steimer | No Comments

In the Pirates last 2 games, we have seen 3 top flight prospects make their big league debut.  First, on Monday, Nationals much hyped starter Steven Strasburg made hid debut against the Pirates.  He mowed through the lineup, striking out 14 on just 94 pitches.  This isn’t a post about Strasburg, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t say how impressive it was.  I didn’t get to catch much of the game live, but recorded it on DVR and watched Strasburg’s innings last night.  If you want to know how good is stuff is, just consider that there were more than a few occasions where hitters were bailing out against physics defying curve balls for called strikes.  When you can throw triple digits with command and also spin it like that, it becomes very, very hard to get good wood on the ball consistently.

After that game was completed, the Pirates announced 1B Jeff Clement would be optioned to AAA and Jack Taschner had been DFA’d.  Those 2 moves made room for SP Brad Lincoln and OF Jose Tabata to make their big league debut’s last night.  Given how dominant Strasburg was in his debut, part of me considers last night a huge disappointment.  Tabata would bat lead-off and went 2-4 with a SB and a BB.  Quite honestly, if he can continue to do that and sprinkle in an occasional extra base hit, I’ll be happy.  But, there was nothing about his performance that was overwhelmingly excellent, and trying to judge a hitter on one game is just dumb anyway.  A one game assessment of a pitcher makes slightly more sense, just because you can judge how their stuff looks, but its still an awful small sample size, which brings me to Brad Lincoln.

Lincolns final line was rather ugly 6.0 7 5 5 2 3 1.  But he was very much let down by his defense, and he showed me some things I liked.  His plus curve ball that everyone has talked about when he was drafted and making his way through the minor leagues is very much that.  It’s a true out pitch when he locates it.  It may have just been adrenaline, but he had more velocity on his fastball than I expected, hitting 93-94 in the early innings.  At least 2 of the runs he allowed probably should have been unearned, but the no decision he came out of the game with seems fitting given how well he pitched.  I’m gonna give Lincoln a pass for now, given that his first start this year at AAA was a rough one and how thoroughly he dominated the level after that.  I’ve gone over this before, but Lincoln is never going to be a true ace like Strasburg, so comparing the two is just plain unfair.  But he seems to have the makings to become a solid middle of the rotation pitcher, one that should be in a Pirates uniform for at least the next 6 years.

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2010 Season Preview: Offense

Apr 4

Posted by Sean H. Steimer | No Comments

So the other day I talked about the pitching & defense, and now it’s time to talk about the other side of the ball.  I’ve seen the claim in more than one place that your 2010 Pittsburgh Pirates could have the worst offense seen in Pittsburgh since the 50’s.  While I haven’t looked into it extensively, I seriously doubt that claim would hold up from a statistical basis.  No matter, there’s lost of people who think this team won’t be good, and they have very good reason to believe so.  That said, I think the offense could be pleasantly surprising if just a few things fall the right way.

For opening day, and probably until Pedro Alvarez is called up or someone gets traded, the lineup is going to look something like this:

1. A. Iwamura, 2B

2. A. McCutchen, CF

3. G. Jones, RF

4. R. Doumit, C

5. L. Milledge, LF

6. J. Clement, 1B

7. A. LaRoche, 3B

8. Pitcher

9. R. Cedeno, SS

Starting at the top, Iwamura is a solid on base guy who should set the table nicely.  Everyone, myself included expect ‘Cutch will only continue to get better and while there’s certainly room to question Jones (I don’t think anyone expects him to keep up his 21 HR, .938 OPS in 82 games pace he set last year), it’s very reasonable to expect he can hit 30 or so dingers and drive in a bunch of runs hitting in the 3 hole.

The next 4 are the real question marks and will make or break this team from a run scoring point of view.  Doumit has proven over the career he can hit the ball well, especially for a catcher, when he is healthy.  The big question is, can he stay healthy for the full 162 game season, or will he see time on the DL once again in 2010.  Lastings Milledge is probably getting his last shot to prove himself as an every day big leaguer.  He’s been saying all the right things this spring, and one of those things he’s been saying is that he’ll be able to hit for more power now that the wrist injury he had last year is fully healed.  Only time will tell of course, but I believe this is the year Milledge finally breaks out.  Clement is probably the biggest question mark of all, having only played 75 career games in the bigs, none of them at 1B.  Based on his minor league numbers, he’s proven all that he can at AAA, and between his power and the Clemente wall in right field, one can at least hope he can be a productive number 6 hitter.  Finally, we come to Andy LaRoche.  Everyone knows what he did last year, and while that was a massive improvement over what he did in ‘08 after coming over in the Jason Bay trade, he still has a ways to go to be where you want your everyday third baseman to be offensively.  Based on his minor league numbers though, there’s reason to believe he could get there, and what he does will go along way to dictating what the pirates do when Pedro Alvarez is ready.  Even if he doesn’t improve over his ‘09 season, he’s a very solid on base guy, and you could do a lot worse for your number 7 hitter.  It’s probably unreasonable to expect all four of these guys to break out to their potential at one time, but if 2 or three of them can, and Jones can maintain 80% of what he put up in the second half last year, the team should be in good shape offensively.

Finally, the Pirates are all set to bat the pitcher 8th and Ronny Cedeno in the 9 spot to turn the order over.  While I like the idea in theory (see here), I don’t like having a career .280 OBP guy playing that role, and would much rather see Andy LaRoche or Lastings Milledge batting ninth.

Moving to the bench, Delwyn Young has been a solid hitter his whole career except when he is expending all his energy pre-game trying to learn to play second base.  John Raynor is speedy and could be a nice pinch runner and defensive replacement.  Ryan Church is a very solid fourth outfielder and Bobby Crosby was the AL rookie of the year in a former life.

With all that said, I’m probably in the minority here when I say this team could be solid offensively.  They aren’t going to be great by any stretch of the imagination, but I really do believe that offense isn’t what will kill this team, but rather the pitching and defense.  And once Pedro shows up, likely in early June, well let’s just say the offense can only get better when that happens, and this team is going to begin to come together for the future at that point.

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2010 Season Preview: Pitching & Defense

Apr 3

Posted by Sean H. Steimer | No Comments

Last season, the Pirates defense was a somewhat surprising bright spot, finishing the year as the best defense in the majors based on fielding percentage and errors. Of course, many of the players who led to that rating, Nyjer Morgan, Adam Laroche and Jack Wilson to name a few, are gone and after their departure last season, the team’s defense took a precipitous drop off. On a per position basis, the Pirates have above average defense at only 2 positions, Aki Iwamura at 2B (1.4 UZR/150 for his career) and Andy LaRoche at 3B (3.9 UZR/152 for his career). Beyond those 2, the defense is either average, below average or unproven* at every other position. The one wildcard tot hat is Andrew McCutchen in CF. Many think his defense will get better, and with his speed and tools it should, but last year his UZR/150 was -1.0, so we can’t just assume he wil be above average defensively this year until it happens. Overall, I expect the defense to be bad this year, and it’s going to be frustrating. Expect the team’s cumulative FIP to be lower than the ERA, and consequently, expect the defense to cost the team several games they should have won.

*In the upnroven category are Lastings Milldege in LF and Jeff Clement at 1B. Clement is there for obvious reasons, but I felt like I needed to explain Milledge a bit. His careez UZR/150 in LF is 10.4, but that’s only over 93 games. Over the larger sample, 298 OF games, more than half of them in CF, his UZR/150 is -10.0. Until the sample size in LF is larger, I’m calling his defense unproven.

On the pitching side, the starting rotation looks like this. Zach Duke, Paul Maholm, Ross Ohlendorf and Charlie Morton return from last year. Daniel McCutchen won the 5th spot from Kevin Hart this spring, but I expect to see both of them start some games this year, as well as 2 guys starting the season at AAA, last years rule V pick Donnie Veal and former #1 pick Brad Lincoln. Of this group, Morton and Lincoln have the highest upside, but both are young. Lincoln especially figures to have some struggles once he gets called up, which will probably happen sometime in June or July. Duke and Maholm are pretty much known quantities to Pirate fans at this point. Neither is gonna blow you away, but both manage to get a lot of ground ball outs and are relatively effective when the defense behind them is good. Unfortunately, as I already said, that is not likely to be the case and they are therefore likely to have some troubles this season. Overall, this group definitely has a lot of potential, but there’s just too much young inconsistency here to expect anything great to happen. They all have the potential to be good, but who steps up will be very telling in how this team moves forward next year and beyond. Behind these guys is a large group of starters at AA and AAA, and in the years to come they will be pushing for spots, so the ones who wish to be a part of the long term answer need to step up now.

While the rotation is mostly the same form last year, the bullpen had been almost completely overhauled. Gone is Matt Capps, Steven Jackson and others. In their place is Octavio Dotel, Brendan Donnelly and DJ Carrasco. I really like what Neal Huntington has done with the Pen and think they will be able to keep this team in a lot of games and hold leads, on the rare occasion they are given them.

Overall, the pitching is going to be good but not great from end to end. The nice thing is that if anyone fails to perform, there is someone behind him at AAA waiting for the opportunity to show their skills. I expect a lot of guys to be given just that opportunity this season, and even if its going to be frustrating at times, it should be fun to watch this team come together and see who steps up. This theme of competition for spots is one I expect to see this year and into next year, and its one I’ll touch on in my offensive preview as well, coming tomorrow.

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Russ Branyan and Jeff Clement

Feb 21

Posted by Sean H. Steimer | No Comments

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.

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.

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What to Watch Down The Stretch

Aug 14

Posted by Sean H. Steimer | No Comments

I haven’t blogged in a while.  I haven’t blogged in a while because this team is downright depressing to watch right now.  In the words of whygavs in last night’s game recap:  “Well, uh, at least we scored a run?  This baseball team is pretty hard to watch right now.  I don’t have anything else to say about this.”

With that being said, where do we go from here?  What am I watching for the rest of this year?  For the purposes of this post, I’m going to largely ignore the progression of minor league players.  Like everyone else, I want to see Pedro continue to rake in AA and our young pitching prospects like Lincoln and Alderson continue their development.  This team is in a rebuilding mode and if your a fan of this team, you need to be following the minor league teams as closely, if not more closely, than you are the big club (There are several great sources for this sort of information.  Dejan Kovacevic’s PBC blog does a great job of posting daily minor league reports.  Raise the Jolly Roger likewise does a daily minor league roundup.  Finally, Rocco Demaro’s Extra innings post-game show always includes a minor league report, and his show is available in podcast form in case you miss it and want to catch up the next day).  But there’s nothing special about the minor leagues to follow down the stretch that you shouldn’t be watching a daily and weekly basis.  So focusing on the team playing at PNC park, here is what I expect to see and will look to happen as we move toward 17 straight losing seasons.

September Call-ups

As of September 1st, major league teams can expand their rosters from the standard 25 up to 40.  For a team like the Pirates, this gives them a chance to get a cheap look at what some of their young prospects can do in a month with the big club.  Given that this team has been in audition mode ever since Jack Wilson and Freddy Sanchez were traded, I don’t expect much to happen.  Robinzon Diaz played well while he was in Pittsburgh earlier this year due to Ryan Doumit’s injury, so I expect him to get another shot.  Brian Bixler has been up and down between Pittsburgh and Indianapolis over the last few years, playing well in Indy and poorly in Pittsburgh, but in order to give JR some infield depth, I expect to see him called up as well.  The last position player I see being called up is Jeff Clement, the 1B acquired from Seattle in the Wilson/Snell trade.  He has been hitting well in AAA Indy to the tune of a 1.134 OPS and 6 dingers in 13 games and it seems like he’s earned a shot.  In addition to those position players, I would expect to see a few guys called up to provide JR with some help in the bullpen, but I don’t really see that happening until the International League season ends on September 7th.

Who to Keep an Eye On

As of today, the Pirates have 48 games, a little more than 1/4 of a season, remaining.  In those games, there are a lot of questions about a lot of players that need to be answered.  Most of these questions are going to go beyond these 48 games and go into next season, but how these questions are answered will go a long way to determining who is a part of the Pirates future.

Can Lastings Millegde’ defense develop  enough to lock down a corner outfield spot long term?

No matter what Milledge does in the final 48 games, I expect to be given and extended opportunity next year.  Certainly though, he has something to prove.  One can project from what he did in AAA this year, and with the Mets in 2007, and with the Nats in the second half of last year that his bat will come around.  But his defense is a mystery to me.  I’ve said this on twitter and facebook before, that based on his speed and athleticism, one would think he would be a very solid defensive outfielder.  Based on what I’ve seen so far in Pittsbugh, he’s shown some flashes of that, but also made more than his share of boneheaded plays.  Will his work with the Pittsburgh coaching staff pay off and translate the solid defense we all would like to see, or will he continue to struggle and eventually be replaced by Gorky’s Hernandez, Jose Tabata, or another of the Pirates many outfield prospects?

Can someone take hold of first base?

There are options at first, but so far no one has taken the reins of the position.  Garrett Jones, Steve Pearce, and Jeff Clement will probably all be given a chance to do so down the stretch and one of them needs to step up and prove they deserve to be their to start next season.  Everyone seems to think that Pedro Alvarez is the long term future here.  The common wisdom being that even if he can break into the bigs at third, he will eventually have to make the move across the diamond.  In the meanwhile though, someone needs to play first, and it almost certainly be one of the three mentioned above, the other 2 being relegated to bench duty.  Whoever of the three can do the most with the bat over the next 48 games plus spring training next year will probably be given the nod to start next season.

Will Kevin Hart or Paul Maholm step up?

I’m going to keep this one short and sweet.  Brad Lincoln excelled in Altoona this year, and while his numbers have slipped some since being called up to Indy, it would seem he’s gonna be in Pittsburgh sometime next season.He’s going to have to replace someone and based on the current starting rotation it seems it would have to be either Hart or Maholm.  Duke has been our best pitcher all year.  Morton has the best stuff on the staff and while Ohlendorf has been a bit up and down, he’s been better of late and seems to be safe.  Maholm has been very shaky this year and really needs to round back in to from if he wants to stay in the rotation.  I haven’t seen enough of Hart to make a judgment but based on his numbers it would seem his BB/9 has to come down for him to keep his rotation spot.  One of these guys will stay in the rotation when Lincoln comes up and the other will go to the bullpen or something.

Obviously there are way more than 3 questions as we round out his season, but to my eye those are the three that are most begging to be answered.

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