6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog

It's been a while since anything really caught my attention about baseball — the Cubs won the World Series last year, an event that passed without note in these all but abandoned pages; the team will never need to buy another round anywhere in Chicago, and Theo Epstein et al. probably punched their own ticket to Cooperstown. Reversing the curse in two cursed towns is some sort of witch doctory! But with both my native teams two time zones past my now Central Daylight Time bedtime, I find keeping up with the Angels or Dodgers difficult, save on weekends or during day getaway games.

So the game moves on without me, in many ways; the deep detailed looks at various sabermetric aspects (and more, the impressive roster of solid writers) I got at Baseball Prospectus, watering holes like Baseball Think Factory (now enervated thanks to a squabble between founder Jim Furtado and Darren Viola), Jon Weisman's on-again, off-again blogs (Dodger Thoughts, now largely defunct) — all have lost my attention, and that predated my 2015 move to Arkansas. So it's kind of a surprise to see a post that really grabs me, and this one comes from ESPN: "State of the Stat: MLB numbers taking yet another crazy turn" offers some interesting changes lately in baseball. Particularly, home runs:
What pops out is the names of the decade home run leaders for the 1990's and 2000's, Mark McGwire and Alex Rodriguez's, respectively. Neither will make it into Cooperstown as a consequence of steroid use, and more's the pity, especially in A-Rod's case. As with Roger Clemens and Barry bonds, a legitimate first-ballot inductee is being kept out of the Hall largely because of political pressure rather than his actual record.

In some ways, though, the most interesting thing in here is the steady decline in wins by starters:

The piece continues:

The traditional standard of 20 wins remains a high bar, with just a few pitchers getting there each season. There were three 20-game winners in 2016, two in 2015, three in 2014 and one in 2013. The peak for 20-win seasons came in the late '60s and early '70s, when many starters threw a huge number of innings. There were 15 20-game winners in 1969, 14 in 1971, 13 in 1973 (and 1951) and 11 in 1970 and 1974. As the five-man rotation became standard by the 1980s, the 40-game starter became obsolete. Then the complete game neared extinction.

Maybe the 20-game winner is next on the endangered species list.

What would be especially ironic is if Bert Blyleven, who famously was kept out of the Hall for so long because he did not have 300 wins, might instead be an early forebear of ending the win as a pitching stat with any actual value.

Labels: hall of fame, sabermetrics

Craig Calcaterra, who is one of my favorite follows on Twitter, has a great piece up about how to deal with advanced metrics and concepts in conventional baseball writing. Noticing that Anthony French at the Detroit Free Press casually drops a line about José Iglesias benefiting from a higher-than-usual BABIP, Calcaterra observes that, in the 1960's and 70's, Taco Bell needed to explain what a burrito was, and yet:

Maybe there was a need for this in the late 60s and early 70s when burritos were still sort of exotic to a lot American fast food eaters, but they stopped doing that at some point. Why? Because Taco Bell realized that we can handle a burrito. Yes, we ate nothing but cheeseburgers for years and we probably still understand cheeseburgers better, but by some time in the 1970s we were totally are capable of processing what a burrito was as long as it was presented properly (i.e. fast, cheap and available at, like, midnight).

Mainstream baseball writing (i.e. newspaper baseball writing) still hasn’t figured that out for the most part. It probably was necessary in 2002 to explain advanced metrics, such as they were then, in greater detail. Batting average and RBI were our cheeseburgers, and we were being asked to process something new.  But we’ve been eating our SABRburritos for a good while now, so it’s not necessary for them to be over-explained to us. It’s actually sort of distracting and creates unnecessary controversy when they are. WAR debates and “geeks vs. jocks” cultural garbage. I’m rather tired of that. Aren’t you rather tired of that?

 It's a war that's all but won, save for holdouts like Murray Chass. That we're having this discussion is proof.

Labels: sabermetrics

Been meaning to post something about this for a while now: a Baseball Prospectus day at Angels Stadium.

Baseball Prospectus and the Los Angeles Angels invite you to join us for a great day of baseball on Saturday, June 16 at Angel Stadium. Thanks to the fine folks in the Angels front office, we are proud to be able to offer our guests the following:

• Admittance to a private "meet and greet" with special guests and Baseball Prospectus personalities 2 hours prior to game time (including Sam Miller, Geoff Young, John Perrotto, Stephani Bee, Jason Wojciechowski, former Dodgers GM Dan Evans, MLBDepthCharts.com Jason Martinez )
• A question and answer session with Los Angeles Angels Assistant General Manager Matt Klentak.
• Seat in the right field MVP section of Angel Stadium to watch the Angels take on the Arizona Diamondbacks with Baseball Prospectus fans and staff.
• A $15 coupon to be used toward a new Baseball Prospectus Premium subscription or your next Premium renewal.

Festivities begin at 4:30 PM with a game start time of 7:05.

Labels: angels, sabermetrics

Interesting article by Baseball Prospectus' Ben Lindbergh in ESPN's Insider (paywall) section about how the widely accepted belief that "home runs come in bunches" is actually false:

Using a statistical concept called binomial distribution, we determined the theoretical rates of zero-, one-, two-, three- and four-homer games for the average major league batter. By comparing those predicted rates to how often those games actually occurred, we could see whether there was anything to the idea that home runs are hit in bunches. If players actually alternate between home run hot streaks and dry spells, their long balls would be bunched together, and we would see higher rates of two- and zero-homer games and lower rates of one-homer games than predicted.

Cutting to the chase, the net result of this is that for prolific home run hitters (we don't worry about guys hitting in single digits annually), there may be a "slight tendency to be 'bunched'" (as for Vladimir Guerrero), "but even in his case, it's likely that the difference was due to chance."

So why do Pujols and so many other players mistakenly believe that they're hitting home runs in bunches? A cognitive bias called the "availability heuristic" might be to blame. According to Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, the psychologists who coined the term, the availability heuristic is our "tendency to make a judgment about the frequency of an event based on how easy it is to recall similar instances."

But, Lindbergh concludes, it's probably best not to tell Pujols about this. "One of the most important qualities for a hitter to have is confidence, and the "bunches" belief provides a confidence boost for any occasion." And at this point, having changed leagues and in the first weeks of a very, very long-term contract, it's certain that Pujols needs all the confidence he can muster.

Related: Interesting post about how Pujols' drought mirrors Dave Winfield's in the Bronx. Arte Moreno isn't a jerk, which should at least make the whole process easier.

Labels: angels, sabermetrics

• The Dodgers are down to their last homestand with Frank McCourt as owner. And that's a good thing, mostly.
• Albert Pujols has gotten pull-happy in his stint with the Angels. Pujols' infamous quest for HR #1 as an Angel is part of an overall power outage plaguing the team, which trails the league in home runs.
• Tracy Ringolsby wonders if the Pujols acquisition represents the Angels following their own history with free agents, overspending on guys on the way down.

Labels: angels, dodgers, mccourts, sabermetrics, transactions

Something I missed yesterday, but a wonderful analysis by David Schoenfield at ESPN SweetSpot on why Mark Trumbo will never be a regular at third base, or at least, why the odds are badly stacked against him:

I did a little search on Baseball-Reference and checked all players since 1950 who had played at least 300 games at first base and third base. I picked what I thought would be a reasonable standard of playing time; if you played 300 games at third base, it means a manager was at least willing to live with you out there for a couple seasons' worth of games. This would help narrow down players who had played both positions and highlight guys who may have made the first-to-third transition. I figured it would be a large list. After all, a lot of third basemen get shifted to first base, right?

There were only 24 such players. The list: Harmon Killebrew, Deron Johnson, Joe Torre, Dick Allen, Richie Hebner, Pete Rose, Tony Perez, Enos Cabell, Ray Knight, Bob Horner, Darrell Evans, Pedro Guerrero, George Brett, Jeff King, Dave Magadan, Ron Coomer, Todd Zeile, Phil Nevin, Shea Hillenbrand, Kevin Youkilis, Jim Thome, Aubrey Huff, Wes Helms, Miguel Cabrera.

You know how many of those 24 converted from first base to third base? One.

Wow. The consequences of that are enormous. Trumbo never played third in the minors, which makes for a tough sell defensively. He has made some very nice plays there this spring, but we may write some of that off due to sample size.

Read the whole thing. His conclusion that Trumbo is a utility guy (with a goodly amount of pop) seems to me well-founded.

Labels: angels, sabermetrics, spring training

Hard to believe, but that's the surprising result from David Pinto's analysis. (Pinto notes that Fangraphs rates him much higher.) Bonus if you drill through his post on team probabilistic model of range: the Retrosheet database download suitable for MySQL. I'll have to check that out later today.

Labels: angels, sabermetrics

I just fell in love with this piece on ESPN The Magazine when I got it in the mail (I'm a subscriber to the print edition via Insider) because of the cover alone and the included text:

After he discovered analytics, Brandon McCarthy changed his motion, saved his career, signed the big money deal, and married this model. Score one for the nerds!

As Helen observed, his wife (who makes her money in front of the camera, but in a different way) is clearly more relaxed than McCarthy (who is all about the "meh, you're looking at her, but it's all good). Fun piece.

Labels: athletics, sabermetrics

Back when I was doing the daily series about player birthdays in team history, I ran this for Rick Burleson which detailed the catastrophic trade by the Angels of Carney Lansford, Mark Clear, and Rick Miller to Boston for Rick Burleson and Butch Hobson. That deal turned out to be a catastrophe for the Angels — it was the second such horror in as many years, given the team let Nolan Ryan walk in free agency just the year prior.

But what brought this to mind was a Sports Illustrated article by Daniel Okrent (h/t Jay Jaffe on Twitter) introducing the then-unknown Bill James to a wider audience. In particular, check out this passage about that deal, freshly struck, and the far more even-handed deal that sent Fred Lynn to the Angels:

This season James relishes the textbook cases he expects will develop from the big Boston-California switches of the past winter, when players shuttled between the best hitters' park in the league (Fenway) and the third-worst (Anaheim). "One is tempted to say," he writes, "that when you put Carney Lansford in Fenway he will inherit Fred Lynn's statistics, and when you put Lynn in the Big A, he will pick up those left behind. That could very possibly happen, and I've hung myself on cruder scaffolds."

James then made the following bold declarations:

• Lynn, over a period of years, will not even approach in California the offensive production he had in Fenway. If he hit .300 two-thirds of the time in Fenway, it might be one-third of the time in California. James admits that Lynn is unpredictable, but he estimates that in the long run he will be a .285 hitter in Anaheim, with 18 to 24 home runs a year. [In fact, he only once in four years with the Angels posted near a .300 average, in 1982 when he hit .299. — RLM]
• Third Baseman Lansford, a .261 hitter in Anaheim with 15 homers last year, is pegged for a .310 season in Boston with 25 home runs, but, says James, "that doesn't represent the upper boundary of his ability." [Lansford went on to post two very good seasons with Boston, and then found himself traded to Angels' AL West division rival Oakland, where he finished his career.]
• Rick Burleson, the ex-Boston short-Stop, never used Fenway to his particular advantage and should hit just as well in California. [He did — for one year — separated his shoulder in a spring training game in 1982, missed most of that year, posted solid numbers in 1983, but missed most of 1984 when he re-tore his rotator cuff lifting weights before the season.]
• But Butch Hobson, the third baseman sent from Boston to California, is in for trouble. His home-run frequency will hold up, but his average will plummet so much that, in combination with his poor defensive play, it will make him a bad risk. The Angels will eventually bench him, since they already have an abundance of designated hitters and first basemen, and there's no other place to play Hobson. So he'll wind up hitting .230, with 15 to 22 home runs, in no more than 350 to 450 at bats. [Just so. He hit .235/.321/.336.]
• Joe Rudi will drive in 100 runs in Boston if he's healthy and playing. "But," adds James, "if he'd been healthy, he would have done it in California." [I can't tell if Rudi was healthy, but judging from the 49 games he appeared in in 1982 for Boston, I take that as a "no".]

Pretty impressive, really.

Labels: angels, history, red sox, sabermetrics

... or, they might make you shake your head with knowing scorn having heard contrary nonsense for much of the last decade. Mike DiGiovanna in the Times covered yesterday's press conference introducing Jerry Dipoto as the Angels' new GM. The most important paragraph out of all of it:

He's a firm believer in on-base percentage (OBP) and plate discipline. "If you're not OB, you're not going to win many games," he said. He thinks "count control," from the pitching and hitting sides, is important. He loves aggressive baserunning.

I cannot stress enough how vital it is to hear this after years of attachment to a statistic that does not correlate well with offenses that actually score runs. It may yet prove ephemeral or a case of glib public relations, but at this exact moment it represents a much needed return to sanity in an organization that has lacked that on offense for a very long time.

Labels: angels, front office, sabermetrics

CERA is one of the most polarizing saber/traditional arguments. Sam Miller of the Register looks at CERA as a possible window for Mike Scioscia's mancrush on Jeff Mathis. It's actually a pretty funny read, too.

Labels: analysis, angels, sabermetrics

• Beyond The Boxscore has its preliminary 2011 defensive catcher ratings out. Hank Conger and Rod Barajas are both in the upper half, while Jeff Mathis is one of the worst, as is (surprisingly) ex-Dodger, current Yankee Russell Martin. #1? Baltimore's Matt Wieters.
• Rafael Furcal is nowhere near ready for a rehab stint, according to MLB.com's Ken Gurnick. (Via Aaron Gleeman at NBC's Hardball Talk blog.)
• Maury Brown says the Astros sale is down to the details, and should complete soon. Jim Crane will buy the club for $680 million.

Labels: analysis, angels, astros, dodgers, injuries, ratings, sabermetrics

Dodgers Extend KABC Through 2011

It doesn't seem like very long, does it? Anyway, it won't really be Opening Day (for the Dodgers, at least) until I can hear Vinny call a regulation game in the regular season.

Burying The Lede: Baseball Prospectus Fails To Notice Yankees Getting Really, Really Old

But probably not fast enough to hope for a home sweep next weekend. This Village Voice piece is something I saw while in Arizona during spring training but kept forgetting to mention:

Based on the study of hundreds of players in their declining years, Silver projects these slides for the Yanks' elders in 2010:

Jeter from a 2009 batting average of .334 to .286 this year, a drop in home runs from 18 to 11, and in stolen bases from 30 to 10. Posada from a .285 BA to .263, home runs from 22 to 12. Pettitte from 14-8 and an ERA of 4.06 to 10-11 and 4.70. Scariest of all, Rivera from 44 saves to 22, and and ERA the moves from 1.76 to 3.53.

If Silver is right, the 2010 Yankees are sunk. Worse yet, Steinbrenner and Cashman seem to have no plans for how to replace the Core Four. Last year we suggested that the Yankees were going to be in trouble if Jeter played at the level of a typical 35-year old shortstop. He made us look foolish by playing way above it. But what happens if age catches up to him this season? Where will the Yankees move him to, and who is ready to step in at shortstop? The problem hasn't gone away, it's just gotten a year older.

Yet, reading the book itself, the intro is a paean to the brains of Brian Cashman, with nary a peep about this very visible issue facing the core quartet of Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte, and Mariano Rivera. I don't get it.

Also Slightly Old: Mets Shopping Matthews, Jr.

Already. "Maybe the Mets are anticipating [him complaining about a lack of a starting role]" says New York Post writer Joel Sherman.

OT: A More Wretched Hive Of Scum And Villainy

Seriously? A Star Wars animated sitcom?

Labels: dodgers, mets, offtopic, predictions, radio, rumors, sabermetrics, the horror the horror, yankees

Some stuff that may have lately transpired... some old, some new.

Mike Napoli, Baseball's Worst Defensive Catcher

Really? Even worse than Jorge Posada? Apparently so, according to a post at Driveline Mechanics. Jeff Mathis is also net negative runs defensively (-2.0), but still better than Napoli. Russell Martin at -3.3 is also sub-par. Gerald Laird, lately of the Tigers, ranked best (+13.3 total runs). Crazy.

Torii Hunter To Have Surgery To Repair Sports Hernia

I always figured a sports hernia was a euphemism for some kind of testicular injury, but no; it's a consequence of a rupture where the abdominal muscles are thin rather than stemming from a lack of strength. Torii Hunter will have surgery to repair his, and should be back in plenty of time for spring training.

Dallas McPherson Signs Minor League Deal With Oakland

... according to Jerry Krasnick. He had back surgery in July, and missed the rest of the season with the Giants' minor league affiliate in Fresno. Hard to believe he's only 29.

Dodgers Move Luis Guerra, Three Others To 40-Man Roster

The Dodgers added Luis Guerra and three others to the 40-man roster prior to the deadline; the others were Ivan De Jesus, Jr., Trayvon Robinson, and Kenley Jansen.

Labels: angels, dodgers, injuries, sabermetrics, transactions

Appearing in the D Magazine's Inside Corner blog. Author Bob Sturm starts with a Bill James essay appearing in The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract in which James writes

"If a pitcher’s strikeout rate is less than 4.5 per 9 innings, you can pretty much write him off as somebody who is going to have a real career.”

In fact, he writes, that if you desire a pitcher who has a chance to be one great pitchers of his decade, then you should know that all of those pitchers “were all above the league strikeout average early in their careers. Probably 7 of the 10 greats of any era led their league in striekouts at least once.” - One detail that may interest you is that in 2009, the league strikeout average rate is 6.8 per 9 innings.

Sturm then goes on to observe that Scott Feldman has a ... 4.49 K/9 this year. (B-Ref says 4.3, and no full season more than 4.4.)

Can Scott Feldman be the exception to the rule? My eyes say yes. Bill James says there is no example of this ever lasting for the long haul. I tried to call his bluff. I ran the numbers for every pitcher who has won 100 games in the big leagues since the year 1970. 40 seasons of major league baseball to see if I could find a few. 214 pitchers have won 100 games since 1970. Of those, 27 had a career K rate lower than 4.5 per 9.

Of those, only 1 pitcher has pitched in the last decade. Kirk Rueter. Kirk won 130 games with the Expos and Giants with a career K rate of 3.8 per 9. And there is your entire list.

Kirk Rueter was the first name to come to my mind, too. The top ten in major league history as measured by descending K/9 with more than 100 wins are

+-------------------+------+---------+------+
| Name              | K/9  | IP      | W    |
+-------------------+------+---------+------+
| Bill Gullickson   | 4.50 | 2,560.0 |  162 | 
| Eddie Plank       | 4.50 | 4,495.7 |  326 | 
| Jim Scott         | 4.50 | 1,892.0 |  107 | 
| Charlie Buffinton | 4.49 | 3,404.0 |  233 | 
| Preacher Roe      | 4.49 | 1,914.3 |  127 | 
| Kirby Higbe       | 4.48 | 1,952.3 |  118 | 
| Bob Groom         | 4.46 | 2,336.3 |  119 | 
| Mort Cooper       | 4.46 | 1,840.7 |  128 | 
| Whit Wyatt        | 4.46 | 1,761.0 |  106 | 
| Bob Shaw          | 4.45 | 1,778.0 |  108 | 
+-------------------+------+---------+------+
10 rows in set (0.01 sec)

(Note that some of the names on the list above appear to be 4.50 due to rounding.) In general, it's not an especially compelling list, 262 in all. If you filter for players who had above-average K/9 rates early in their career, the list would be even shorter. But the odds do not look good for a repeat performance from Scott Feldman.

Labels: predictions, rangers, sabermetrics

Great piece:

me: Before I go to some players outperforming or underperforming projections, though, this is quoting you… you were asked which Angel could collapse, which would break out: “If I have to pick one maybe Howie Kendrick. I’m worried about the injuries and inability to lay off the slider outside stalling his development. With his lack of patience, he has to hit .300 to be an asset, .270 would be a disaster. … Weaver will take the step forward to become an ace, like Lackey, Santana, and Saunders have before him. My projections see him as the equal to Lackey and Santana.”
You’re a witch!!!
Sean Smith: That looks pretty good. But I take no pleasure in Kendrick’s struggles.

Labels: angels, predictions, sabermetrics

Via the Register's Sam Miller, the Angels have the second-worst UZR in the majors. Since UZR is all secret 'n stuff, we have no way of knowing what that means in absolute terms, and of course it comes with small sample size constraints, but gah.

Labels: angels, sabermetrics

... for getting a job in the Mariners' front office.

Labels: front office, mariners, sabermetrics

Just confirming what I already believed.

The Angels have four potential batting champions in their lineup, less of a curiosity than a necessity for an offense dependent on batting average. Although fans and analysts sometimes bemoan how few walks the Angels draw, batting coach Mickey Hatcher said the club does not evaluate its hitters on walks.

"That's a false stat," Hatcher said.

In the context of their high-contact, low-power offense, Hatcher explained, the relative lack of walks indicates less that the Angels are free swingers and more that opposing pitchers challenge them more often, because a fat pitch is not as likely to end up as a home run.

"If they're throwing strikes, we'll hit them. If they're not, we'll walk," Hatcher said. "But we don't have a lot of home-run threats.

"When you look at Detroit's lineup, they'll have a lot more walks, because they're a lot more dangerous."

I mean, I understand that there's a line between patience and passivity, one that Hee Seop Choi eventually crossed, but this sounds like Hatcher is just begging to be made fun of.

Labels: angels, sabermetrics, stupid ideas

Via Halos Heaven, Dayn Perry sets out a strange list of what he considers to be the top ten pitching duos in baseball today. It's strange because he gives more weight to rate stats than durability, proof of which comes when he ranks the Twins' Santana/Liriano combo third overall despite the fact that they pitched only 219 innings between them (edit: ... and all of them by Santana!). The full list follows:

1. ARI: Brandon Webb, Dan Haren
2. CLE: C.C. Sabathia, Fausto Carmona
3. MIN: Johan Santana, Francisco Liriano
4. SDP: Jake Peavy, Chris Young
5. SFG: Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum
6. LAD: Brad Penny, Chad Billingsley
7. LAA: John Lackey, Kelvim Escobar
8. PHI: Cole Hamels, Brett Meyers
9. TBD: Scott Kazmir, James Shields
10. ATL: John Smoltz, Tim Hudson

As I said, a strange list. Here's how I would have ranked them using VORP for pitchers with 120 or more innings pitched, which takes into account playing time. This won't fix the translation for Dan Haren going to the weaker league (but that probably washes out because he's heading to a harder park). It also likely shortchanges the Brewers, whose impressive young starter, Yovani Gallardo, only pitched 110 innings because he was a midseason callup, and would likely have been a ~40-50 VORP pitcher on his team, i.e. the Brewers' ace. It also doesn't try to adjust for incoming Japanese pitchers like Hiroki Kuroda of the Dodgers, who are essentially unknowns.

1. SDP: (73.7 VORP) Jake Peavy, Chris Young
2. CLE: (71.3 VORP) C.C. Sabathia, Fausto Carmona
3. ARI: (64.9 VORP) Brandon Webb, Dan Haren
4. ATL: (63.1 VORP) John Smoltz, Tim Hudson
5. LAD: (58.5 VORP) Brad Penny, Chad Billingsley
6. LAA: (57.3 VORP) John Lackey, Kelvim Escobar
7. BAL: (47.8 VORP) Erik Bedard, Jeremy Guthrie
8. BOS: (47.4 VORP) Josh Beckett, Curt Schilling
9. CHA: (47.3 VORP) Mark Buehrle, Javier Vazquez
10. TBA: (39.0 VORP) Scott Kazmir, James Shields

The Giants and Tampa Bay Twins completely fell off the list, in San Francisco's case mostly because Lincecum wasn't as good as Perry represented. With the Rays' Shields, his problem was the longball, tallying 28 in 2007, tying him for third in the league with John Danks, behind first-place Twins starter Johan Santana). Likewise, Kazmir coughed up quite a few taters (18) that hurt his numbers.

Update: I totally screwed up on Minnesota, forgetting that Carlos Silva was a free agent signed by the Mariners this offseason. His absence drops the Twins utterly off this list and moves Tampa Bay back up, albeit their starting two is almost a full win worse than the Chisox, Red Sox, or Baltimore. Liriano gets no love because he didn't pitch a single inning in 2007, and it's questionable what he'll bring to the table in 2008.

Labels: ratings, sabermetrics