Last thread has zombified, here is a new Minors thread.

As always, thanks to Oracle shroomer for the pitching forecasts

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Because I need something to satisfy the 75 word limit:

K and BB rates of people whose K rates we worry about (Updated 5/15)

Let me know if you want a specific player tracked here

Mendonca: 31.5% K, 5.5% BB
Mike Olt: 25.3% K, 15.8% BB
Jake Skole: 25.8% K, 9.2% BB
El Pharoah: 32% K, 4% BB
Zach Cone: 26.9% K, 5.4% BB
Deglan: 24.8% K, 8.9% BB
Drew Robinson: 25.7% K, 15.9% BB
Jordan Akins: 39.0% K, 0.9% lol

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May 8th - Tuesday

Hickory - 6 PM - Luke Jackson (Rained out)

Myrtle Beach - 6 PM - Font (4.2 IP, 1 H, 1 BB, 5K)

Frisco - 11 AM - Pimentel (who cares)

Round Rock - 7:30 PM - Neil Ramirez (5.1 IP, 8 H (1 HR), 3 BB, 1 HBP, 3 K)

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May 9th - Wednesday

Hickory - Off

Myrtle Beach - 6 PM - Buckel of the year thwarted by rain

Frisco - Off

Round Rock - 7:30 PM - Greg Reynolds (whatever)

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May 10th - Thursday

Hickory - 6 PM - Luke Jackson (5 2/3 IP, 7 H, 4 BB, 9 K)

Myrtle Beach - 5 PM (double header) - Buckel (5 IP, 2 H -1HR, 4 BB, 7K) and Joe Van Meter (4 IP, perfect, 7K)

Frisco - 7 PM - Barret Loux (5 1/3 IP, 4 H - 1HR, 2 BB, 6 K)

Round Rock - 7:30 PM - Zach Jackson

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May 11th - Friday

Hickory - 6 PM - Payano (7 IP, 3 H -1HR 1 BB, 6 K)

Myrtle Beach - 6 PM - Mendez (4 1/3 IP, 4 H, 4 BB, 3K)

Frisco - 7 PM - Brigham (7 IP, 5 H - 1HR, 1 BB, 1 HBP, 5 K)

Round Rock - 7:30 PM - Kirkman (5 IP, 3 H, 4 BB, 5 K)

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May 12th -Saturday

Hickory - 5 PM - iCoff

Myrtle Beach - 6 PM - Tepesch

Frisco - 7 PM - Tim Murphy

Round Rock - 9 PM - Martin Perez Hankins out of nowhere

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May 13th - Sunday

Hickory - RAIN

Myrtle Beach - RAIN

Frisco - 1 PM - Grimm

Round Rock - 3:30 PM - Nero

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May 14th Monday- Let us forget this day forever

Hickory - 5 PM - Will Lamb

Myrtle Beach - 6 PM - Hendricks

Frisco - 7 PM - Pimentel

Round Rock - 9 PM - A crestfallen Martin Perez

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May 15th - Tuesday

Hickory - 5 PM - Santo Perez

Myrtle Beach - 5 PM - Hendricks and Joe Van Meter Double Header

Frisco - 11 AM - Loux

Round Rock - 1:30 PM - Reynolds

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May 16th -Wednesday

Hickory - 10 AM - Luke Jackson

Myrtle Beach - 11 AM - Font

Frisco - 6:30 PM - Brigham

Round Rock - OFF

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May 17th - Thursday

Hickory - 6 PM - Payano

Myrtle Beach - 6 PM - Please enjoy your Buckelic evening

Frisco - 7 PM - Tim Murphy

Round Rock - 7 PM - Zach Jackson or Michael Kirkman or Who Cares?

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May 18th - Friday

Hickory - 6 PM - Payanoforte

Myrtle Beach - 6 PM - Mendez

Frisco - 7 PM - Grimm

Round Rock - 7 PM - Zach Jackson

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May 19th - Saturday

Hickory - 4:35 PM - Lamb and Eickhoff Doubleheader

Myrtle Beach - 5 PM - Tepesch

Frisco - 7 PM - Chad Bell

Round Rock - 6 PM - Nero

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May 20th - Sunday

Hickory - 1 PM - Santo Perez

Myrtle Beach - 12:30 PM - Hendricks

Frisco - 4 PM - Loux

Round Rock - 1 PM - Martin Perez

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May 21th - Monday

Hickory - 3 PM - Luke Jackson and Nick Martinez Doubleheader

Myrtle Beach - Rest

Frisco - 11 AM - Brigham

Round Rock - 7 PM - Reynolds

For Rangers fans, this offseason has been something of a let-down so far.  The offseason Droolfest 2010, which started with the team reportedly having designs on BOTH Lee and Greinke, ended with a McClung.  With few impact FA left on the market, the front office has become curiously quiet.  Although the DH and a rotation spot remain unfilled, nobody really know who the club is targeting and what they feel about the current roster.

On this board, I think there have been two ways that we've looked at the team.  The optimists argue that since the black holes at catcher, 1B and Harden will be eliminated, the club should still be the AL West favorites, even in its present state.  The pessimists point to a full season of Haren and Morales for the Angels, and the flurry of incremental improvements that the A's have made to complement their young, talented pitching staff as signs that the balance of power in the AL West is shifting.  All living beings agree that Seattle is still kind of hopeless.  I wanted to put some numbers to this question, so I made a position-by-position WAR count for the four teams (click the table for bigger view):

Usually, people do this kind of exercise when the rosters are set in ST, but I wanted to do one right now to get an idea of what additional moves are needed in the offseason.  Wins above replacement (WAR) values for position players are roughly estimated with park-adjusted wOBA from statcorner and the defense values from fangraphs.  Pitching WARs are based on the Fangraphs FIP values.  All WARs are adjusted by my arbitrary judgement.  Generally, I estimated improvements for younger players and regression for older players, or those having exceptional years.  Please note that these are rough estimates, and expect an error bar of a couple of WARS.  I have only included 4 member of the rotation, since the #5 tends to be a very fluid spot.

Angels:  The Angels have a very good rotation.  Their 1-2 is the best in the division, and I may be underestimating Pinero's performance a little bit.  The signing of Downs and Takahashi plugs some holes in their below-average bullpen, and the return of Morales is a instant 2-3 win upgrade.  The issue is that outside Morales and Hunter, the remaining position players are really uninspiring and quite average.  They are probably looking to sign a DH, or even a outfielder to get Abreu out of there.  Overall, there is not too much upside in their bats (no real breakthrough candidates).  They are not too far off, but are still a couple more upgrades from being on par with the top of the division.  The good news for us is that outside of Mike Trout, they don't particularly have much in terms of prospects.  They are also a bit tied up financially for this year and possible the next.  They may be able to sign Beltre, which should give them a 2 win upgrade over Izturis, in which case they will be closer, but by no means a favorite.

Athletics:  Probably the primary contender to the Rangers right now.  They added a few pieces in the offseason, and although none of these upgrades are concerning in isolation, the sum of the part is quite significant.  They have turned out a lineup like a deluxe version of last year's Padres - there are no real stars, but they have no black holes, and are solidly average to above average at every position.  This is also a team with a large chunk of value built into their defense.  Last season, their starting infielders turn out almost 5 wins (according to UZR) on defense above average.  Compared to a poor defensive team, say the Royals, the infield defense alone makes up around a 8 win difference between them.  8 Wins!  On infield defense alone!  On the other hand, I get a little bit suspicious when a large chunk of the team's value is based on defense.  Since they still cannot be evaluated quite well, there is often a tendency for large regression (i.e. last season's Mariners).

The pitching staff is good, but probably overrated.  I think the only real ace-level pitcher on the staff right now is Brett Anderson, though the rest have the potential to get there.  The worst of their top four starting pitchers is probably still a solid #3.  Because of the excellent defense and the park, they are likely to put up really low ERA numbers and look a lot better once again. 

Last year, the A's organization had a terrible year in the minors, but an excellent year for the major league club.  All of their young pitchers made progress or established themselves, and Barton emerged as a very good player.  I think that although this is a young team, their best chance to compete for the division is not a few years down the line, but now.  A's cannot spend a lot of money, and with Barton and Cahill becoming arbitration eligible next offseason, their payroll will have to increase by more than 10 million annually just to keep up with arbitration raises.  Since their maximum payroll is probably no more than 60-70 million unless they can move somewhere else (not for a few years, if at all), they will not be able to afford to keep the core roster together in a few years and still have money left to spend for anything else.  Given that their farm system lacks top-end talent that can provide major contribution soon, I think their window of winning the West is now, particularly with the Angels stuck in the doldrums and Mariners not quite ready.  After that, they might have to trade away those pitchers and rebuild again.  Given the moves Beane has made so far, it's clear that he believes the team to be competitive now as well.  They are going to be the main rival in the next 2-3 seasons.

Mariners: The Mariners are not in as bad a shape as most think, since they have some very good players and young players with high upside.  The problem is that they don't have enough of a supporting staff to seriously mount a challenge for the division right now.  Sure, there is a chance if Smoak, Saunders develop, if Pineda/Ackley contribute immediately after being called up, if Figgins return to his pre-contract form, if the bullpen finds some stability, if Bedard returns healthy, and if the remaining players manage not to be black holes that they can legitimately compete, but that's if nothing bad happens either.

The Rangers have the best group of position players, if not somewhat brittle.  The A's has similar problems with injuries, but they are not quite as top heavy, so injuries will hurt a bit less.  The problem right now is the rotation.  It's the third best in the division, and there are way too much uncertainties for a team expected to win the division.  This problem must be addressed.  They cannot just move Feliz into the rotation or expect someone like Feldman to pick up the slack.  Ideally, you'll want a solid #3 who can give you innings, possibly a reclamation project, some depth, and stick Holland in the rotation because they need to find out what he can do now.  Keep Feliz in the pen for now, I don't think it's a good idea to add even more question marks to the rotation as it is.  Overall, the Rangers are probably the favorites right now, but only slightly.

Then what do the Rangers need to do?  Had they been able to sign Lee or get Greinke, they would have opened up a more comfortable 3-5 win gap between themselves and the A's.  In not doing so, they improved their long-term outlook at the cost of the short term.  Now, if the A's manage to get Beltre, which really is not that big of an upgrade of Kouzmanoff, (1-2 wins), they are essentially co-favorites for the AL West.  Also, because I think the A's competitive window is closing, just like some thinks ours is closing, it makes sense for the Rangers to try to open up this gap a little more.  Maybe it's through upgrading the rotation by trading for someone like Nolasco, or finding a good DH option, or even upgrading center field, but I think it's imperative that the team finds a way to add a couple more wins worth of talent before the end of the offseason to tilt the balance more in their favor.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that the Rangers are by no means in a bad situation.  They have both the best major league talent and the best minor league talent in this division.  They have extra picks next offseason, only one bad contract, and money to spend.  Right now, I think the team is in great shape in the long run.  However, without further upgrade this offseason, they may be facing very stiff competition in the next couple of years.

tl;dr: Rangers good, need better, Oakland chasing, sandwich tasty.

Warning, long post ahead.  I will be spending 1500 words to argue a very simple point.

If you were poorly adjusted when you were growing up like I was, you might have wondered if the Grinch and Santa Claus were the same person.  After all, why else would they wear the same outfit; why did Santa* deck all of his elves in green regalia.  Maybe he just got tired of bringing Chinese-made toy cars to little kids and sweaters to husbands and wanted to troll.  Maybe Cliff Lee felt the same way.

(*Actually, to paraphrase someone much wiser than myself: what kind of a creepy old man has thousands of little kids sit in his lap during the day, and then breaks into their houses at night and eat their food?  How suspicious is that?  Don't even get me started on Rudolph - I mean he gets used as a headlight just because he has a red nose.  If you ask a bald man to be a lightbulb for you, he'd punch you in the face.)

Need more evidence?

Q.E.D

For whatever reason, Lee has sucked in his latest three outings.  He did not have his curveball in one of those starts, but his stuff seemed otherwise fine.  It was obvious to everyone that the reason for the poor outings was simply too many pitches in the middle of the plate, or is it?

Here are the pitch locations from four of Lee's starts this year, can you guess which ones were good starts, and which ones were poor?  (The caution and caveats in using pitch f/x data applies here - for example, velocity of movements of pitches are sometimes not very consistent.  However, I've only used pitch locations here, and that tends to be pretty accurate.)

Continue reading this post »

Fifty-four games into the season, the team is in first place.  Countless cans of Tab have been emptied in celebration; countless sighs over bunt attempts and base running errors have been uttered in indignation; countless walks have been issued by Rich Harden; countless boobies have been posted in GDTs in the name of participation.  At this made-up milestone of the season, it's a good opportunity to stop, look, listen, and examine what the team came from, and where it might be going. 

Beware, extremely long post ahead!

(Note: this game does not include Tommy Hunter's awesomefest today)

Continue reading this post »

Lots of hand-wringing around here over the Lowell trade, and not the least over his ability to sustain a reasonable offensive performance here.  Here is a hypothetical question: how would the 2009 version of Mike Lowell have done in TBiA?  Thanks to Trip Somers (NoNameOnCard) and his transcendent spray chart and pitch f/x tool at texasleaguers.com, we can do just a bit better than empty speculation.

Here is a chart of Lowell's balls in play from 2009 - superimposed upon the TBiA. 

I don't know about you, but this chart immediately makes me nostalgic for old friend, Mr. Kinsler

Both are clearly pull hitters, the difference is that Kinsler's hits tend to go a little bit further.  Based on last year's results, Lowell doesn't have any power except to left field, and there is a conspicuously large amount of green "hit" dots just inside the wall in left field.  If you look at the same place on the field for Kinsler, most of his batted balls there were turned into outs.  I know what you are thinking, but this DOES NOT mean it's necessarily the Green Monster effect, since Lowell tend to hit a bit more line drives than Kinsler (19 vs 17%).  Nevertheless, it's possible that those Lowell hits in semi-deep left field were partially consequence of Fenway, and if that's the case, he will lose some of those hits in TBiA.  In addition, based on the fact that he doesn't really seem to get a lot of hits anywhere else, I raise a red flag on whether Lowell would be able to sustain his offensive performance.

Of course, balls in Arlington should travel further than balls in Boston, so you can move those dots further outwards for Lowell.  In these cases, those dots near the wall should turn into home runs, but I don't think the effects will be great enough to turn the dots in medium-deep left field into legit hits in our park.  Perhaps it's reasonable that he will increase his HR total, but at the cost of maybe some hits.  Then again, many hard hits to left field in Fenway ends up as singles because of the stupid wall, so his 2B number might actually go up.

Also, remember that Lowell was hurt in 2009.  I can't get data for his spray chart for 2008, so I don't know how that would compare.  Injury certainly would have sapped his power, and if he is healthy again and his power recovers, it's not unreasonable to expect a power surge in TBiA.

So based on the 2009 spray charts, I am worried that Lowell may not be able to sustain his offensive performance in TBiA because of the evidence that he benefit from the left field in Fenway.  Traditional stat also seem to support this, but only for last year (.932 OPS home vs. .713 OPS away in 2009).  He did not show such split in 2008 (.766 OPS Home vs. .823 OPS away), and 2006 (.763 OPS Home vs. .866 OPS away), although the split was there in 2007 (.993 OPS Home vs. .767 OPS away)

Finally, remember that although this is not empty speculation, it is still speculation.  Take with grains of salt, please!

Jeff on LL just did a quick overview on the state of Mariners post-Lee deal, and since now that we are waiting for St. Greenberg to officially purchase the team, I thought I'll do a similar thing on where the Rangers are right now in terms of talent level.  This will be a rough estimation; don't expect accuracy, especially given the roster fluctuation at the moment.  Data are taken from Fangraphs and Statcorner in terms of Wins Above Replacement (WAR)

Estimations are very conservative, and assume that we have Lowell already.  As is, it puts us at about 82-83 wins based on talent level alone (replacement level is like 48 wins), but with significant upside.  Position players performances are extremely difficult to estimate, so I assumed little to no improvement in catching, modest improvement at 1B, offensive regression from MY, but somewhat offset by defensive improvements.  Hamilton is the hardest-  I think he will play good defense in LF, but not sure about the bat.  Borbon figures to play reasonably good CF defense, or somebody else will take his place. 

Harden, if healthy, will outperform the 3 WAR I gave him.  If he is hurt, someone like Nippert should replace him and put up at least 1 WAR, so 3 seems like a decent compromise.  Feldman and Hunter are figured to repeat last year (in terms of tRA/FIP, not ERA).  I think Holland will be better, but assumed only modestly so.  The bullpen is completely unknown, but since the Franky/CJ/Feliz/O'Day quad put up 7 WAR last season, and that we no longer have the Eddies and Bensons in the pen, 4 WAR should be reasonable. 

I am usually pessimistic, but if you are more well-adjusted, we are looking at a 85 win talent team.  That's on par with Seattle right now.  Good news is that there is a good chance several players will exceed the estimation (like Hammy, Davis, Holland, maybe even catching), and a smaller chance they will do worse.  Bad news is there is not a lot of room for improvement.  I don't think we are in a position to seriously upgrade any one component on the team.  The biggest projected weaknesses are catching and 1B, but they won't be doing anything there except limiting downside.  Any DH improvement probably won't be that much better than what Lowell will give you.  There is also a lack of high end starting pitching initially.  We are by no means favourites, but at least we should be very competitive, which isn't bad given our ownership issues.

Edit: credit for background photo of spreadsheet goes to williamos2

Here is to Chris Davis: he of the two true outcomes, the man with the oscillating bandwagon, the hero of the game, the beasticon.  It appears that the time has come when the self-imposed handicap of a 4-foot high strike zone is finally lifted.  Chris Davis!  It is time to unleash your full power, terrorize the dreams of AL pitchers from Aardsma to Zumaya, and bask in the euphony of the cry of their women and children!

Everybody knows about how McCarthy decided to scrap his curveball (which is supposedly a plus pitch) for a slider.  Apparently McCarthy wasn't all that comfortable with the curveball and could not control it very well (hat tip: BBTiA).  So I briefly looked at some of the pitch f/x numbers from both 2007 and 2008 (beware of the SSS) to see if his discomfort was also reflected in results.

The one thing that stands out about the curveball is that almost nobody swings at the pitch and misses.  In 2007, the swinging strike % on the curveball is a bit lower than 5%, and in 2008, it's even worse at 3% - Andruw probably swings and misses more than that in batting practice.  The average starting pitcher gets about 7.8% swinging strike rates on the average of all of his pitches, and the swinging strike % are usually higher for breaking pitches than for fastballs - provided that the breaking pitch is any good.  By comparison, McCarthy's fastball ended up getting about 7% swinging strikes in 2007 (which isn't bad at all), and further suggests that the curveball doesn't fool anyone (a real man's curveball like that of Ben Sheets gets 11.5% swinging strikes).  Nevertheless, it seems mildly effective in avoiding being hit - partly because he threw it for a strike only 54% of the time in 2007, and slightly improved 61% strikes in 2008.  As a reference, the strike rate of an average starter (for all his pitches) is about 64%.

On the other hand, his changeup (also supposed to be a plus pitch) got swinging strikes 15% of the time in 2007 and 14.5% in 2008.  Unfortunately, his command of the pitch was really bad in 2007 and 50% of it missed the strike zone while being ignored by the hitters.  The command improved to 65% strikes in 2008.  Interestingly, the average velocity of the changeup increased by a bit more than 1 mph last season, but don't ask me what it means.  McCarthy said he is mainly a fastball-changeup guy, and those two pitches do indeed appear to be his better pitches.  In 2007, his fastball wasn't bad, but he didn't have much command on either of his breaking pitches.  In 2008 on the other hand, his breaking pitches seemed to be better, but his fastball wasn't quite as good.

After seeing the data, I guess I am a bit less upset and flummoxed about his sudden change of heart and repertoire - given how bland his curveball appears to be.  I don't know if the slider will turn out any better, but it can't be too much worse than the curveball even if it's just a placebo pitch. 

Quickly, somebody teach him a cutter.

After looking at Mr. Joey's Line up analysis, where the current 2009 lineup is expected to score 830 runs, I wondered how our pitching would look as is in 2009 and how many runs we might expect to give up.  So I did some rough calculations based on the CHONE and Marcel projection systems and calculated expected record in 2009 without major additions.  I used the projected innings pitched, runs and earned runs to do the calculations.

For all of these, I assumed that starters would pitch a combined 900 innings and bullpen 540.  I assumed the starting five to be Millwood, Padilla, McCarthy, Harrison, and Hurley, and used their total projected innings pitched.  I then made some assumptions of innings pitched based on some other starter candidates to get to 900 innings total.  For the bullpen, I used the full projected innings pitched for Franky, Benoit, and CJ and made some assumptions for other folks

------------------------ CHONE projections -----------------------

Chone projects are pretty hard on our pitchers:

Format used is:  Name:    IP/ERA, for numbers that I assumed/made up, I put a parethesis around the number

--------- Starters ------------

Millwood:     159/5.09

Padilla:        150/5.16

McCarthy:    78/4.96

Harrison:     134/5.57

Hurley:         107/5.89

Feldman:    (60)/4.71

Dusty Tits:  (50)/4.73

Hunter:        (40)/5.75

Holland:      (30)/5.63

Gabbard:    (30)/5.23

Others:        (62)/(5.40)

Others are either the likes of Murray/Mathis, reclamation projects, minor leaguer FAs, I assume that they will get a 5.40 ERA.  This bunch will pitch 900 innings and allow about 570 runs (525 earned), for starter ERA average of 5.25

------------ Bullpen -------------

The bullpen innings are harder to predict since it depends both on player health and performance and health of starters.  Also who will end up in the bullpen is hard to say.  Here are numbers:

Francisco:   58/3.54

Benoit:         57/4.36

CJ:                58/4.42

Rupe:          (70)/4.93

Feldman:    (30)/4.71

Dusty Tits:  (30)/4.73

Madrigal:    (40)/5.14

Gabbard:    (40)/5.23

Moscoco*:  (30)/5.49

Mendoza:   (40)/5.44

Others:       (87)/(5.40)

* I picked Moscoco here to represent some combination of Moscoco/Eyre/Bannister.  Moscoco seem to get the most healthy projection, so who knows...

This group pitches 540 innings and allows about 318 runs (294 earned), for bullpen ERA of 4.90.

Together, the entire staff looks to give up about 888 runs (819 earned) and staff ERA of 5.12 next year based on CHONE projection.  That translate to a pythagorean of 75.5 wins if you assume that we score 830 runs.  Not much changes from this year.

However, if you would follow me to dreamland for a minute, what would some FA additions like Ben Sheets do for the expected records?  Ben sheets projects in CHONE 148 IP/3.83 ERA in 2009, and if we replace Padilla with Sheets and assume Sheets perform based on projection, the total runs given up gets knocked down to 863, and pythag record goes to 77.9 wins.  Replacing Padilla with Sheets should get us an extra 2.4 wins.

What about bullpen improvements?  We still need a lefty, and the two names out there that has been linked to everyone's favourite team are Everyday Eddie and Will Ohman.

CHONE projects Ohman to be 51 IP/3.88 ERA and Eddie 36 IP/4.50 ERA.  I assume that both will pitch 50 innings should they be signed, and that 40 of those innings are taken from Gabbard and 10 from "Others".  Doing this, signing Ohman gives pythag of 76.4 wins (0.9 win improvement) and Eddie 76.0 wins (0.5 win improvement)

----------------------- Marcel projections ---------------------

Marcel (taken from Fangraphs) is little more generous to our starters:

--------- Starters -----------

Millwood:     162/4.94

Padilla:        158/4.87

McCarthy:    65/4.36

Harrison:     102/4.72

Hurley:         72/4.44

Feldman:    (100)/4.76

Dusty Tits:  (50)/5.20

Hunter:        (65)/5.26

Holland:      (30)/5.63   --- I can't find Marcel for Holland, so I used CHONE here

Gabbard:     (40)/4.41

Others:         (56)/(5.40)

Total of 900 innings, surrendering 529 runs (496 earned) for starter ERA of 4.96.

-------- Bullpen ------------

Francisco:   63/4.0

Benoit:         56/4.1

CJ:                55/4.34

Rupe:           70/4.56

Feldman:    (30)/4.76

Dusty Tits:  (30)/5.2

Madrigal:     44/4.3

Gabbard:     (40)/4.41

Moscoco:     (30)/5.49   ---- Same as CHONE, combo of Moscoco/Eyre/Bannister

Mendoza:     (40)/5.47

Others:         (82)/(5.40)

Total of 540 innings, giving up 307 runs (281 earned), ERA of about 4.69 for the bullpen.

Marcel projects the entire staff to surrender 835.6 runs (777 earned) and staff ERA of 4.86, and pythag win of 80.5.  Sheets projects 173 IP/3.59 in Marcel, and replacing Padilla with him ups pythag win to 83.4 (+2.9 wins).  Adding Ohman nets an extra 0.4 wins and Eddie extra 0.3 wins.

--------------------- Summary --------------------

Well, it looks like a 75-80 win team as everybody else has predicted.  The pitching should improve just due to regression, but anything gained from that is lost from the regression in the offense as well.  Both projections are generous on the defense, so if you think we are still going to give up 100 unearned runs like last year, take off 3 wins from the projection.  If Sheets can pitch up to projection, replacing Padilla with him (maybe 4 million extra per year) gets 2.5 extra wins - a pretty good deal, but there are a lot more people that believe the Sheets will underperform the projection rather than outperform.  Ohman might be worth about $4 million a year, depends on which projection you look at and how well you think Gabbard will perform.  Eddie should get a half win at a smaller price.  Allowing some variations, it's possible that the team will win 85 and compete since the division is weak, but almost equally likely that they will have 70 wins and be in the cellar.  At this point and with the current roster construction, serious playoff hope in 2009 is probably a stretch. 

There are some room for optimism though.  The defense should be better (especially if they put a good glove at 3B), and it's not likely that they will put up with the CHONE projection of Metcalf numbers for an entire season.  Most of pitching staff is equally horrible, so depth is less of an issue than for team with obvious aces.  The projections also don't show any "breakthroughs", and assumes none of the pitchers take a step forward, but of course they can go backwards as well.  Although I have a hard time imagining how you can underperform a projected ERA of 5.7, but it's Rangers baseball afterall - where surprises awaits you after every pitch.

Most here agree that Hurley's first start was decent.  He had good command overall, but also showed why he is so homerun prone.  Let's look at this performance in more detail (which obviously mean pitch f/x).  Perhaps we can all learn something from the data and..... oh hell, I just needed to do this to get it out of my system.... I've waited a whole year!

As I was saying, first a pitch profile - of the 91 pitches tracked, pitch f/x calls 59 fastballs, 23 sliders, and 9 change-ups.  Of the 91 pitches, only 27 were balls and 7 were swung on and missed for swinging strike % of 7.7%.

The average fastball velocity was 91.1 mph, ranging from 87 to 93, and only 2 swinging strikes on the fastball.  The change-up averages 80.5 mph, with no swinging strikes, and slider averages 84.6 mph, with 5 swinging strike (22%). 

The following chart shows movement of the three pitches:

It's interesting to note that the fastball seem to be split into 2 groups, one of them with both larger vertical and horizontal break.  I believe this might be correlated with the velocity difference, or perhaps this is just a SSSS (small sample size syndrome).

Overall, the fastball has decent movement.  It's not a straight pitch and has some "rising" action.  The change mimic the fastball closely (more close than you think!), which may or may not be preferred depends on what you think a changeup should accomplish, and the slider breaks only slightly.  While there is nothing flashy, this is a good combination of pitches as I will explain a bit further down.  First I focus on the fastball locations:

I feel that I must make a clarification.  I screwed up worse than the Royal's bullpen in some previous posts.  The location shown in this graph is from the perspective of the umpire (not the pitcher).  Please mentally overwrite all "right" with "left" and vice versa in regard to my previous posts regarding location.

So anyway, nothing too groundbreaking here.  Hurley pitches on the edges most of the time, and he also gets the usual wide strike zone.

The mistake pitches are obviously the ones right down the middle.  Hurley threw the changeups exclusively to left handed batters today,  so he threw them outside to them.  Nobody got a hit off the changeup, and nobody swung and missed at it either.  For the most part, they did not get very good swings against the change.  Now for the slider:

Not surprisingly, the major dose of sliders went to the right handed hitters.  Very good location of the pitch caused a lot of swing and misses.  This pitch will be extremely tough on the righties.  Nevetheless, he did manage to hang a couple which got hit.  

Hurley's pitching strategy is not too complicated.  Work off the fastball, throw changeups and sliders to lefties to get bad swings, and slider to righties to K.  If he continues to have good command of these pitches, his only real task is to cut down on mistake pitches.  This will also confirm the suspicion that we've had regarding his AAA performance.  His stuff and command is good enough to get a lot of strikeouts, but those Xs down the middle are bad for his performance and my mental health.

Finally, just because I just figured out how to do it (thanks Jeff), here is a new plot you may or may not have seen:

This plot shows the average trajectory of Hurley's pitches from a side view.  The horizontal axis is the distance away from home plate, and he is assumed to release his pitches at a point 50 feet away from home plate.  The vertical axis is the distance off the ground.  An average hitter's knee will be at a height of around the 1.5-2 feet region on the y axis.  The first thing that you may notice is the similar path of all of his pitches in the initial part of the flight.  The 3 pitches look similar to one another from the side.  The changeup and fastball follow similar paths on average, so in essence, his changeup is a slow fastball.  Some pitchers use their changeup as a strikeout pitch, and their changeups will deviate dramatically from their fastball in the last 15-20 feet from the plate and drop down.  In Hurley's case, his changeup arrive at a similar spot to the fastball as it crosses the plate.  So hitter may think it's a fastball and swing at it, but since it's slower, they will get in front of it and won't get much of a swing.  It is a bit more difficult to net strikeouts because the deviation in speed alone may not be enough to avoid the batter's bat as he swings.  In today's game, batters swung at 5 of the changeups, fouling 3 off and hitting into 2 outs.  Be aware, small sample size is in effect.

Now, look at the trajectory of the pitches from a "birds eye" view.

The horizontal axis still stands for the distance away from the plate, and the vertical axis is now parallel to the ground (think of the line running alone the direction of a batter's foot if he stands in the batter's box facing the plate).  The 0 mark on the vertical axis is the center of the plate, and the strike zone will fall between the +1 and -1 marks on the y axis.

First thing I point you to is the path of the fastball and the slider.  At the time when an average hitter must make his decision whether to swing or not, the slider and fastball are at around the 40 ft mark on the horizontal axis.  Now, up to about 30 feet away from the plate, these two pitches look EXACTLY the same.  Afterwards, the slider curves outside to right handed hitters and drops down.  Since they are also the same in the side view initially, it is going to be very difficult for a hitter to tell if a pitch is a fastball or a slider as it comes out of his hand, unless they can pick up the spin.  If he commands the slider properly, it will be agonizing task (especially for righties) to try to hit it.  This is an out pitch.

The changeup looks similar to his fastball in this view as well, but it's interesting to note that he seem to release both the changeup and slider further away from his body.  It might be something worth keeping an eye on lest he tips off his pitches.

Overall, Hurley features a decent fastball in tandem with a good slider and a changeup - whose effectiveness in the major leagues remains to be seen.  I think he will have a tough time trying to blow the fastball by hitters with a 91 mph fastball, but the slider, if commanded well, is a strikeout pitch.  Obviously he needs to cut down on his mistake pitches, but perhaps he could also utilize the changeup to throw off hitters so they don't captialize on those mistakes as much.  If he retain this level of command, however, I am not too worried about him.

AN has part 1 of the Billy Beane interview up, highly recommended.  It is equally relevant in our situation.  Link

EDIT: Part 2 of the interview is up.  This part is a bit more A's specific, but still some good stuff.  Link

Part 3   Link

Blez:  It’s been a long time since we chatted and the last time we did, you shied away from the word “rebuilding” and called it “retooling” instead.  Since then you’ve gone through the rebuilding process and you yourself referred to it in the media as that. What was the impetus behind that rebuilding?

Billy Beane:  The impetus for it was where I thought we were headed. That to me is as important as anything with a franchise: not where you are but where you are going.  I really thought our best-case scenario for the next year or two was really mediocrity.  Ultimately there was no chance to be a really, really good team and I just felt we were going to just be in that middle area there.  I also knew at some point we were going to have to, so to delay it was really just wasting time.  We were at the FanFest and a few people were upset.  Actually every year there are a few people upset (laughs).  I remember asking the question back to a gentleman in the audience who was upset and it‘s good that he was upset because he cares about the team and he was there spending a Saturday which is why we have those events.  But I asked him the question of how many games he thought we would win if we stood pat and he said something like 75 or 80.  He was upset and I said, “Are you OK with that?”  That was essentially trying to stimulate what was going through our minds and get him thinking the same way.  Winning 75 or 80 games is nothing to get excited about, particularly if that’s what you’re going to do over the next several years.

And this next clip is interesting given that earlier in the season, there were some talks by the FO on "not eroding the fanbse"

Blez:  I’m not really talking about the hard core fans who live and breathe and die with the team like the Athletics Nation people do.  I’m talking more about the casual fan who comes on occasion because the team has an interesting player they want to see.

Beane:  I don’t think people come out on a regular basis to see individuals.  I think people come out to see a team.  We have no other way to operate. We could operate where we have a whole generation of players well beyond its prime but there would be even less people here.  For every one we lose because we don’t keep their favorite player, we’re going to keep two if we win.  And the reverse is true.  The thing that’s always been interesting about being here is that there is always excuses about why people don’t come out.  The fact is that we don’t draw.  The blame has always been on this thing or that thing.  There is always something new.  I mean we went to the ALCS in 2006 and in an era when baseball attendance was shooting up 26 percent or something, we wound up drawing less people the next year.  Explain that.  Over the last decade, we’ve put a pretty good product on the field.  We have a group (of fans) here that’s been here since the first year we came here.  The fact remains is that we’re still well behind the curve when it comes to attendance and some of it is probably the organization’s fault.  Not everyone is completely blameless.  You can understand that when you’re having that kind of turnover you’re going to lose some of that loyalty.  Again the flip side for us, given everything that we have to balance, is that we’re going to maintain that loyalty with the hardcore people by putting the best product we can on the field and having to err on the side of making good business decisions instead of making emotional decisions.  Believe me, my life would be a lot easier if we could just stamp a team down for the next six or seven seasons.

As you know, the A's are in a very similar situation right now as the Rangers.  It appears the Beane and JD has approached the situation in very similar fashion in some areas, but not so much in some other areas.  It will be very interesting to follow the development of these two teams, and it will be tough for JD since he is essentially going head-to-head against one of the best in the business in rebuilding.  The next couple of years will be very interesting to see.

This season has not been kind to CJ.  After a quick start, his recent struggles has been well-documented.  Here I will try to raise a view possible points of discussion as to what is wrong with him.

Before you start, first read the excellent article at Baseball Time in Arlington by Mr. Matschulat Here

Recapping a few points from the above article:  CJ is throwing more fastballs, more strikes, does poorly in stranding baserunners.  He also has low BABIP and low line drive %.  His strikeout numbers are low.

For this reason, it is fitting to start with the fastball.  CJ is throwing the fastball 86.6% of the time, way up from previous years.  They average 92.4 mph with average horizontal and vertical breaks of 5.92 and 9.58 inches.  35% of them are balls, and 6.5% of them are swung and missed.  (see the movement chart below)

Well, really there is nothing wrong with this picture.  The fastball has good velocity and very good movement.  By all means, it's a good fastball, and the fact that he is throwing 65% strikes means he has at least decent command of it.  Since he throws it so much and does not get much strikeouts, the low BABIP implies that most of the time, hitters do not get very good wood on these either, but what about the ones that they do hit?

Well here is a crude graph of the locations of pitches that resulted in hits for CJ so far this season.  All of these pitches except for 1 are fastballs (the other one is a curve).  Not surprisingly, the ones that are hit are pretty much at the middle of the plate.  More surprising though is the circumstances under which they are hit.  Of the 15 hits, 8 are doubles or HRs, and only 1 of these 8 ABs that resulted in double or HR saw more than 3 pitches (the exception was 4 pitches).  6 of these 8 hits were in counts favorable for the pitcher where CJ threw a fastball.  In contrast, only 2 of the 7 ABs that resulted in singles had less than 4 pitches.  What one can conclude from this is that extra base hits are consequences of hitters seeing the pitches they wanted while singles are mostly result from hitters battling it out.

Now looking at the breaking pitches, we find something interesting.  CJ throws essentially 3 breaking pitches, a slider, curveball, and changeup.  So far he has thrown 10 change, hitters have swung at 2 of these pitches, and 7 were balls.  He has thrown 19 curves, and hitters swung at half of them.  Finally of the 12 sliders, hitters swung at only 3 of them and 7 were balls.  These off-speed pitches are designed to generate poor swings by hitters so they can't sit on the fastball, and the fact that they are NOT swinging at the off-speed pitches is troubling.

Here is another crude chart of the locations of off-speed pitches.  CJ is able to locate the curve fairly well, and to some degree the slider, but he does not throw the slider and change for strike, and the hitters aren't bothering with them.  This means that he is essentially reduced to a 2-pitch pitcher, and hitters will just sit on the fastball and/or curve.  In fact, most of them are not very successful at hitting the curve, so they are just looking for the fastball. 

This could be where the problem lies.  Since CJ throws so few off-speed pitches, and does not generally throw them for strikes, hitters can afford to ignore those pitches and concentrate on the fastball.  Not only this, they can sit on certain locations so that CJ can't get away with too any mistake fastballs down the middle (which is why the hits are hit hard).  Also, most of those breaking pitches are thrown on 0-2 and 1-2 counts, but since they are not thrown for strikes and hitters do not swing at them, it's useless a lot of the times.

I for one would like to see him throwing the change and slider for strikes more often.  This will hopefully throw hitters off his fastball, and force them to swing at a few more off-speed pitches.  His release point for all of his pitches are similar, and he should have success with them.

The performance of the starting pitching staff this season has left many of us scratching our heads at this point, so it's fair to ask what is going on and if it will be sustainable in at least some degree.  Of course, Paddy Cake has been one of the biggest cause of scalp irritation so far, so let's see what we can learn about our starters, and see if the 2008 performances so far are sustainable.

For the most part, Vinny's pitching statistics are not spectacular.  His BB/9 (3.2), K/9 (5.86) are  worse than his career lines, (by comparison, his BB/9 and K/9 in 2006 was 3.15 and 7.02), his HR/9 rate (1.07) is about the same as previous years.   His BABIP is exactly at .300, and all this translate to a fielding-independent expected ERA of around 4.5.  His ERA right now is much lower, largely because of the amount of baserunners that have been stranded.  Of all baserunners reaching, 81.1% of them has been left on base.  On average, 70% of left on base is a reasonable number, and only the best and luckiest pitchers get to 80% left on base (no more than 1-2 per year).  So it is expected that this will regress to his career average of around 72% LOB.  A rough calculation shows that this regression along should put his expected ERA at around 4.3 (calculation assumes same ratio of unearned to earned runs).  (Incidentally, the LOB% of Gabbard and Edinson Volquez are both around 90%)  So he is getting a bit lucky, but even with the regression, the results should still be decent.

Just for fun, let's try to see if we can be more substantive in terms of balls in play profile and pitch selections.  22% of balls in play are line drives, 41.8% ground balls and 36.4% fly.  So far his ground ball rate has been slightly down from previous years and fly ball rate slightly up.  The high line drive percentage is a cause of concern.  Padilla has historically given up a lot of line drives, but he has been able to overcome that with high strikeout rates.  Now that his K rate is down, it becomes a bit unsettling.

We all know he is throwing a lot of fastball this year, and this is certainly true- he is throwing 80.4% fastballs.  He has cut down his numbers of curveballs from 14.6% last year to 6.1%, and is throwing similar numbers of sliders (7.5%) and change (6.2%) as he has throughout his career. 

I tried to used the Pitch f/x tool, but it doesn't work correctly for Vinny.  Namely, it calls every single one of his off-speed pitches as sliders, so I'll concentrate on the fastball instead, and it looks like this:

Yeah, so the movement profile of his fastball is a very large blob.  He throws his fastball on average at 92 mph, touching 96 at times.  The fastball has quite a bit of horizontal movement (average of about -6.7 inches), and quite a bit of variety, whether be design or inconsistency.  By comparison,  many pitchers with good fastball, such as Tim Lincecum are more consistent in terms of movement.  There is also a large number of fastballs here that are sinkers or mistake pitches (those with little horizontal and vertical movements).

37.8% of his fastballs are thrown for balls, which is a bit high, but nothing alarming given the movement it has. 4% of the fastballs miss bats, and 18.6% are called strikes.  Speaking of called strikes, the locations of fastballs looks like this:

called strikes:

balls:

So all this says that Padilla has a live fastball, and he gets the wide strike zone common to pitchers with large horizontal movement on their fastballs.  However, he is hurt by not getting low strike calls.  In fact, this seem to be a problem with many Rangers pitchers in general (maybe I will look into this a bit deeper at some later time).  This lack of low strike calls could be related to, if not the cause of, his low ground ball rates.  Also, given the velocity and movement of the fastball, he should be able to use more off-speed pitches to miss bats.  His change is around 80 mph, but he doesn't use it very often (and it doesn't look all that good when he does).

Finally, one last interesting observation about this season so far is the reversed platoon split.  Usually Vinny destroys right handed batters but has nothing on left handed bats.  This season, there is little difference in the splits.   Also, he is especially prone to giving up HR balls early in the season.  May is normally his worst month, but he gets steadily better as the season continues.  These factors are minor and should not affect the big picture very much.

So in conclusion, I expect Padilla to regress a bit in the near future, but his stuff and peripherals are good enough that he should be a solid pitcher.  Nevertheless, he needs to find a way to increase his K rates, since his stuff has not diminished at all.  However, it's hard to do this in the major league level when you throw such a large amount of fastball that are not spectacular in velocity.  Especially when you can't get calls for pitches lower in the strike zone, you are forced to throw them higher, and that does not bode well if they get hit in the dog days of TBIA.