There's going to be a lot of talk about Seth Smith's splits in the coming months. Home/away, righty/lefty, all of it. This post is a friendly reminder of what splits can do...and what they can't. There are two big problems with using splits, and they both stem from sabermetrics' favorite "you can't do that" refrain, sample size issues.

Let me start with an example. If a player hits 3 singles over 10 plate appearances in two games, does that mean that his true talent batting average is .300? No one would possibly suggest it. What if he batted .300 over 50 plate appearances? 100? 5000? Where is the sample size line where we can be reasonably confident in our assessment of his batting ability?

Let's say that John Q. Baseballer has an OBP of .350 in 250 career plate appearances. How close to his true skill level is that .350 figure? It turns out that we can actually calculate the uncertainty in the OBP figure by using a formula derived from the distribution of OBP talent in baseball. Over 250 plate appearances, the uncertainty in John's OBP comes out to 0.030. For the math-inclined, this uncertainty is expressed in standard deviations, but to put it more simply, we can say that John Q. Baseballer's OBP has a 68% chance of being within 0.030 of .350 (in other words, it lies between .320 and .380). If we double this uncertainty interval to 0.060, John's true OBP now has a 95% chance of being within the interval (between .290 and .410).

Clearly, 250 plate appearances don't tell us much. But if we quadruple the amount of plate appearances to 1000 (about two seasons worth), the uncertainty now falls in half to 0.015, which is a far more useful estimation of his talent. See the big problem here? Quadrupling the sample size cuts the uncertainty in half. To quote Tom Tango in The Book, "if you want twice as accurate a measurement, you need four times as much data". So splitting a player's body of work into small splits results in uncertainties that grow into huge analytical problems. But that's just the beginning.

The second problem arises from the first. Let's go back to John Q. Baseballer.

Home: .370 OBP
Away: .330 OBP

Let's assume he has two full seasons under his belt with 1000 total PAs, half at home and half away. That seems like it should be a big enough sample to conclude that he has giant home/away splits, right? Wrong. Let me cite those splits again, this time with the appropriate calculated uncertainties included.

Home: .370 ± .022 OBP
Away: .330 ± .021 OBP

That certainly changes things, doesn't it? Remember, this means that there's only a 68% chance that his true OBP at home is between .348 and .392. That's the difference between a league average player and an MVP. And there's a 32% chance that it's outside that range! In nearly every use of splits you'll see in baseball commentary, you have not just one fuzzy number, but two, and they both have uncertainty intervals that overlap. With 1000 PAs split into two equal groups, there's a 3% chance that John Q. Baseballer is actually better on the road than he is at home! It's a small chance, to be sure, but there's a much greater chance that he has a home/road split that's smaller than average. We just don't know.

But enough about hypotheticals. What about Seth Smith?

Continue reading this post »

Speaking of truckloads of dollars, Susan Slusser reports (and AP, via the SJ Merc, concurs) that the A's have dealt OF Jai Miller to the Orioles for cash considerations. UPDATE #2: Joe Stiglich, also in the Merc, has Coco Crisp about to resign with Oakland on a two-year deal. --EN

By my back-of-the-envelope math, the A's just saved $10-15MM for this upcoming season by trading away Trevor Cahill, Gio Gonzalez, and Andrew Bailey. Even after figuring in a handful of arbitration raises and league-minimum salaries for the new guys, the A's are looking at a rather nice amount of cash on their hands. The savings over the next few years will be even greater, considering that Gonzalez and Bailey are going into their first year of arbitration, and that Cahill has only cashed in $500,000 of his $30.5MM contract. We don't know much about the Athletics' financial books, but considering that they offered a rumored $64MM deal to Adrian Beltre last winter, they clearly have a little spending money.

Billy has already said that they're willing to spend upwards of $10MM on the draft this year. But outside of the draft, there's a target that the A's absolutely need to acquire if they're serious about this 2015 rebuild plan: 19-year-old Cuban defectee Jorge Soler.

Some background first. From Baseball America's Jim Callis:

Six-foot-3 and 205 pounds, Soler has explosive bat speed and power potential. He also has plus speed and arm strength and profiles as a classic right fielder, though he runs well enough to play center. Because of his youth, he'll need some time to develop, but he should be worth the wait.

Callis goes on to say that if Soler had been a part of 2010's MLB draft, he would have been a top five overall pick, likely after the top three of Bryce Harper (A), Jameson Taillon (A-), and Manny Machado (A). Grades in parentheses are from John Sickels' 2012 rankings. Callis also compares Soler to 2011 fifth overall pick Bubba Starling, and he expects both Starling and Soler to sit in the 11-20 range of Baseball America's next Top 100 prospect list. Put it this way—scouts are absolutely in love with the kid.

And the best news of all? According to Susan Slusser, the A's have shown "strong interest".

Fellow countryman Yoenis Cespedes seems to be rated a bit higher by scouts than Soler, but Cespedes has the stronger brand name recognition, and thus, a stronger bidding war and price. And besides, at age 26, Cespedes doesn't fit as well with the Athletics' 2015 rebuilding plan as the 19-year-old Soler.

Now, as far as the new Collective Bargaining Agreement is concerned, there's a new clause that sets a limit on any club's international expenditures at a total of $2.9MM over the 2012-2013 signing period. However, that signing period begins on July 2, 2012, so Soler could be the last unrestricted international signing that the A's can make.

Billy Beane absolutely needs to do this rebuild right, after the last Holliday-shortened attempt. There's no better way of putting high-upside talent in an A's uniform than the farm system, and between Soler, the 2012 #11 overall pick in the draft, and a little luck, the A's could get a formidable infusion of young talent a year or two into their new park in San Jose. The A's haven't had a position player in the top 20 places of Baseball America's top prospect list since Carlos Pena in 2002.

So go ahead and overpay for the kid, Billy. Throw that cash around. Where else are you going to put the money, Cody Ross?

When's the last time we've had two threads in one day?

This is the no-meta zone.

Ah, who am I kidding.

The A's are punchless. They haven't finished in the top half of teams in Isolated Power since 2003. I can count on two hands the number of times an Athletic has slugged .500 this century. But I keep reading things about team "balance", in that the A's should target a slugger for the sole reason that the team doesn't have one. There seems to be a fairly widespread misconception that if a team lacks power, acquiring a power hitter will provide a larger boost to the team than if they already had four 30 HR players. It's as if the value of power is dependent on the team's slugging percentage.

It's simply not true. The value of slugging percentage is linear. The difference in runs scored between a team with a SLG of .400 and .450 is the same as .600 and .650, all else equal.

I know this topic has been pretty much beaten to death in sabermetric circles, but there's no problem with re-testing those conclusions and bringing it to a different audience. So here we go.

Some background first: A few years ago, Tom Tango created wOBA, which is a stat that adds together all of the possible batting outcomes (singles, doubles, triples, walks, etc) and weights them appropriately to come up with a total picture of how valuable a player's offense is. The important thing here is that wOBA assumes that offensive value is linear, which means that if power is indeed non-linear, I can use wOBA as a baseline to hold everything constant except power. That way, I can find any possible deviation from the linear model.

First up, I took every team, broken up by season, from 2000-2011. This gave me 12 years and 360 data points to work with. After the jump is team runs scored vs. team wOBA.

Continue reading this post »

The star blue-chip prospect of the return for Trevor Cahill is RHP Jarrod Parker, the ninth overall pick in the 2007 Draft. He made his professional debut in the beginning of 2008 and made it up to AA Mobile in 2009, before elbow troubles forced him to get Tommy John surgery. Thankfully, he's pitched a full year in 2011 at AA without incident. John Sickels, take it away:

Parker is 22 years old, turning 23 in November. Listed at 6-1, 195 pounds, he's put on about 15 pounds of muscle and strength since high school. His key pitch is a hard sinking fastball, working at 92-95 and hitting 96-97 at its best. He's lost no velocity since the surgery, although he's still working on command refinements.

His slider was his out-pitch pre-surgery. Scouting reports indicate that he's not throwing it as much as he used to, but it still rates as a plus pitch. His changeup has improved a great deal, ranking plus at its best, and he'll mix in some curves on occasion, giving him four pitches to work with. He's especially tough on right-handed hitters, holding them to a .209 average with just two homers this year.

Parker stayed at AA for the whole 2011 season, before getting a small cup of coffee in the majors at the end of the year. He has a grand total of 6 innings in the majors, 5.2 on one start on September 27th, and 0.1 in the NLDS. Both were at Chase Field in Phoenix. Unfortunately, he's never pitched in the Arizona Fall League (owing to his surgery recovery timetable), so those 6 innings are the only innings the PITCHf/x system has seen from him. Because of the small sample and the single location, the usual caveats about PITCHf/x camera calibration apply in full force, so consider everything below with a grain of salt.

Continue reading this post »

Sure, the first day of the Winter Meetings wasn't all that eventful, but we did get to see a mammoth FA signing (Jose Reyes to the Marlins for six years, $106MM). In A's news, be sure to follow Susan Slusser on Twitter to get the latest news as it breaks. A small Slusser selection from yesterday (link to her Twitter feed here):

Melvin says that the door is open to bringing Matsui back but it sounds like it would be late in process. #Athletics

Melvin says Choice and Green could be in the big leagues this season if they continue to progress. #Athletics

Billy Beane on A's popularity at winter meetings: "I feel like the hottest prom date." #Athletics

Beane emphasizes again that the #Athletics aren't shopping players, but they're willing to listen.

Beane doesn't sound as into possibility of Matsui returning as Melvin did; he thinks DH spot can be filled by #Athletics younger players.

Discuss away. And a quick reminder: be sure to cite and link any quotes from reporters as they come in throughout the day. Their hard work deserves to be credited.

Like the pitch tracking system PITCHf/x, there's a system that tracks the flight paths of batted balls. It's called HITf/x, and while there are no current plans to publicly release the data like its pitching counterpart, a few lucky people have gotten their hands on a taste. Mike Fast, a fantastic Baseball Prospectus writer, recently published two articles using a whole year's worth of HITf/x data from 2008 to make tremendous insights into pitchers and their ability to control the quality of contact they induce from batters. In 1999, Voros McCracken launched the entire field of defense-independent statistics by arguing that pitchers have very little control over quality of contact, and that any measurement of results on batted balls includes so much luck that it's more accurate just to throw the whole lot out. Here, Fast very persuasively argues that with HITf/x, we have the technology to measure that skill.

Click to read (part one, part two). It's long and intensive, but well worth the time. This might be the sabermetric article of the year, and I'd absolutely love to see what Fast does with the data set next.

I figure it's time to update some of my old visualizations with new 2011 data. First up, vertical vector charts.

Click to enlarge.

Continue reading this post »

Lounge away.

In order of innings played on defense, here's a list of every outfielder the A's used in 2011.

Coco Crisp (1134)
David DeJesus (1055)
Josh Willingham (829)
Ryan Sweeney (618)
Conor Jackson (361)
Hideki Matsui (232)
Michael Taylor (83)
Jai Miller (22)
Adam Rosales (7)

See the problem? Five of the top six are no longer with the team, and the sixth is a backup outfielder with knee problems. Conor Jackson was traded to Boston in August to help them with the playoffs (ha). Crisp, DeJesus, Willingham, and Matsui are free agents, and none of the four are expected to resign with the A's. Of the remaining three outside of the top six, one is a prospect, one is a 26-year-old career minor leaguer, and one is a utility infielder.

So basically, we have to recreate an entire outfield from scratch.

Continue reading this post »

Major League Baseball is done for the time being, so why not check in with one of the biggest offseason leagues in organized baseball, the Arizona Fall League?

A quick refresher: The Arizona Fall League is run by MLB as a place for prospects to get extra playing time after the regular minor league season ends. Generally, the competition level in the AFL is somewhere around AA/AAA, although a small number of top prospects from the lower levels of the minors are usually present. This year, the A's sent eight players (and a manager) to play for the Phoenix Desert Dogs:

Ryan Ortiz, C (AA)
Dusty Coleman, SS (A+)
Michael Choice, OF (A+)
Grant Green, OF (AA)
Anthony Capra, LHP (AA)
Andrew Carignan, RHP (AAA/MLB)
Tyson Ross, RHP (AAA/MLB)
Murphy Smith, RHP (A+)

Clearly, the standout of the group is OF Michael Choice, as he demolished the Cal League in 2011 to the tune of a .918 OPS. The big question mark on Choice has always been that his high strikeout rate may indicate poor performance against a stronger competition level of pitching, so even in a one month small sample of AFL play, this is a great test for him. And he's passing with flying colors.

A+ Stockton (2011): .285/.376/.542
AFL Phoenix (2011): .333/.424/.745

A+ Stockton (2011): 24.7 K%
AFL Phoenix (2011): 15.5 K%

Choice is tied for the league lead in home runs, he's second in OPS, I could go on and on. I know it's a small sample, but considering this is the first taste of upper-level pitching he's seen, Choice deserves all the raves he's getting. It should be an interesting year to see in Midland next year.

Continue reading this post »

Is it April yet?

Almost all television broadcasts do it. Most stadiums do it. FOX has been doing it all throughout the World Series. In the onscreen graphic that comes up when a batter walks to the plate, you'll always see three numbers, and often, those three numbers only: batting average, home runs, and runs batted in. The limitations of HRs and RBIs compared to modern stats like wOBA are widely known. But exactly how poorly do the traditional Triple Crown stats assess player performance, compared to the sophisticated tools we have now? And how bad are they compared to the also-popular "triple slash" set of stats, AVG/OBP/SLG, which is just as easy as AVG/HR/RBI to use?

A quick aside: The great thing about wOBA is that it's essentially as close to perfect as we can get. It describes total offensive performance in a single number that's both context-neutral and comprehensive. Unlike other advanced stats, it doesn't pick and choose certain attributes to measure, and all of its coefficients are calculated from actual baseball events instead of being conjured out of thin air. It makes for a great baseline we can work from.

So, armed with this knowledge, the Triple Crown stats were easy enough to test. I took every qualified batter season from 2009-2011 and ran correlation tests with batting average, home runs, and runs batted in, compared to wOBA.

Another quick aside: The measuring stick here is R². In a nutshell, R² gives an indication of how much of one statistic's variability can be explained by the other stat, or to give an example, an R² of 0.62 between wOBA and FictionalMadeUpStat says that FictionalMadeUpStat is responsible for up to 62% of what wOBA says. Since we're treating wOBA as our perfect barometer of value, this would say that FictionalMadeUpStat accounts for 62% of player value.

So, the results?

Continue reading this post »

Shed your skin and swim
Right into the arms of the sea

I didn't want to throw this on top of 67MARQUEZ's excellent Al Davis piece, but this needs to be discussed. It's huge news that has been brewing for a while, but appears to finally be (mostly) confirmed.

The Astros are being sold, and they're moving to the AL West for 2012 or 2013. Peter Gammons tweeted the news this morning.

Houston ownership change expected to go through in mid-November, w/ AL move.

What does it mean for Oakland? For one, that's a lot more guaranteed games against a currently terrible opponent. The Astros lost 106 games in 2011. But more importantly? Being in a four team division is an amazingly underrated benefit. Now the A's have to compete with four other teams instead of three.

Can anyone beat the Rangers? Anyone at all? Nelson Cruz hit a ridiculous walk-off grand slam in the 11th to bring the Tigers to two games back last night. If Detroit loses again tonight...this might be a short series.

The Tigers are sending Doug Fister to the mound to cut that deficit, while the Rangers counter with Colby Lewis. Don't break my heart, Detroit.

First pitch at 5:05 Pacific.

It's been fun, AN. To next season!

The bad news? He allowed two home runs in an eight inning complete game loss, allowing four runs in all.

Four runs isn't terrible but tonight, it was far too much. He was up against Jason Vargas, and Vargas was ON. Ten strikeouts, no walks, one run...it was a masterful effort. Vargas was fantastic, and the A's couldn't do much about it.

Vargas allowed his first and only run of the game about five minutes after his first pitch, as red hot Jemile Weeks launched a double to left field to leadoff the game. Hideki Matsui drove him in with a single two at bats later.

But finally, with Vargas out of the game in the 9th, the A's got up. Coco Crisp singled to lead off the inning, then promptly stole 2B and 3B to accomplish two things: extend his now-22 steal streak without getting caught, and tie Brett Gardner for the American League stolen base champion at 48. Hideki Matsui struck out, then Josh Willingham grounded out to drive in Coco. With two outs, Scott Sizemore shot a booming double down the right field line to bring the tying run to the plate. Kurt Suzuki stepped into the batter's box, glanced at the pitcher, prepared for a battle...and plopped the first pitch into the ground for the final out. Oh, Kurt.

But all in all, Brandon McCarthy had enough of a cushion to hold onto his FIP title's lead, and while he finishes 2011 on a down note, it's still one of the greatest seasons ever to come in an Athletics uniform. Congrats, Brandon. You've earned it.

Continue reading this post »

It hasn't been a great season, but there have been some positives.

Like Brandon McCarthy (9-8, 3.26 ERA, -∞.19 FIP). He's awesome. And he's starting tonight, in a bid for his tenth win. Also starting tonight is Jason Vargas (9-13, 4.38 ERA). He's not very awesome.

And neither are the Mariners, really. They'll avoid another 100-loss season (last year was 61-101), but at 66-93, they're not exactly a force of power. Neither are the A's, really, but oh well.

And so begins the last series of the worst season in a long while.

Continue reading this post »

On September 3rd, while facing his 18th batter of the night, Brandon McCarthy threw an 89 mph cutter to Brendan Ryan. Ryan popped out into foul territory. There wasn't really anything special about that particular plate appearance, other than that it came in the middle of a masterful ten strikeout, zero walk, three hit complete game shutout. But with that foulout, Brandon McCarthy reached a season mark of 139 innings pitched, on the A's 139th game of the season. Which, according to MLB Official Rule 10.22(b), qualified him for the season-ending pitching title. And...

Brandon McCarthy currently leads the American League in FIP.

No, seriously. Not Verlander, not Sabathia, not Weaver, Haren, or Hernandez. An astounding 2.76. He's scheduled to make his final appearance of the season tonight, and he holds an 11 point lead over the second place pitcher, CC Sabathia. For all of the talk about Verlander being an MVP candidate...McCarthy is leading him by 23 points.

The A's signed Brandon McCarthy on a tiny $1MM one year contract, after Brandon had been out of the majors since 2009. After five lackluster seasons, the former top prospect power pitcher decided to reinvent himself, turning into a Halladay-esque control artist who relied on movement and deception, rather than blowing hitters away. What a find.

But how great has this season been? How about in A's history? By FIP- , he has a 71—his FIP is 29 percentage points greater than league average. That's the third greatest season by FIP in Athletics history since the deadball era. The only others? Vida Blue in 1971 (65), and Lefty Grove in 1930 (64). That's it.

So hats off to Brandon McCarthy, for sneakily having one of the best pitching seasons to ever come in an Athletics uniform. Good luck, tonight, Brandon. Here's to many more.

Brandon McCarthy and the A's take on the Mariners in the first game of the last series of the year tonight. First pitch is at 7:10.

The Angels needed a minor miracle to make the playoffs. Now they're going to need something a bit stronger than that. The Rangers clinched the AL West with a win over Seattle tonight, so unless Boston and Tampa Bay completely collapse over the home stretch, the 2011 Angels are done.

It was quite a nice win, too, as Gio Gonzalez picked up his fifteenth victory of the year in a 7.1 inning outing against one of the premier pitchers in baseball, Jered Weaver. Gonzalez only allowed 3 hits, including a home run by Torii Hunter which was the sole run that crossed the plate under his watch. He struck out 5 and walked 2. The A's needed every last drop of that performance, as Jered Weaver was on his A-game tonight. He lasted 8.1 innings in a fantastic start, striking out 8 and walking none. The problem? He allowed two solo home runs, one to Jemile Weeks on the third pitch of the game, and one to David DeJesus in the top of the 9th.

As an aside, why did Mike Scioscia allow Jered Weaver to start the 9th anyway? He was already at 107 pitches after finishing the 8th, and the Angels were down by one. What's the point of taxing LA's new $85MM man in an attempt at a complete game loss? The Angels are counting on Weaver to be their ace through 2016, and he just hit a new high in innings pitched earlier this week.

And speaking of Jemile Weeks, man oh man, has it been a good week for him. Weeks lasted until his 90th game as a major leaguer before hitting his first home run, and now he has two in two games. Both weren't cheap shots, either. Hit Tracker Online has yesterday's at 389 feet and today's at 399. I guess the little guy has some power after all.

Either way, the A's just hit win number 71 with 5 more games to go. Number 72 comes tomorrow at 6:05.

Continue reading this post »

Wow, did you see that thing that guy did?! What an amazing play by him. A great effort to back up the pitcher's great outing. Too bad the offense, well, you know.

Well, at least we've hit 70 wins.

The A's are mathematically guaranteed to fall short of their 81 win season last year, and they're virtually guaranteed to put up the worst season in Oakland since 1997. To equal 2008 and 2009, they'd have to go 5-1 in these last two series, and to equal 1998, they'd have to go 4-2. Yikes.

Either way, the A's are sending Gio Gonzalez (14-12, 3.33 ERA) to the mound tonight to face Jered Weaver (18-7, 2.41 ERA). He's good. Very good. I'm worried.

First pitch is at 7:05.

Continue reading this post »

Amazingly, I've started not to mind offdays too much.

Win!

Stupid 6-4-3.