SB Nation User Blog: salb918

2009 Fan Scouting Report

salb918 — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:00:27 -0000

Measuring defense is really, really hard. One can criticize any of the popular defensive metrics. UZR, PMR, RZR, and TotalZone all have their warts (and don't even get me started on FRAA). Additionally, because both the sample sizes and the ranges in defensive skills tend to be small, the numbers for even the best defensive systems have to be taken with a grain of salt (that is, sabermetricians have to regress pretty heavily to the mean).

At the risk of bringing this entry down to Urban-esque levels of belligerent stupidity, we do need to get our noses out of the proverbial spreadsheets and watch some damn games. That's why we have scouts. But did you know that you're a scout, too? You watch every A's game, which means you observe the players more often than a scout does. And while your opinion by itself might be flawed or biased, we can put our opinions together and begin to come to a consensus. Our collective opinion is almost certainly better than our individual opinions. And there are lots and lots of A's fans hanging around here whose opinions are untapped.

And that's what the Fan Scouting Report is all about. Every year, Tom Tango asks thousands of fans to give their scouting reports by rating fielders in a variety of categories. Says Tom:

What I would like to do now is tap that pool of talent. I want you to tell me what your eyes see. I want you to tell me how good or bad a fielder is. Go down, and start selecting the team(s) that you watch all the time. For any player that you've seen play in at least 10 games in 2009, I want you to judge his performance in 7 specific fielding categories.

And best of all:

And, most importantly, do not, absolutely do not, look at any numbers. Don't look at his fielding percentage, range factor, zone rating, UZR, or anything else that someone else is telling you. I just want you to rely on your eyes. You are the scout. I need you to rely completely on your own observations.

Tom's been doing this every year for over five years now, so we're starting to get good historical data. In some cases the fans agree with the numbers. In other cases, they disagree. It's all very useful information, because it gathers the collective experience of you and I - the most experienced scouts of A's players in existence - to tell us what the numbers might not. The more opinions the better. As usual, the A's have one of the smallest response pools in the Fan Scouting report. For every evaluation of an A's player, there are *10* for the Rays. The Rays!

Read the instructions first...

...and fill out the Fan Scouting Report for the A's!

But this is important: be honest in your evaluations. This isn't a ballot-stuffing contest. This is an attempt to use the collective knowledge of the best-informed baseball fans our there to help us identify fielding skill. Thanks for helping Tango out in his project, which I think is the most creative and informative collective-wisdom projects in the blogosphere.

How do we project players/shameles advertising

salb918 — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:32:35 -0000

How do we project players?

Most of you know about projection systems like PECOTA, ZiPS, CHONE, or Marcel that attempt to predict how a player will perform in the future. If you're a fantasy junkie or a rosterbator, that stuff is a must. If you like hanging out at AN and discussing who to sign, who to trade, and who to DFA into oblivion, having projections around can be helpful.

Projections typically rely on mathematical formulations, and while each projection system is different, most of them have the same inner workings:

compile stats from the past few years, weighting the most recent stats most heavily.
regress to the mean.

Projections systems differ in the details: which stats they use as for inputs, how the weights are assigned, whether league and park adjustments are made, which mean they regress toward, etc.

There's a second critical bit about projecting player performances: our eyes. Objective information, even if it is not quantified, can help us make determinations about players. The classic example is injuries. Tim Hudson is projected to have a 4.06 ERA in 150 IP by Marcel, but Marcel doesn't know that Huddy just had Tommy John surgery on his throwing elbow. Sometimes pitchers add a new pitch. Sometimes batters change their mechanics. Sometimes these things can change a player's performance level, and sometimes they don't. It is worth at least thinking about what non-statistical objective information is useful.

That's why I think The Hardball Times 2009 Season Preview is a great book. In addition to over 1000 player projections and all 30 team projections, you get awesome commentary on players and teams. The projections are done by smart analysts. The commentary is written by fans who live and die with their team's every pitch. Jeff Sullivan wrote the Mariners chapter. Justin Inaz wrote about the Reds. It's like an all-star roster of bloggers and fans.

Oh yeah, I wrote the A's chapter.

Here's what the book's editor, David Gassko, has to say:

This is the third year we’ve done this book, and it’s the third year that I can honestly say we’ve surpassed my every expectation. I know my opinion is biased, but our writers have done a fantastic job covering every aspect of the upcoming season.

The projections include all the regular statistics you might expect, plus fielding ratings, three-year projections, a reliability score, projected fantasy values, and depth charts. In other words, no matter what you’re using these projections for, we have you covered.

The book also includes a review of 100 players by an injury expert, commentary on rookies to watch for, and - for the fantasy players - an essay on managing risk in your fantasy draft. Purchasers receive not only the book, but access to a spreadsheet with over 2600 projections.

So I come to you, hat in hand, asking you to consider purchasing what I consider to be the essential pre-season guide to the 2009 baseball season. Your purchase supports THT, which - in my opinion - is the best free baseball site on the internet.

If you do want to buy the book, consider purchasing it directly from ACTA instead of from Amazon. If you purchase it from Amazon, the six bucks you save comes directly out of THT's cut. If you do purchase from amazon, consider donating part of your savings back to THT from the PayPal link at the bottom right of our homepage.

And if you've made it this far, I'll give you a sneak peak at some Oakland projections for next year:

Devine: 3.08 ERA
Duke: 3.82 ERA
Ziegler: 4.41 ERA
Gallagher: 4.49 ERA

Cust: .893 OPS
Giambi: .875 OPS
Barton: .737 OPS
Crosby: .635 OPS

DLD 1/23: NO POLITICS

salb918 — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:52:27 -0000

George Mitchell, the head of MLB's recent steroid investigation, has been named the special envoy to the the Israel/Palestine region.

Shysterball has his take:

Despite pronouncements of his neutrality, soon after he begins work, it will be reported that he is a board member of Hamas;

Ignoring decades if not centuries of political and social conflict in the region, Mitchell will approach his work with the assumption that all of the trouble began with Arafat, because a lot of people hated him to begin with;

Rather than work on the root causes of strife in the region, Mitchell will simply publish a list of 80 or 90 guys he is told have fired rockets or built illegal settlements and hope that speaks for itself;

I particularly enjoyed the Hamas-Red Sox parallel.

This is the first joke of mine that my then-girlfriend, now-wife laughed at:

Did you hear that Hizbullah is now recruiting women for suicide bombing missions? Because of their strict beliefs of separating men and women, though, they're spinning off a new organization. They call is "Herbollah."

Is this humor inappropriate?

Anyway, the news on the baseball front is a lot of the same old rumors, but there were a few good things out there this morning.

Greg Rybarcyk compares wood bats to aluminum bats at a High School Power Showcase.

The small sample size for wood bat homers means that there remains a lot of uncertainty in the “translation factor” from wood to metal bats, but knocking roughly 10 percent off the distance of a home run hit by a high school or college slugger can provide a good rough estimate of how far it might have gone with a wooden bat. For line drives that don’t clear the fence, knocking off about 8 percent of the speed off bat will give a reasonable wooden bat estimate.

John Walsh checks out the best outfield arms of 2008.

Manny's replacement in Boston, Jason Bay, is a terrible thrower, at least he was last season. Curiously, almost all of those negative 8 runs were "earned" in Pittsburgh, Bay was slightly above average in Boston (with 61 opps).

For Juan Pierre there was good news and bad news in 2008. The good: he was nowhere to be found at the bottom of the list of center field arms, a place he had inhabited for several years running. The bad: Juan has now established residency at the bottom of the left fielders' list. I'm not counting Luis Gonzalez, who, as far as I can tell, has been playing with a paralyzed throwing arm for the last several years. Note the Kill+ of zero for these two.

Staturday: Does Jason Giambi help the A's?

salb918 — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:31:11 -0000

A few months ago, I opined:

That means that signing Giambi and sticking Cust in the outfield will garner us, at most, an extra 2 wins (+25 - 15 - (-10) = 20 runs, 10 runs = 1win) - for which we'd have the pleasure of paying Jason Giambi about $10 MM.

I'm not opposed to paying $10 MM for an extra few wins, but only if a) we're at the cusp of contention, b) there are no better options, and c) the move has some upside. None of those three criteria are met here. We're not knocking at the door to the division, there are lots of low key upgrades we might make in the infield, and there is virtually zero upside to signing Jason Giambi beyond what I've outlined here.

In the light of Preparation G's "imminent" return to Oakland, let's revisit that conclusion. The price has dropped considerably since I wrote the above. Management believes that we are at the cusp of contention (whether or not you think so is, well, up to you). It's arguable whether or not there are better options, but I'm of the mind that this move doesn't necessarily preclude others, although space on the 25-man roster is becoming tight. I think we can mostly agree that there's not a lot of upside to this move, as Giambi is both a known quantity offensively and also an injury risk due (at least) to age.

Thanks to Chone Smith, we have projections for next season at our fingertips. For the purposes of this post, I'll just assume about 150 games of playing time for everyone - that obviously won't be true, but it will give us a starting point.

Prior to signing Giambi, I think we would have seen an outfield of Holliday, Sweeney, and Buck. With Giambi, there are two options.

First, send Buck to the bench (or the minors), run Cust into the outfield, and let Giambi DH. Cust versus Giambi at DH is a wash - both project to about 20 runs above average over 150 games. So the exchange here is Buck in a corner OF spot for Cust in a corner outfield spot.

Buck is projected to be a slightly above average hitter and if you assume above average defense (+7 runs), you're essentially talking about an average player. That's +2.5 wins above replacement for a full year. Cust is a far superior hitter, but if you consider his outfield defense to be very bad (-10 runs), he comes out to...+2.5 wins. No gain, although given Buck's injury history I would guess that Cust in the OF will be worth more than Buck+replacements in the OF over the millions of possible future trajectories.

Second option is to bench (or option) Barton and live with Giambi's awful defense at first base. Barton projects as Buck's equal with the bat. Throw in some slightly above average defense (+5 runs) and you've got yourself a +2 win player. Giambi, like Cust, is far superior with the bat but a butcher in the field (-10 runs). Put it together and you've got a +2.25 win player. Slight gain, although it's essentially a wash.

Prior to the Holliday trade, a Giambi signing might have made some sense, as pushing Cust to the outfield would have replaced a truly putrid hitter. But with Holliday in the fold, we're pushing out a guy like Buck. And replacing Barton with Giambi is also a wash. Defense counts for something in this game, and Giambi doesn't have it.

As for depth, Giambi (by proxy) adds injury insurance to 1B and corner OF. That's good, considering that Buck is never healthy and Barton's head might lose an battle with the bottom of a hotel swimming pool. The depth is nice, but this team's major injury concerns are at 3B and 2B, where the potential replacements for our projected starters are...well, let's just hope that Chavez and Ellis can play.

So, for $6 MM or whatever it is, this move doesn't really improve the team, doesn't add a missing skill, probably inhibits the development of either Barton or Buck, and results in the loss of a roster spot (the likely casualty is Rajai Davis). Thumbs down.

This is a team with a whole lot of "average" around the diamond, with premium players in LF and 2B. SS (and possibly 3B) will be the only sucking wound, and we need to fill it in a bad way. At this point, an overpay for Orlando Cabrera might actually be a good idea. Hey - does anybody know what David Eckstein's health situation is?

A's acquire Matt Holliday for who the hell knows

salb918 — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:29:59 -0000

Not to trample all over Taj's excellent prospect-watching story from this morning, but feel free to use this as your all-purpose "Matt Holliday traded to the A's" freak-out thread. John Heyman files this report:

The Oakland Athletics have acquired star outfielder Matt Holliday in a trade with the Colorado Rockies, SI.com has learned.

I'm scared. My hands are sweating. Hold me.

Updates as they happen.

[Note by salb918, 11/10/08 2:32 PM EST ] DKNJ and TroyNeelorBust broke the news on AN first.

[Note by salb918, 11/10/08 2:35 PM EST ] Oh yeah: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!

[Note by salb918, 11/10/08 2:46 PM EST ] For those of y'all that wear fanny packs, a few numbers: Holliday was 54 runs above replacement last year (52 offense, 8 fielding, -6 for position), between Brian Giles and Jose Reyes in the NL. A quick projection gives me about +40 for offense next year (although I didn't adjust for park) and Sean Smith projects him as +8 fielding in a corner and +0 in center. That's a good player, folks.

[Note by salb918, 11/10/08 3:03 PM EST ] Robothal reports:

Over the weekend, the teams discussed A's outfielder Carlos Gonzalez, left-hander Greg Smith and reliever Huston Street, according to one source, but it is not known if any or all of those players will be included in the package for Holliday.

...

The A's are not acquiring him with the intention of flipping him or even trading him in July. The team is in position to increase its payroll to as much as $80 million, and plans to contend next season.

[Note by salb918, 11/10/08 3:31 PM EST ] Yahoo's Tim Brown is reporting Street, Smith, and CarGon.

[Note by salb918, 11/10/08 4:08 PM EST ] Beat-writer extraordinaire Susan Slusser says the same.

The A's are working to complete a trade with the Rockies that would bring Matt Holliday to Oakland in exchange for reliever Huston Street, starter Greg Smith and outfielder Carlos Gonzalez, major-league sources said Monday.

[Note by salb918, 11/10/08 4:10 PM EST ] Hey Geren, thanks for killing Huston's trade value last year.

[Note by salb918, 11/10/08 4:11 PM EST ] Oh yeah. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!

DLD 11/06: Somebody get Poppy on suicide watch

salb918 — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:53:19 -0000

It's not official yet, but it appears that the gold glove winners in the AL will be:

P - MIKE MUSSINA - YANKEES
C - JOE MAUER - TWINS
1ST - CARLOS PENA - RAYS
2ND - DUSTIN PEDROIA - RED SOX
3RD - ADRIAN BELTRE - MARINERS
SS - MICHAEL YOUNG - RANGERS
OF - TORII HUNTER - ANGELS
OF - GRADY SIZEMORE - INDIANS
OF - ICHIRO SUZUKI - MARINERS

At least Dustin Pedroia isn't the worst pick of the lot; that honor belongs to the statue-eque Michael Young. The longer the rangers run Young out to shortstop, the better it is for the A's. Keep the gold glove, sweetheart.

The gold gloves aren't based on statistics, nor should they be. They are based on the impressions of the electorate, which in this case happens to be managers. They watch games, and tell us what they see..

In Tango's Fan Scouting report, fans do the exact same thing, but instead of the votes of 14 managers, you get the votes of dozens of fans.

Those fans - including Red Sox partisans - rated Ellis as superior to Pedroia in the following categories: instincts, first step, speed, hands, release, and accuracy. Fans rated them as equals in arm accuracy. Fans rated Pedroia as superior in: . Oh, there's nothing on that list? Huh.

Anyway, we've got Mark Ellis and nobody else does. That counts for something, right? Here's to you, MaEl:

via farm2.static.flickr.com

Staturday: If you think Mark Ellis is bad, I hate you and find you stupid.

salb918 — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:24:26 -0000

Taking a cue from one of my favorite bloggers.

Most of you know that Ellis is a very good defender. Can't hit much, but he's good with the glove. What a lot of you don't know is that Ellis is not just "very good" with the glove, he's one of the best defenders in the majors, and his defense is worth a whole heck of a lot.

I've heard people on AN say that the A's need more offense, not defense. That's such an ignorant statement it makes me cringe. A run saved is a run saved. The balance between offense and defense is overblown. You win games by scoring more runs that your opponent runs. You can do that just as well by preventing runs as you can by scoring them.

Okay, let's get down to numbers. According to MGL, Ellis has saved 23, 12, 26, and 21 runs with his glove from 2005-2008. Based on this, it's not unreasonable to guess that Ellis is worth +20 runs with the glove alone. Almost no players are actually that good with the glove, so let's say Ellis got lucky and that he's actually +15 with the glove.

Ellis wasn't much of a hitter last year, and his endless parade of popups was positively Byrnesian. But his Marcel projection suggests that he will be an exactly league-average hitter going forward. (Those of you who say, "but he hit .233 last year!" will be subject to Nico and his goat. Staturdays are for intelligent discussion, and if you can't keep up then I'd rather you not participate.) Ellis is positively average with the bat.

So, offense and defense combined, Ellis is +15 runs compared to all other players, or +1.5 wins. But that's not all: Ellis is a secondbaseman. I've talked before about positional value before, so I won't rehash it again, but that adds another 0.25 wins to his ledger. And I've talked about replacement level before as well, which adds another 2.5 wins. That means that, all told, Ellis is worth about 4.25 wins above replacement over a full season.

Now, Ellis is coming off surgery and he's getting older, so let's say that his defense and offense both fall off and he misses time next year. Knock over a win off that 4.25 figure, and you get 3 wins above replacement. I'm kicking him down a lot of notches, but I'm being pessimistic here.

Players who were worth about 3 wins above replacement this year: JD Drew, Jack Cust, Miguel Cabrera, Derek Jeter, Justin Morneau.

The A's just signed Justin Morneau to a two-year contract for $11 MM. And, if it works out, the A's have an option for a third year at $6 MM. And I'm being pessimistic about Ellis's future performance. What a ridiculous steal.

Did you know that the going rate for a win on the free-agent market is about $4.8 MM dollars? The A's should be tryin to pay less than that, obviously, since they keep a small payroll. Let's say the A's want to target $3.5 MM per free agent win. They should be paying Ellis at least $10 MM next year.

Assuming Ellis gets worse every year from here on out (to the tune of -0.5 wins per year), assuming no salary inflation over the next three years (almost certainly untrue), Ellis would be worth at least $36 MM on a three year contract in the open market. The A's got him for less than a third of that, and hedged their risk by making the third year a team option. This is almost unfair to Ellis.

How could this go wrong for the A's? Well, let's find the breakeven point. I'm already assuming that Ellis is a +15 run fielder instead of +20, and that he's -5 runs as a hitter instead of +0. So, starting from this pessimistic viewpoint, let's assume that Ellis is even worse.

Knock his fielding for 2009-2010 to +10 and +5 (from +15 and +10). Knock his hitting down to -10 and -15. So, by 2010, he's one of the worst everyday hitters in the majors (like Willie Bloomquist bad) and just barely above average with the glove. That gives the A's 4.5 wins above replacement for two years. Now say Ellis misses a third of the games the A's play. That's now 3 wins above replacement over two years. That would cost, on the free agent market, $14.5 MM, or about $7 MM per year - less than what the A's signed Ellis for.

So - if Ellis is terrible with the bat, sees his fielding fall off a cliff, and misses a third of each season, the A's come out even.

One final thing. There was discussion that the A's have depth at this position because of Cliff Pennington, Eric Patterson, Adrian Cardenas, and Jemile Weeks. The former two are ready for the majors now, but don't project to be anything close to Ellis as a player. Ellis is a star player. Even at the major-league minimum salary, there's no way that Pennington and Patterson are worth playing over Ellis. Cardenas and Weeks are no locks to stay at second base, and while both might be stars like Ellis one day, that day is certainly not until 2010, after which the A's have the option of terminating MaEl's contract.

To his credit, Ellis likes it in Oakland, apparently likes the fans, and is showing loyalty to the organization that stood by him while he rehabbed a potentially career-ending injury. He's throwing away tens of millions of dollars to do that. Whether it's because he's stupid or noble, I don't know. All I know is that A's fans get to benefit.

I'm so happy that I'll get to watch Ellis for the next few years, and you should be too.

Rays bludgeon Sox, lead ALCS 3-1

salb918 — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 03:22:08 -0000

Another evening, another Sox pitcher tattooed. Another evening of Red Sox fans streaming out of Fenway in the middle innings. Another evening of Rays hitters taking the ball over the monster time after time. Another evening of the Red Sox looking old, tired, frustrated, and outmatched.

Another evening of this, and we'll the Rays - yes, the Rays - in the World Series. One more to go, boys. The whole country is rooting for you.

Open Game Thread: ALCS Game Four (cont'd)

salb918 — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:21:26 -0000

David Ortiz BJ Upton, postseason clutch god: .303/.378/.818.

This is no ordinary ALCS.

This is your ticket to baseball heaven.

Open Game Thread: ALCS Game Four

salb918 — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 23:10:51 -0000

Sometimes, it feels like you have to be a baseball blogger in order to open a game thread.

Luckily for you, I am one.

Lineup

Tampa Bay Rays @ Boston Red Sox

10/14/08 5:07 PM PDT

Tampa Bay Rays	Boston Red Sox
Akinori Iwamura - 2B	J.D. Drew - RF
B.J. Upton - CF	Dustin Pedroia - 2B
Carlos Pena - 1B	David Ortiz - DH
Evan Longoria - 3B	Kevin Youkilis - 3B
Carl Crawford - LF	Jason Bay - LF
Willy Aybar - DH	Mark Kotsay - 1B
Dioner Navarro - C	Coco Crisp - CF
Fernando Perez - RF	Kevin Cash - C
Jason Bartlett - SS	Jed Lowrie - SS

Don't be fooled: in their last two trips to the ALCS, the Red Sox rallied from 3-0 and 3-1 deficits. That's not to say that they have an uncanny ability to win with their backs against the wall. It's just that Red Sox teams of recent vintage have been really, really good. This series won't be over until the final out is recorded.

LET'S GO RAYS!