Bucs Dugout: Why Hasn’t Trading Their Best Hitters Caused the Pirates to Lose More?

You mean it’s not the LaRoche’s twin OPS+ of 116?

The Pirates’ trades of Jason Bay, Xavier Nady and Nate McLouth were rebuilding deals. But that doesn’t mean the next couple of years have to be that much more painful than they otherwise would have been. The Pirates’ defense with Bay, Nady and McLouth in the outfield was a disaster. Without Bay and Nady it’s become far better, and the improvements are likely to continue now that the Bucs have replaced McLouth with Andrew McCutchen. These changes offset most of the losses the Pirates took on offense, which is one reason why the Pirates’ 2009 W-L record is practically identical to their 2008 W-L record before the Bay and Nady trades. So even though the Pirates got back prospects in these deals, they may not have made their 2009 team that much worse.

...But perhaps the main reason the Pirates haven’t gotten worse is that they’ve changed from a poor defensive team to a very good one, especially in the outfield. The fundamental complexion of the team is different. This isn’t a change that’s particularly easy for fans to see, which is one reason there continues to be lingering anger about the trades. The Pirates’ old outfielders were active impediments to the Pirates’ pitching staff, because they just didn’t get the job done in the field. Now they have outfielders who do.

Dodgers Sims: A Lidge Over Troubled Water

I think this series has shown what two equally good teams they are. Both teams have had great starting pitching, Hamels being the best outing of the bunch. The Dodgers defense has probably played a little better, but the biggest difference has been the two closers. Have Broxton and Lidge swap teams for the last two games, and the Dodgers are scurrying to avoid the sweep on sunday. Broxton has been his amazing self and Lidge has more than regressed back to the mean from last years amazing season. Kudos to Broxton (and the rest of his bullpen mates) and the Dodger hitters for taking advantage of the struggling Phillie closer. The pitching stats from the series are listed below…

Actually the stats are in the link.

My patience is wearing thin with the self-justification and hypocrisy of the stat zombies

Joe at Statistician Magician sent me this bit of “ha-ha, we told you!!!” about J.J. Putz after the fact from stat zombie Dave Cameron. (I’m not bothering to check, but did the zombies rip the Putz trade when it was announced?) Cameron, with the assistance of the always infallible hindsight (except when the stat zombies discuss Paul DePodesta’s tenure as Dodgers GM, which they inexplicably still defend) has unloaded on the Mets for daring to try and upgrade their bullpen by acquiring a former All Star closer to be their set-up man. Here’s the relevant quotes as Cameron, like any stat zombie who’s been bullied and abused, kicks the guy when he’s down:

Today’s news that J.J. Putz has undergone surgery on his right elbow and will miss the next two months should come as a shock to no one. We talked about his obvious health problems a few weeks into the season, and the only surprise is that it took this long for the Mets to put him under the knife.

They didn’t give up any future stars in the deal, but once again, trading youth for relief pitching fails to pan out. I’m pretty sure the Mets would love to have Jason Vargas, Mike Carp, and Ezequiel Carrera back, at the very least. When you give up seven guys, odds are one or two are going to come back to haunt you.

The Mets trade for a guy in Putz who was just about unhittable as recently as 2007, pitched quite well down the stretch in 2008, was intended to be their set-up man this year, and just happened to have a recurrence of his elbow issues and you’re going to sit there and reference Jason Vargas and Endy Chavez as reasons that it was a bad deal? Jason Vargas? Endy Chavez?

I’m curious if Putz had pitched through his elbow pain and pitched well, would we be hearing this indignation of “we knew it!” Would we be hearing people of this kind saying the Mets made a mistake in dealing Vargas, Chavez, Aaron Heilman, Joe Smith and three minor leaguers?

Did anyone look at how Vargas pitched for the Mets and the Marlins before requiring surgery on, guess what, a bone spur? Or notice that he had the now-famous torn hip labrum and didn’t pitch at all for the Mets organization in 2008?

Vargas was serviceable as a rookie in 2005 with the Marlins; he was nothing short of hideous in the majors and minors in both 2006 and 2007 and I can promise you one thing, his positive results in for the Mariners this year are not gonna last because the American League teams will figure him out and start punishing him, sooner rather than later. If you’d like to find something about which to give Mets GM Omar Minaya a hard time in regards to Vargas, then acquiring him at all in a trade that sent Matt Lindstrom and his 100-mph fastball to the Marlins is more than enough; not sending him away in this trade.

Endy Chavez? Chavez is probably the best defensive outfielder in baseball and a good guy, but Jeremy Reed is a suitable replacement for him and Chavez barely played for the Mets after Jerry Manuel took over as manager. He doesn’t hit enough to be a regular player and, much like Reed, will be a defensive replacement more than anything else. Was trading him such a gaffe? Are the Mets problems boiling down to not having Endy Chavez when he wouldn’t have been playing anyway?

Heilman had to get out of New York and even after the Mariners dealt him to the Cubs for Garrett Olson, he’s pitched about as poorly as he did for the Mets. Olson? He’s been rotten as a starter and the assertion that he “has shown the potential to be a useful LH reliever” is the last vestiges of the stat zombie pulling an opinion out of his ass in the hopes that no one will check out their veracity. Olson as a lefty reliever? His relevant career platoon splits are the following: lefties have hit .312 against him with a .400 on base percentage; righties have hit .306 against him with a .388 OBP. At least he’s consistent----he gets shelled by both. The Mariners can know what to expect. And who knows what’s going to happen with the minor leaguers?

It’s like beating a piñata to take a trade that hasn’t worked out as planned and rip it retrospectively. If an idea is a sound one, but fails, does it then become a bad idea or one that just didn’t work? It’s not like the Mets gave up Fernando Martinez or any of their top prospects to get Putz; they gave up some filler and no one knows what the Mets will look like if they get Putz and Billy Wagner back healthy in August. It could be the equivalent of two major trades to bolster the bullpen if they can hang around striking distance of a playoff spot until then. Ripping the deal now is just piling on as a method of proving one’s own point that wasn’t provable to begin with unless there was a convenient manipulation of facts and selective memory.

Marchman: Starter or reliever? When it comes to Joba, the choice is simple

Another look at the Chamberlain Rating and Valuation Act of 2009

Starters are more valuable than relievers, and Chamberlain is showing every sign of developing into a wonderful starter; therefore, he should start. Simple.

Because it’s so simple, it’s mildly bizarre that more than a year after his brief run in relief ended there are still people who are passionately convinced that Chamberlain should be working out of the bullpen. Some of this is just contrived; some, like the insane ranting of New York City radio host Mike Francesca, is just comical. A lot of it, though, is sincere, which is what can make it so frustrating. Because when you run through the arguments, there’s nothing there.

...Still, at least this is an argument rooted in observable fact. The strangest argument people make is that Chamberlain would actually be more valuable as a reliever. This just isn’t true.

There are a lot of ways to prove this with complicated math, but there really isn’t any need. Chamberlain has a career ERA of 3.12 as a starter, and 1.53 as a reliever. Given that American League starters have run up a 4.64 ERA and relievers a 4.42 ERA this year, and that as a rule of thumb a random scrub pitcher—or replacement player, per the term of art—is about 20 percent worse than average, it’s simple to figure out just how many more runs above replacement level Chamberlain would prevent in each role, at least assuming that he pitched the rest of this year as he has in the past. (You want to compare him to a replacement player, incidentally, because by setting the baseline at average you value the average players at zero. This is problematic, as Bronson Arroyo’s agent could gleefully tell you.)

In 180 innings as a starter, Chamberlain would be worth about 50 runs above replacement. In 80 innings as a reliever, he’d be worth about 35. Fifty is more than 35.

RotoSynthesis: Keri: BABIP of the Week: Jay Bruce

More like BABIPIL (Batting Average on Balls In Play In Louisville).

Either way, we now have a player hitting .216 for the season. That’s .216/.294/.474 overall, and here’s where we get to the good stuff: 14 HR (6th in the NL), 30 RBI and 29 R so far this year. Indeed, while Bruce’s extreme flyball rates make him a potential batting average liability, batters who hit a lot more flyballs than groundballs are also more likely to hit the ball out of the ballpark, assuming they’ve got the power to do so.

Bruce obviously does, with an Isolated Slugging number (ISO) of .258, 24th-highest in the majors. He’s improved in other ways too, hiking his BB/K rate to 0.42 (up from 0.30 last year) and his BB/AB rate up to 0.90/PA (0.73 last year).

...Jay Bruce is not going to come at the same bottom of the barrel discount that you’d get for, say, David Ortiz right now. Bruce is just 22 years old, and fantasy owners are seduced by youth and potential, even in non-keeper leagues. But you can probably get him for 85 cents on the dollar. You absolutely should go after him. Even if the low line drive rate holds, Bruce has still been so unlucky that a .240-.250 average with tons of power and run production should be in the cards for him for the rest of the season.

And if things really start to click, Jay Bruce could be the reason you win your league.

BtB: Slicing and Dicing 2002-2008 Injury Database

Jeff put together a database of injuries from 2002 through 2008 and went all Studes on us with his graphs, like this one:

SF Gate: Bruce Jenkins’ 3-Dot Lounge

190+ pitch outings by Mike Krukoww-oww!

Mike Krukow had some scathing, spot-on comments about pitch counts yesterday on the Gary Radnich show. Krukow plays it close to the vest during telecasts, honoring the game’s trend toward caution and protecting young arms, but he revealed his true feelings with Radnich, ridiculing the notion of effective pitchers being replaced after 100-odd pitches and calling it “the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.”

...As Krukow told Radnich, the way you become a winning pitcher is by finishing a game, working your way through a batting order three or four times. Anyone can win the first couple of matchups, but once you’ve figured out how to out-perform that guy every time, especially when it counts, you’re a better pitcher and a better man. Krukow said he routinely had 150-pitch games during his career, clearing 190 a couple of times in college, and that if you decide to stick with a pitcher who has it all going, after 110-120 pitches, “It’s not going to hurt him, OK?” said Krukow. “It’s just not.”

The worst of it is, Hinch probably won’t even think twice about his decision. He and a thousand other managers will take the paranoia route every time. That’s how you lose games, respect and any chance of making an impression in this division.

BDD: Baer: Take the Records to the Curb

“Marichal had...uhh, one..two..three..four..five..six....SIX 20-Win seasons! Mike Mussina had one...and HE GOT THAT ON THE LAST DAY OF THE SEASON!” (whew...I feel better)

Wins and losses for pitchers are vestigial in baseball’s stat-keeping world. It used to be that they were the holy grail, but now, in the era of frequent five-inning starts and platoon match-ups with relievers, wins and losses tell you as much about a pitcher as a tarot card reader will tell you about your future. In other words, they don’t tell you anything anymore. Nada, bupkis.

Of course, you’ve heard the anti-record arguments before, but nothing has become of them outside of the Sabermetric community.

...A pitcher’s record is ingrained in baseball culture, so weaning ourselves off of it won’t come easy, if we even attempt it at all. But it’s something that should be done. Thinking about a pitcher’s record in this day and age is like worrying about how much gunpowder you should put in your musket. It’s outmoded like Zubaz and pogs. See what I’m getting at?

On the other hand, the wealth of in-depth pitching statistics that can be found at Baseball Prospectus, FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, The Hardball Times, and a host of other sites are waiting to be introduced to the average American baseball fan. Most Saber-savvy bsaeball fans ignore W-L already, so now it’s time to get the less-nerdy baseball fanbase to let go.

Fangraphs/Anderson: Welcome to the Majors, Daniel Schlereth

Nice bit of analysis here. The umpire is one of my old favorites (not!), CB Bucknor:

The top and bottom of strikezones change with different hitters. Blake’s top is at the 3.58 mark and extends to 1.7. The constant is the width of the zone – or at least should be. It’s hard to argue that pitches three and four aren’t strikes, yet that’s how the umpire called it.

RotoSynthesis: Liss: Sample Size and Statistical Significance

That off across the ocean there’s a million guys named Joe...Mauer?

I’m not going to mention a certain Twins catcher by name, but I do want to make a distinction between the two concepts above because it seems in our discussion of said catcher, they have been confused.

...The question is - at what point do we conclude that the coin is *not* evenly weighted? Well, it’s not simply a matter of how many times you flip the coin, i.e., sample size. It’s *also* a matter of the *magnitude of the deviation*. If you get 16 heads and four tails, I wouldn’t be so sure the coin is unevenly weighted. But if you get 20 heads and no tails, it’s almost certainly so. (Less than 1 in a million odds of that). In both cases, the sample size is quite small, but in the latter, it’s more than sufficient. When the coin lands at a an 80-percent heads clip, you need a larger sample to determine the coin is rigged because the magnitude of the deviation from the baseline (50/50) is less. And if the coin lands heads at a 55-percent clip, you need an even larger number of flips to determine whether it’s rigged.

So understand that the sample size is only one of two factors in determining the significance of the outlier. The other is the magnitude.

That’s why when you see Verlander strike out 60 batters in 44 IP or Joe Mauer - f*** it, I’ll mention him, hit 11 home runs, you cannot simply say, “it’s only one month, I’m not a believer” without also considering the magnitude of the deviation.

Is 60K in 44 IP a big enough magnitude to make one month significant. Is 11 home runs? In my opinion, yes. But whatever your opinion, you must address both factors if you’re going to get a good gauge of whether it’s dumb luck or a new baseline.

SNY: Salfino: What about Wang in the bullpen?

It seems ProSolution Gel works for every sabermetrician!

The other half of the equation here is putting Wang in as a starter. I first looked at this question back in 2007. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Dan Szymborski at BaseballThinkFactory.com had a formula of his own. And since then, Tom Tango on his Web site and Harry Pavlidis at the TheHardballTimes.com have looked at the question, too. They have done it from the perspective of converting a reliever (Joakim Soria) into a starter. We all agree that the same pitcher is most likely to pitch significantly better as a reliever than as a starter. The question is how much better?

Tango and Pavlidis deal mostly with Wins Above Replacement, not simple enough for our purposes. I want to convert the stats that we all understand.

My Wang conversion (based on how he’s pitched as a starter for his career) is a 2.89 ERA, 5.71 K/9, and 1.08 WHIP (baserunners per inning). Of course, he’d still be an extreme groundball pitcher. (Note: my conversion formula is based on how a sampling of modern starters turned relievers actually performed through 2006.)

Szymborski says Wang as a reliever would have a 3.09 ERA with 5.4 strikeouts per nine innings and a 1.21 WHIP.

Baseball Musings: Pinto: Yankees Defense

Or as Jeter pretty much said..."We’ve had routine plays, spectacular plays - we’re making all of them, pretty much.”

The Yankees set a record Monday night, playing their 18th straight game without an error. Now, errors are a fairly overrated defensive statistic. While most are obvious, there will be variation among official scorers on some hard hit balls that players bobble. Also, compared to the early days of baseball, errors are rare. The ability to get to a ball (range) is a much more important factor that the ability to handle a ball cleanly. Fielders with hands of stone just aren’t going to last a long time in the majors.

...So the pitching is a little better in terms of strikeouts and walks, a little worse in terms of home runs allowed. It doesn’t seem like enough to account for the 2 1/2 run drop in runs allowed. Maybe the drop is better defense, including no errors. I noticed Jeter was well positioned last night. If someone has game by game defense for the Yankees, I’d love to see +/- or UZR comparisons.

Friar Forecast: Gettinger: Looking at Adrian’s Home Runs

Gonzalez disguised as Sosa? The list of Adrian messenger...to follow.

After last night’s game, Adrian Gonzalez has now hit 21 home runs in 2009.  At his current rate, Gonzalez will finish the season with 66 home runs.  He will almost certainly smash his previous season high of 36 home runs, set in 2008.  The big question is whether Adrian’s power spike is real, or luck driven.  The answer: a little of both.

Since Gonzalez came to the Padres in 2006, he has consistently increased his home run totals.  In 2006 he hit 26 HR, he hit 30 in 2007, and 36 in 2008.  This progression has been consistent with a typical course of power development.  Gonzalez is now 27 years of age, somewhere around his prime.  That he is having his best power season of his career is not a surprise.  That he has hit home runs at such an astounding rate is.

...Adrian Gonzalez is having a fantastic season.  As he is in the prime of his career, we should not be surprised that he is playing better than he ever has.  That said, I doubt Gonzalez will continue to hit home runs at such a ridiculous rate.  His HR/FB rate is just not sustainable.  My guess is Gonzalez hits something around 25 additional home runs in 2009.  He might make a run at 50 home runs, but duplicating Sammy Sosa’s 1998 campaign of 66 home runs seems unlikely.

FanGraphs: Seidman: Flying Solo

Or as Fez Cadena from my league sez..."Josh has Willinghamstrung my team!”

Willingham is staying relatively true to his career marks with a .252 BA and .376 OBP, but has produced a .550 SLG so far that dwarfs his career .477 mark. The surge has helped his wOBA soar to a robust .393. Most of the total bases involved in the SLG calculation come from Willingham’s nine home runs, but there is something much more interesting about those dingers - they are all solo home runs!

Nine home runs, all solo, which makes his 9 HR-12 RBI line quite comical. Curious about the nature and frequency of solo homers, I tallied the number of solo dingers in my database for each player-season, divided by the total home runs hit and determined the solo home run percentages. To find the leaders and trailers for all players since 1954, it really depends on the floors set.

For instance, of anyone with at least 15 total home runs in a season, Ken Singleton has the record for highest solo percentage at 1.000, as he went a perfect 15-15 in 1975 for the Orioles.

SNY: Berg: David Wright: Examining numbers to investigate common criticism

And after that...it’s back to doing the Jack Fisher–Tyler Yates shuffle!

The bottom line: In the first two months of 2009, Wright homered less frequently and struck out more often than he normally does. Neither is a good thing, to be sure. But Wright has had similar power outages in his career, most notably in 2006, when he hit only six home runs after the All-Star break. That instance was chalked up to either fatigue or a change of approach following Wright’s impressive performance in the Home Run Derby, but it could just as easily be coincidence.

The strikeouts are more troubling and tougher to explain, especially because Wright’s strikeout pace decidedly picked up in the second half of 2008 and hasn’t really slowed down. Still, Wright has whiffed with some frequency for the length of his big-league career, and I’m sure a stretch of 53 K’s in 48 games really falls safely within the realm of standard deviation.

It’s natural to try to diagnose Wright’s problems in the early goings of 2009, but ultimately imprudent. I know I sound like a broken record, and I know it’s tough to keep in mind two full months into a season, but this season’s stats fall across a relatively small sample compared to the much larger one that is Wright’s entire career. The good news is that, due either to luck or some adjustment that can’t be accounted for in Wright’s rates, the balls he has put in play have fallen for hits at an enormously high rate. If that’s something real and lasting—which I doubt—then, well, great: A .432 on-base percentage makes Wright an incredibly valuable player even without a ton of power, and even with a lot of strikeouts.

More likely, though, it’s just the specter of random chance rearing its head again. I’ll resist grandiose statements about Wright’s season and tendencies until there’s much more evidence to support them.

SNY: Megdal: Mets will miss Castro

So did Peter Falk...boy, was he way off!

One of the best catchers in Mets history was traded Friday night, and nobody seemed to notice or care. There were smiles all around, and the widely held assumption is that a career .650 OPS hitter in the Minor Leagues is more than up to the task of taking his place.

Ramon Castro will be missed. Attention must be paid. At first glance, referring to Ramon Castro as one of the best catchers in Mets history will be taken as hyperbole. Is it?

Castro hit 33 home runs as a Met in his five seasons with New York. That ranks sixth all-time in franchise annals. The five ahead of him: Mike Piazza, Todd Hundley, Gary Carter, John Stearns, Jerry Grote. That’s pretty elite company.

Notice further that while those five played in anywhere from 600 to 1,235 games, Castro hit his in just 269 games as a Met.

Going by OPS, Castro is second all-time among Mets catchers. Only Piazza bested his .773 OPS with the ballclub. Not Hundley. Not Carter. Not Stearns. The catcher was so powerful, his at-bat music was, fittingly, “The Imperial March” by John Williams.

Simple Zone Rating Discussion

Colin Wyers posted part 1 of a description of a new fielding measurement system at the end of last week. It was picked up by Tango, and there has been a desultory discussion on the Book Blog subsequently, in which Rally said:

For the pre-1990’s retrosheet stuff, Colin is on the same track as TotalZone, and some of his results are really similar - Brooks, Ozzie, Belanger....And that is pretty much how I intend to handle the pre-retrosheet stuff.  Assign hits based on handedness of the pitcher (which is all you have to go on) and figure plays made from the primitive stats of putouts and assists.

For me, the Holy Grail of fielding statistics is going to be a method that can cover the whole of baseball history. Could it be we are getting nearer?

FanGraphs: Anderson: Is Citi Field Robbing Beltran’s Range?

Uncle Zebu Rumpnagle must have one of those Citi Field obstructed seats or something.

Amongst the oddities in the UZR rankings, Carlos Beltran’s -3.9 value ranks high on the list. Beltran is universally renowned for his defensive prowess and ability to make even the most difficult of plays look routine. The accolades are well deserved. Only once in our UZR data has Beltran posted a UZR in the negative for an entire season. That was in 2005, Beltran’s first year with the Mets and as a whole one of the worst seasons for Beltran.

During that season, Beltran posted a career low in RngR of -8. So far this year, Beltran’s RngR is -2.5, his ErrR is -0.5, and his ARM is down to -0.9. Overall his UZR -3.9 while +/- has him at 1.6 runs. Clearly, Beltran hasn’t been quite what we would expect. What’s the reason for his sudden decline?

Well, how about the brand new ballpark? UZR attempts to adjust based on the parks played in, a new park offers little in the way of data for adjustments, so for now we’re still using the park factors from Shea. Obviously upgraded seats and paint isn’t causing Beltran to make more errors, but could it be affecting Beltran’s range?

Perrotto: Morgan is the best defender in baseball

“McLouth’s stature in the game certainly does compare to Jeter.”...Don’t worry, I’ve had gooey blood cherry Squeez Tube Candy stick up my n’t buttons before. No biggie.

General Manager Neal Huntington dropped a surprising fact into the conversation Sunday as he met with reports prior to the Pirates’ 2-1 loss to the Houston Astros at PNC Park.

Huntington said the Pirates’ in-house metrics that evaluate defensive performance showed Nyjer Morgan, in his first season as a starter, to be the top fielding left fielder in the major leagues.

Well, that piqued my curiosity, so I did some surfing to www.fangraphs com to take a look at their UZR leaders. UZR isn’t a symbol for an airport in the Ukraine but stands for Ultimate Zone Rating, which measure the runs a fielder saves over an average defender at his position.

It turns out Morgan not only has been the best defensive left fielder in the majors through the first two months of the season but the best defender at ANY position with 11.8 runs saved. Second on the list is Seattle third baseman Adrian Beltre, the player once invented by Jim Tracy, at 9.3.

Morgan is nearly lapping the rest of the left fielders as the Los Angeles Angels’ Juan Rivera is second with a 4.7 mark.

Ironically, UZR claims center fielder Nate McLouth, who won a National League Gold Glove for fielding excellence last season, is the weak link in the Pirates’ outfield. He ranks 13th among in the majors at his position at minus-0.9.

Davidoff: Manuel’s assertion that Wright has been pressing at home games

Jerry Manuel usually prefers to rest his star players on the road, but after Wright’s 0-for-5, two-strikeout showing Friday night, Manuel called Wright into his office and told him he’d be resting yesterday.

In his pregame news conference Saturday, Manuel took note of Wright’s home/road splits. Wright has a .797 OPS at home (.362 on-base percentage, .435 slugging percentage) and 1.058 on the road (.510 OBP, .548 SLG).

“I think anxiety has something to do with it, wanting to do so well in front of the home crowd, those type of things,” Manuel said. “I believe he’ll eventually turn that around, get comfortable here in these surroundings.

“Some hitters come to the ballpark and say, ‘I see a lot of hits out there.’ . . . Some come up and say, ‘Don’t look like I can get hits here.’ I don’t know if that’s the case, but more he plays here, more comfortable he’ll become here.”

Wright respectfully disagreed with his manager, saying: “I just think it’s two months of a game that is already tough to be consistent at. But I don’t feel any different playing here than I do on the road. I go out there and try to get the job done at home, try to get the job done on the road. I don’t try harder one place or another.”

Thanks to Barnald: King of All Small Samples.

NYT: Curry: More and More Teams Pitch Around Pujols (RR)

Huh? (shakes off transient ischemic attack...better now)

“You love to get your walks,” Pujols said. “But you also love to hit and not give any at-bats away.”

...As disciplined as Pujols typically is as a hitter, pitchers said that he sometimes swings at balls out of the strike zone. Bonds, who hugged the plate, choked up on the bat and used a compact stroke, rarely swung at balls that were even two inches out of the strike zone. Pujols will chase pitches, especially breaking pitches down and away.

“My walk total is what it is because sometimes I expand my strike zone a little bit to drive that run in,” Pujols said. “Sometimes, I get it and I drive the ball out of the ballpark. With my hand-eye coordination, I take advantage of that. Putting the ball in play doesn’t help you get a lot of walks.”

La Russa said Pujols “plays the game to win,” meaning he will go after borderline pitches if he thinks he can produce runs. Pujols mentioned his similarities to Tony Gwynn, an eight-time batting champion, not Bonds, because Pujols is a contact hitter who does not strike out much.

Feinsand: During streak, Yankees fielding is perfectly good

“The complicated analysis. . .that’s icing on the meatloaf.”

Back in spring training, Brian Cashman said one of the reasons he wanted to bring in strikeout artists such as CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett was that the Yankees were “a bad defensive team,” so the less opponents put the ball in play, the better.

These days, the Yankees are doing everything they can to prove their general manager wrong.

The Yankees extended their franchise-record errorless streak to 16 games in Saturday night’s 10-5 win over the Indians, tying the 1992 Cardinals for the second-longest streak in baseball history.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the longest such streak is 17 games by the 2006 Red Sox, a mark the Bombers can match this afternoon.

..."Regardless of how well you pitch, if you don’t make the plays behind them, it’s kind of pointless,” Derek Jeter said.

Beyond the Boxscore: Rancel: Nolan Reimold, The Other Baltimore Orioles’ Rookie

Or as Kung FU Panderer, Chris Carlin said the other night...”...and a home run from Nolan Reimold ~~~~~WHO?!!!!?“

This brings me to my original thought about the rookie who has been roaming left field for the past few games. Nolan Reimold has showed some serious power in his brief time in the big leagues. A former second round pick in the 2005 draft, Reimold finally reached Triple-A to start 2009. After hitting 25 home runs for Double-A in 2008, he continued to hit at the next level hitting .394/.485/.743 with nine home runs and 11 doubles in 130 plate appearances for Norfolk. In his first 56 PAs as a big leaguer, Reimold has slugged five more home runs proving his power is indeed real, not that there was much question. Since 2006, he has posted an ISO of over .200 at each level of the Orioles organization, and at age 25 he is showing the most power with an ISO of .349 at Triple-A and .302 in the big leagues.

While he probably will not hit for a high average since he has the tendency to swing and miss like most sluggers, Reimold has shown a good eye at the minor league level walking 14.2% of the time in Triple-A and 11.1% in 2008. Along with a good eye comes average speed and average defense. In a very limited sample size, he has a +0.3 UZR in left field and was average to slightly below average defensively in the minors. In other words, he won’t kill you out there, but you won’t be confusing him for Carl Crawford anytime soon.

Reimold may not have the fanfare as Wieters and that’s just fine. But if he continues to hit like he we have seen then, like Wieters, he may be a part of the Orioles lineup for quite some time. At age 25, Riemold isn’t getting younger and with Pie’s struggles and Montanez’s injury this is just the opportunity that he needs to prove he can make it in the big leagues. We’ll see if he can make the most of that opportunity or not.

McCoy: Baker likes chemistry of his young team

Dusty Baker studying stats?...BRITKL!...Susty Staker sudsing bats...ZZYPPH!!...Busty Rekaber bsitning atz...FOOOOOOOOOOS!!!........ (hello, HP...HELP!)

Dusty Baker was in a reflective mood as he studied stats and scribbled notes before sending his Cincinnati Reds on the field against the Milwaukee Brewers.

“One of the top decisions of my life was coming here (to Cincinnati),” he said. “I like being here and plan to be here for a long time, if they’ll have me here.”

Baker was asked about the Reds being baseball’s surprise team and he said, “Well, we are for now. You don’t surprise people for very long. If you surprise some people, fine. If not, no problem. If they give us credit, fine, if they don’t, fine. Just keep playing.”

...Baker said it has come about because there is more young talent than the Reds are accustomed to having, “More exuberance, more excitement, guys taking losses harder. We have good character on this ball club, which is what we wanted to do and change. You scout character when you try to put pieces to the puzzle back together and they haven’t had the pieces together here for a long time.

..."I see similarities,” said Baker. “We try to play good fundamental ball and have good pitching and Minnesota was in the bottom in home runs, but the top five in runs scored. Very simple. He who touches home plate the most wins, no matter how you get there.”

Conlin: Organizing a revolt against the pitching count

and in 1930 the Phillies had 54 complete games with a 6.71 team ERA.

I recently tracked 14 top Phillies minor league pitching prospects from Triple A Lehigh Valley down to Low A Lakewood. It is possible to conclude that the organization continues to develop starting pitchers built for the short haul. Most will never develop the bulldog toughness that once defined a great starting pitcher, a Ryan, Seaver, Gibson, Koufax, Carlton, Marichal and, yes, a throwback named Curt Schilling. Schill could be last-of-breed - unless Nolan Ryan can toss a grenade powerful enough to blow up the clickers and torch the count charts.

The Phillies pitchers are Carlos Carrasco (0-6, 5.81), Kyle Kendrick (4-3, 4.25) and Andrew Carpenter (2-0, 3.61) at Lehigh Valley; Vance Worley (4-2, 2.83), Joe Savery (4-1, 3.49) and Michael Stutes (3-1, 4.00) at Reading; Kyle Drabek (3-1, 2.91), Yohan Flande (5-1, 3.38), Drew Naylor (2-5, 5.52) and Julian Sampson (1-4, 7.36) at Clearwater; Heitor Correa (1-1, 2.40), Tyler Cloyd (4-2, 3.14), Jason Knapp (2-4, 4.86) and Jesus Sanchez (1-4, 5.18) at Lakewood.

Not counting their most recent outings, this prospect group has averaged 5.5 innings per start. None averages 7 IP per appearance. The Iron Men are Cloyd and Worley at 6.34.

Cole Hamels was Charlie Manuel’s Rock of Gibralter last season. By the end of the World Series, his 262.1 IP led MLB. This year he has averaged 5.2 innings for eight starts. Brett Myers, with 6.3, is the only starter who sees much of a seventh inning.

...Nolan Ryan is weary of seeing innings taken away from the best pitchers in the game and handed to guys who in his time would have performed mop-up duty.

Good for Citizen Ryan. Long live the Revolution of the Throwletariat.

Teixeira seeingmore fastballs?

Last night, on the ESPN broadcast of the Yankees/Rangers game.  Rick Sutcliffe said that Mark Teixeira has been getting more fastballs since Alex Rodriguez came back from a torn labrum.

I know that I have written about this before, about how Tex was a great hitter and was going to get hot about that time anyway, as he does every single year.  But now I have some evidence.

Dave Allen over at The Baseball Analysts wrote a good piece questioning whether or not Milton Bradley was in fact getting balls out of the strike zone called against him more often.

So I posed a question, and asked him if he could tell me if Tex had actually been seeing more fastballs since the return of ARod.

His response:

“Joe, yeah that is very easy to check with the pitchf/x data. It looks to me like before May 8th Tex was thrown 288 fastballs out of 479 pitches, about 60%. Since May 8th he has seen 167 fastballs of 287 pitches, 58%. He has seen fewer fastballs since A-Rod has been back, but the difference is small.”

As mentioned, the difference is very small.  So saying he has seen less fastballs may not matter so much over a small sample where variables can get in the way.  But to say it is roughly the same might be of accuracy.

I understand that Sutcliffe doesn’t have the same information handy (although he could easily get it), nor does he probably care to check.  But this evidence shows that Tex hasn’t actually seen more fastballs.

Now, there is the possibility that the fastballs are located within the strike zone more often.  Or that they are in Tex’s “Hot Zone” more frequently.  But they have not been thrown more often.  And the evidence shows that.

Schulman: Are you ready to admit Renteria was a good signing?

Yes...right after I admit my Aunt Dirty’s scream-filled casu marzu cake was delicious.

Let’s just talk about the player, and here is what I see:

I see a shortstop who clearly is past his defensive prime and cannot make plays, especially to his right, that most younger shortstops make. But I also see a shortstop who is good to his left, makes the routine plays and presents a good, experienced counterbalance to Emmanuel Burriss’ inexperience at second base.

I also see a hitter who has not batted for a high average but is one of the few guys in this lineup who will work a count, who knows how to go the other way and now is batting .333/.453./.452 with runners in scoring position.

Is Renteria an All-Star? No. But I do not see him as the worst free-agent signing in baseball this year, which is how the deal was viewed by lots of analysts.

Manley: Greinke: How’s this for HOF credentials?

Z for Zackary...the explosion continues.

Dead Ball vs Live Blood

The other thing that is interesting in looking at these 20 pitchers is that 9 of the 20 are in the first 20 years of the century. It is also true that 9 of the 20 are in the last 20 years. For the 70 years in between, only two pitchers are on this list – Koufax (1963) and Seaver (1971). What’s the explanation?

Well, of course, the “dead ball era” (up to around 1920) covers nine of these. And, the 1960’s - early 70’s were pitcher-dominated as well. So, that explains 11 of the 20 on this list. But, what about the nine in the last 20 seasons?

I call that the “Iive blood era”. Who knows who started taking what and when and how much it improved their performance? Because I don’t know and neither do you, I have no choice except to paint a broad brush over the entire group. It’s doubtful if Saberhagen, as early as 1989, had anything going, but after that you have this inexplicable bunch of historically great pitching performances - despite it being during an era when balls were flying out of the park left and right. If anyone wants to believe that is coincidence or “training”, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

Back to Greinke

In any event, those are the stats. Based on ERA, SO/BB ratio and HR’s, Greinke could slip a lot the rest of the season and he still would make it on this list of 20. In fact, average innings pitched being equal, he could go the rest of the season with an ERA of 2.81, 1.1 HR/G and SO/BB ratio of only 3.3 and he would still be in this group of 20 – make that 21.

Dave Cameron: Branyan Arrives

So far, he looks like a genius. Branyan entered the day hitting .306/.395/.590, and he just hit a Trevor Cahill fastball about 750 feet for his 11th home run of the season. Given a chance to hit against left-handed pitching for the first time, he’s responded by showing a fairly normal platoon split - .312/.407/.634 vs RHPs and .294/.373/.529 against LHPs.

Watching him play on a daily basis, and looking at his career performances, I have to wonder just what kind of career Branyan missed out on for no real reason. Starting in 2000, when he got some real playing time for the first time in his career as a 24-year-old, Branyan has never posted a wOBA below .326. His career wOBA is .350, and his wRAA of 43.0 in 2,487 PA paints the picture of a guy who was worth about 10 runs more than a league average hitter over each full season’s worth of playing time.

True Blue L.A.: The Walk Gap

When I grew up, I learned baseball statistics from the back of baseball cards, like this 1986 Topps Darryl Strawberry card:

Sure, walks were listed, but on-base percentage was nowhere to be found.  Batting average was still king of my world in those days.  Over the years, thanks to the writings of Bill James, Rob Neyer, Baseball Prospectus, and many others, I came to appreciate the finer points of baseball statistics.  The importance of the walk became more apparent to me.

When I think of the term patience, as it relates to baseball, I don’t necessarily mean for it to be players simply looking for a walk.  Rather, patience is working the count to your favor, so you can get more good pitches to hit, and when you get those more hittable pitches, hammer them.  However, a byproduct of patience is in fact the almighty walk.

It may seem as I’m a bit obsessive about walks.  I issued the 50-walk challenge to the Dodgers, and my first article ever at True Blue LA was about walks.

The Dodgers are leading the major leagues in walks taken, with 213.  It’s a main reason their offense has been so good, averaging 5.7 runs per game.  As good as it is to get walks offensively, it’s understandable that it’s less desirable to give walks.  This is one of the rare cases where it isn’t better to give then receive.

Dodger pitchers have given up 196 walks, third most in baseball.  Only the Nationals (202) and Florida (200) have issued more free passes.  However, the Dodgers have taken more walks than they have given, so their “walk gap” is a +17.

Also listed in the link is a chart of the current “walk gap” of all 30 teams.