This was a fairly disappointing loss. The Rays were facing off against Drew Smyly, in his major league debut, sending Jeff Niemann to the mound in his season debut. In the end, the offense's inability to drive in runs and the relief pitching's inability to keep the game close led to the Rays scoring fewer runs than their opposition, resulting in a loss and knocking them down to 4-2 on the season.

Both starting pitchers were fairly effective through 4 innings. Jeff Niemann was flat out dominant during this stretch. He struck out 4 hitters (including Miguel Cabrera twice) and had a 50% ground ball rate, allowing just a pair of base runners on weak hits and stifling the Tiger offense. The Rays continually mounted threats, including a bases loaded no out situation in the first, and runners in scoring position in the 3rd and 4th, but couldn't GTMI, with the only run coming off of another home run from Carlos Pena.

The fifth inning would prove to be the Rays and Niemann's undoing. Despite notching a pair of strikeouts, Niemann surrendered two walks and two hits, which led to three Tigers runs scoring, giving them a lead they would not surrender. That would be it for Niemann, because although he still appeared to be effective in this inning, by its end he reached 102 pitches.

The Rays again mounted a threat against the Tigers bullpen in the seventh inning, as a Longoria RBI single led to two men on with nobody out, and the Rays within 1 run. Jeff Keppinger lined into a double play in what resulted in a turning point in the game. After this, the Rays were never even close.

The Rays bullpen pitched rather poorly as well. JP Howell pitched a 1-2-3 6th inning, certainly a positive sign. This would be followed by the tandem of Wade Davis and Jake McGee surrendering two runs (Davis allowing the base runners and McGee allowing them to score), and Joel Peralta surrendering a pair of runs on a single, triple, and wild pitch. Obviously this is not what Rays fans want to see.

The Rays will head to Boston tomorrow to kick off a four game series. Although losing the series in Detroit is not what anyone had in mind, the win yesterday against Verlander allows the Rays to save some face and maintain their standing at the top of the scoreboard. Hopefully the boys bring their A-game in the series in Fenway.

Notes:

• JP Howell owes his perfect inning to Matt Joyce, who, as Brian Anderson would put it, made a "right on the money" throw to nab Delmon Young trying to convert his hit into a double.
• Carlos Pena took a pitch to the wrist area in the 5th inning. Although he appeared to be fine, I'd rather he never take a pitch there again, particularly with him on such a hot streak (which he extended today, going 4-5 with a home run).
• Overall, today the Rays appeared to be victims of bad luck as much as anything else. They only scored 1 of their 12 base runners (that too on a home run), with untimely strikeouts and a line out into a double play. The pitching kept the ball out of the stands, recorded 8 punchouts, and only surrendered a pair of walks.

Although the season preview series has looked at all members of the Rays active roster, there's one other thing that should be considered when looking forward to the start of the year. As the title to this article suggests, the Rays schedule in the first month could well serve as a knife to the back. Take a look at the series lying ahead:

4/6-4/8 vs NYY

4/10-4/12 @ DET

4/13-4/16 @ BOS

4/17-4/19 @ TOR

4/20-4/22 vs MIN

4/24-4/26 vs LAA

4/27-4/29 vs TEX

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When the Rays signed Kyle Farnsworth last off-season (a story that was broken by DRaysBay), reactions were mixed. Dave Cameron thought the move was a solid signing, while others such as Cork Gaines thought the move was god-awful. In the end, the deal was a fantastic move. Not only did the Rays get Farnsworth's high-quality production for $3.3M last season, but they also got to keep him this year for a piddling additional $2M via team option, well below what he would've gotten on the market.

In looking to project Farnsworth's 2012, it's only logical to examine his 2011 for clues as to what we might expect. It seems reasonable to expect that Farnsworth's role with the 2012 Rays will be similar to what his 2011 role was: the textbook closer, who comes in to rack up saves and to pitch in tied home games going into extras. Farnsworth superficially excelled in said role, putting up an ERA of 2.18 (8th in the AL for relievers). His DIPS were less elite, with a FIP and xFIP of roughly 3.20. Nevertheless, this is still quite good, particularly when placed in Tropicana Field in front of the Rays defense.

Farnsworth's 2011 contained the same transformation that a bevy of other relievers have underwent upon joining the Rays. Just like Rafael Soriano, Randy Choate, Lance Cormier (in his first season at least), and Brian Shouse before him, Farnsworth displayed a concomittant decrease in both his strikeout and walk rates, allowing more of his at bats to end with balls in play, resulting in an overall improvement in peripherals. Unlike the other relievers, however, Farnsworth also underwent a tremendous transformation in his batted ball data.

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With Spring Training coming up and the opportunity to write about 2011's games shrinking, I figured it would be a good idea to churn out all the ideas I had for retrospective pieces. Here, we'll look back at the ten most detrimental plate appearances of the previous season, as determined by WPA (courtesy of Fangraphs).

For those of you unfamiliar with WPA, it's pretty much the best stat available for retrospective analysis of how much a plate appearance contributed to a team's chance of winning. It looks at the odds of a team winning before an at bat based on the run/base state, and then calculates it afterward, attributing the difference to the hitter and pitcher. For example, in a 1-0 game in the bottom of the 9th, nobody out, the winning team has a .813 chance of winning. If the leadoff hitter hits a home run, the team that was leading now has a .340 chance of winning. The hitter is credited with a WPA of +.473, while the pitcher receives a WPA of -.473.

WPA is not perfect. The Rays odds of winning are obviously very different even if the base runners and outs are the same if they're facing Scott Proctor in Yankee Stadium, or if they're facing Mariano Rivera in the Trop. Still, WPA is about as good as it gets. We'll look at the 5 worst offensive plays of last season after the jump. Conspicuously absent from the list (and the bottom 10 plays of the year) are Kelly Shoppach, Desmond Jennings, BJ Upton, Johnny Damon, Matt Joyce, and, surprisingly, Reid Brignac. Even if Brignac's bat gradually bled the Rays chance of winning dry game after game, at least he can say that he never ruined a game in one fell swoop.

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In the same vein as this and this, I've done early napkin projections for the big 3 of the AL East. I opted to not project bullpens at all, given how volatile relievers are, and I know the bench projections are somewhat lazy. They're fairly conservative predictions, but even though some players may slightly over-perform the predicted numbers, a few will drastically underperform them (due to injury, or general ineffectiveness), so for teams as a whole, they should be relatively accurate. Some random notes after the jump.

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I've come up with a new, extremely complex statistic that I think will revolutionize baseball.

Let me go over how to calculate this statistic. Bear with me for a moment folks because it gets a little messy. First, you look at all the times a hitter comes up to bat. Give the hitter one point for every time they get on base by hitting the ball, except if the scorer feels like the fielder *probably* should've made the play (they get a point if the fielder is too lazy or inept to make it to the ball on time though). That's right, this statistic gives equal credit for home runs and singles, even though about 70% of the time a batter hits a single, he won't score, but a home run guarantees one run at minimum. We also don't give hitters any points for walking, because frankly, it's boring to watch, and who wants to tire out opposing pitchers and create run scoring opportunities anyways?

Then we divide the number of points accrued by the number of opportunities a batter has to get points, except we ignore some of these opportunities. Walks didn't count for anything at the beginning, so there's no reason to start counting them now, it's just easier to pretend they didn't happen. We WILL, however, count errors as opportunities, because even though the hitter succeeded in every way by getting on base, advancing runners, and not making outs... well we'll still hold it against them. If the hitter gets out but advances a baserunner, then we also don't count it as an opportunity, but only if the hitter did it on purpose, or if it's a fly out that leads to a run scoring. Ground outs that "accidentally" lead to a run scoring count as opportunities. The scorer will judge how pure the batter's heart was to decide if it was intentional or not.

To recap:

"Points"=Times on Base-BB-HBP-FC-RBOE-Dropped 3rd Strike-CI-SH

"Opportunities"=Plate Appearances-BB-HBP-SH-SF-RBOE-FC-Dropped 3rd Strike-CI-SH

Now to calculate this ground-breaking statistic, we divide the number of "Points" by "Opportunities". I shall call this "the batting average".

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The Rays glut of starting pitchers is no secret. People claim that the Rays have eight viable starting pitching options-James Shields, David Price, Jeff Niemann, Jeremy Hellickson, Matt Moore, Wade Davis, Alex Cobb, and Alex Torres. Given that Alex Torres is, barring injury, a lock to start off the season in AAA, this still leaves the Rays with 7 legitimate potentially above average starting pitchers.

As Einstein once said, seven is two more than five. Because of this, even if the Rays keep Alex Cobb in AAA for another season or if they manage to trade someone they'll have one too many pitchers, and at this point in the off-season, with so few murmurs, it seems unlikely the Rays will be able to get what they perceive as fair value for one of their starters. As a result, it seems likely that someone will be stuck moving to the bullpen.

Even though people generally seem to think that Jeff Niemann or Wade Davis should be moving to the bullpen, on account of those being the two least reliable and probably least talented starters out of the main six contenders, Matt Moore provides an intriguing option for this movement. I'll examine why after the jump.

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As of now, the presumptive Texan starter for Monday's ALDS Game 3 is Colby Lewis. As many of you probably know, Lewis was a horrendously bad pitcher from 2002-2007, putting together a 6.71 ERA over 200+ innings mixed between the rotation and bullpen (the highest in baseball for any pitcher with that many innings over that stretch, by a significant margin). Lewis mixed the deadly trifecta of mediocre strikeout rates (6.4 per 9), awful walk rates (5.1 per 9), and atrocious home run tendencies (1.5 per 9).

After being yanked back and forth between AAA, Lewis finally left the United States to play in Japan. There, something magical happened.

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There's been lots of debate on Casey Kotchman and whether he's actually improved this year or not. As a result, I'll try to stick to the facts at the beginning here.

These numbers are all very similar to his career marks. It's probably safe to assume this year's marks are his true talent levels. I don't think anyone really would dispute that. As much as people are saying "maybe he's hitting better because his eyes have been repaired" he's still chasing pitches at about the same rate as last year (26.1% last year vs 25.7% this year) so it appears as though his plate discipline hasn't really improved.The bigger disagreement in where his True Talent Level is as far as BABIP goes. Anyone claiming Kotchman's true talent level of production is above his career mark is thus claiming his true talent BABIP has changed.

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Let's start with the obvious: James Shields is performing way way better than he did the last year. First consider the raw numbers:

James Shields hasn't just been greatly improved. He's also been one of the best pitchers in baseball this year. He ranks in the top 10 in the AL in K/9 (6th), BB/9 (7th), ERA (4th), FIP (8th), xFIP (1st), fWAR (5th), rWAR (5th), and IP/G (1st). Shields has truly been a force to be reckoned with this season. The obvious pair of things to consider after any meteoric rise are the sustainability and apparent causes for change.

Any mention of James Shields's performance, particularly his 2011 season, is remiss without mention of the "luck" stats (BABIP, LOB%, HR/FB%). These three stats are generally accepted as not entirely under the control of pitchers, and prone to wild fluctuation. Although Shields's career LOB% is roughly what would be expected, his career BABIP (.304 vs average of .300) and career HR/FB% (11.6 vs 10.5) are both slightly worse than league average, suggesting that defense-independent pitching stats might not be optimal for evaluating his true talent level. Still, Shields's 2010 was arguably one of the unluckiest seasons of all time. Although many still believed that Shields could return to the ace-like form that he demonstrated in 2008, an equal number thought that he was done as a pitcher.

Still, not even the greatest Shields supporter could have possibly seen this year coming. While Shields's BABIP (.259) and LOB% (86.4%) suggest favorable luck, he's striking out hitters at a far greater clip while managing to marginally improve in avoiding walks and inducing ground balls. There's no question that Shields is pitching better. The reasons for this are less than obvious, but we shall look at a few of them below.

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We've discussed John Jaso's plate discipline at length around these parts. To summarize, however, consider this chart:

min 400 PA

*Evidence suggests that K-BB is more meaningful for pitchers than K/BB. It's probably also true for hitters.

Let this soak in for a minute. Jaso was among the best in both BB% and K%, and led in both BB/K and BB-K (the top 5 in both included Albert Pujols and Joe Mauer). His plate discipline was obviously outstanding.

Given the information we have about sample sizes, it would appear as though Jaso's plate discipline is indeed his true talent level. Still, the sample sizes Pizza Cutter gave us are blanket sample sizes, and as those of you who are statistically inclined know, it takes more data to get safe p-values about data points that are further from the mean. Or, in normal terms, Jaso might still be a regression candidate despite the safe sample size because of how extraordinary his numbers are. We'll take a look at this after the jump.

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There are a lot of traditional "rules" for creating a lineup. In general, it seems like most traditional baseball analysts say that the leadoff hitter should be speedy, the second hitter should be a contact hitter, the 3-hole should belong to the best hitter on the team, cleanup should go to the best power hitter, and after that the team should just slot in their hitters in descending order of ability. The general importance of hitter quality is something like 3, 4, 2, 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 according to this line of thinking. Based on this, the Rays' 2011 lineup would probably look something like this:

Upton, being far and away the main stolen base threat, gets the leadoff spot. There's little question that Longoria is the Rays' best hitter (unless Manny has more left in his bat than everyone thinks) and it seems as though Damon provides the best combination of contact and actually being able to hit the ball for the 2-hole. Although there might be minor quibbling regarding the final spotting of this team, these are more or less the ultimate lineups we'd see from a traditionalist view.

In Tom Tango's The Book (which any of you statnerds should read immediately if you haven't already), he takes a look at how to optimize a lineup using statistical measures. Below the jump, we'll look at Tango's words of wisdom regarding optimizing a lineup and how this applies.

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Win Streaks are a common occurrence in baseball, as are losing streaks. The 2010 Tampa Bay Rays won 96 games last year with a maximum win "streak length" of 7 games. Despite having the best record in the American League, however, the Rays still had many many losing streaks, the longest of which was 5 games. The question at hand is whether these streaks are meaningful in a predictive sense.

We here announcers insist that "the team's on a hot streak so the opposition better watch out" or that a team's lost several games in a row so they "aren't playing well" all the time, implying that a team on a hot/cold streak is more/less likely to win their next game. That being said, we hear the same things said about hitters all the time, but as The Book showed, they have little to no predictive value.

First some notes about how streaks are going to be examined and some implicit assumptions.

• Games can be part of more than one streak, i.e., if the Rays win games 1, 2, and 3 then games 1 & 2 and games 2 & 3 constitute two different streaks.
• The season's total win percentage is being used as the team's true talent win percentage. Although this is probably not true, it's probably at least reasonably close.
• Opponent team's strengths are being ignored. Although this is the biggest flaw in the methodology, the computation simply gets to be too complex if attempts are made to account for this.

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Manny Ramirez's last great season was 2008. Putting up a mammoth .432 wOBA and 168 wRC+, Manny was good for 6.2 wins. After joining the Dodgers, he essentially carried the team to the playoffs himself with a Barry Bonds-esque wOBA of .500 for the final 53 games.

Never has a player's decline been so clearly one-dimensional.

Last year, as we all know, Manny was still a productive hitter but nowhere near the force he was two years prior. A glance at the four factors was, for me at least, surprising. Manny put up very similar walk and strikeout rates, and his BABIP was roughly the same. The obvious culprit, then, is his power. His ISO fell precipitously from .270 to .162, his HR per 150 games was more than halved from 36 to 15, he hit fewer doubles and triples, and his HR/FB fell from 22.2% to 12.7%.

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Early napkin projections of the AL East's big 3 in the same vein as this. I tended to the conservative side for these estimates.

Position Players:

*Assuming that Brignac and Rodriguez Platoon at SS.

Pitching staffs:

Total Team WAR:

Discuss!

Jeff Niemann's overall stat line from last year is misleading. The conventional numbers suggest that he had a solid year, starting 29 games and compiling a 4.39 ERA and 12-8 record in 174.1 IP. The most advanced numbers aren't all that different, with xFIP and tERA both at 4.35 and his FIP at 4.61 because of a high HR/FB% of 12.2. A look at his month by month splits, however, might paint a more familiar picture.

Niemann's ERA absolutely ballooned in August and September. Perhaps not coincidentally, Niemann went to the DL after his start on August 3rd. It would be his last start until August 25th when, against the Angels, he would give up 10 earned runs in 3.1 innings. His next start wouldn't be much better when, against Toronto this time, he was obliterated for 7 runs in 5 innings. The murmurs from fans and the media alike were that Niemann had been rushed in his return to the rotation and clearly wasn't ready for his return. And yet, we must always be careful not to mix correlation and causation, even if the relationship is perhaps logical.

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Vladimir Guerrero is a name that you're probably all familiar with by now. Vlad, Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez form a trio of probable Hall of Fame sluggers. As of now it seems probable that Jim Thome ends up re-signing with the Twins (although apparently the Rangers are interested too) and we've already investigated how well Manny might fit with the Rays. Let's take a look at the last member of this trio, and perhaps the one who's the best fit for the 2011 Tampa Bay Rays.

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In the Rays' bullpen exodus, one of the less-mentioned names is that of Randy Choate. Perhaps this is justified, given that Rafael Soriano, Joaquin Benoit, and Grant Balfour (assuming all three are healthy) are clearly better pitchers. That being said, Randy Choate has been excellent the last two years with the Rays as a left-handed specialist.

The chart below details Choate's numbers against lefties in his time with the Rays.

These are excellent numbers. Choate strikes out lefties at a great clip, rarely walks them, and also gives up nearly no home runs to them due to incredible ground ball rates.

Choate's overall numbers don't looks quite so great, however, because he's absolutely horrible against righties. His xFIP was a mind-boggling 5.99 against them and although some of that is probably the result of small sampling size random variation, it's pretty clear that he's meant to be used against righties only in the lowest leverage situations. This impacts his value negatively.

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Right now the biggest shortcoming of the Rays 2011 roster (aside from the revolving door that is the DH position) is the bullpen. With Joaquin Benoit, Grant Balfour (probably) and Rafael Soriano taking their leaves, the Rays are losing all three of their best relievers. Additionally some of the lesser names that were still quality arms (or perhaps not, based on your belief in DIPS theory) such as Randy Choate, Dan Wheeler and Chad Qualls are also probably leaving. It's clear that the bullpen is going to need some work. The chart below will take a quick look at what exactly we're losing in the way of relief.

Altogether, that's 5.2 wins being lost from the bullpen via leverage free WAR, and given the high LIs that relievers face, it would probably convert to even more games lost. Over at The Process Report, they've examined some excellent candidates for non-tendered relievers that maybe talented. The Rays' next relievers may not come from externally, however, but rather from internally. As the title suggests, Jake McGee and Aneury Rodriguez could well be the next members of the Rays' bullpen.

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Lance Berkman is a name probably familiar to most of you. In the last ten years, Berkman has been an All Star five times and a top five MVP finish four times. The last 10 years Berkman played a roughly average defense first base while carrying one of the strongest bats in the league; he has a career .296/.409/.545 triple slash line to go with a 149 wRC+. Averaging 5.3 wins per season, Berkman was in the last year of his contract of with the Astros when he got traded in the midst of a disappointing .356 wOBA season to the New York Yankees. There, in a DH role, his performance tanked completely.

Berkman was nothing short of horrible by his standards with the Yankees last season. In a DH role, his power vanished completely and he put up a measly .314 wOBA and 93 wRC+ in a short stint of 37 games. Overall, the year was easily Berkman's worst. He was still an above-average overall player, however, putting together 2.1 wins and a 117 wRC+ from a .345 wOBA.

Partly because of this down year, Berkman would be a potential free agent signing this off-season for the Rays revolving door at DH.

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