SB Nation User Blog: Evan

Election Projection Thread

Evan — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:58:37 -0000

We can do this, right? The election considered as sport, not as politics?

Take a stab at predicting the results in the following categories:

1. Electoral vote

2. Popular vote, in percentages

3. Senate breakdown (currently 49-49-2)

4. House breakdown (currently 235-199 with one vacant seat)

Tiebreaker: total number of votes cast

Everyone chip in 100 McCovey Bucks, Lyle will tally up the results,* and whoever comes closest scoops the pot.

*no he won't

Six-man rotation

Evan — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 18:38:26 -0000

Under discussion.

Anybody like this idea, or is it just the Giants being short-sighted and indecisive again? Does the body really need five full days of recuperation between games? If you want to "protect the young arms," isn't it better to make sure they never pitch when they're tired (i.e., minimize the number of pitches at any one time) rather than make sure they pitch less frequently?

In a just world Noah Lowry would go the pen till he proves he's better than one of the pitchers who's currently in the rotation, but we all know by now that the Giants don't make decisions that way.

Last!

Evan — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 23:02:56 -0000

Farewell, old McCC! I pour out a shot of Basil Hayden for you. The new site will never replace you in our hearts.

(sniff)

Guess the Comparable Pitcher!

Evan — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 20:28:58 -0000

The 2008 Pecotas are starting to come out. They're ugly. You could have guessed that.

But can you guess which current Giants pitcher or prospect has one of the following pitchers as one of his top four comps? Please, no wagering.

Okay, wagering. What do I care.

Dave Stewart
Tug McGraw
Vinegar Bend Mizell
Darren Dreifort
Jung Bong
Paul Spoljaric, Yorkis Perez, Arnold Earley, Mickey Mahler*
Felix Rodriguez
Damian Moss
Antonio Alfonseca
Phil Hughes, Matt Cain, Roy Halladay

* included only because this is the best collection of names ever.

The Case for Andruw Jones

Evan — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 16:51:53 -0000

I know, I know ... we should punt 2008, think about the long term, and play the kids. But playing the kids isn't going to be enough. This team is starved for talent and should be looking to bring in good players anywhere they can be found.

Signing a high-priced free agent on the wrong side of thirty makes sense to me only under the following conditions:

a) He has some marquee value.
b) He's not horrifically overpriced.
c) He fills an immediate need for the Giants, and thus can help make the next couple of years, which look to be bleak, a little more respectable.
d) He projects to still be a productive player two or three years down the road, when we might reasonably hope to have a contending team again.

Andruw Jones meets all four conditions, I think.

a) He's a former MVP, a perennial gold glove winner, and is in the postseason every year. That should make him famous enough to put butts in seats.

b) He is expected to sign for 5 years/$80 million, maybe less. I'll get into the math later, but as I see it this is substantially below the current free-agent market rates.

c) By "immediate need," I mean "someone to hit home runs." But though it may sound crazy, center field is a need as well. Although Sabean has been pathologically collecting center fielders , none of them is particularly good. Rajai Davis looks like a fine fielder but a marginal hitter. Fred Lewis is badly stretched at the position and can't hit lefties; the best role for him is as a platoon player in a corner. Roberts and Ortmeier obviously aren't solutions. Our best CF is Randy Winn, but he's not a good defensive player in center; at 33, he's probably headed downhill; and moreover, he's one of very few veterans on the roster who should have enough trade value to bring back a decent prospect.

d) Jones is 30, turning 31 early next season. He's one of the most durable players in the game, having been a regular for ten years and logging at least 154 games every single year. As a fielder, he's still exceptional. As a hitter, he's been up and down over the years, but generally quite good. His rotten 2007 is alarming -- but that rotten season is exactly what makes him affordable. I'm confident that that bad season was a fluke and that he'll be hitting .260 with a decent OBP and 30+ home runs for the next several years.

In 2007, Jones's component stats -- strikeout rate, walk rate, GB/LD/FB percentages -- were in their usual range, but the results weren't there. The first problem is that his batting average on balls in play was quite low, 30 points off his career level. This isn't really a concern; it will almost certainly come back up next year and he'll hit in the .260s again.

The other problem with his 2007 is more worrisome: he lost a lot of power. Specifically, although he was hitting as many fly balls as usual, his home run per fly ball rate dropped sharply, from an
established level of 21.1% down to 13.4%.

This is bad, but there's no particular reason to believe that it represents a real change in his ability. Spikes happen. Jim Thome's hr/fb rate took an even more precipitous dive in 2005; the next year, it was back in its normal range. Carlos Beltran had a bad season that year as well; after posting hr/fb rates of 17.6, 17.9, and 17.6, in 2005 he dropped to 8.8. The next year, he was at 21.1. ARod's hr/fb rates over the last five years have gone 25, 19, 26, 20, 27.

There is a potential physical explanation for Andruw's bad year: On May 27, he hyperextended his elbow making a catch, and it bothered him the rest of the season. We can also speculate that since he was in a well-hyped contract year, he was putting too much pressure on himself. There's no way to know exactly, but it seems far more likely that his bad season was a fluke than that a 30-year-old with a clean injury record and tons of natural talent suddenly went off the cliff and will no longer be the same player.

During his career -- including his early years as a part-timer, his awful 2007, everything -- Jones has averaged .263/.342/.497, creating 5.86 runs per 27 outs. Over the course of 150 games, that's 98 runs. Replacement level these days is in the neighborhood of 60-65 runs. So Jones is 35 runs better than replacement with the bat.

With the glove, he's not quite the marvel he once was, but he's still good. The Fielding Bible +/- system ranks him as the very best center fielder in the game, saving 20 runs or more above the level of the average CF. However, the other state-of-the-art defensive measurement, UZR, has him as almost exactly average. I don't know which of these is more correct (though I suspect it's the first one), but it seems reasonable to split the difference and call him 10 runs better than
average.

Altogether, then, that's at least 45 runs better than replacement level, or 4.5 wins. Per Tango's salary
calculator, a fun little tool that factors in both inflation and expected decline in order to give a crude guess at a player's fair-market value, Jones could thus expect to receive $17-$19 million per season: four years for $75 million, five for $91, six for $106, in there somewhere. But because GMs overrate the importance of the most recent season, he's not going to get it.

The lesson of the Detroit Tigers' post-2003 turnaround is that it's not enough to draft & develop well or scoop up free talent or make sharp trades or sign expensive free agents. If you want to get from bad to good in a hurry, you have to do all of them at once.

This is one of the very rare opportunities to get a star free agent at a relative discount, and Sabean should go after it.

Mischegas

Evan — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 01:15:30 -0000

So Vinnie Chulk is going on the bereavement list for a few days (condolences, Vinnie) and lefty Pat Misch is getting called up to take his place.

I'm moderately excited. Misch was a marginal prospect as a starter, but he's really found himself this year in the Fresno bullpen: 2.03 era, 16bb/62k in 57 innings. And he's a ground-ball machine, with a go/ao ratio of 1.88. Here's hoping Sabean can find a taker for Steve Kline and Misch is up to stay.

Nu?

Best defense in baseball?

Evan — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 14:29:10 -0000

So far this year, the Giants have a Defensive Efficiency Ratio (that's the percentage of batted balls turned into outs) of .732, best in the National League and second to the White Sox overall. By the plus/minus system, the Giants' fielders have made 22 outs above average, best in baseball.

(link to Hardball Times team stats)

Can they keep it up? Probably not. For one thing, the best-fielding team last year, San Diego, finished with 91 outs above average and a DER of .703; the Giants are way ahead of that pace. For another, they've been playing three regulars (Feliz, Winn, and Aurilia at first) who have good gloves but don't really hit enough for their positions, and Bochy is already shaking that up in search of more runs.

But still, this was a good defense last year and it looks to be a lot better this year. Not bad for a bunch of old guys.

Building a Better Lineup

Evan — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 23:35:14 -0000

Dear Bruce,

Two games, two identical lineups. Who do you think you are, Dusty Baker? Since you seem to be still goofing around with your new roster (Niekro against Peavy! Alfonzo against Hoffman! You kidder, you!), I thought I'd give you a few tips for filling out the lineup card tonight.

First, don't listen to what anybody says -- it doesn't much matter whether Bonds hits third or fourth, or that Ray Durham isn't a classic cleanup hitter. What you need to worry about is that for the last two nights you've had a solid 1-4 and then a horrid string of punchless free-swingers. Check out the numbers vs righties (2004-06) for your 5/6/7 hitters:

.268 .320 .411
.260 .300 .384
.254 .288 .441

That's ugly. Really ugly. In essence, you're following your cleanup hitter with three Pedro Felizes in a row. Plus, don't you want to break these guys up so it's harder for the opposing manager to choose a reliever in the late innings?

What to do? Two quick fixes:

Move Winn up. Against right-handers, Winn and Durham are basically indistinguishable: .299 .358 .463 vs .277 .352 .462. Batting one of them cleanup while the other hits eighth is just silly. Even if you do think it's kind of cool when the number eight hitter is speedy.
Get Klesko in the lineup. I've been pessimistic about Klesko and I still am, but with this roster, there's no choice but to play him every day against RHPs and see what happens. Maybe he can come back and maybe he can't, but there's really nothing to lose, because your alternatives (Aurilia and Feliz) can't hit right-handers at all.

Now, against lefties, you have a different set of problems. Two of the guys I was complaining about absolutely rake against lefties:

Aurilia: .294 .362 .505
Molina: .340 .373 .566

Not only that, but little Ray really is a legit cleanup hitter against lefties:

Durham: .325 .386 .552

Follow Bonds with those three guys and you're going to light up the scoreboard like a pinball machine. Unfortunately, you have to sit down your leadoff man. Don't get fancy; just let Todd Linden hit leadoff against lefties. I know, I know, he's big and not particularly fast, so he doesn't look like a leadoff man; but he'll get on base more often than anyone else you have for the job. (Too bad about Jason Ellison, though -- would've been fun to see whether he was really a .320 .369 .476 hitter against lefties.)

So, to recap:

vs. righthanders
Roberts
Vizquel
Bonds
Durham
Klesko
Winn
Molina
Aurilia or Feliz

vs. lefthanders
Linden
Vizquel
Bonds
Durham
Molina
Aurilia
Winn
Feliz

Give it a try. You'll thank me later. You're on your own with that bullpen, though.

PECOTA time

Evan — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 19:09:10 -0000

Baseball Prospectus's 2007 projections are out. At a glance, the hitter projections are very encouraging, the pitcher projections (which are much less reliable) not so much.

Quick summary:

Zito: 4.22 ERA

big comeback from Randy Winn

substantial power dropoff from Molina

Durham holds on to most of his improvement

Linden's the third best hitter on the team

Pedro Feliz (just to spite us!) has a career year

The real jawdroppers are the low-level prospect projections, which are so good that I wonder whether there was a glitch of some kind. Try these on for size:

Ben Copeland: .274/.333/.412

Emmanuel Burris: .281/.331/.344

Antoan Richardson: .289/.348/.385

Frandsen, Lewis & Schierholtz look good as well.