Table data taken from Texas Leaguers for the 2011 season. Four-seamer and two-seamer got combined since I don't actually think he has a two-seamer. Slider got renamed for better illustration of the pitch's lack of quality.

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So now we know about fastballs for the most part, right? No? You've forgotten already? Howsabout another Dave Allen graph:

So right, more run values. Negative is good for the pitcher, positive is bad. Outside of the whole movement/velocity thing, the big takeaway is what happens with and without the platoon advantage. The four-seamer remains a far more viable pitch to opposite handed hitters than does the two-seamer. I'm just eyeballing it, but the difference between having and not having a platoon advantage with a two-seamer is the about the same one we saw in the fastball velocity graph. In case you forgot, it's the difference between an all-star and average.

Given that, it would see we need to figure out some different sorts of pitches to offset the problems of the fastball.

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These posts would be almost totally lacking in actual data and evidence without Dave Allen, Bojan Koprivica and Trip Somers. There are more I've read since Pitch F/x was born and I could start a list, but it would be long and linkless since my brain's just pretty much shut down at this point.

Okay, so now is the time on South Side Sox when we talk pitching, pitchers and pitches. Since I have done and plan to do scouting profiles on Sox pitchers and opposition hurlers as 2012 winds it's way toward spring and then into the season, it seems like a good idea to talk about what I look at, how I think I know what I know and all that. This will totally skip mechanics as while I have some thoughts on that, I don't have actual evidence or good language to talk about. This is strictly about what happens once the ball leaves the pitcher's hand.

Fastball

The best place to start is with the most basic pitch, the one everybody has. Or a version of it, at least. I'm going to try to illustrate a few terms and basic concepts for the sake of clarity limiting the discussion to the heater. Now, when it comes to the fastball, I think everybody knows that velocity is a big deal. It's really that simple. Throwing hard is a substantial advantage that negates numerous other issues with the pitcher in question. To wit:

These graphs may seem a little weird. But the idea is that Dave has plotted what happened to different fastballs according to location, outcome and velocity. Negative runs is good. Positive is bad. And if .01 runs seems like a small number, consider that's on a per pitch basis. The course of 200 innings pitched runs in the neighborhood of 1750 fastballs (that's a round-ish number). At .01 runs per pitch, that's the difference between a 3.21 ERA and a 4.00 ERA. And that doesn't even take fully into account the synergistic effects. You'd be willing to bet a slider following a 97 mph fastball is better than one following 91 mph, right?

The takeaway is three-fold. First, I like charts and graphs. Second, above average velocity can solve a lot of problems. Third, you can undo all of that if you have no idea where the ball is going. In the top graph, the home plate runs from about -.5 to .5 feet, give or take a bit. Notice that's about where the colored lines start converging? In the bottom graph, the strike zone is marked by the horizontal lines. Same thing.

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Splicing together a couple tweets from Sun-Times beat writer Daryl Van Schouwen on John Danks' extension:

Sox announce Danks extension: 5 yrs, $65 million as reported; $8 million for 2012 and $14.25 million in each of the 2013-16 seasons.

Tom Tango's analysis isn't changed much by the particulars, though it looks like the White Sox got Danks to agree to take a little less in 2012 in order to take a little more throughout the remainder of the deal. The $8 million he will make in 2012 is about $1-2 million less than I thought he'd get this year, which is nice. In addition, Danks is taking a slight discount because he's not waiting to get to free agency. On the whole though, it's a fair market deal that works in the White Sox' favor thanks to the organization's talent for handling pitchers.

UPDATE: For the people who still need press releases, here it is.

UPDATE 2: He has a full no trade clause for 2012 and a limited no trade clause thereafter.

As I argued last week, it really doesn't seem like the Sox are in position to do much other than rebuild. But who should they swap? And who can they expect to get in return? Neither question can really be answered definitively as there's just too much uncertainty. We do know that Jerry Reinsdorf has said he always budgets his team to break even.

That may not be enough considering the substantial losses from last season, but at a minimum they'll go that far and I'd wager they're not there yet. Even with Buehrle gone, Cot's has payroll at $93M and that doesn't include Danks, Quentin and a handful of league minimum salaries. Add those in and payroll is in the neighborhood of $110M. That would qualify for the 3rd highest payroll in White Sox history, odd for a team Kenny Williams has admitted is rebuilding.

For comparison, in 2010 the Sox were set to break even with an opening day payroll of around $105M. That team won 88 games, probably pretty near the club's in-house projections. If I had to put a figure on it, I'd say $100M. That means at least one of John Danks or Carlos Quentin and perhaps one of the veteran relievers. So who should go?

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So apparently there's still some thought that this team as presently constructed can compete for a division title next season. Baseball being what it is, it certainly could happen. But it simply can't happen without a great deal of luck.

First, let's clarify what's meant by luck. A typical team season will see unexpected breakouts, injuries, sudden declines, the success or failure of new pitches, etc. all spread across the 25 player team. Usually these things more or less cancel out over the long run that is a 162 game season. The end result is an approximately luck-neutral season.

I say approximately because there's actually a lot of variance around a team's talent level. Everyone remembers that year the Royals fluked their way into contention for a while. The Indians last year were such beneficiaries. It's just a part of baseball that sometimes the luck all goes your way. If you combine that with actual talent you get pure dominance. See 2005. But the thing is, if a team needs that kind of luck just to compete, it's in trouble. And that's where the team is after last season's absolute debacle.

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Between the seeming impossibility of Mark Buehrle's return and the now lingering specter of John Danks' departure at the end of the season (or otherwise), the Sox' pitching staff is going to take on a whole new look over the course of the next few years.  As depressing as the impending loss of Buehrle and Danks is (and it really really is), we do at least have Chris Sale to look forward to.*

Probably anyway.  The worried, ever-anxious part of me wonders whether Kenny might have left Torii Hunter and a bag of chips over at Arte Moreno's and Moreno's balking at only getting Beckham in return.

But sure, let's assume all is well and that Chris Sale will be spending his time as a starting pitcher for the Chicago White Sox for some time to come and not, hypothetically, down in Arizona looking like a future Cy Young winner.  If you'll recall, I peered into the crystal ball to see how it might turn out should Sale have started last season.  To recap the post, Sale was very well regarded coming out of the draft.  Here's Andy Seiler:

His fastball is a plus pitch that generally sits 91-94, touching 96, and he commands it with plus precision. He gets a lot of life on it due to his three-quarters release point, and it’s one of the best left-handed fastballs in this class. His best secondary pitch is a plus changeup with excellent depth and fade, and it’s a Major League-ready pitch. His third pitch is an average slider that isn’t commanded nearly as well, and there are concerns about his inability to spin a breaking ball.

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Since 2006, the White Sox have won 10 fewer games than the money they've spent indicates they should have.  Another way to say it is that the average general manager would have won 10 more games than Kenny Williams managed to with the players he selected over those seasons.

And that's in an organization that employs Don Cooper and Herm Schneider.  As I've mentioned a jillion times, Coop and Herm turn nothing into something every season in ways that nearly no other GM can rely on.  Coop has one peer in Dave Duncan.  Herm's record is by far the best in his field.  So Kenny's player investment work is actually worse than merely slightly below average.  Most GM's don't have his in-built advantages.

As it happens, picking up Jason Frasor's option is exactly the kind of money wasting acquisition that the Sox have made a specialty of over the years.  Sure, it's only one year and how much can it really hurt? It's no Mark Teahen.  It's no Scott Linebrink.  Or Rios and Dunn, for that matter.  The suck involved here is on a less painful level, but it manages to illustrate a number of problems that have come up time and again since the World Series win.

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TP invited me to take the reins for a bit.  

The flat screen is his.  The old name brand recliner mottled with beer and pizza stains from way back when, his.  The glass topped coffee table, the big red sectioned couch with the dog fur and the faint seriously impossible to place weird smell, the smaller bookshelf, the larger not-from-Ikea bookshelf, the twenty year old Kenwood Dolby 2.1 receiver, the dog, those were hers.  Are still hers, of course.  But they’re gone and she’s gone and the place is very empty and dark since he either didn’t notice or didn’t care that the sun went down.  

Pretty much devoid of furniture, the living room still has to deal with the takeout remnants.  Which means the white fold up overfull leftover boxes of rice (Dunn always asks for an extra; he hates when they don’t give you enough) are sitting on the still fairly-new carpet.  He got through two of the three boxes, good for a .667 on-plate percentage.  It’s the same on-floor percentage, he absently calculates, since one made it to the still-not-technically-full trash can.

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When last we e-met, the discussion centered around Kenny's performance over the course of the decade.  In short, it started off hot but after the WS victory, the bad has outweighed the good.  On that note, let's check out the specifics of that failure to see what depths Kenny actually fell compared to his competitors.

To that end, I went to Fangraphs and looked at the White Sox position player WAR at each position starting in '06 summed through the most recent season.  Then I compared those results to every other team in the league and ranked the Sox accordingly.  The results are kind of shocking, really.

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Back in August, I ranted that Kenny Williams has on average been failing to acquire assets at below-market prices and that in part was responsible for the utter failure of 2011.  And while I think we can all agree that's been true lately, a rant is not exactly the measured quantitative approach that in general I prefer.  So let's remedy that.

Tango ran a pretty neat post last Thursday that looked at the Moneyball (2002-2011) era.  The point was to identify the relationship over the course of the defined era of dollars spent on payroll to wins.  In case you weren't sure that money matters in baseball, it turns out that there is a very significant correlation between the two (r=.7):

Big surprise who ended up where, right?  But I don't see the White Sox anywhere.  And while what I should have done was ask Tango for his data so I could just plug and chug, I went to baseball-reference and pulled my own figures and ran roughly the same data to produce a similar graph.  I included 2001 and I took out 2011 because the payroll data for the most recent season wasn't updated when I checked.  I also put everything in terms of 2010 dollars.  The end result was basically the same graph, but a teensy bit smaller correlation.  So hooray, that checks out.

What I really wanted was the equation for the trend line.  That equation gives you the expected wins given your team's salary levels.  As in the Tango graph, the teams above the trend have found value in excess of the money they spent.  And the ones below suck oh so very hard.  Pretty straight forward way to judge a GM, right?  Sure there are caveats, but over the course of a decade it's a very reasonable metric.  So how have teams done over the KW Era?

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I've been selectively paying attention to the Sox lately.  Every time I check in, something crappy is happening.  Unless you count angling for a better draft pick.  I'm down for that in the abstract but it doesn't mean I want to watch that particular sausage get made.

And the thing is, I do want to want to watch.  There's plenty for me that remains fun and interesting about watching any given game of baseball, let alone a team I commit so much of my time to.  In which case, I blame them.  They so rarely seem like they're having fun, especially the old guys.  As ever, Harold said everything that needs to be said.

So if I'm going to check in and I'm going to write, I'm staying away from the miasmic drear that's infected much of the team.  Toward that end, I watched and charted every batter Addison Reed has faced to date.  It's a tiny sample?  So what.  It's fun.  Have you seen his numbers?  Absolutely sick.  In the minors, he whiffed 97 more batters than he walked in less than 80 IP.  And he hasn't stopped since he got to the majors.  He's K'd almost 40% of every batter that's stepped up.  And just 1 walk.  Boosh, indeed.

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[front-paged for obvious reasons - B2]

I'm not a football coach by any stretch, I'm merely an obsessed fan.  To wit: I watched the M-WMU game 3 times before Labor Day with constant rewinding and slow-motioning to obsess and analyze.  On top of that I'm pretty sure I've read every Smart Football post there is.  So that's where I'm coming from.  If you've got any objections/better interpretations, feel free to let me know.  Just learnin' the game like the rest of y'all.

BlueSeoul did a nice scouting report, but I thought it'd be fun to do a Smart Football-style focus on the Brian Kelly offense.  I'll try to avoid too much redundancy and maintain interest, seeing as Chris from SF has in fact already done one and didn't think there was much to see.  It may be that none of this is special to Kelly, but hopefully it will at least be representative of what Michigan will see on the field Saturday night.

As Chris says, Kelly bases out of a 4 wide set and his base passes take those receivers vertical out of their breaks:

The basic things you notice are that a) The receivers divide the field into fourths, thus making it difficult for either one or even two deep safeties to defend all four; b) The receivers burst off the line immediately with no fakes or stutter-steps, which forces the defensive backs immediately into retreat position to respect the deep pass; and, most importantly, c) The receivers give away no information -- they might go deep or break short, or break inside or outside. (Also the running back serves as a nice checkdown as he has an option route and can basically find the open grass.)

Kelly combos this base 4 verts passing game with an abiding commitment to the running game.  That is to say he's definitely not an Airraid type who'll throw it 40-50 times per game by design.  Which is just as well, given that ND has a very talented back in Cierre Wood.  Without disparaging M's backs or aping Fred Jackson, I'd say he's a bigger/stronger Mike Shaw and a serious challenge for scraping linebackers.  

BK's approach doesn't seem to be that different from other spread attacks in terms of how he selects plays.  The spread helps him count who's in the box and figure out whether to run or pass from there.  Given his typical four wide set, he'll see some number of defenders aligned with the primary responsibility of stopping the run.  In a vanilla defensive set, all the offensive coordinator has to do is count the number of defenders and compare that to his number of blockers.  

If his QB isn't a running threat, the defense needs a minimum of 6 defenders to account for each blocker and the running back in a 4-wide set.  Fewer than that and the OC can give the go-ahead to run the ball knowing he's got a serious advantage in the box: the defensive coordinator does not have a player to fit in each gap to stop the run.  But 6 or more means he needs to give serious consideration to passing the ball.

Of course it's not at all in the defense's interest to supply such an easy read.  In the college game it's very common to see a safety "screw down" into the run fit just as the snap comes.  Alternatively, a defense can supply an additional run stopper from what's called the alley:

Alley defenders in particular are vulnerable to Kelly's attack because of the 4 Verts scheme.  Often one or more are responsible for both playing in the run fit and for walling off a potential vertical route until the receiver can be passed off to a safety.  If the dual priority alley defender can't get a clean run/pass read, he could very well end up defending neither.  On top of that, playing right over or just inside the receiver to cover the vertical threat makes it difficult to cover the run even if he does get a clean read.  Getting back in time to beat Cierre Wood to his gap is a tall order indeed.  They can however help themselves by alignment:

Both USF alley defenders are right in position to wall off any vertical threat and play the run if necessary simply by alignment.  They each have enough depth to provide the angle necessary to play pass defense, but are not much wider than the far hip of the defensive end.  Just outside the box is maybe not as good as actually in it, but given their dual responsibilities both are covered as well as possible from this alignment.

Kelly--and most if not all spread-types for that matter--employ constraint plays in order to push these defenders farther from the box so as to open holes in the run game.  The most common (and certainly to Michigan fans) is pairing a bubble read with any hand-off from the shotgun:

The diagram is nice, but I'd point out that Kelly's alignment here is even more effective.  Assuming no counter type action from the running back, the play in this case would be run toward the nearside alley defender's gap that puts him in a serious bind given bubble action from his receiver.  Attack the run, get burned on the bubble.  Sit on the bubble, open a gap for Wood to run through.  Admiral Ackbar would know just how to describe this.

But wait, there's more.  Kelly also really likes to open up running lanes with draw and draw-read action:

Side note: this play (hilariously) got waived off thanks to a totally unnecessary Michael Floyd holding penalty...and this wasn't even close to the biggest gaffe of the evening.  Truly this was one of the Yakety Saxiest performances in recent ND history.  Definitely up there with anything Charlie Weis managed: a pick thrown in the endzone, a fumble returned for TD, a missed field goal, a muffed punt and Brian Kelly's face redefining crimson for the folks at Pantone made for the schadenfreudiest of evenings.  God bless, BK.

Anywho.  In this instance, it isn't technically an alley player being picked on thanks to TE Tyler Eifert's very narrow split off the tackle.  The linebacker in the box to the trips will however be in a run/pass bind as the play design nails his feet to the ground and leaves ND with effectively 5 in the box to block with their 5 run blockers:

As you can hopefully see (apologies for the screencap quality), the tackle to the trips has set for pass protect along with (as best I can tell) 3 of his linefriends.  One however has pulled from the trips-side to the boundary.  Meanwhile our buddy the trips-side backer seems confused indeed.  His feet and knees are locked, his torso is angled toward the TE while his head is watching the QB/RB interaction.  He very possibly has noticed that the guard to his side has pulled, perhaps with nefarious intent.

The problem is that the TE is going to take a vertical release.  Any fake or read on the backer means he'll be responsible for the TE unless he wants a TD pass over his head.  As a result, he goes nowhere and it's 5-on-5 in the box with only a defeated block or the safety coming up hard between Cierre Wood and 6 points:

As it happens, the right tackle did in fact get burned and Wood was forced to bounce the play outside.  But the pulling guard still got up through the initial hole with a solid angle on the playside linebacker.  The farside linebacker as expected has no chance to make any impact on the play.  At least he managed to hop backward a few steps to maintain his position with the vertical route of the TE, who even now is not blocking on the play.  Michael Floyd is blocking all the way and is about to initiate his very silly hold:

The G cuts the LB, Floyd (illegally) walls off the CB and it's Wood v. Safety.

Fake touchdown Notre Dame.  And look who's there to meet Wood in the end zone.  None other than the frozen not-caveman linebacker.  

Now, I'm not putting the blame on him for the defense's breakdown.  They lost the numbers game by play design and the playside safety did a poor job of reading and filling the run.  Whether or not Kelly has added a pass-run read of that linebacker a la Holgorsen I'm not entirely sure.  Given the effect of the fake off the draw, perhaps it's not even necessary.   This is one example of many variations that to me constitute a well designed offense that fits its base plays very effectively with numerous constraints that prevent the defense from getting numbers where they need them.  

Sure, there's nothing especially mind-blowingly cool about the set up without the draw-read, but the constraint theory of offense says that may be beside the point.  Which is: be as simple as you can without sacrificing the counters you need to keep running your base offense.  Kelly does as much and at ND he has a weapon at nearly every position.  It'll be interesting to see how Mattison counters given the youth of his defense.  Scheme and a talent advantage hid a lot of mistakes last week and they'll be without the latter in the Big House on Saturday.  

The 2011 Sox are pining for the fjords.  They were all "I think I'll go for a walk" but then the Tigers were all "you'll be stone dead in a moment," clubbed them in the head and threw them on the cart with the rest of the bodies.  It was a real joy to watch all the way around.*

And the best part is that they're going to do it all over again in 2012.  The Sox have $89M already committed in contracts to players for next season, not including Danks, Quentin and Buehrle.  Bring back all three and they'll be paying about $120M to be a slightly above average team.  I doubt that's tenable considering the likelihood that Jerry Reinsdorf lost money on this season.  Or maybe Jake Peavy's insurance money got a lot of it back?  There's a lot we don't know, but the weight of the evidence suggests we should expect some attempts at cost saving.

Let's start with the super obvious: Frasor's a luxury on a team that's already got 4 very good end-of-game options.  Oh  and Tony Pena blows.  So they're gone.  From there the consensus seems to be that Quentin is gone.  It makes sense.  Viciedo, Lillibridge and de Aza will all make significantly less money and replace some of his value, possibly all depending on Q's health and whether or not you believe in the Bridge.  Don't expect too much in return though.  It'll probably be some young former prospect who's since disappointed.  Given the Sox' track record, let's hope it's a pitcher rather than a position player.

Ditching Quentin and keeping Buehrle and Danks cuts about $7M from the ~$120M starting point.  For a team expected to win something like 79-84 games--it's hard to nail down exactly at this point--I would guess they'd still be in the red and not breaking even.  If that's actually the case, where would the cuts come from?

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I'm nothing if not accommodating; it's time to provisionally scout Tyler Flowers.  I went back and watched his last 17 plate appearances to try to nail down exactly what's lead to his sweet sweet .281/.373/.491 line.  

From a saber perspective, a lot of it has to do with his completely unsustainable .400 BABIP.  When that comes back down to earth, we're all going to notice how hard a time he has putting the ball in play in the first place.  Right now, he's whiffing on almost 40% of the pitches he swings at.  That's way worse than Adam Dunn and in fact there are no major league regulars this year who've chopped broccoli that often per swing.  Sample size caveats apply, but there's really nothing in his minor league numbers that suggests he'll ever be much better than what he's shown so far in that category.

This weakness manifests itself especially when it comes to hard breaking stuff.  He does an okay job laying off anything that looks like it might be a fastball headed low and away, especially early in the count.  But if it's a bender and in the zone, it gives him fits.  Jered Weaver rung him up 3 times by teasing with the fastball in unhittable locations and then spotting his off-speed stuff on the plate.  For what it's worth, he seemed to do somewhat better with lefty changes.  If that's a repeatable skill, that'd be huge help in making him tough on southpaws.

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I haven't watched the Sox much lately out of concern for my own well-being, but from what I have seen the story hasn't changed much.  Aside from the fact there are fewer and fewer and fewer games to play, anyway.  Given that, I think it's okay to set aside Sox specifics and talk blogging.

Right, so the New York Times Magazine posted an article entitled "Another Thing to Sort of Pin on David Foster Wallace" the same day I finished Infinite Jest, DFW's hypertrophic really good second novel.  Said article diagnoses the blogging community at large with what I'll term DFW Disease.  I.e. blog post are often overlong, overwrought, rambling, hedging, nonspecific and excessively verbose.  All of these things Wallace should be accused of, the author writes, but he (DFW) gets off the hook for being brilliant.  The author goes on to say if you're not brilliant, you're aping the wrong guy.  Pick Hemingway or something, I guess.

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Even if the Indians have played well over their heads just to be a tick over .500 (and they have), acquiring Ubaldo Jimenez is an absolute good.  For one, the Tribe handed over pitching prospects in exchange for him.  As good as Drew Pomeranz and Alex White may now be, even in combination they're not likely to add up to one Ubaldo Jimenez.  TINSTAAPP is real.  Trading minor league pitchers for major league pitchers is a winning proposition at today's going rates. 

On top of that, Jimenez may have the most team-friendly contract in major league baseball.  As nice as it is to be paying a pitcher of Gavin Floyd's caliber $5M this season, Ubaldo will make about half that even though he's about a full win better than Gavin.  The Indians gave up overrated (albeit still good) prospects and they're paying the guy peanuts.  It's a great move for them.  Vegas didn't like them to even win 75 games this year, but getting Jimenez puts them at just shy of 81 for 2012 in my opinion.  They're in contention now and a couple more shrewd moves will put them right in the thick of things in 2012.

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So this Zach Stewart fella pitched on Saturday and actually looked pretty decent.  I've already made at least one Jeff Marquez joke at Stewart's expense, so it's only fair to go back and check if there's anything to like. Seeing as I was internetless on the day in question, it's in fact my first time watching the guy pitch.  You'd think maybe I could wait to actually watch the guy before passing judgment.  Not how I roll, y'all.

Also, it's not as though I didn't justify my dislike.  The pitch f/x data prior to the recent start, his age and his minor league stats were all signs that maybe there really isn't much there.  He's turning 25 and hasn't really dominated at any level.  There's nothing there that suggests he oozes potential.  Really though it's the pitch f/x data that was depressing.

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You sign a free agent and he doesn't work out, you can't trade him.  He's not the player the market thought he was, it's not gonna want him at the price you bought.  So you have to send him off with a couple million to get rid of him.  Or another actually talented player.  If it's money or a player, the cost is the same.  You take wins off the team to deal with the mistake.

And no, y'all know I'm not talking about Dunn.  This isn't even about him.  Adam Dunn was the model of consistency and he imploded.  I have what amount to thin guesses what happened there and if anyone else knows for sure, they are keeping their mouths shut.  Whatever you want to say, the Sox weren't bidding against themselves to get his asking price up that high.  

This is about Mark Teahen.  Teahen was a guy no one thought much of.  Kenny took a gamble and signed him to a multi-year deal.  I get the thinking.  You take a risk, he turns out to be average, all of a sudden you've got a productive guy signed for cheap.  If you want to change the direction of the team, no problem you can deal the guy and get something back.  If you like the way things are going, keep him and keep winning.  That's finding value.  Except Teahen wasn't any good.  Which is what you might expect considering it only took Josh Fields and Chris Getz to get him.  They're all basically replacement level.  But Getz is paid like it.  This one's a scouting failure.  If you see gold and everyone else sees clay, better make triple-sure you're really seein something everyone else ain't.

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This just in: the White Sox have a serious Alex Rios problem.  The guy is owed about $4M for the rest of this season and $38M from 2012 until Kenny can mercifully buy Rios out at the end of the 2014 season.  This wouldn't be such a big deal if he were even somewhat productive.  A ball player is worth his salary because his runs scored on offense and runs saved on defense are combined worth a number of wins which in turn generates revenue for the club.  As long as the player's salary is equal to or less than his revenue, the club makes money off the player and everyone is happy.

Obviously, the White Sox are not making money off of Rios.  In fact, they're in trouble.  See, he's been worse than nearly every major leaguer currently in possession of a roster spot and probably a decent number of minor leaguers.  Yeah, he was way better last year, but in '09 he had a similar problem.  Not to the same extent, but 2 years out of 3 is a meaningful trend.  

Since 2009, he's been worth about 1 win every 600 times to the plate.  Most major league teams already have a guy who can play CF and produce at that level.  And odds are that guy is getting paid somewhere between the league minimum and $5M to do it.  The most anyone is paying for that kind of production is what you can get on the free agent market.  Lately, that kind of production is going for somewhere between $4-6M.  That's $6-8M less than Rios made this year.

So he's been worth about 1 win per season over the last 3.  And the Sox will be paying him as if he's worth 2-2.5 wins.  If Rios' true talent level is 1 win this year, then just thanks to aging, he'll be worth less and less as the contract goes on.  If there's no difference at all between him and a replacement level player, then the Sox may as well just release him because they'll have to eat the whole salary just to get another team to take him on anyway.  Given a typical aging pattern, we could expect him to be replacement level as of 2013.  Even if the Sox can trade him, they're very very likely to be on the hook for anything he's owed from 2013 onward.  Instead of the 4 or so wins that might have been worth in those seasons, the Sox will pay $26M for nothing.

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One of the surprising outcomes--to me anyway; thought you guys were a bunch of homers-- of the SSS community projections turned out to be our collective opinion of Gordon Beckham as a hitter.  A bit above average is what we said he'd be.  That seemed very fair--the hitter we saw in 2010 slumped tremendously, but seemed to figure it out before going down to injury before season's end.  The 2009 version excited but really expecting all that was too much.  Somewhere in the middle, but leaning toward '09 rather than '10.  

Instead, here we are: Gordy's line on the year is .255/.312/.364, nearly indistinguishable from the slump-plagued previous year we all thought wasn't really him.  At this point he's been less than a league average hitter for his career and it's not really clear where he's going from here.  After a miserable June, he's posted a good July, but it's been almost all batting average fueled.  He's not taking walks.  He's not hitting home runs or doubles.  He's striking out more than he ever has.  The obvious question: what's changed?

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Everything has been crappy and sad and confusing for two consecutive series.  Everything!  So I'd rather pretend none of that happened and talk about something happy, namely Sergio Santos.  I projected him as a tick above average before the season started and I thought he'd be functional this year while making progress toward Really Good.  Instead, he's more or less repeated his performance in 2010 and the 3.13 ERA projected by the community has been more or less spot on to this point.

As it turned out, his stuff has been maybe even better than he showed in 2010.  His K/PA has gone from a very nice 24% last year to a truly elite 33% in 2011.  He's walked a few more batters per PA so far, but the strikeouts more than make up for it.  In combination, both rates tell the story: Sergio has outstanding stuff and decidedly below average command.  As a reliever, the former significantly outweighs the latter.

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The video says nothing.  I don't feel slower.  I'm still seeing the ball...

At this point we all know the story.  Model of consistency collapses completely.  Everyone wants to know what the problem is.  We've heard various A Scout Says stories about how it's not his mechanics.  Dunn and Greg Walker don't seem to really know either, at least according to reports.  If his performance against his old club is any indicator, it's just suck and more suck and suck forever more.  Feels that way, right?

What's all the more worrisome is how incredibly rare this is.  Eric Seidman went looking for comparables dating back to 1950.  Of all full time players with 3 consecutive seasons with power like Dunn's, just 34 have experienced similar drop-offs.  He found that most of the players in question were at the end of their careers or struggling through some injury.  Dunn is only 31 years old.  No matter what you think of the Old Player Skills Theory, none of it suggests a decline of this nature.  For instance, Dan Szymborski's projection system, ZiPS, uses comparable players to create player-specific aging curves.  ZiPS projected Dunn home runs in 2011? One short of 40.

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Feel the excitement!

Man, the number of HR I watch keeps going up.  This time was a matter of frustration with what I was seeing.  In part it was because Carlos has hit out an inordinate number of ugly mistakes compared to Paulie and Alexei.  I'm not sure if that's because he's had more opportunities or just that he's made good on the same few he's gotten.  Either way, it's just not that informative.  I know for a fact KenWo* could have gone yard on the slider** Holland threw to Quentin.

The other frustrating bit in watching Q! swing the bat is actually watching him do it.  I feel like I have an understanding of how Paulie and Alexei do what they do.  While both swings are different, they're free of excess.   The adjective that comes to mind is "natural".  

Baseball's contrived as much as any sport, so the concept of a swing being natural is a little weird.  Of course, we use it anyway.  Hell it's the title of a movie.  Because that's what natural is in sports.  "Natural" in sports almost always refers to something in the way of pure unconscious; it's a kind of perfection exactly because we're not thinking about it.  And that's Carlos' problem right there.  Maybe "thinker" isn't the right word and "brooder" comes closer, but he doesn't give the impression of someone who can just let it all go.  He can't just be and he can't just do.  

He's similar in this sense to Paulie earlier in his career.  But now PK seems so zen.  So out of mind.  So good that he can tap into that secret vein, that swing that every 12 year old sees in his mind's eye as he's lacing it back up the middle, just like you're supposed to.  I wouldn't argue that either Konerko or Alexei or AJ have taken on this platonic form, but they have access to it.  They've adapted it, taken their flaws and shaped it around that ur-swing.

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The first incarnation of these went over better than I expected and since someone in the last comment thread asked, I figured I'd oblige and investigate Paulie's HR.  It's the last 11 this time because he just so happened to homer twice against the Rays, for which he earned a curtain call.  I was interested to see exactly how well his fastball hitter reputation holds up, especially compared to Alexei.  But I was also looking to see if there were any real weaknesses.

On to the HR sequences:

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Since it's a lot more difficult to actually watch video for hitters on MLB.tv and make any use of pitch f/x with them, I haven't ever really done scouting reports for hitters, ours or theirs.  Also, I'd say I feel less comfortable assessing hitters, since I was a terrible one of those, whereas I was a pretty decent pitcher.  But, like, who cares right?  Sack up and such.

For my first foray into something resembling a scouting report, I decided I'd watch Alexei's last 10 bombs and to see what there was to see.  Prior to actually checking the video, I had him pegged as a mistake hitter with what Steve Stone calls a "slider speed bat".  To me, Alexei could hit a single off pretty much anybody, but when he really did damage, a pitcher had to screw up.

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