SB Nation User Blog: Aadik

The Bengie Molina Paradox - or why the RBI totals don't matter

Aadik — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:28:27 -0000

There was an interesting discussion going on in this thread about the penalty of Bengie's base running, with the caveat offered by the original poster that he's still percieved Bengie as a good player and a good hitter. Suffice to say, I think this is broadly wrong, for a multitude of reasons, and I thought I'd bring it out here. Basically, much as we like Bengie, he's just not that great. In fact, I venture that Fred Lewis is a significantly more valuable player than Bengie Molina to the 2009 SF Giants, a fact that makes the Damon Bruce crowd go broke.

First, DINGERS.EXE aside, I present to you the basic line, per ESPN:

.256/.264/.436, for an OPS of .700.

Ponder that OBP for a second; Bengie has the 4th lowest OBP in baseball amongst qualifiers; 168th out of 172 hitters. No matter how much you slug, its very very hard to overcome that hurdle, a lesson most people understood 10 years ago. Bengie's Slugging percentage (at .436) is slightly above league average, but on an overall basis, the value doesn't add up. Don't believe me by slash alone? Take the advanced stat of your choice; looking purely at offensive contribution.

wRC (from Fangraphs) - in simple terms, how many runs have they created this year? In raw totals alone, Bengie Molina has been less impressive than many of our (sometimes deserved whipping boys) such as Lewis and Edgar.

the second stat (also not position adjusted) is wRAA, how has this person performed as compared to the average hitter in the league; therfore, you can see why Juan Uribe has only contributed about 14 wRC to the giants, he has been a slightly above average hitter when he has played; once again, the only Giants regular who's been significantly worse than Bengie Molina is Manny Burriss.

Player Position wRC wRAA

Aaron Rowand	OF	34.7	8.1
Pablo Sandoval	3B	30.7	5.6
Randy Winn	OF	30.3	1.8
Fred Lewis	OF	24.5	0.3
Edgar Renteria	SS	19.2	-6.0
Bengie Molina	C	18.9	-7.0
Emmanuel Burriss	2B	15.4	-9.3
Juan Uribe	3B	14.1	0.6
Travis Ishikawa	1B	12.5	-2.7
Andres Torres	OF	4.2	0.8
Rich Aurilia	1B	3.8	-5.8
Nate Schierholtz	OF	2.9	-5.5
Matt Cain	P	1.8	-1.5

Okay, you say - what about positional adjustment? Surely Bengie's C as a C, has a lower baseline than that of Fred playing LF? Well, to again use the simplist positional adjustment metric, lets use VORP from BP; essentially, the value over a replacement scrub at the given position, offensively. VORP isn't directly comparable with wRC above because the baseline assumption isn't 0, but its still fairly low. Again, we see the same point; while BP's pitcher values for VORP may be insanely low (in fact, I think they may be 0) in fact, Matt Cain has contributed more offensive value to the Giants than Bengie, and Bengie's offensive value is essentially equivalent to that of Osris Matos (1 AB, a triple, is essentially 1 run of value above replacement). If that doesn't sum up his value, I'm not sure what does.

16.6

14.2

7.4

5.4

3.8

2.3

1.5

1.4

0.9

10.

Osiris Matos

SFN

0.9

11.

Bengie Molina

SFN

0.8

Now clearly, there are 2 aspects I haven't measured above - baserunning and defense. Baserunning can be crudely estimated with a basic run matrix; using BP's statistics, it shouldn't surprise anyone that Bengie is the worst baserunner in baseball; last year, he was agout a -7 run player vs the average and this year, he's a -3 run player; conversly,Fred Lewis is a +3 runner this year. Over this year, the baserunning value differential between Fred and Bengie alone should be worth at least a couple of wins (~20 runs), and maybe more.

So that leaves us with defense;with the full caveat that its probably way too early in the season to use UZR's or your defensive metric of choice, Fred Lewis has a UZR of 0.8; his UZR/150 is 4.2, suggesting that he's about 4 runs better defensively than your average LF (IT was 3.5 last year, so I'm willing to accept this is a reasonable sample). Now C defense is brutal to measure (and many defense metrics just throw up their hands and pass), but I think anyone would be hard pressed to argue Bengie is elite at this; ignoring poor metrics like his CS% (which is 19.2%, per THT), let us assume optismitically that Bengie is at least as good defensively as Fred; ie, so far this year, he's been a +1 defensive player so we can take that off the tabel.

Fred Lewis has created more runs than Bengie Molina (wRC); when he's played, he's been a more productive player than Bengie Molina (wRAA), and even adjusting for positional scarcity, he's been a better hitter (by VORP), although not my much. When we further take base running into account, Fred Lewis is a better player.

The broader point here though is not that about Lewis; this is very simplistic, quick and dirty summary with reasonable holes to pick (ie, Fred sitting against LHP improves his wRAA, for example), but mainly to raise this point - whatever metric you use, Bengie Molina is probably the 2nd worst regular on the Giants; Manny Burris is the only guy who has done less. Adjusting for positional scarcity (but not for defense) even Edgar Renteria (he of the immortal .259/.330/.333 line) has been a better or equivalent offensive player to Bengie.

The 49ers are going to get Crabtree

Aadik — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 21:16:30 -0000

Wow. That's seem like good luck that's very out of character for a SF-based franchise. If they pick up another RB, a lineman, and an edge-rusher later, it seems like a decent draft for them

Anyone else watching the draft? Comments other than LOL Raiders (which is appropriate again today)? I'm not a big NFL fan compared to baseball, but still interested.

PS - $42M guaranteed for Stafford - this should be interesting.

FanFest 2009

Aadik — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:16:11 -0000

So,

anyone been to one of these before? I have to be up in the city on Saturday anyway, and wanted to drop by for a couple of hours if its fun/entertaining, and because damnit, I need baseball to be back already. People planning to go from here? Figure if we get a large enough flock of McCoven, can grab a beer or something before (9AM beer - always a good start) or after. I'm looking forward to deluding myself on how this will be our year.

Great BP Piece

Aadik — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:08:08 -0000

http://baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=7937

A couple of excerpts (keeping it short with copyright)

Look, I’m no radical, but I’ve never understood why we allow in sports what we would never allow in other professions. Engineering firms don’t draft the top engineers and pay them below-market rates, and while the early careers of attorneys can be daunting, they get to choose a firm to give 100 hours a week to for a few years. ...

We also wouldn’t tell them they had to work for a lousy firm, or in a city they might hate, far from their families. As a nation, we wouldn’t stand for that kind of thing, but we do in sports. In sports, we’re handing over the prime of players’ careers without ever giving them a chance to find out what they were worth. For many players, the step from amateur to professional is, in fact, the only time in their lives that they will have any leverage at all in their salary, if not their employer or place of work or management team. It is embarrassing to take so much away from them, then complain that they’re not being reasonable when it comes to the one thing that they can negotiate. If coming out of college I’d been told that I had no choice but to go copyedit for the Des Moines Register, you can be damn sure that I would have been a jerk about salary.

Seriously, this is the point that way too many people ignore - the idea that the players have some sort of duty to sacrifice "For the good of the game", or whatever bogeyman we owe today. I'd like Buster Posey to be a Giant, but damn if I think he's wrong to maximize every penny he can get at this point.

Baseball Prospectus - Bay Area Pizza Feeds

Aadik — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:17:30 -0000

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/ - see Gary's post
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/events/

Anyone else going? I went a few years ago, and generally had a good time, and its a pretty decent cause.

Details on the events page - March 18 and March 27 - I'll be attending the March 18 in Menlo Park, which means Round Table.... spectacular.

The Vizquel deal gets worse...

Aadik — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 05:02:46 -0000

From Rotoworld:

Omar Vizquel's soon-to-be-finalized contract with the Giants will be worth $5.5 million and include a vesting option for 2009.
The option, which becomes guaranteed if he plays in 140 games, is worth $5.2 million. The 40-year-old Vizquel will be getting a raise from the $4 million he made last season even though he was as bad of a hitter as there was in the NL. When the Giants say they don't have the money to pursue Alex Rodriguez, it's because of decisions like this.

Seriously? Why does Brian Sabean have a job? Does he have a secret stash of Abe Vigoda pics that make him happy? YOu're giving a 40 year old who was the WORST offensive regular in baseball a 2 year deal? And you're giving him a raise?

Giants have made Lincecum available?

Aadik — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 19:37:08 -0000

From Rotoword:

Lincecum, their No. 1 pick in 2006, can be had for a quality bat."
Maybe he has Lincecum confused with Noah Lowry. It wouldn't be his sloppiest writing in the column. Ringolsby leads off his article with: "After giving up three of its top five pitching prospects in July of 2006 to acquire Livan Hernandez from Arizona ... Arizona finds itself searching for rotation help." Ignoring the obvious gaffe that they made the trade with themselves, the Diamondbacks actually gave up only two prospects and the deal was done in August. But other than that, he's nearly spot on. OK, back to Lincecum. He simply cannot be had for a quality bat. Maybe he'll be available in return for an exceptional bat. The only player we can think of that qualifies and might be available is Miguel Cabrera.

Seriously? Who wants to lead the pitchfork brigade?

Fun with Numbers

Aadik — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 00:44:59 -0000

Obviously, this is cherry picking - but still - I found this amusing in light of another discussion.

Pitcher A in his free agent season - 27 year old LHP: ERA+ of 139, 217 IP, 99 BB, 151K's, and 10 HR's.

Zito: 28 year old LHP: ERA+ of 116, ERA+ of 116, 221 IP, 99 BB, 151K's, and 27 HR's.

Ladies and gents, we've signed Mike Hampton.

Craig Whitaker

Aadik — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 00:51:04 -0000

someone else brought this up - and I'm curious - what happened to him? I know he had a back injury last year, but is he pitching at all?

Is the Pitching Really that Good? The pessimistic view

Aadik — Sun, 06 May 2007 09:15:36 -0000

One of the things that's been somewhat enjoyable is that all things considered, the Giants pitching has been really good this year - with the starting rotation in particular being absolutely magnificent. The Giants have a team ERA of 3.77, and 4 SP's with an ERA below that. I can't recall who (and it may have been more than one person - a common sentiment perhaps) mentioned that they wouldn't swap the Giants rotation for anyone - and there was a fair amount of consensus around that belief.

The bad news: Our pitching is living on knife-edge - anyone want to take a bet on Matt Morris ending the year with a 3.20 ERA bet? The team's K/BB ratio is 1.42 - and the overall K/9 rate is 5.69. That K/BB ratio is 28th in the majors - and that K/9 rate is 25th. Simply put, that's not sustainable.

Those stats would be less troublesome when you have a good/great defense to back you up (Omar and Pedro make that category if we're being generous - no one else), but that's not really the Giants forte. The team's Defensive Efficiency (basically, what percentage of Balls in play end up as outs) is .710 - 13th in the majors. Some of this may be the park effect (fly ball pitchers in a large park), but I don't know if that's likely to last either, given the age of the team. Ray-Ray can be described as an average fielder through our rose-tinted glasses - Bonds and Klesko, the less said, the better.

What's causing this "luck"? The Giants are pretty solid as BAPIP goes, but one statistic stuck out for me: HR as a % of FB. The league average is 9% - and the Giants are currently at about 6%. For context - this is the lowest number in baseball (the Dodgers are also at 6%).

Essentially, a lot of those flyballs are staying in the park. This may well be a Pac Bell effect (although the park has essentially been neutral the last couple of years - not a pitcher's park as perceived), or it may be a sign that the Giants are getting significantly luckier than their K-rates suggest.

To summarize: The results don't match the peripherals, and that's more than a little worrisome - when the pitching goes back to what the numbers indicate, we will be in trouble.

Where's the downside coming from? Well, its no secret that Matt Morris and Noah Lowry (them of the 15/18 and 16/16 K/BB ratios) are both light years better than their peripherals suggest. Simlarly, Matt Cain is a great pitcher, but a K/BB ratio of 25/21 was not that of an 1.51 ERA pitcher - his last start was certainly not reflective of him as a whole, but unless he gets significantly better control, his current ERA (3.08) is a great goal for the season. Cain may well be one of the rare pitchers whose stuff is good enough for consistently lower BAPIP rates, but it seems hard to make that call just yet. Moreover, the Giants have had only 2 blown saves in the year - again, the 5th lowest in baseball. Now, saves are generally a pretty useless statistic, but its telling that Benitez has been perfect this year - by any neutral impression, that's not going to last.

That being said, this analysis is all pre-Enchanter - I think he's a reasonable bet to be the 2nd or 3rd best pitcher on the Giants. Overall though, I find myself more worried about what's to come, especially since the offense is striving for mediocrity at best.