SB Nation User Blog: DyingQuail

Wednesday Morning-ish Astros, etc. Round Up

DyingQuail — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:18:10 -0000

More photos » by Pat Sullivan - AP

I decided that Tal Smith has never gotten photo love from us, so he gets it today.

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It's been too long since we've had one of these, so here goes:

Brian McTaggart checked in with Ed Wade while he's in Chicago this week and learned that while there's a ball park for payroll, there's actually no certainty for it. While I don't think this means Drayton is going to authorize real spending, it's nice to know that a team who has had six weeks off still doesn't know exactly what it's offseason plans could entail.
Speaking of offseason plans and the Astros, Billy Wagner's agent is toying with Boston by publicly stating that he just might accept arbitration if he's offered it. My guess is that Wagner won't, but I like this signaling by his agent, Brian Stringfellow (this guy got picked on as a kid). Wagner's Type-A status is a burden for his free-agency candidacy, so if Stringfellow can spook the Sox into not offering arbitration, score one for the agent. If Stringfellow accomplishes this, I think increases the seriousness of speculating about an Astros/Wagner 2010 reunion tour.
In case you needed proof of it just one more time, Roy Oswalt is one of the best pitcher's of his generation. I need these moments of validation every once and again.
It could be until 2011 that the rest of the 105 who haven't been named—yet—can sleep well, as a federal appeals court will not rule on the matter of the list being seized in the first place until then. Sucks to be them.
JC Bradbury summarizes the evidence that Moneyball impacted player compensation through a revaluation of OBP.
I think I just like things like this because it discusses technological innovations that took place before I was born: A look at Sabermetrics in 1983.

SBN Awards: NL Cy Young

DyingQuail — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:30:49 -0000

More photos » by Jeff Chiu - AP

Don't forget to bring a towel.

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For the next few years, this thing might as well just be named the Tim Lincecum Award. If I'm still around doing this in 2020, I can see myself rolling out this post then and marveling at the robotic durability that is Lincecum as he collects on his 13th straight SBN Cy Young. What really scares me, is that I can actually see that happening the more I think about it (if the ganja doesn't get him first...what's a Lincecum article these days without a a pot joke?).

For my balloting in this I went Lincecum and Vazquez at 1-2 based on their xFIP, WAR, tRA, and IP. In all honesty, I can't remember who I put at 3rd. Definitely not Cliff Lee. Definitely not Carpenter. I think it was either Wainwright or Haren (I also can't rule out Jurjens, but if I did that it was just to piss off HLP, who suffered Jurjens' Clemensing by the Braves in fantasy this year), but I wish I just would have given Wandy a courtesy third place ballot. Damn my objectivity.

The lack of an Astro in this table probably doesn't shock many of us, but it's sad none the less. Here's to 2010 and perhaps the appearance of a one Rodriguez, Wandy.

Rk	Player	Team	1st	2nd	3rd	Pts
1	Tim Lincecum	San Francisco Giants	18	13	-	129
2	Chris Carpenter	St. Louis Cardinals	9	4	7	64
3	Adam Wainwright	St. Louis Cardinals	4	4	10	42
4	Javier Vazquez	Atlanta Braves	-	5	7	22
5	Dan Haren	Arizona Diamondbacks	-	3	4	13
6	Ubaldo Jimenez	Colorado Rockies	-	1	1	4
7	Cliff Lee	Philadephia Phillies	-	-	1	1
8	Jair Jurrjens	Atlanta Braves	-	-	1	1

SBN Awards: NL ROY

DyingQuail — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:53:59 -0000

by Tony Tribble - AP

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This was, by far, the most difficult category for me to make my selections and I believe it was the same for HLP. Although we ended up texting out a resolution, I know that we ended up with different picks.

At some point during that insanely depressing text conversation, I realized that I didn't have as firm of grasp of the ROY pulse because there were no Astros with possible hopes of claiming the title. Apathy really got the best of me in this incident. I guess next year we could have Gervacio, Jason Castro, and someone I'm not thinking of at this second.

The fun part of this vote is playing: can you spot the homer-ism? Not that I'm lambasting anyone for it, but there a couple that jumped out at me and made me snicker a little.

Rk	Player	Team	1st	2nd	3rd	Pts
1	Tommy Hanson	Atlanta Braves	9	9	6	78
2	J.A. Happ	Philadelphia Phillies	6	9	7	64
3	Andrew McCutchen	Pittsburgh Pirates	8	3	5	54
4	Chris Coghlan	Florida Marlins	7	5	4	54
5	Dexter Fowler	Colorado Rockies	-	3	1	10
6	Randy Wells	Chicago Cubs	-	-	6	6
7	Garrett Jones	Pittsburgh Pirates	1	-	-	5
8	Casey McGehee	Milwaukee Brewers	-	1	2	5
9	Seth Smith	Colorado Rockies	-	1	-	3

SBN Awards: NL Manager of the Year

DyingQuail — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:24:51 -0000

More photos » by Matt Rourke - AP

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David took a look at the GM's yesterday, so I guess it's fitting that we move to manager's today (ROY to be released at noon).

One of the truly beneficial things about SBN (besides the platform and tech support) is that it's a collection of fans writing for other fans. There's no one who runs a blog that was assigned a team to follow or landed at a blog because they were the one hiring (a la the main stream media). So when it comes time for something like awards' season, we get to tap into the collective passion (and I like to think wisdom, as well). For all of the NL awards this year, each blog was given two votes per category and the general baseball blogs were also given two votes for the NL as well.

For the MOY the year, I imagine we'll come to discover that our results will differ from the main-stream-media's take on the NL skippers. Hopefully, it'll be in a good way.

My take aways:

There are no votes for Cecil Cooper—thank God.
I believe that HLP and I comprise 2/3 of TLR's 1st place votes.
Was I wrong to place TLR ahead of Tracy?
Bud Black and John Russel....?

Rk	Manager	Team	1st	2nd	3rd	Pts
1	Jim Tracy	Colorado Rockies	24	1	2	125
2	Tony LaRussa	St. Louis Cardinals	3	7	10	46
3	Fredi Gonzalez	Florida Marlins	2	6	5	33
4	Joe Torre	Los Angeles Dodgers	-	9	2	29
5	Charlie Manuel	Philadelphia Phillies	-	3	5	14
6	Bruce Bochy	San Francisco Giants	1	1	1	9
7	Bobby Cox	Atlanta Braves	-	1	4	7
8	Bud Black	San Diego Padres	-	1	1	4
9	John Russell	Pittsburgh Pirates	-	1	-	3

Cecil Cooper from take off to landing

DyingQuail — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:03:03 -0000

by Gene J. Puskar - AP

5 months ago: Houston Astros manager Cecil Cooper walks in the dugout during a baseball game against the Pittsburgh Pirates in Pittsburgh Saturday, May 30, 2009. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

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A one-hour plane ride and two torn out pages of the Bill James Handbook, that’s all I have. Perhaps it’s because I’m a grizzled veteran now, but probably because I know that I work best under a deadline (see: 3 AM the ~~night~~ morning before any important paper due in college); whatever the reason for this hare-brained idea, that’s what I’m working with to produce this post.

If you didn’t believe me when I said that I was going to be using the interesting things I’ve stumbled upon in the Bill James Handbook as fodder for 30 or so posts—believe.

Today’s topic: Cecil Cooper’s managerial statistics. The juicy details: after the jump.

James has a couple of pretty useful measures for us to talk about what we got with Coop in 2008 and 2009. Looking over the historical stats for various managers in the book, I noted how it seemed like a lot of these stats were driven by the kinds of teams that the managers could pull the levers with. But here’s the thing, Coop doesn’t really seem to fit that mold at all.

(Since I’m writing this in a bind, I don’t know that I’ll do the greatest job of holding onto my objectivity, but c’est la vie. I’ve now sat through an hour and half of delays and there will always be a part of me that will hold Coop in ire for 2009 being a second half nose-dive. My stasis is not the best for pure, rational objectivity.)

2008: The year that Coop drove us nuts with the running game

The Astros attempted 154 stolen bases, 81 sacrifices, and started the runners moving 112 times. Having loosely observed the various levels of these stats for other managers, this is a pretty high year for wasting outs. The stolen base has a negative run expectancy. A sacrifice obviously uses an out (and let’s be honest, Coop wasn’t using sacrifices in high leverage situations only), and I’ve never read anything on the statistical impact of sending the runners, but I imagine it’s probably not a wonderful statistical move.

Thinking about this team without the aid of FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, or any of my statistical sanctuaries, this wasn’t a shrewd move on Coop’s part. Subjectively, let’s think about the bone headed stolen base attempts we saw that year: Ty Wigginton and Carlos Lee on several occasions. There was, of course, the well-publicized "green light" policy and the neglect of telling Hunter Pence and Michael Bourn that simply being fast doesn’t mean you’ll steal with a lot of success.

These numbers don’t capture their effect. They’re just a count of attempts, but just thinking about the number of attempts with the cogs that were cranking the wheels, it’s not hard to say that this wasn’t the finest piece of utility maximization in the history of managing.

2009: The year that Coop, seemingly, destroyed the bull pen

There are only two numbers I need to give you (four really, but get off my back): 116 and 449 (108 and 488). The first number is the number of times that a reliever was used in consecutive days and the second is the total number of relievers used. The non-parenthetical numbers are 2009’s totals and the parenthetical are 2008.

In twelve less games than he had to work with 2008, Coop increased the number of consecutive days, while using nearly forty less relievers. While this probably isn’t the most damning usage of relief pitchers ever, let’s consider who Coop was working with:

Chris Sampson: Coming off an off-season elbow surgery.
Geoff Geary: Coming off an off-season hip surgery.
Doug Brocail: Coming off a season where he’d just been abused in the 8^th inning all year long. And yes, he was over the age of forty in both instances and had a faulty ticker.
Jose Valverde: Coming off his shredded calf muscle in April.
Relief pitcher X: The guy I should have mentioned but have forgotten as I realize I’m running out of time.

Just like with the running game in 2008, this isn’t to say that Coop definitively killed the Astros bullpen because determining that would take a lot more evidence than I have. Both of these brief blurbs are to point out that Coop had bad tendencies as a manager. The usage pattern in 2009 for our relievers was bone-headed. There’s no other way for me to describe it. During all of our discussions of what helped the Astros out pace their Pythag record in 2008, we all came back to our successful late-inning relievers. The second of 2009: we were trying to plug the links as they sprang up; ultimately, our ship sank.

So what’s the overall point of this (besides the challenge of writing all this between takeoff and landing)? To say that these are the small changes in managerial tactics that I think can hopefully give the Astros a better starting point in 2010. Brad Mills, please take note.

LaTroy Hawkins files for free-agency

DyingQuail — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:36:56 -0000

LaTroy Hawkins files for free-agency

I'm not sure what to make of this.

What should the Astros do with their shoe string budget?

DyingQuail — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:41:38 -0000

More photos » by Nick Wass - AP

Rich Hill is definitely my pick for sexy-under-the-radar reclamation project. He still has a few prime years in his tank and is a major head case, it seems. From we know of Arnsberg, that's right in his wheelhouse.

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The title is somewhat facetious. The Astros are guaranteed to spend around $80 million, as is, heading into 2010, but there should be another $10-15 million to allocate to filling the gaps. So where should Ed Wade and co. be focusing on allocating it?

In my mind, there are few options:

Find someone for 3rd base. Geoff Blum isn't getting any younger and Chris Johnson isn't getting any better at getting on base. Jeff Keppinger was great as a platoon there, but I think we can find a better option. This option could include re-signing Tejada and slotting him at 3rd, but I doubt that happens in the wake of the Blum re-signing. If we really wanted to go for it: Chone Figgins (probably a multi-year deal with at least $7-8 million on the table each year).
Sign LaTroy Hawkins back to have a strong depth for the likely closer by committee situation I can feel building. There are a few former closers who carry the label to which I'm sure Ed Wade is keen, and my Interesting rehab-esque-project of the bunch is Billy Wagner.
Sign a top-teir reclamation project for Arnsberg to get behind. Ben Sheets or Justin Duchscherer are probably the cream of that crop. Both are coming off years where they were DLed and in all honesty I don't know the exact status of either of the two, but if they could log 100-120IP for us in 2010 just think of the marginal gain. That's replacing Hampton or Ortiz' production for probably not a whole lot more in guaranteed money. Neither of those two are looking for multi-year deals. Instead, they're looking for a chance to audition for a year and then jump into the big deals they seemed primed for in 2008. My under the radar choice for Arnsberg to ply his trade with: Rich Hill (see photo caption for explanation...for the one other than LHP hominid).
Convince Drayton McLane that if he wants a decent on-field product, he's probably going to accept spending in the red. I don't think this is a hard argument to win. There's little to no fan excitement with this team—especially after a 10-22 last month-ish of the season. Unemployment is still up and while other macro-economic indicators are improved, they're not game changing. The odds that attendance collapses further if Drayton doesn't do something to generate excitement is roughly the equivalent of the odds that Drew Brees beats Jake Delhomme in TD passes this season. So the options Drayton has seem to be: lose money by nothing nothing, or spend just a little bit more money and increase your odds that you don't lose revenue.

If four were to happen, I could easily see us accomplish two and three. But I don't know how many different ways you can combine the options with the shoe string budget that rounds out payroll. Thus, the crux of our offseason seems to be what will the Astros brass deem our most important short coming as a baseball club. My hope is that they realize they likely have to pay a lot of attention to option three.

My in a perfect world of realitic limitations off season goes like this:

Rich Hill signs for no more than $3 million.
Hawkins re-signed, or some equivalent former closer for no more than $5 million. Wagner would be a sexy choice.
Bobby Crosby gets a crack at 3rd base for $5-6 million.

That's $13-14 million and I think it plugs some major holes. While still leaving some wiggle room for our "that guy still plays baseball?" corps of bench guys that Ed Wade plucks from the nether-regions of baseball.

Those are just my ideas, though. What say you?

Baseball is over: Face the unfathomable sadness

DyingQuail — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:17:07 -0000

Baseball is over: Face the unfathomable sadness

There really might not be a better clip of television in existence. My opinion.

Some thoughts on the Astros efficiency in 2009

DyingQuail — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:21:09 -0000

***Now featuring an attempted answer by me***

What would your response be if I told you that in 2009, there was only one team that was more efficient in MLB than the Astros? Since that was rhetorical, I'll answer what I assume: WTF?!

But it's true. Kind of. More like, sort of—actually.

According to the Bill James Handbook—which the kind folks at Acta Sports sent my way—I've had the opportunity to mull over the surplus of entertaining stats, charts, tables, and graphs that pack that pages of the Handbook (they'll likely be the fodder for about three months worth of posting...just warning you). While I've come across a couple of truly interesting things, the team efficiency scores have had me scratching my head for a few days now.

James' Team Efficiency measure is a combination of a couple different scaled scores based on hitting efficiency (basically our RC's created compared to RS), pitching efficiency (basically our PRC compared to RA), and our Pythag-differential. To quote James himself on this measure:

Teams bounce up and down these rankings, and there is a lot of pure luck which is included under the heading "efficiency" (10).

So basically it's this massive aggregator of macro-data that requires sifting through. This works well for us because we're just the people do that for the Astros.

Here's how the separate efficiency scores that comprise team efficiency played out (100 is average):

Hitting Efficiency: 96
Pitching Efficiency: 101
Runs Efficiency: 111
Overall Efficiency: 106

What's crazy to note, and James actually notes it, is that given our various efficiencies, the Astros were expected to garner 70 wins. That Nationals, were also expected to garner 70 wins by this measure. The difference between those two teams? Their run efficiency. The Nats out paced us by a ton in Hitting Efficiency, and were just behind us in Pitching Efficiency (I'm cursing myself for capitalizing the efficiencies to start with).

Before we go any further, I understand that the aggregate efficiency stat likely suffers from a lack of attention to too wide of margins of error and lack of attention to significant figures. But what's fascinating is that somehow the Astros have managed to outpace what they should have accomplished. Yes, 2009 wasn't a great finish like 2008, but the Astros still managed to keep their heads well above water.

My first guess at how we managed to this is that there are probably some subtle loopholes in these measures because it's difficult to measure the interactions between events like hits, doubles, triples, home runs, strikeouts, walks, GIDP, SF, etc. Further, base running is difficult to measure, too. Using BPro EqBR, the Astros were 13th in base running and pretty much broke even on the base-paths, which is an accomplishment in and of itself.

Obviously, as we've hashed out many times before, prevailing in close games helps a team outpace their Pythag record, but I don't think we were as stellar of a close game team as were in 2008. Yet, only the Mariners had a better Run Efficiency than we did in 2009.

So what was it about this team in 2009 that mad them the most efficient team in the National League and the second most efficient team in baseball (the Angels were first)? Do we give credit to the small ball tactics of Cooper? The speed of Bourn? Or is it some combination of factors that doesn't immediately jump out at us? Or do we just chock it up blind luck?

We've got all day. Let's see what we can come up with.

********************

Since I left the questions open-eneded and unanswered, I'll start.

The Astros seemed to be a team that once in a favorable position, they capitalized. Looking at their BR batting splits, there's a big trend in both the positioning of runners, and the counts the Astros reached, that allowed them to make the most of their meager offensive output overall. Their best OPS in terms of bases occupied came with a man on second (.879) and their best count OPS was the 3-0 count and the 3-1 count at 2.184 and 1.364 respectively (yes, those should probably always be the best counts, but 2.184—that's impressive).

Do we call it clutch, or luck? Or do we just call it statistical probabilities, since they seemed to perform favorable with the odds were stacked for them?

Do you think Joe Blanton feels bad that CC Sabathia, on three days rest, is better than he is on...

DyingQuail — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:40:20 -0000

Do you think Joe Blanton feels bad that CC Sabathia, on three days rest, is better than he is on full rest?

I asked this question to a few people early, via sms, and I liked the responses. Let's see what we can, collectively, come up with.