I don't have anything to say about this ... I just suspect that others might ... and think it's better to have a dedicated thread for discussion of the baseball implications of the Adenhart crash, so that the memorial/mourning oriented threads can go on without interruption.

If you feel the need to talk about it in that context -- please do it here and not there.

If you think it's way too soon to be talking about this, that's fine too. Please stay out of this thread -- it's clear from the title that it's not for you.

Let's just all be respectful to everyone else. Thank you.

Given the big news of the day … no, the team hasn’t signed a big free agent or come through with another blockbuster trade … the big news is that UZR, the gold standard in defensive stats, is now available for all at the fantastic fangraphs.com. I thought, with this new tool, it might be a good opportunity to look at a few acquisition options.

Randy Johnson

The Big Unit, once one of the biggest stars around, is looking to prolong his stellar career and is likely willing to sign a one year deal in order to make it happen. As I’ve discussed previously, I believe a quality pitcher would be a great addition in 2009 and maybe 2010, but not really a great allocation of resources beyond that.

So how does UZR affect a pitcher? Defense, baby, defense …

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#7 Lou Gehrig

As this series returns from far too long of a vacation, I have to start with this statement: If you have not seen The Pride of the Yankees, you are not a baseball fan. Please leave this site immediately and do not return until you have fulfilled this critical obligation.

"Lou was the most valuable player the Yankees ever had because he was the prime source of their greatest asset - an implicit confidence in themselves and every man on the club."
Stanley Frank

Atypical for this series, which has generally proceeded in a fairly linear fashion, for this great of the game, what he did on the field, as half of the greatest hitting duo the game has ever seen, as a man whose power was as prodigious as it was profuse, as the embodiment of durability and hard work that was unmatched for over half a century and as the seventh greatest player to ever swing the lumber, none of that mattered as much as the simple, inspiring reminder to always look on the bright side.

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Two of the more interesting stories for our beleaguered team this year are closer Huston Street and setup man and AN author Brad Ziegler. Having read the title (and not being an Angels fan), you have probably figured out which player will be the focus of this article. AFTER you finish reading this article and commenting on it thoroughly, head over to Hardball Times, where our own salb918 has written a fascinating article on Brad Ziegler and why his slow pitch softball delivery is so effective. He has graphs … I like graphs … I have graphs too, so stay and enjoy my graphs … then go check out his article.

So Huston Street has been a pretty frustrating player for a lot of us. I had always seen him as the heir apparent to Dennis Eckersley. In celebrating that, I hung my signed, framed SI with Eck on its cover next to my signed, framed Beckett with Huston on the cover.

But, see, there is a difference between Huston Street and most closers. Health issues this year, aside, Huston Street is a really, really good pitcher. Over his career, he has done a great job of not allowing the opposing team to score very many runs. The problem, though, is that he has just been too darn consistent. Whereas his overall numbers have generally been in line with the bottom of the top tier or the top of the second tier (depending on how you define them) of closers, he has blown quite a few more saves than you would expect. Why? Because, in accumulating saves and avoiding blown saves, consistency is a bad thing. The more evenly his runs allowed are distributed, the more blown saves he will have. Because of that, though, the A’s win a lot of games that Huston blew the save in. They are 2-3 this year, for example. Because of that, saves and blown saves underrate Huston’s ability as a closer. How much, exactly, is a story for another column.

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Okay, so there's no actual contest ... but I need some help on A's knowledge. I'm planning a future Staturday column assessing BB's overall success or failure in trading. I still need some information on PTBNLs and cash that completed trades.

Questions:
How much cash did we get for Kevin Melillo?
How much cash did we send to Atlanta with Kotsay? $5.3m
How much cash did we send to Chicago with Kendall? $6m
Who was the PTBNL we sent to Washington for Jermaine Van Buren?
How much cash did we get for Adam Melhuse?
Who was the PTBNL we sent to San Diego for Jack Cust? Cash, $100k
Oy, it takes too long to type out sentences ...
Cash for Langerhans (the first trade)?
PTBNL (along w McBeth)  for Denorfia? Ben Jukich
PTBNL on each side for Saarloos? Denham/Manon
Cash paid for Murphy?
Cash paid for Karsay?
Cash paid for Ryan Glynn?
Cash acquired with Dotel?
Cash acquired for Jose Flores?
Cash or PTBNL with Kielty for Lilly? $10k
Cash with Lilly?

Thanks for your help!

Update: Making progress, thanks everyone ... keep it up!

Back in March I commented on the similarity between the way Ichiro Suzuki and Jack Cust produce very, very dissimilar results. Ichiro has confounded PECOTA for years because he is a truly unique player. Jack Cust, with his limited MLB experience, had not had the chance to prove whether his own uniqueness was merely a function of small sample size or whether he was truly unique.

In that article, I noted how unique Jack Cust was in that he had the 8th highest line drive percentage in the league, a fairly low fly ball percentage but the highest HR/FB percentage. Also, particularly remarkable, given his relatively high ground ball percentage, he was the only player to fail to get a single infield hit. Each of those added up to an acceptable batting average, despite a ton of strikeouts and mammoth amount of power. Oh yeah, he also walked a lot.

So where do those things stand now?

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I present to you the fourth and final installment of Pitch, Blease. We have looked at the wide variety of pitches thrown in the majors as identified and described using PitchFX data. To this point, the key things we have learned are that having a good fastball is important – but having reliable secondary offerings is the key to being a high level pitcher.

Building on that, in this final installment I wanted to look at a couple of larger issues, the first being, how many pitches is the right number of pitches?

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Some readers of this site may have noticed that there has been quite a lot of activity surrounding a recent event, the 2008 Major League Rule 4 Draft. Although it is not typically accompanied with the same fanfare of the NFL or NBA’s draft, these two days in early June have more of an impact on the fate of our beloved franchise than virtually any other in sports. As such, loyal readers must forgive this author for taking a break from his ongoing series, Pitch, Blease, which, you need not worry, will be picked up in three weeks, to delve into some numbers surrounding the draft.

No, the topic has not yet been beaten to death. The numbers I will be exploring are very different from the extensive set provided by Taj Adib and others over the last two days. Instead of focusing on the players drafted, I will be looking at trends over the last few years and what that tells us about this class.

The data is courtesy of Baseball America and runs from 2005 through 2008. I would have preferred to go back a couple more years, but that is as far as they do and this author is lazy. In case anyone has become interested, Staturday is in search of an intern to help out in compiling the basic data that allows us to do our work.

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Hello deal target audience.

My parents are celebrating their 28th anniversary this 27th of July and my dad wants to take my mom to the game for it. He was looking on the website, though and, naturally, couldn't find anything except mid caliber seats available -- the best being deservedly taken up by the team's loyal season ticket holders.

You see, my parents raised me and loved me and laid the groundwork for turning me into the A's fan that I am so I was hoping I might find one of ya'll on here who have awesome season tickets (fourth row behind home plate or something like that ....) who might be willing to let a single game go, at hopefully not much more than face value, for a good cause.

Thanks a lot!

~Devo

“Christ, you don't need a quadrophonic Blaupunkt! What you need is a curveball! In the show, everyone can hit heat.” –Crash Davis

In the last appearance of Pitch, Blease, we saw that the effectiveness of a pitcher’s fastball is very much dependent on a pitcher’s ability to compliment it with breaking/off speed pitches. Heat only helps if you do not have to throw it all the time.

In this article, we will explore some of these other pitches, the curve, slider and change. Before we get into that, here is the article on the knuckler:
Wakefield throws it. He throws it a lot. He throws it slowly. Small Sample Size warnings apply to any conclusions drawn from that data set.
The splitter is only thrown often by a few guys – too many to summarize that succinctly and to few to write a meaningful article about.

Continue reading this post »

Jack Cust is back. After today’s game, Jack Cust is riding a seven game hit streak over which he has posted a .458 Avg, .552 OBP and .791 Slg, good for a 1.343 OPS. What’s more, over those seven games he’s only struck out five times. Incredible, just incredible. I think I have figured out what his problem was … he’s not used to playing baseball in March/April. His first PA in Japan was only his second ever in the early season. Not only that, but in that one at bat he struck out as a pinch hitter facing Ramiro Mendoza in a blowout loss to the Red Sox. Curiously, the player he replaced was none other than Larry Bigbie. April has been a traumatic month for Cust.

via assets.sbnation.com

Bobby Crosby has a four game hitting streak of his own after doubling this afternoon against a righty starter. He’s batting .400 with 3 doubles and a pair of walks – good for a 1.071 OPS, raising his season’s OPS to .737. The kid is hot!

With the news that Fautino de los Santos is headed to the minor league DL with a sore elbow and a rough five games (5.87 era) to start the season, Ryan Sweeney batting under .200 with no extra base hits over the last 11 games and Gio Gonzalez off to a slow start (5.00 era and a k/9 of only 7.0 after posting an 11.1 last season) I think it is becoming clear that Kenny Williams swindled Billy Beane. In the history of A’s baseball, the Danny Haren trade will be remembered as Mark Mulder part two and times two, having returned twice the players and possibly twice the talent that Mark Mulder did, while our much beloved Nick Swisher will be remembered in the same breath as the bulldog, Tim Hudson. Is it a karma thing? Does Billy Beane not have the attention span to deal with two trades at once? Does his shit simply not work with fan favorites? I don’t know, but I think one thing is clear – devo felt like writing a silly article this Sunday afternoon.

We all love fastballs. It is the pitch we drool over – we are always excited to watch the pitchers who crank up the heat, who bring the mustard, throw cheese, gas and/or smoke or who fire BBs, pills or seeds. It is also the pitch pitchers rely on the most. Pitchers throw a lot of fastballs. A lot of them.

Of the 142 pitchers included in this study, only 21 did not throw a fastball the majority of the time. Twelve of them replace those fastballs with cutters, which are basically fastballs with a little extra movement, so only nine pitchers rely on the slow stuff or the breaking stuff most of the time. Most of these guys, bottomed out by John Smoltz at 44.9%, are not that far off the pace. Two guys are, though. One is obvious – Tim Wakefield, who relies on his knuckler, to the tune of 82.6% -- the other, perhaps not as much. The New York Mets’ Jorge Sosa throws his slider 52.3% of the time.

One of these pitchers is not like the others, one of these pitchers just doesn’t belong. Three of these guys throw slightly harder than my grandmother and Litsch’s fastball is a couple of ticks below average. Sosa, though, throws a good, above average speed fastball – he just relies on his slider an unprecedented amount.

Continue reading this post »

Introduction

So in the ever-expanding mass of information available to we baseball fans, one of the newer tools available is PitchFX data – data on the speed and break of pitches thrown – data which allows smart guys and gals to identify the pitches a pitcher throws. Rather than relying on occasional observations and anecdotal information, we can look at real, hard data to identify which pitches a pitcher throws, how often he throws them and how fast he throws them.

I’d invite you to play around with them as well. The data I’ll be presenting comes to us courtesy of the good folks at fangraphs.com. Note: it is based on what kind of pitches the data that represents them looks like. It is not perfect.

This article will just present some basic, introductory data. More in-depth analysis will follow in subsequent articles.

Continue reading this post »

Two of a kind, for your information, we're two of a kind
Two of a kind, it's my observation, we're two of a kind
Like peas in a pod
And birds of a feather
Alone or together, you'll find
That we are two-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo, oo of a kind

Jack Cust

6’1" 231 lbs

Ichiro Suzuki

5’11" 170 lbs

Eerie, isn’t it? 

Aside from practically being twins, these two outfielders have another thing in common – absurdly high batting average on balls in play (BABIP). As A’s fans, we should be hoping that they have another thing in common.

Ichiro Suzuki has PECOTA (a forecasting system created by Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus) confounded. PECOTA is absolutely sure that Ichiro is just getting lucky – that like most luck does, his luck will end and he will be regressing to the mean any minute now.

Continue reading this post »

STOP READING – SPOILER ALERT!

This column will project the upcoming season with such frightening precision that playing the games will be little more than a novelty. The only reason to attend a game will be to drink over priced beer, eat garlic fries and enjoy the beats pounded out of the left field bleachers. Fair enough, those are some good reasons.

Read on, if you must, but do not say that I did not warn you.

Warnings aside, these projections, as with all projections, are inexact. They are based on weighted averages of a range of possible outcomes for each player. Many players will exceed these projections. Many others will fail to live up to them. I do my best to account for health, but, again, these are based on what I consider to be the most likely outcome and serious injuries or unexpected health could change playing time projections dramatically.

Offensive projections are based on this formula, drawn exclusively from OPS (as projected by PECOTA) and playing time:

RC = (.3 x OPS - .1) x PA

Pitching projections are based on this formula, drawn exclusively from RA/9 (as projected by PECOTA) and IP:

RA = RA/9 x IP/9

These are both very simple translations. They do not include important considerations, such as defense, leverage, base running, OPS distribution and a number of other factors.

Lineups were taken from MLB.com’s depth charts. Playing time was based on my own estimates.

Continue reading this post »

#8 Hank Aaron

For several decades Hank Aaron led off the Major League Baseball encyclopedia with the rare Aa. In 2004 Hank Aaron's place atop the encyclopedia was supplanted by David Aardsma. I think it's safe to say that the journeyman middle reliever will never supplant Aaron's place in history.

 Hammerin' Hank put up some incredible numbers over his very long, very consistent career. Of course there are the 755 home runs, second most ever. What's amazing is that he was not even a pure power hitter. Those 755 home runs were a relatively small portion of his 3,771 hits, number three of all time. His 624 doubles (#10) and 98 triples added up to 6,856 total bases -- the most ever. With an 880 XBH lead over Bonds (#4), that's a record that should be safe for a while. His 2,297 RBIs are the most ever and his 2,174 runs trail only Henderson, Cobb and Bonds. He was always a bit of a free swinger, but he still managed 1,402 career walks (24th), more than his 1,383 career strike outs. Of course, he also recorded the second most outs and double plays of anyone ever.

 He was also selected to 21 consecutive All-Star games, won three Gold Gloves and, despite only capturing the award once,  was sixth all-time in career MVP share.

 Yeah, I'd say he was pretty good.

Continue reading this post »

Blez seems to find himself scraping the bottom of the barrel, but here I am, front and center. I have neither song to sing nor any stories of alien invaders, bent on imposing rationality on the statistical world to amuse you. I merely offer some numbers – simple numbers – that will hopefully paint an interesting picture of trends over the last several decades in Major League Baseball.

For some completely unknown reason, offensive output has increased fairly dramatically over the last couple of decades. Explanations abound – juiced baseballs, smaller parks, expansion, more optimal strategies at the plate, improved workout regimens, global warming  ... perhaps other factors as well ... {ahem} ... one in particular. Other than simply "more offense", though, how have those various factors affected the game?

Many have chosen to assume that it was merely a handful of muscle bound behemoths that had figured out how to best take advantage of the warmer summer days caused by the build up of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. While some, notably among them, Jose Canseco, have argued that virtually all of Major League Baseball was likely to have availed themselves of global warming’s bounty.

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Just a quick GPA of the 24 teams for whom Sickels has released his top 20.
A 4
B 3
C 2

+/- = .33 (ie A- = 3.67, B+ = 3.33)

1    Rays    2.93
2    Rangers    2.80
3    Red Sox    2.78
4    A's    2.78
5    Reds    2.77
6    Braves    2.70
7    Rockies    2.68
8    Cardinals    2.65
9    Yanks    2.63
10    Pads    2.62
11    O's    2.60
12    Marlins    2.60
13    Nats    2.60
14    Dodgers    2.57
15    M's    2.56
16    Halos    2.56
17    Twins    2.55
18    Cubbies    2.52
19    Mets    2.50
20    D-Backs    2.50
21    Gnats    2.47
22    Tribe    2.47
23    Brewers    2.45
24    Royals    2.43
25    Stros    2.42
26    Phils    2.38
27    Rats    2.35
28    Tigers    2.28
29    Jays    2.28
30    ChiSox    2.28

[update] I have incorporated Sickels' grade changes, made subsequent to publishing his original lists. The difference is minimal.

Continue reading this post »

#9 Rogers Hornsby

Unlike many of the players on this list, Rogers Hornsby did not start his career on the fast track to stardom. In fact, his big league career almost never got started. His professional debut was as a light hitting, weak fielding shortstop in the Texas-Oklahoma league. He had already been scouted and signed by the Cardinals, but they were almost ready to give up on the 18-year-old and tried to sell his contract to Little Rock of the Southern League for a mere $500. Little Rock did not think he was worth it.

Rather than giving up on Hornsby, St. Louis continued to work with him and completely rebuilt his swing. The improvement was not immediately apparent. In his brief 1915 call-up, Hornsby posted a meager .246/.271/.281. Hornsby was not ready to call it quits, though. Instead he spent that off season down on the farm, working at hard manual labor for his uncle and adding 25 pounds of muscle in the process.

The rest, as they say, is history.

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#10 Mickey Mantle

Mickey Mantle, born during the heart of the Great Depression was named for one of baseball's most popular players in a difficult time -- the A's great catcher, Gordon Cochran. Lucky for the Mick, his father didn't know that Mickey wasn't Cochran's real name. It was the first of many things Mutt Mantle did right as a father.

Before his Major League career started, though, his health put everything in doubt. On January 10, 1951 the 18 year old prized prospect went in for a routine doctor's visit. In that visit, Mantle learned that the Osteomyelitis he suffered from that resulted from a high school football injury and almost caused him to have his leg amputed was causing problems in his ankle. The Yankees issued an optimistic, but foreboding statement, "Mickey's locomotion is hampered only slightly, but we can't tell now what effect this condition will have on his baseball future." It, unfortunately, proved to have far too profound of an effect on his career, leading to persistent health problems.

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His stats are impressive:
2,428 hits, 101st all-time
622 stolen bases, 15th
1,528 runs, 54th
4 Gold Gloves
11 trips to the playoffs
6 All-Star selections, 4 as a starter

But they aren't quite good enough -- yet.

Continue reading this post »

Sparked by the discussions in bringbackymiggy's recent diary I decided to looking into projecting runs and then trying to determine trends between the teams that beat the formula or fail to live up to their talents.

I ran a regression on every team from 2000-2007, comparing their Hits, Total Bases, Strike Outs, Walks, Stolen Bases, Sac Hits and Sac Flies to their runs scored.

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Fear not, AN. It's looking bleak ... but our trip to rock bottom should result in a quick bounce back.

Projections are based on a combination of 2007 PECOTA projections and YTD numbers unless otherwise noted.
Pos Name Sal ProjWARP
C__ Zooks 400k 3.5 (based on 2007 PECOTA projections)
1b_ Johnson 400k 4.0
2b_ Ellis 4m 6.5
3b_ Chavez 11m 5.0
SS_ Crosby 3.5m 2.5
LF_ Buck 400k 5.5
CF_ Kotsay 8m 2.5
RF_ Swisher 3.5m 6.0
DH_ Cust 400k 5.0

So our starting lineup should produce about 40.5 wins above replacement at a cost of $31.6 million.

SP1 Haren 4m 7.5
SP2 Blanton 2m 6.5 (arbi eligible)
SP3 Gaudin 2m 4.5 (arbi eligible -- had to fudge the numbers, since PECOTA assumed he was a reliever)
SP4 Loaiza 7m 2.5 (PECOTA only)
SP5 ? 400k 0.0

And our rotation should produce 21 wins above replacement at a cost of $15.4m

CL Street 2m 5.0 (arbi)
SU Duke 2m 2.5 (arbi)
SU Casilla 400k 2.5
MR Embree 3m 1.5
MR Calero 2m 1.25 (arbi)
MR Marshall 400k .75
MR ? 400k 1.0

Finally, our bullpen should produce 14.5 wins at a cost of $10.2m

Continue reading this post »

So Mike Piazza is likely out for several more weeks -- but when he comes back, we may have a difficult decision to make. What do we do with Jack Cust when it happens? He cannot really play any position, other than DH ... so what to do?

I would suggest that largely has to do with what we can expect from him.

At this point, his numbers are pretty ridiculously good. A 1.076 OPS ain't bad at all.

Continue reading this post »

Hey guys, my organization is having its website redone.

The designer asked me to come up with some examples of good websites to help get them started.

I've got a couple ... but I just don't know where to find enough good websites ...

If anyone could suggest websites they find visually appealing, effectively layed out that have few or no pictures and are well suited to containing a fairly significant amount of information I would be grateful.

Here is an example of a layout that would pretty well meet our needs.

Thanks!

I need a rooting interest in the Utah/Houston game ... I'm not looking ahead or taking anything for granted, but that game is very likely going to be played and I am very likely going to watch it -- so I would rather root for the team that the Warriors would potentially have the best chance against in round two.

The way I figure it, the Jazz stand a much better chance of running with the Warriors ... but if the Rockets can control the tempo, there is little if any chance the Warriors can beat them in the half court.

In the season series, 2-2 Jazz, 2-1 Rockets.

Help me out, who should I root for?

Will Carroll, although much criticized around these parts when it turned out that his reports on Rich Harden's death (impending TJ surgery) were greatly exagerated, released the latest in his series of positional injury reports.

Interestingly, Milton Bradley, despite frequently being labeled with the term "injurt prone" is awarded a green light.

Jermain Dye also received a green, with the following not, "Dye is one of those players I like to point to when people ask me if the injury-prone label can come off. It certainly can when a player doesn't lose his athletic ability, works hard, and has a great rehab team."

Gary Matthews Jr. is happy to be home.

The Veterans Committee will reveal its selections today. The big question is, will history repeat itself, will the announcement be that the winner is ... drum roll, please ... ... ... {drum roll} ... Nobody!

The list of folks who wants more money now includes ... everybody!

Feel free to use this as an all-purpose Fan Fest thread.

I'm going to Fan Fest on Saturday and plan on having a great time ... yada yada yada ... it was awesome last year ... yada yada yada ... Saint, Duke and I, along with Bobby (510) and a couple of other guys camped out and drank beers all night ... yada yada yada ... then we snuck in ... yada yada yada ...

long story short, I need a good picture of Milton Bradley that is high enough quality to have developed as an 8x10 to hopefully get signed while I'm there. Help me, please!!!!

Devo's first ever link dump! It's a crappy one!

Jayson Stark votes for McGwire

That National Championship of College Football is tonight. Who do you think will win?

Brilliant sports journalist, Devin Lavelle presents an interesting look at PECOTA's successes and failings in picking 2006's outcome.

For the third year in a row, PECOTA has pegged the A's win total. It did a great job with the AL West, but had a so-so performance in the AL East and completely blew the Central. Okay, you're right, credit where credit's due -- it nailed the Royals suckitude.

It did a much better job with the NL.
The Padres exceeded expectations, thanks, almost entirely to Chris Young and Clay Hensley and the Mets had an easier time with the NL East than expected, but, otherwise it did well here.

Continue reading this post »

Inspired by Low Country Joe's odd devotion to Quality Starts -- I decided to study the issue, based on the premise of Quality Starts, but using a worthwhile measure.

The measure is based on the odds of winning when a team gives up a given number of runs:

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