More photos » by Al Behrman - AP

With his new extension, Scott Rolen will be manning the hot corner for the next three years...provided he can stay healthy.

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Overall reaction seems positive in the news thread.  I wanted to run the numbers, though, just to see.

What the Reds are Paying:

Assuming the signing bonus is paid evenly over the three years ($1.7M/yr), and making some guesstimates about current and future WAR/$ exchange rates, the Reds are paying:

$7.7 M in 2010 @ $4.5 M/WAR = 1.7 WAR
$8.2 M in 2011 @ $4.7 M/WAR = 1.7 WAR
$8.2 M in 2012 @ $5.0 M/WAR = 1.6 WAR
Total contract value: 5 WAR over life of contract.

How Rolen Projects:

Offense:  I averaged the CHONE and ZiPS projections for Rolen in 2010.  That gives this projection:  463 PA's (66% playing time), 0.277/0.352/0.432 slash line, 11 HR, 0.347 wOBA, 4.8 RAA after park adjustments = 0.51 WAR.  An aging but still effective hitter, at least when he's in the lineup.

Fielding: both Jeff Zimmerman's UZR/150 projections as well as CHONE's fielding projections have Rolen at 7 RAA per season.  Fan Scouting Report had him at +18 runs last season (weighted average of his totals from TOR and CIN fans).  Average of the three approaches puts him at 10.6 runs per season.  Given the playing time estimates above, that projects him at 7 RAA = 0.75 WAR.  Still an excellent defensive 3B.

Position Adjustment: +0.25 per full season for 3B, prorates to +0.17 WAR given the playing time estimates.

Replacement level: 2 WAR/season in the NL, which prorates to 1.3 WAR given the playing time estimates.

Overall, assuming 0.5 win/yr aging:

2010: 0.51 + 0.75 + 0.17 + 1.3 = 2.7 WAR
2011: 2.2 WAR
2012: 1.7 WAR
Total expected: 6.6 WAR

Given his age and injury history, you can argue that we should use slightly higher aging rates than this.  You can also argue that free agent salaries are actually coming in lower than $4.5 M per WAR this year (though I think it's too early to make that call).  Nevertheless, I think it's fair to say that this deal is, at WORST, a market-even deal....and most likely represents a nice little surplus.  Congrats to the Reds on a nice deal.

Update 12/20/09: I noticed an error in how I was applying a park correction to his offensive projection.  This has been fixed above.  It did not change the conclusions, but did pull 0.2 WAR/season off of his projections.  I apologize for being a dork.

I teach at a small university, and this spring I'm going to be teaching a class on baseball.  Here's the description I submitted this fall:

Course Title: The Science of Baseball

Description: Perhaps no other sport relies as much on tradition, hearsay, and loud opinion as baseball. But what is gained (or lost) when these claims are examined using a scientific approach? How do hitters watch the ball when it moves faster than human eyes can track? Do clutch hitters exist? Do steroids really help performance, and if not (or even if so) should they be banned? Why does a MLB bench player earn 10 times more money than a teacher? We will discuss these and other questions in light of studies from the exercise physiology, psychology, economics, and "sabermetrics" literature.

So, it's not a "sabermetric" class per se.  But a big part of what we're going to do will be sabermetrics.

Given that next semester starts in a month and, beyond this description, I basically haven't started prepping the class, it's time to start putting together a battle plan.  And I thought this might be where you folks could help. 

More below the jump.

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The induction class for the 2009 Hall of Fame will be announced on January 6th.  While Erik already looked at the most attractive new candiates for the Hall of Fame, I thought I'd take a tour through most of the rest of the ballot.  Like Erik, I'll be using a mainstay graphical tool here at BtB, the WAR graph.  The Excel template I threw together to make these figures can be found here.

In all graphs, we're plotting Rally's WAR for individual seasons ranked best to worst.   The "HoF Zone" is a range that spans from the average Hall of Famer (specific to either pitchers or hitters) down to the 20th percentile Hall of Famer.  Thanks to Sky Kalkman (the inventor), Jeff Zimmerman, Tom Tango, and Dave Studeman for driving the development of this graphical approach.

Let's start with pitchers, because there aren't as many on the ballot and the story is pretty straightforward.  

There is absolutely no excuse for Blyleven to not receive unanimous support for the Hall.  But you knew that.

Kevin Appier is the surprise to me, though.  He's gotten very little attention in his first year of eligibility, but his 10 best seasons seem extremely worth of hall of fame consideration.  In fact, his peak three years rate as above-average compared to hall of fame pitchers.  He deserves consideration.

Jack Morris is the guy who will probably get a lot more attention than Appier.  He's close, but at best, he's in the 15th percentile or so of Hall of Famers.  Given all of the other eligible candidates who were much better that this, I tend to think that this isn't good enough.

Pat Hentgen had one really nice season.  Lee Smith was a closer...I'm not sure if this is the best way to evaluate a closer, but it certainly doesn't make him impressive.  Mike Jackson's line, not shown, is similar to Smith's.

Position players are below the jump

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I received this question in an e-mail today.

I manage and play on a men’s adult baseball team, basically a bunch of professors and grad students, so it’s not elite competition or anything.

We have two starting pitchers, one is a strikeout machine, very hard thrower, and when they make contact on him, it’s usually a fly ball (he’s fastball-change-curve). The other pitcher is a contact pitcher, throws five different pitches and variations on them (fastball-change-curve-splitfinger-knuckleball), and gets a large number of ground balls. The first essentially has an ERA roughly equal to his runs allowed, or what one would say is normal. The second pitcher, while having a lower ERA, gives up an inordinate number of unearned runs (he also doesn’t hold runners very well)—he puts more balls in play, and therefore there are a lot more chances for errors. The goal here is to cut down on unearned runs, if such a thing is possible.

The infield is composed (at present):

1B: poor range on ground balls and positioning, decent arm, excellent receiver of thrown balls at 1^st (he’s very athletic, just doesn’t move or position well on batted balls, particularly grounders)

2B: weaker (though not terrible) arm, not as much range as the SS and 3B. He’s also the oldest guy on the team, very athletic for his age, but he is in his 40’s. He gets to balls, just takes a long route to do so and often can’t do much with them when he does get there.

SS: good arm, good range, probably one of the best SS in the league.

3B: rocket arm, strongest on the team, lightning quick reflexes, good range, and probably it would be a push between him and the regular SS – he plays 3B because he joined the team after the SS (this is old-men baseball!, seniority comes into play)

If you were managing this team, would you shift the players in that infield according to the pitcher on the mound (with our strikeout pitcher, I think I’d keep things as they are)? Is there a greater benefit with a ground ball pitcher on the mound to having the best two defenders (the current SS and 3B) up the middle, and moving the current 2B to 3B? We would lose the sure-fire out on any ground ball at 3B, as well as the line drive outs that would go for extra bases otherwise with our current 3B’s arm and glove, but gain a more rangy defender up the middle who is the equivalent of a SS at 2B.

Ladies and gentleman, that's your question.  What are your answers?  

I'll post my response (for whatever they're worth) later today in the comments.

To recap thus far, 2009 saw the offense drop considerably, the fielding improve dramatically, with a net effect being that the 2009 position players were probably at least as good, if not slightly better than the 2008 Reds squad of position players.

What about the 2009 pitchers?  Since the fate of a pitcher in the boxscore is directly tied to the fielders playing behind him, we need to adjust for fielders.  Here are three ways of doing that, and how the last several years of Reds pitchers have fared using each approach:

Here's what is shown above:

• UZR-adj Runs Allowed is straight-up runs allowed (park adjusted), with UZR-based team fielding factored out.  For example, this year, UZR rates the Reds as a +53 fielding team.  So, I added 53 runs to the runs allowed total to "simulate" what would have happened with an average-fielding team.
• FIP-based runs allowed uses team FIP to estimate runs allowed per game, and then extrapolates to the full season.  FIP stands for "fielding independent runs," and uses K, BB, HBP, and HR rates to estimate runs allowed independent of a teams' fielders or context.  I park-adjusted K, BB, HBP, and HR rates.
• tRA-based runs allowed is straight-up pRAA from statcorner, summed for starters and relievers.  It is based on tRA, which is billed as a sort of "FIP on steroids."  It uses K, BB, and all batted ball rates (LD, FB, GB, HR/FB, all park adjusted) to estimate runs allowed in a manner that again should be independent of fielders or context.  I am unclear if pRAA is based on tRA or tRA* (tRA* is the regressed version).

As you can see, the UZR-adjusted number is more volatile, which makes sense given that it's based on actual runs allowed and thus is subject to all kinds of "luck" (not to mention the volatility of a fielding stat!).  The FIP and tRA stats, on the other hand, basically parallel each other, with pRAA being consistently more negative about the team than FIP.  These two stats do largely the same thing (though with somewhat different input data and methods), and in my experience are usually within spitting distance of each other.  So while I'm not surprised to see them running parallel, I am surprised to see such a large quantitative difference between them in RAA.  It seems to me, at least over the last four years, that the "real" data (UZR-adjusted runs allowed) have more closely matched FIP, which makes me more inclined to believe FIP.  Maybe pRAA is using the wrong baseline (I'm comparing to all NL pitchers), or is more severe in its park adjustments?  (fwiw, while I still like tRA, I am much less enamored with it--and much less ready to ditch FIP--than I was, say, 6 months ago.  This is just the latest reason).

Anyway, looking at each line individually, you can see that all three statistics point to the same thing: pitching fell off a bit this year.  And, if you look at just the FIP or tRA lines, it was in its worst state since Bronson Arroyo's arrival in 2006.  What happened?  Obviously, the Volquez injury was huge.  But that's not the only story here.  Player by player breakdowns below the jump.

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More photos » by Al Behrman - AP

Drew Stubbs is very good at running down baseballs.

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We linked to Jeff Zimmerman's UZR projections a few weeks back, but here are CHONE's fielding projections.  Even though they use a less granular measure (TotalZone instead of UZR), the thing that makes these unique is that they involve both major and minor league data.  That makes them MUCH more reliable for young players with little or no major league experience.  They also include catching stats, which I like.

Here are your Reds, with numbers given in runs per season compared to their position:

C Hanigan +7
C Hernandez -1

1B Votto +0

2B Phillips -3

3B Rolen +7

SS Janish +5
SS Cozart +2
SS Valaika -18

CF Stubbs +11
CF Taveras +7
CF Heisey +3

OF Bruce +2
OF Gomes -6
OF Dickerson +9
OF Balentien +5
OF Frazier +1
OF Dorn -2

Only one that seems drastically off the mark is Phillips, but for some reason the CHONE system seems to be consistently very tough on Phillips, both on offense and defense.  Interesting ratings on Heisey, Balentien, Valaika, and of course, our man Mr. Stubbs.

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As demonstrated in the opening article, the 2009 Reds fielding was a massive improvement over the 2008 team fielding.  Like we did with the offense, lets go position by position:

The above plot is strictly based on UZR data (except for catchers, which use "my" catching stats based on sb/cs/pb/wp/e rates).  But you can see that there was a small dropoff in both Votto's and Phillips' fielding scores, but nice upticks at catcher, 3B, and CF....and GARGANTUAN improvements at shortstop, left field, and right field.  In each case, a massively sub-par fielder (Keppinger, Dunn, and Griffey) at each position was replaced with one or more well above-average fielders.  

What does this do to overall value?  Here are batting above average + fielding above average totals for each position:

Granted, this is strictly using UZR data.  But wow--we're seeing net improvements at virtually every position.  The only dropoff was 3B.  We're even seeing improvements in LF, where the Reds essentially traded an offensive juggernaut in Dunn for players who could actually catch the ball.  I think if Dunn had played the entire 2008 season with the Reds, those bars would be close to equal.  That's pretty amazing.  Despite the dropoff in offense, at least by these measures, the move to a fielding-oriented team over the past year really did work: the 2009 squad of position players was better than the 2008 squad, almost across the board.  This is not what I expected to see when I started this.

Player by player breakdowns follow below the jump

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A late season surge helped prevent a historically bad offense, but nonetheless, relative to average, the Reds fell off 26 runs in 2009 to 71 runs below average (after park adjustments).  It was the worst Reds offense since the 1997 team (95 runs below average).  On a team level, where did this offensive dropoff come from?  Let's go position-by-position:

Notes: Batting runs are the "Batting" stat from fangraphs, which are park-adjusted for us, and include all players at each position on the '08 and '09 Reds teams.  Players playing multiple positions had their offenses pro-rated based on innings played at each position.  

The Reds had a nice uptick at 1B and 2B thanks to improved offensive seasons by both Votto and Phillips.  But there were major dropoffs in offense at 3B, SS, and LF.  3B was largely due to the massive underperformance of (and injury to) Encarnacion and subsequent powerless debut by Scott Rolen.  At SS and LF, the story is a bit more nuanced.  The Reds had guys who were essentially playing out of position at those positions in 2008 (Dunn, Hairston, Keppinger), but in 2009 were replaced by guys who didn't hit as well but contributed significantly better fielding (Janish, Dickerson, etc).  Also, given how much time Paul Bako got in 2008, I was surprised to not see better offense from our catchers.  But then I looked again at the 2009 catchers' hitting stats and it all made sense again.  More on the individual players below.

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Let's start by comparing this year's team to the other Reds teams of the '00's:

Blue line is runs scored above average, red line is runs allowed "above" average (positive = good), and the green line is overall runs above average (RSAA + RAAA).  The latter stat will track pythagorean W% very closely.  All data are park adjusted using Patriot's 5-year regressed park factors.

We all know this, but the last good Reds team was Griffey's first year and Jack McKeon's last.  After that, Bowden's ragtag assemblages stopped working, and the Reds bottomed out in 2003-2004.  A combination of Dan O'Brien, Wayne Krivsky, and Walt Jocketty oversaw the 2004-2009 teams, which have tended to come in somewhere around 55 runs below average (expected 74 wins or so).  

What's fascinating to me about these teams over the last five years is that they've gone about posting their marginally below-average records in such different ways.  The 2005 team was, by a massive margin, the most unbalanced team in Reds history in terms of runs scored and runs allowed (next closest were the 1944 & 1976 Reds teams, but the disparity of the 2005 team was 30% larger).  The defense (pitching + fielding) made a huge comeback in 2006 with Arroyo's fluky season and one of Harang's best, but the spectacular 2005 offense largely evaporated, especially over the last two months of the year.  

2007 saw the offense rebound but the defense slide. But over 2008 and now 2009, we've seen a steady shift in a team that is becoming more focused on pitching and fielding, and less on offense.  2009's team ultimately had the best run prevention of any team since 2000.  What's that?  You don't think of the 2000 club as a team with great pitching & fielding?  I didn't either.  But NL teams scored 5.0 runs per game that year compared to 4.4 runs per game this year.  So, you can more or less subtract a half-run from each pitcher's ERA in 2000 to compare them to this year's run environment.  It was a different world!

2009 Season breakdown begins after the jump.

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