So we drafted this guy in 2007 over Tim Lincecum (who has by the way won 2 Cy Youngs since then. how many cy young has Longoria won???). then we waste all this money signing him and its money that we couldve used to sign CRAWFORD long term. the other day Longaria hit a home run and stats was talking about how he hasnt hit one in a long time and I realized yeah it was about damn time! we aren't paying you all this money to be a below 300 hitter langoria and striek out all the time like you are right now. get it together

To the Red Sox.

I bet you all didn't see that coming.

Continue reading this post »

Many of you have been clamoring recently for Brignac to be the full-time shortstop against right-handed pitching (making him the larger part of the platoon). This is wrong on so many levels. I might be biased towards Bartlett because I really like him, but what isn't there to like? He gives 110% all the time, is a superb base-runner in terms of steals, is full of grit, and stole me a taco. But even on a deeper level, Bartlett should be the full-time shortstop.

Continue reading this post »

[Ed: Bumped to the front page. Quality here.]

Consider the month to month ERA/FIP/xFIPs of the rotation.

April: 2.76/4.19/4.19

May: 3.40/4.37/4.35

June: 5.96/4.68/4.24

There is a glaring inconsistency here.

Continue reading this post »

The majority of ways that a pitcher can outperform their FIP is through things that are really out of their control; BABIP, LOB rate, and HR/FB are generally the three most commonly pointed out things. One thing that is out of their control, but still sustainable, however, is their defense; pitchers with good defenses generally can sustain slightly lower BABIPs, and also have higher LOB rates (because of caught stealings, etc.). Over the course of a large number of innings, barring a few notable exceptions, this is the main way that a pitcher can outperform his FIP.

Continue reading this post »

I looked at correlations between wOBA and some of the mainstream stats, and I was somewhat surprised by the results.

Batting Average: .591

RBIs: .639

Homers: .673

Steals: -.005

Runs Scored: .642

The strong correlation with homers is surprising, as is the tiny correlation for steals.

I also looked at wRC, and some things jumped out here too.

Hits: .739

Homers: .605

RBIs: .674

Steals: .161

Runs: .837

RBIs and runs scored don't come in last if you're looking at total run production OR at rate of run production. Who would've thought?

So here we saw that Navi had a BABIP of .251, but with an xBABIP of .300. This is a disparity of 59 points, which would to a loss of 22 base hits. If all 22 of those were singles, then his wOBA would move up from a vomit-inducing 251 to a merely abysmal 300.

Upon closer inspection, though, we Navi's career BABIP is .279. He's been in the bottom 5 of players with at least 400 PA twice in the 3 seasons that he had that many. When we plug in his career numbers into the xBABIP calculator, we see that his career xBABIP is .304, 25 points higher than his true BABIP. Given that the sample size is over 1500 AB, it's probable that any and all regression has happened, and that Navi simply has a low BABIP for whatever reason, perhaps because he makes weak contact, or perhaps because even putting in 0 for stolen bases overestimates his speed. Now a true disparity of 59 points between his xBABIP and BABIP like he had this year is also probably unlikely, and so we can pencil him in for some regression, but don't expect him to be a true talent 300 wOBA hitter either. Something like .280 seems more like what his actual production would've been this year, given the 25 point career disparity, which would put him at about .5 WAR, ignoring defense.