SB Nation User Blog: PaulThomas

Brett Anderson's Midland Debut

PaulThomas — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:05:14 -0000

And what a debut it was.

6 IP

3 H

2 ER (both coming on solo HR)

0 BB

12 K

Anderson K'd every batter in the opposing lineup at least once within the first 4 innings. The California League seemed to be a bit of a bugbear for Anderson, as evidenced by the bad luck thumb injury, but he's surmounted that hurdle. He appears to be fully back on track in the town where he was born.

What are your expectations for Anderson once he reaches the major league level? Is he a #1? A #2? A back-of-the-rotation guy? Doomed unless he locates his shaving razor, which he appears to have left behind in Stockton?

Following up on today's discussion

PaulThomas — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:01:43 -0000

of Josh Hamilton and Milton Bradley, which can be found here, two additional links.

One, a fairly interesting conversation on the Bradley-Hamilton situation which, I think, gives the racial angle its due.

The other, a link to the most recent post at the excellent blog It Is About the Money, Stupid-- where we first read about the Hamilton/agents/Christians thing. Apparently Jason Rosenberg, the blog's author, received a call from none other than Matt Sosnick himself, Hamilton's jilted ex-agent, thanking him for his support and confirming the story.

I don't know what Hamilton's motives for firing his agent really were. I doubt he's lying about the dream thing. But one thing is very clear-- this was a terrible thing to do to someone. Just terrible. Hamilton used Sosnick like a cheap suit when he was down and out, but now that he's about to hit it big... well, he can't be associated with those people anymore, can he?

I know the commandments of the Lord are supposed to be true and righteous, but that implies that either he's wrong about this instruction being from the Lord, or the Bible is, because it ain't true and righteous. It's profoundly unethical. If Sosnick does not get his share of whatever contract Hamilton ends up inking, he should man up and recompense his former agent out of the remaining proceeds.

What the Buck?

PaulThomas — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:56:03 -0000

Like everyone else on this site, seemingly, I've been confused as heck by Travis Buck's play this year. It's now June, and his batting average is still way south of the Mendoza line. He just doesn't look like the same player that we saw galvanize the gimpy A's offense from the leadoff spot last season. So what exactly is wrong with the Stag? Is it correctible? Is it just bad luck?

Well, thanks to Fangraphs and their awesome new stats on plate discipline, we can try to find out.

I'm going to dig into Buck's performance from the top down, meaning we'll start with the basic stats and then try to dig into the underlying reasons for them. The skinny: Buck has been what our British brethren would call "pants" this year. Or "bollocks."

Stats can be found here , except for PrOPS, which can be found here .

His slash stats last year were .288/.377/.474, for an OPS of .851. His slash stats this year have been .170/.234/.340, for an OPS of .574. Last year he walked 39 times and struck out 66; this year he has walked 7 times and struck out 28. That translates to a decline in walk percentage from 12% to 6.5%, and an increase in strikeout percentage from 23.2% to 28%. It's not easy to simultaneously lower your walks AND increase your strikeouts, but somehow Buck managed it.

So that's what he HAS done. Now we can turn to "why?"

Balls in Play

The first place to look is BABIP-- batting average on balls in play. This stat has gotten a lot of press for pitchers, but it's not nearly appreciated enough when evaluating hitters. Hitters actually have significant control over it. Cesar Izturis is going to have a worse BABIP than Miguel Cabrera. If you think about this for... oh... a second or so, you'll realize why-- Cabrera hits the ball harder. A lot harder. The harder the ball is hit, the less time the defense has to make a play on it.

Last year Buck was hitting the ball plenty hard-- a .354 BABIP. This year, he's been hitting like a girly man, with a BABIP of .203. That's a problem. But we can go deeper than this. Different kinds of batted balls have different success rates. In particular, line drives are way more likely to fall for hits than flies and grounders.

Last year Buck posted a solid line drive rate of 18.6%, right around the league average. This year? His LD rate is 10.8%. Yeech. That's abysmally bad-- worse than Ray Durham's 2007 mark, which earned him a cool .218 batting average last year. That explains a LOT. Buck is not squaring the ball at all.

Our friends at the Hardball Times have developed a stat called "Projected OPS", or PrOPS for short, which uses a hitter's batted ball types to create an estimate for what that hitter "should" be hitting. If you're hitting lots of liners that just happen to be finding gloves, you can expect your PrOPS to reflect that in your favor, and conversely if you've just gotten a bunch of ducksnort bloop singles.

Buck's PrOPS from last year was .765-- reflecting that he may have gotten a bit lucky to have a BABIP as high as it was. The rule of thumb seems to be that a player's line drive rate plus .120 is about his expected BABIP, so we would have expected Buck's BABIP to be .306 last year. And only .228 this year. Well, even THAT's an improvement on what he's shown so far, which is why his PrOPS for this year is .664. While that's not the retinoblastoma-inducing carcinogen his actual batting line is, it's unacceptably bad for a corner outfielder.

At the Dish

So we've noted that Buck is not squaring the ball like he did last year. That hasn't been his only problem, though. He's also striking out a ton and not walking. What's up with THAT?

Well, courtesy of fangraphs, we can find out. The first category in their plate discipline stats menu is O-Swing%. That is, the percentage of pitches outside the zone that a batter swings at (bad). This varies a LOT-- Giambi swings at maybe 10%, Vlad at 45%. Last year Buck swung at 21.4% of pitches outside the zone. This year, 29.6%. So he's gone from a hitter with average patience to a significantly impatient one. Or so it seems.

Next up: Z-Swing%. That's the percentage of pitches IN the zone that a hitter swings at (good). Last year Buck swung at 68.7% of pitches in the zone, which is somewhat better than average (average is about 66.6%). This year his protectiveness has been much lower, at only 62.6%. Wow.

Buck's overall Swing % is up by 2.8%. So what we're learning is that not only is he swinging more, but he's also taking more called strikes-- all of the extra swings are coming on pitches out of the zone.

Finally, we can look at Buck's contact percentages. His O-Contact% (percentage of swings outside the zone that make contact) is up from 52.5% to 62.5%. While it's good that he's getting wood on ball, making contact with pitches outside the zone is usually a bad thing. They don't call it the "strike" zone for nothing-- it's the zone where you can strike the ball effectively. Contact with balls outside the zone usually results in weak grounders, popups, broken bats and foul balls. (Unless you're Vlad. If there's one thing that you find out from looking at these plate discipline stats really fast, it's that Vlad is a unique freak of nature who should be enjoyed but not emulated.) So that's an ambivalent stat at best.

Meanwhile, his Z-Contact% is down, meaning he's missing more balls in the strike zone. It was a not-great 87.5% last year, and it's 82.5% this year (average here is about 89%). We add another epithet to Buck's Iliad of woes here, as he is also having problems hitting balls that are theoretically hittable.

Let's sum this up: Buck is swinging more at (what would be) balls, and putting more of them in play (weakly). He is also swinging less at strikes, and whiffing on more of the ones he is swinging at.

Conclusion

My usual process when writing something like this is to go in cold-- no assumptions, just look at the data. That's what I did here, and wow. I was stunned. Normally a slump is a bit of pressing and a lot of bad luck; this is not one of those slumps. Buck has been very nearly as bad as his numbers indicate. It's a chilling bunch of info. In virtually every aspect of the game, Buck has regressed from last season, in many cases to the point of no longer being MLB caliber.

I would be remiss if I did not observe that the sample sizes here aren't real large. Hitters go through bad stretches at times; it's just the way the game works. Nonetheless, the point here is that Buck's struggles are unequivocally the result of bad process-- not bad luck. Something that he is doing is wrong; let's hope he can fix it.

Weekend College Viewer's Guide

PaulThomas — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 06:40:08 -0000

Most of you already know this, of course, but MLB's mammoth draft finally concluded this evening at around 5:00 PM. In most sports, this would mean that you wouldn't be seeing anyone playing the sport for the next, oh, three months or so-- but in baseball, the draft actually happens midseason! College baseball has entered the playoffs, offering us a chance to check out the college prospects whose teams have survived to the Super Regionals round (the round of 16). I've put together this viewer's guide to point out which series will be showcasing potential future A's players and potential future MLB stars. Think of it as something to flip through so you can skip seeing that Fry's Electronics commercial for the 92479th time during a break in the A's game.

Arizona vs. Miami (Today at 4:30 PM, Sunday if necessary at 4 PM)

This is THE marquee series for A's prospect watchers and fans of the college game. Miami's #1 nationally ranked team is stacked with prospects, with three players taken in the first round alone. The highlight here is Jemile Weeks, the speedy second baseman that the A's drafted in the first round. Will he hit like Ichiro or more like Shinjo? Can his glove play at second, or is he headed for the outfield? Should the A's sign him, or are you rooting for him to suddenly demand a zillion dollars and give the A's pick 12A next season?

Also of interest in this series: two lower A's draft picks on the Arizona side of things. Pitcher Preston Guilmet went today and seems to be running on fumes at this point in the year, so if you didn't catch him today, you'll have to hope Arizona completes the upset and advances to the College World Series. 3B Bradley Glenn was also picked up by Oakland. And on the Miami side, there are two additional first-round picks. Yonder Alonso has a savage power stroke and great plate discipline. Carlos Gutierrez pitches like you'd imagine Brandon Webb would if he was a closer, with savage sink on his fastball. Arizona also has a first-round pick in Daniel Schlereth, but he's injured and probably won't appear in the postseason, and another in Ryan Perry, who the Tigers hope will be a quick reinforcement to their injury-riddled bullpen.

NC State vs. Georgia (Today at 9 AM, Sunday if necessary at 1 PM)

Nothing here in the way of A's prospects, but if you want to see the guy the A's DREAMED about getting, have a look at Georgia SS Gordon Beckham. He's got major-league power from the shortstop position, which will get teams to overlook a lot of other flaws. Unless your name is Wood and you play for the Angels, that is. In which case, be very afraid. Fireballer Josh Fields may also put in an appearance or two en route to Seattle's bullpen in the very near future.

Stanford vs. Cal State Fullerton (Today at 4:30 PM, Sunday if necessary at 4 PM)

For two teams that have historically produced lots of top-tier talent, this series is a bit disappointing. Stanford lefty Jeremy Bleich is done for the weekend after a strong outing tonight, so the only top pick you'll see here is catcher Jason Castro, who absolutely mugged a ball out of the yard in Game One of the series Friday night. You'll also get a look at what might have been, as freshman speed demon Gary Brown was a few hours away from signing with Oakland before a last-second change of heart sent him on his way to Fullerton.

Wichita St. vs. Florida St. (Today at 9 AM, Sunday if necessary at 10 AM)

Giants fans will be watching this one with alert interest, as their first round (Buster Posey) and sandwich round (Conor Gillaspie) picks square off against each other. The A's have some horses in this race too, however. Wichita State lefty pitcher Anthony Capra was a 4th round pick, while shortstop Dustin Coleman will be a difficult sign as a 28th rounder. Florida State isn't deep in top talent, but Posey utterly carries his team, with a ridiculous .476 average and the ability to play any position if needed.

Coastal Carolina vs. North Carolina (Today at 9 AM, Sunday at 10 AM)

Last year's UNC team was of serious interest to A's fans, as closer Andrew Carignan and shortstop Josh Horton were both A's signees. This year's edition is somewhat more blase, as neither of these teams have produced either a top pick or an A's draftee, so watch it for the stars-to-be, or flip to another channel.

UC Irvine vs. LSU (Today at 3 PM, Sunday at 1 PM)

UC Irvine is a program that has historically done more with less, so it's not much of a surprise to see a lack of top draft talent. LSU, though, was one of the nation's best teams this year. The absence of any first-round picks from their roster is a little more surprising.

Texas A&M vs. Rice (Today at noon, Sunday at 4 PM)

Cliff Pennington may be watching this with alert interest, but Billy Beane probably isn't, as the A's again have no prospects involved in this one. There is one first-rounder here, as the Red Sox picked Rice righthander Brian Price with the 45th overall pick. Am I the only one irritated by the fact that the Red Sox, who just won the World Series, have more early round picks than the A's do? I'm moving toward the thought that draft pick compensation should just be done away with, as it's pretty ineffectual as a balancing mechanism in baseball.

Fresno State vs. Arizona State (Today at 6 PM, Sunday at 7 PM)

Finally another A's prospect turns up, this time on the ludicrously stacked roster of Arizona State. Their park is a hitters' haven, but it's hard to make up stats like Brett Wallace and Ike Davis possess. Wallace is the guy half of AN seems to wish the A's had taken, although it's not clear what Oakland would have done with another quick-rising college first baseman. I guess you can always find room at the expense of defense, but it doesn't seem like the ideal strategy to me.

The guy the A's DID pick up is no slouch himself. ASU catcher Preston "Petey" Paramore is, in addition to a guy whose name is just lovely for puns (see?), a highly successful college catcher, who has leadership skills that make up somewhat for his lack of great tools. That may sound familiar, as most of the same things were written out of college about the A's current starter Kurt Suzuki. The A's made plenty of picks of the tools variety in this draft, including what has to be a near-record number of junior college players, but Paramore bucks (no pun intended, fellow Sun Devil Travis) the trend. Does he have what it takes to be a future big-leaguer? You can form your own opinion.

Taking a Step Back From the Ledge: The A's Offense

PaulThomas — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:57:34 -0000

Yes, you interpreted that title right. The A's offense is going to get better.

It's not going to score more runs, however. This seemingly counterintuitive fact is explained by the fact that so far this season, the A's have scored a lot of runs with a bad offense. There are a few ways to do this (most of them being variations on "get lucky") but the A's in particular have been doing it by hitting with runners in scoring position. When everybody in your lineup turns into Derek Jeter with a man on second base and Mike Matheny with no one on, you're going to score more runs than you really ought to.

So: the A's have been lucky. Sort of. Except that they've also been UNlucky, in that a whole boatload of position players have had terrible starts to the season. Now, hitting as a whole is definitely a skill-- we can't expect players to regress all the way to the mean, the way we can something like hitting with RISP. But a month and a half is (brace yourselves) a pretty small sample size. And one would suspect that most of the A's lineup will jones up a little over the rest of the season.

I'm going to take a gander at who's performing how well relative to their ZiPS projections. With the team conveniently at the quarter-pole of the season, it seems like a good time for a reality check.

[Editorial note: This was written before part 3 of the A's epic 3-act offensive faceplant in Cleveland... so the numbers are slightly behind the times, but not hugely so.]

How to read the stats: I'm not a genius at editing this, unfortunately. The stats to the left of the slashes are the position, age and ZIPS projection for a given player. The stats to the right of the slashes are that player's actual line to date.

Guys who are eating their Wheaties:

Bobby Crosby ss 28 .240 .305 .353 // .253 .320 .370

+15 OBP, +17 SLG, +32 OPS

Yes, folks, Crosby's scintillating .690 OPS is actually better than what was expected of him over the offseason. He is a bad, bad player. With multiple teams now facing serious holes at shortstop, I don't really understand why he hasn't been moved yet-- although perhaps the other GMs see the same thing we do.

Mike Sweeney dh 34 .266 .331 .433 // .318 .378 .443

+47 OBP, +10 SLG, +57 OPS

Sweeney should probably get a little more credit than this-- his projection figured him to be playing in a better hitters' park. Likewise, Ryan Sweeney and Big Frank are probably doing a little better than they seem to be.

Rajai Davis cf 27 .263 .325 .357 // .292 .308 .417

-17 OBP, + 60 SLG, +43 OPS

Rajai Davis seems to have heard the phrase "you don't walk off the island" when he got to Oakland and mistakenly thought it was referring to the island in the middle of Hegenberger Road.

Jack Hannahan 3b 28 .258 .362 .375 // .247 .400 .371

+38 OBP, -4 SLG, +34 OPS

Hannahan's component hitting is actually even better than this, as he's hit a lot of unfortunate line drives right at defenders.

Guys who could use some iron in their diets:

Daric Barton 1b 22 .280 .369 .440 // .230 .333 .338

-36 OBP, -102 SLG, -138 OPS

As I mentioned the other day, Barton is rapidly hitting his way into a demotion back to AAA. Perhaps it's all for the best in the long run.

Chris Denorfia cf 27 .282 .350 .438 // .260 .339 .300

-11 OBP, -138 SLG, -149 OPS

Someone needs to have a chat with Chris, once he's off the DL, and let him know that while hustling and hitting gritty infield singles are fine and whatnot, the team would actually be better off if he just hit like he did in the International League a few years ago. He had over 20 HR one year in his career, but he won't match that when he's hitting like 80% ground balls.

Jack Cust dh 29 .264 .394 .470 // .252 .434 .417

+40 OBP, -53 SLG, -13 OPS

Say this about Jack, the man gets his walks.

Travis Buck rf 23 .283 .360 .458 // .154 .197 .277

-163 OBP, -181 SLG, -344 OPS

The Stag has already been sent down to AAA; I'm not entirely sure I understand how this situation works, but if I am correct, he will need to be in AAA until May 29 to "earn" the A's an extra year of club control. See you May 30, Travis.

Mark Ellis 2b 31 .273 .335 .418 // .242 .328 .379

-7 OBP, -39 SLG, -46 OPS

Ellis's power spike from last season may have been a temporary one, but I'm not sure what happened to his batting average.

Frank Thomas dh 40 .248 .352 .456 // .267 .384 .350

+32 OBP, -106 SLG, -74 OPS

Plus OBP, Minus slugging, and more of the latter. That seems like a pretty accurate description of what the A's have gotten from the Hurt so far. You have to figure he's gone if he doesn't turn things around a little by the 6-game June trip in NL parks.

Rob Bowen c 27 .255 .349 .397// .200 .250 .200

-99 OBP, -197 SLG, -296 OPS

I have yet to confirm that these numbers are not a forgery, and that Rob Bowen is actually still alive.

Ryan Sweeney cf 23 .266 .330 .390 // .279 .343 .349

+13 OBP, -41 SLG, -28 OPS

I'll give Sweeney credit-- he's put up respectable-looking numbers and, in particular, improved his walk rate a lot in recent weeks. Still waiting for that mythical 5 o'clock power to show up, though.

Donnie Murphy ss 25 .252 .305 .413 // .214 .298 .357

-7 OBP, -56 SLG, -63 OPS

I didn't expect Murphy to hit against righties, but I have to say he's been a disappointment as a platoon bat to this point in the season.

Kurt Suzuki c 24 .248 .325 .369 // .248 .314 .297

-11 OBP, -72 SLG, -83 OPS

When I wrote the first draft of this article, Kurt was solidly in the "above projections" category. Unfortunately, 0 for 22 wastelands will tend to make you look a bit worse.

Emil Brown lf 33 .268 .332 .392 // .277 .301 .405

-31 OBP, + 13 SLG, -18 OPS

Yes, Brown is actually underperforming his projections, mostly because he's hit like Barry Zito when no one is on base. Most of the reason for this underperformance, though, is not his hitting-- it's the fact that he has apparently taken a blood oath to fight the evils of walks. A .024 IsoOBP is putrescent-- Garrett Anderson has more plate discipline than that.

Conclusion

Holy smokes, this is bad. Of the A's 9 more or less "regulars" at this point, exactly two of them are hitting above their projections. Of the whole group of 15, only four are-- and one of those, Rajai Davis, has the second smallest sample of plate appearances of the entire team.

Let's look at this from another angle. If you add up the cumulative differentials from those 9 regulars' OPS and then average them out, the average A's regular is hitting .037 below his projection.

What does that mean in run terms? Well, over a full season, 5 points of OPS roughly (someone stop me if this is not correct) translates to one run. So over the full season the A's offense is hitting in such a way that we would expect it to lose about 7.5 runs per player*9, or about 67 runs off of the projected offensive output. Since we're only a quarter of the way through the season, we can guess that the team is about 17 runs-- in OPS terms-- below where it ought to be.

However, we can then take a look at Baseball Prospectus's adjusted standings -- and discover that actually, the A's have scored 19 runs MORE than they should have based on their OPS to this point. The key column to look at here is to the mid-right of your screen, "adjusted equivalent runs," which is more or less the number of runs the A's ought to have scored based on how they've hit, adjusted for schedule strength.

So, weirdly enough, it turns out that the offense's runs scored are actually about in line with what we would have predicted before the start of the season-- even though the hitting performance of the individual batters has been terrible.

Take that however you choose to.

NRI Survivor

PaulThomas — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:56:35 -0000

To help everyone keep track of the enormous number of guys in spring training, I thought I'd start a post to keep track of which non-roster invitees are still active in the A's camp-- and which players ON the roster have been sent down.

Technical note: This page keeps jumping to the top of my computer screen automatically about once a minute. This is unbelievably irritating. Please fix it.

Remaining non-roster invitees:

Gio Gonzalez

Greg Smith

Kirk Saarloos

Mike Sweeney

Brooks Conrad

Matt LeCroy

Justin Knoedler

Todd Linden

Roster players listed as not on the active roster:

Jeff Gray

Dan Meyer

Kevin Melillo

Richie Robnett

Javier Herrera

Landon Powell

Feel free to begin baseless speculations, rumermongering, etc. as to which of the above players will actually earn themselves a roster spot.

Staturday-inspired-- something I've been kicking around

PaulThomas — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 05:48:09 -0000

Alright, so we know that replacement level is a key determiner for salaries. (How much you pay people is contingent on how much you could get out of a minimum-wage worker. If minimum-wage lawyers could write briefs that would win 33% of cases, lawyers would be paid a lot less.)

We know that average level is a key comparison factor for MLB players. Are you helping your team, or hurting your team? Simple enough. Your John McDonalds and Bobby Crosbys and Chris Sheltons may be damage control at above-replacement level, but they're not really helping you WIN ballgames.

But what about when you're trying to assemble a team? Trying to figure out whether to go for it or rebuild? It seems like a similarly handy stat would be <em>runs above playoff level.</em> You've got to be better than average to get to the playoffs. (Maybe not in the NBA, but that's another story.) And sometimes signing players-- even pretty good ones-- won't really get you to the level of a top-tier team. Mike Cameron is probably still pretty good, but he's not Grady Sizemore or Curtis Granderson.

The obvious follow-up is "what is playoff level?" To make the playoffs, you need probably 92 wins. (Some teams with less than that will get in, but you can't count on it.) That translates to a .568 winning percentage. In a 4.9 runs per game environment, we're talking 910 runs scored-- so the average hitter is going to need to account for 101 runs. But only if you have an average pitching staff. If you have a "playoff level" pitching staff, you ought to be holding opponents under 790 runs yourself (assuming you aren't the Phillies). If my math is not too far off, you need about 845 runs scored and 735 runs allowed (note that the two numbers are centered around that 790 run average) to figure you've got a good shot at the postseason. For a hitter, that means he needs to account for about 94 runs if he plays all 162 games. (He needs to be a little better proportionally if he plays less, because your benchwarmers are not likely to produce offense at playoff caliber.)

So: does Swisher help you get to the playoffs? Yes. He's a significantly above-playoff-level player. (He's a good defensive RF, but RF is a slightly penalized defensive position, so it more or less evens out.) Build a team of nine Swishers (assuming some of them hit a little worse but can play CF and SS, and some hit a little better at 1B and DH) and you're looking at a playoff team. Back the Swishers with a playoff-level pitching staff and you're probably looking at home field advantage in the first round, if not throughout the playoffs. Build a team of nine average players and you're looking at a mediocrity.

This is basically why some of us are looking at, say, the Torii Hunter signing and scratching our heads a little bit. Torii Hunter is a decent baseball player-- probably average or a little above over the length of his contract. But average won't cut it in the top tier. When you're a top team, you can afford to sign some below-playoff-level guys as stopgaps, particularly if you have beasts like Vlad picking up the slack for them. But you really don't want to be building those guys into your lineup as integral pieces. They'll drag down your best players.

I'd like to see some of the stat sites like BPro, Fangraphs and THT build in a "playoff level" baseline-- or more likely TWO baselines (one adjusted to a constant number of wins and one to a floating number by year), since "playoff level" has changed a ton since additional rounds were added to the postseason. I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts on this-- useful? Worthwhile?

Batted Ball Profiles and What They Tell Us-- Part 3

PaulThomas — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 20:46:48 -0000

We come to the end of our little odyssey through the world of batted ball types. Today we'll look at the final four major contributors to the A's roster last season, and I'll hand out my First Annual Batted Ball Awards (including the Jack Cust Contact Quality Award-- I bet nobody can guess who's winning that one). First, though, it's time to review our glossary of terms and our league medians. If you've read parts one and two, skip ahead to the Donnie Murphy section.

My apologies for how long it took me to post this; thanks to spending Christmas day with a bunch of small gremlins, I came down with a cold and didn't have the energy to finish working on it.

Glossary

Basic breakdown: What kinds of balls are guys hitting? LD is Line Drive percentage. (Very, very good.) GB is ground ball percentage. (Bad, unless you're Ichiro or Maurice Greene.) OFB is outfield fly ball percentage. (Usually about average, but very bad if you're Juan Pierre or Reggie Willits.) IFB is infield fly ball percentage. (Very, very bad. These are almost always pop-ups or foul-outs.)

Results: What happens to the balls when they land? HR/FB is the percentage of fly balls which are home runs. (Most non-homer fly balls end up being outs, so this tells you a lot about whether a guy is benefiting or hurting his team by hitting flies.) BABIP is Batting Average on Balls in Play. (It's a key component of a player's batting average.) OCSlg is Slugging Percentage On Contact. (When a guy actually hits a ball, how hard does he hit it? If anyone's wondering, the difference between "In Play" and "On Contact" is that the latter includes home runs and the former doesn't.)

League Medians (Among Qualified Players)

Line Drive: 18.8%
Ground Ball: 42.0%
Outfield Fly Balls: 35.0%
Infield Fly Balls: 3.9%

Home Runs per Fly Ball: 10.0%
BABIP: .312

I don't know what the median is for OCSlg, because I calculated that by hand. I seem to recall working out that league average was about .520 not too long ago, however.

One thing I don't think I've mentioned before-- league medians actually overstate some stats. In particular, HR/FB -- a lot of bench scrubs are terrible power hitters. They get a few at-bats here and there-- enough to pull down the average but not enough to actually qualify for the batting title. Unless they're Nick Punto, that is. (Someone explain Nick Punto to me. Please.) Keep it in mind when you're comparing hitters to the baseline figures.

Donnie Murphy

LD 19.3% (22.1%)
GB 34.9% (35.9%)
OFB 43.4% (38.2%)
IFB 2.4% (3.8%)

HR/FB 15.8% (5.4%)
BABIP .260 (.414)
OCSlg .626 (.679)

(Minors stats again in italics.)

If Dave Kingman played short, is this what he would look like?

We've got some contradictory data sets for Murphy's 2007. On the one hand, he hit like your typical shortstop in AAA-- high average, good contact, not much power. On the other hand, once he was called up to MLB, he started swinging for the fences. Not all that uncommon, except that in Murphy's case, he actually reached the fences. Whatever he was doing at the major league level, it seems to have worked. He goes into 2007 as (gulp) the probable best hitter at the shortstop position for Oakland.

I think he's going to have to tone down the homeruncentricity a bit, though. The key question is whether he can bring his other batted ball stats, particularly his BABIP, up as his HR/FB drops. He's not going to BABIP .414 at the major league level, that's for sure. But my spider sense (and his 5-foot-10 frame) tells me that he's not going to jack 15% of his fly balls, either. Hit a happy medium, around .320/10%, and he should claim the starting shortstop job from Bobby Crosby with ease.

Shannon Stewart

LD 21.4%
GB 44.5%
OFB 31.5%
IFB 2.6%

HR/FB 6.8%
BABIP .308
OCSlg .440

One of the interesting remaining decisions that the A's need to make this offseason is whether to resign Shannon Stewart. I know everyone's first thought-- what on earth do the A's need with another corner outfielder? Obviously, a re-sign would not be for purposes of improving the team. What it would do, though, is give the team some control over a commodity which could later be used as trade bait.

Then again, limp-wristed (and noodle-armed) left fielders are not exactly in the highest of demand. Stewart's spread of 132 points between his BABIP and OCSlg is pretty miserable. It's nice to be able to "put it where they ain't," but it would be nicer if it was far enough away from where they "is" to enable him to get to second base.

Stewart's batted ball numbers recentered on his career marks this last season; his liners were way down in his injury-riddled 2006 but popped back up in 2007. I think it's pretty safe to say that the guy we saw last year is the same guy that whoever signs him will be getting in 2008.

Right now I'm inclined toward letting him walk and taking the comp pick, but you never know who might find themselves needing a .750 OPS from an outfielder. Certainly if he's still unsigned by the time compensation picks expire (anyone know when that might be?) I'd offer him either 1/$5M or 2/$7M. It's only money, after all.

Kurt Suzuki

LD 15.9% (20.1%)
GB 39.2% (47.9%)
OFB 42.1% (26.0%)
IFB 2.8% (5.9%)

HR/FB 8.9% (6.8%)
BABIP .275 (.337)
OCSlg .500 (.452)

Bad news for Kurt Klutch fans-- these numbers predict a regression next year. Or, to put a slightly more optimistic spin on things, Suzuki is going to have to improve to stay the same (does that make sense?). His line drive rate at the major league level was troublingly low, and he didn't hit for a lot of power at AAA.

There are some encouraging signs here, but overall very few of Suzuki's offensive numbers are above average. Suzuki is still pretty young, especially for a collegian, so he has some time to work on squaring pitches up. With his fairly small frame, I doubt he'll be a dominant power threat (although he showed flashes of very good power last season), so the most important thing for Suzuki is to work on upping that line drive count toward where it was in AAA. If he can do that and play quality defense at catcher, he'll be a more than adequate solution at the position, even if he's not likely to hit higher than 7th in the order.

Nick Swisher

LD 17.5%
GB 36.9%
OFB 41.3%
IFB 4.3%

HR/FB 11.6%
BABIP .308
OCSlg .600

A puzzling season for Nick Swisher. Despite more or less maintaining his batted-ball ratios (his liners did drop a little, but not very much) and actually increasing his batting average by about 10 points, his slugging percentage dropped like a weighted rock.

His HR/FB ratio dropped by over 1/3, from 17.9% to 11.6%. More than anything else, this explains his struggles at the plate at times this year. Balls which were leaving the yard in 2006 were getting caught for loud outs in 2007. It's possible that a portion of this was injury-related; he had some hamstring issues and at times looked noticeably hobbled at the plate. But that can't be the full story.

My personal theory is that Swish was simply trying too hard. Baseball is not a game where throwing every ounce of effort into your swing is likely to produce a desired result. Some combination of Bradley's injuries and subsequent trade, and his big new contract, seems to have caused Swisher to start pressing. From about the last week of May to the All-Star break, he was stone cold terrible.

How does this translate into the numbers we see above? Well, if he was swinging under balls to try to loft them for home runs, perhaps that caused his home run numbers to perversely decline as he hit more high cans of corn to the outfielders. Looking at the chart of his fly ball rates over the entire season, his flies stayed fairly close to his season rate during the midseason slump-- but none of them were leaving the park.

It is, as they say, just a theory-- but I think the evidence supports it somewhat.

The Groundies

Yes, it's time to hand out the awards for best and worst performance in each category. Again, let me emphasize that grounders and flies don't exist in a stable relationship with each other. Some guys do great hitting lots of grounders; others need to lift the ball for success. If there's one thing I hope we've all learned from this process, it's that there are many ways to succeed at hitting-- and the most important person in the process is the hitter himself. To badly paraphrase Sun Tzu, know yourself and the enemy and you will OPS .900; know one but not the other and you will be average; know neither and you will OPS .600.

Now, the awards (and vaguely topical/amusing commentary about them):

Tony Gwynn Frozen Rope Award (Best LD%): Jack Hannahan

Daric Barton just misses out on this one, because his LD% in the minors was "only" 21.2%.

Tennessee Women's Softball Team Slap-Hitting Award (Worst LD%): Kurt Suzuki

Did you know that there are entire instruction manuals written about the art of slap-hitting in softball? Apparently the key is to start running forward before the pitch even reaches the plate.

Frank Thomas Thank God I Hit Fly Balls All The Time Because I Couldn't Beat Out a Grounder if My Life Depended On It Award (Highest OFB%/Lowest GB%): Mark Ellis

Frank Thomas has hit over 50% fly balls in every full season that he's played since people started keeping track of this stuff-- and a good thing, too.

Reggie Willits I Can't Hit the Ball More Than Ten Feet In The Air Award (Lowest OFB%/Highest GB%): Bobby Crosby

How does Reggie Willits lead a team in pitches per plate appearance? Can't the pitchers just throw heat high in the strike zone? Why would you ever throw a pitch that WASN'T a strike to Reggie Willits?

Meineke Car Care Clutch Award (Lowest IFB%): Jack Cust

Hey, if all the bowl games can sell off their naming rights, why can't I?

Oh, right. I didn't get a cent for this.

Fuck you, Meineke.

Robby Thompson I Wish I Was Playing in Old Candlestick Park So Some Of These Would Drop Safely Award (highest IFB%): Eric Chavez

Back before they had hot dog races, they had hot dog wrapper races out at the 'Stick. Boy, am I ever glad I never went to night games as a child. I doubt my delicate constitution could have handled it.

Dave Kingman Fly Balls are Scared of Me So They Hide in the Stands Award (highest HR/FB%): Jack Cust

There are exactly two player-seasons since 2002 in which a player hit a higher percentage of his fly balls for homers: Jim Thome's 2002 and Ryan Howard's 2006.

Duane Kuiper Couldn't Get it Out If The Bat Was Rocket-Assisted Award (lowest HR/FB%): Mark Kotsay

Ironically, I actually saw Kotsay's one homer this season; it was off Brad Lidge to send a game against the Astros to extra innings. The A's somehow ended that game with Jason Kendall playing the outfield. Needless to say, that did not work out well.

Derek Jeter If I Hit Like This Perhaps People Will Forget About My Defense Award (highest BABIP): Jack Cust, Jack Hannahan and Daric Barton

I'm declaring this one a three-way tie, since they were all pretty close and I'm not sure how much to weigh minor league stats here.

Jeromy Burnitz National Hit Like A Pirate Day Award (lowest BABIP): Mark Kotsay

Aarrgh.

Get it? Pirate? Aarrgh? It's a double entendre. See?

[ducks]

Jack Cust Contact Quality Award (highest OCSlg): Jack Cust

Well, shoot the horse and slap me silly. Whouda thunk.

Juan Pierre Contact Whatever the Exact Opposite of Quality Is Award (lowest OCSlg): Mark Kotsay

Impressively, Kotsay sweeps the negative "results" section of the Groundies. If Jason Kendall was still on the team, he might have given Kotsay a run for his money. As it is, he stands alone at the top of a pyramid of utter futility.

That's all for our excursion into batted ball data and its lessons. I hope you found this interesting and informative; it was certainly interesting, informative, and-- dare I say it-- fun to write.

Batted Ball Profiles And What They Tell Us-- Part 2

PaulThomas — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 23:01:24 -0000

A continuation from yesterday's article; today we'll study the batted ball profiles of Jack Cust, Mark Ellis, Jack Hannahan, Dan Johnson and Mark Kotsay. Get ready for some highs and some lows, folks.

It was suggested in yesterday's piece that I post league average marks in the various stats, so I'll start off by reposting that information, as well as the statistical glossary. If you're reading these in sequence, just skip ahead to the first bolded player name.

Glossary

League Medians (Among Qualified Players)

Line Drive: 18.8%
Ground Ball: 42.0%
Outfield Fly Balls: 35.0%
Infield Fly Balls: 3.9%

Home Runs per Fly Ball: 10.0%
BABIP: .312

I don't know what the median is for OCSlg, because I calculated that by hand. I seem to recall working out that league average was about .520 not too long ago, however.

Now, the players:

Jack Cust

LD 23.2%
GB 42.2%
OFB 33.3%
IFB 1.3% (!)

HR/FB 31.7%
BABIP .366
OCSlg .861 (!!)

Jack Cust is a phenomenon.

There's really no other way to put it. On the one hand, he struck out in almost one third of his plate appearances this season. He whiffed completely on over 1/3 of his swings, according to THT. Boy howdy, though, that pitcher did NOT want to see him make contact.

Just to put things in context here, A-Rod's MVP season, in which he hit 53 home runs, had an OCSlg of around .815. Yes, when Cust made contact, he hit the ball harder than A-Rod. He also had the single highest home run to fly ball ratio of any hitter in major league baseball who qualified for the batting title this season. Jack Cust's 2007 was truly historic.

A couple of underappreciated aspects about him have kind of escaped notice amid all the hoopla about his K's and homers. First is that he hits a lot of line drives. When you run like Jack Cust, you don't post a BABIP of .360 without hitting a lot of liners. Even when he puts the ball in play, it's pretty infrequent that the defense actually gets to it. Correlary to this (because he doesn't ground out a lot) is the fact that he really doesn't hit into a lot of double plays. Crosby grounded into 11; Cust, in significantly more at-bats, hit into 6.

Also, he doesn't pop up. Like, ever. Even before this season, he had 134 at-bats and had popped up exactly once. This season he basically maintained that by popping up three times in almost 400 at-bats. (Compare this to 6 sacrifice flies. A sac fly, unlike a pop-up, REQUIRES a runner on third base to get scored.)

We have to expect some of these features to regress toward the mean, just because they're SO exceptional as to be almost unprecedented. Next year, he'll probably hit a few less liners, ground into a few more DPs, and strike out a bit less frequently. It's sure fun to watch, though. Cust is a unique baseball player in many ways, and that's worth something.

Mark Ellis

LD 18.0%
GB 31.6%
OFB 41.7%
IFB 8.7%

HR/FB 7.8%
BABIP .302
OCSlg .526

In many ways, Mark Ellis was the epitome of a league-average hitter last year. (Not a league-average PLAYER, mind you. His stellar defense took him way over that mark.) The only difference? He hit a few less grounders, a few more popups, and a few less liners than the average batter. As a consequence, I don't actually have a lot to say here.

One thing I do notice is that he's totally changed his hitter profile from 2005, when he was primarily a ground-ball hitter. His line drives have dropped a bit, but more significantly his fly balls have gone way up. I guess it worked for him last year, but I have a feeling that if he could change his swing back to that of "2005 Ellis," he might come closer to his hitting stats of that season (when he was the team's best batsman). He's not getting a lot of homers per fly ball, so hitting a lot of them is not profiting him much.

The comparison with Crosby points up the limitations of this analysis. It's clear that some aspect of hitting performance isn't captured in batted ball stats. Crosby had a higher HR/FB ratio, more liners, more grounders and fewer flies than Ellis this year. Those would normally signal better BABIP, yet Crosby's was 50 points worse than Ellis's. This seemingly baffling discrepancy can only be explained by QUALITY of flies and grounders, which can't be quantified in sheer numbers.

Jack Hannahan

LD 23.4% 24.4%
GB 37.4% 44.9%
OFB 36.5% 26.9%
IFB 2.8% 3.6%

HR/FB 7.1% 19.3
BABIP .363 .372
OCSlg .580 .655

Minor league stats are in italics.

Jack Cust and Jack Hannahan are opposite sides of the same coin in many a way. Cust was the wunderkind, rushed to the majors and then deemed a failure as a consequence of a tiny sample size. Hannahan was the opposite, a guy who toiled in near-obscurity for years hoping to finally make the majors.

We can compare their batting styles, as well. Cust is all about the power swing; Hannahan is all about control. Cust mugs balls; Hannahan (if his minor league numbers are to be believed) knocks them through a hole. And yet they have some similarities-- both of them were extremely productive when they made contact last season, posting BABIPs of over .360. Hannahan didn't have the same success as Cust with fly balls in the majors (and, really, who did?) but he certainly found his power stroke in the minors, leading me to think he's got 10-15 jacks in him over a full season. Hannahan doesn't hit fly balls very often, so he's never going to threaten to lead the team in homers-- but when he does hit them, he tends to get results.

Hannahan struck me last season as a very smart hitter; I think his knowledge of the strike zone is about as good as any player in baseball. When he looks disgusted with the umpire over a strike call, it was a ball-- you can take it to the bank. I have no doubt that he knows what kinds of batted balls he's most successful at hitting, and uses that info to shape his approach and maximize his results. He's not blessed with a ton of natural talent, but he projects as an above-average hitter at third base next season.

Dan Johnson

LD 18.1%
GB 43.1%
OFB 35.0%
IFB 3.8%

HR/FB 13.5%
BABIP .249
OCSlg .516

Dan Johnson... ouch. Look at that BABIP. It's enough to make you want to cover your eyes when DJ actually makes contact with the ball. Good things are not, by and large, going to come from it.

Unlike Crosby, Johnson's struggles with BABIP aren't much of a surprise. He's a dead pull hitter, which allows teams to shift the defense and field far more balls than "normal" against him. He's left-handed, so when he pulls the ball it goes to the right side of the infield-- making it much easier for the defense to throw him out. And he runs like a sloth with congestive heart failure.

It would be unrealistic, at this point, to expect an improvement from DJ in these essential characteristics. He'll never hit for a high average because of the low BABIP, he'll never have dominant power, and he'll never play a skill position. If you need a decent bat at first base, he's a frustrating but reasonable option. Certainly there are (Sabean, are you listening here? Sabean? Brian?) teams which are desperately in need of some walks and home runs, so he ought to be able to find a niche. Unfortunately, that's what DJ is-- a niche talent.

Mark Kotsay

LD 14.6% (!)
GB 44.9%
OFB 38.4%
IFB 2.1%

HR/FB 1.3%
BABIP .232
OCSlg .328

Zounds.

It's really impossible to overstate how bad Kotsay was in 2007. His BABIP would have been the worst in the league if he had qualified; his OCSlg was worse than Nick Punto's. Only Gary Matthews, Ray Durham and Torii Hunter (how on God's green earth did he hit .287 last year?) had lower line drive percentages.

Kotsay's career numbers paint a clear picture of a player in decline. His line drive graph looks like Niagara Falls-- hovering around 25% for most of his career, then dropping to ~18% last year and 14.6% this year. Likewise with his home run rate, which has sagged badly for two seasons in a row.

Quite frankly, I see no reason for optimism in Kotsay's case. He's well beyond the wrong side of 30 and has a bad back. His power seems to be completely gone, and his ability to make good contact is highly questionable at this point, to say the least. He needs to be on a short leash. If his performance in Spring Training is not up to par, the team should release him and allow younger players to compete for the job.

That's all for today. In the final installment, I'll finish up the player profiles and hand out the End of Season Batted Ball Awards. (And/or lashes with a wet noodle, since I'll be noting the LVPs as well as the MVPs...)

Batted Ball Profiles and what they tell us-- Part 1

PaulThomas — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 22:27:45 -0000

A fool with a little information is a dangerous thing...

Lately I've been reading up on batted ball profiles, and what they mean for batting averages and other hitting statistics. I thought I'd take a look at the A's roster this year, and see what we can learn from what kinds of balls they hit.

The usual disclaimers: I'm throwing out anyone with under 80 plate appearances. Why 80? Because I'm writing this, and I said so. Also, I'm pitching the guys who've been cut or traded, since (in the inimitable words of Mark McGwire) we're not here to talk about the past. I'm leaving Stewart in, however, as there is a (remote) chance that he might be re-signed.

This leaves us with 13 total guys with enough plate appearances that are still on the MLB roster. To wit:

Barton
Buck
Chavez
Crosby
Cust
Ellis
Hannahan
Johnson
Kotsay
Murphy
Stewart
Swisher
Suzuki

I'll handle 4 today, 5 tomorrow and 4 Friday.

Statistical jargon

Forward!

Daric Barton

LD 24.2%
GB 32.3%
OFB 37.1%
IFB 6.4%

HR/FB 14.8%
BABIP .368
OCSlg .754

Barton had one of the strongest big-league debuts of any player in recent memory, as he came up and simply knocked the cover off the ball for three weeks at the end of the season. He showed everything one could want from a hitter-- great power, patience and plate awareness, good contact and the ability to beat out tough balls in the infield (2 infield hits).

Needless to say, everyone who is thinking clearly has to expect a regression from these numbers. It may be that Barton is a 24% line drive hitter, but those are fairly rare and we can't expect it on a permanent basis. He's primarily a fly-ball hitter, so he'll need to hold up either his line drives or his power indices (like HR/FB) to post above-average numbers.

Boy, though-- you can't help but salivate at the thought of a guy who hits a liner one out of every four times he puts the ball in play. By their very nature, liners are hard for defenders to handle-- they come in very fast at awkward trajectories. The really exciting thing about Barton is that you can see two separate ways for him to become a star-- a line-drive machine or, if he builds his power to what he was showing down the stretch, a more traditional first baseman model. If he manages both, he's a Hall of Fame candidate.

Travis Buck

LD 18.7%
GB 43.3%
OFB 33.8%
IFB 3.2%

HR/FB 8.6%
BABIP .354
OCSlg .619

Buck's numbers are sitting comfortably around league average in most respects. He hits a good but not great number of line drives. His raw power (as measured by HR/FB) is definitely below league average, but in the neighborhood of guys like Mike Lowell, Eric Byrnes and Kevin Millar-- all solid major league hitters who typically hit home runs in the high teens or low 20s over a full season.

Buck's strong suit is his BABIP. He hits a high percentage of ground balls, but has the raw speed to beat out a decent number of them (five infield hits this season). A rough rule of thumb for BABIP is line drive percentage plus .120, which would give him an "expected" BABIP of .307. We can expect to see some regression to the mean here next season, but Buck should continue to post BABIPs comfortably above league average.

In the future, A's fans can hope for two things. First, if Buck adds additional power (quite a possibility given his youth) he could substantially up his slugging percentage. Second, if he can add the push-bunt to his hitting arsenal, his excellent home-to-first speed should enable it to be an effective means of obtaining additional base hits.

Eric Chavez

LD 17.1%
GB 36.4%
OFB 35.1%
IFB 11.4%

HR/FB 12.0%
BABIP .268
OCSlg .573

Dear lord, that's a fuggly infield fly percentage. To a pretty large extent, those of you who complained about Chavez's lack of clutch-ness last year were quite right. He had a disturbing tendency to pop up in situations where a popup was the worst possible outcome.

That said, Chavez has never had anything like that kind of a popup percentage before this season. In past years it was in the neighborhood of 6%. If-- big if-- he returns healthy from the various surgeries he had this offseason, I suspect his popup percentage will drop toward what it has been for most of his career.

Chavez has good raw power, but he made very poor contact with the ball last season. This is reflected in his poor BABIP and OCSlg, which are below average for everyone in the former case and way below average for power hitters in the latter. A's fans need to hope that a newly pain-free Chavez is able to get around on his swings and square up more balls in 2008. If not, we'd better get used to biting our nails when he comes up with men on 2nd and 3rd and one out.

Bobby Crosby

LD 19.8%
GB 48.1%
OFB 26.4%
IFB 5.7%

HR/FB 8.8%
BABIP .254
OCSlg .415

Crosby: now starring as the Soviet Union! (A riddle, wrapped inside an enigma, etc etc.)

I'm confounded, I really am. Crosby's batted-ball numbers look like Derek Jeter's. And yet he has a BABIP of .254. His OCSlg is absolutely putrid-- despite his considerable power, when he makes contact with the ball, he looks like Juan Pierre.

If I was a hitting coach, I would tell Crosby to forget about trying to hit fly balls. Yes, he has power, but it's useless as long as he's making such poor contact with the average ball. The guy has good speed; if he slapped the ball around a little he might up his BABIP considerably. His best season (2005) was also the season in which he hit the most grounders and the fewest flies.

Really, though, I'm stumped. How can someone have a BABIP which is so close (only 6.5 percent or so off) to his line drive rate? If anything, given his solid speed, his BABIP should be HIGHER than the standard LD rate plus .120. Is he hitting a whole bunch of really soft liners right at people? Doesn't he ever get hits on non-homer fly balls? Maybe he's just unlucky, and Beane has stuck with him for as long as he has because he believes that sooner or later, his BABIP has to come up to match his batted ball profile.

That's all for today. I hope this was somewhat interesting; if anyone has any suggestions, I'd be more than happy to incorporate them (different stats you'd like to see, different ways of organizing them, whatever). Does my analysis make sense? Any ways you feel the team should make use of this information? Inquiring minds want to know.

More tomorrow.