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2005-03-10T19:12:00.000-08:00

And so it was written that March 10, 2005 shall henceforth be forever known as the Day of the Great Baseball Blog Exodus.

I'm out of here; the Fourth Outfielder has moved to All-Baseball.com. Please check me out at

http://www.all-baseball.com/fourthof/

You may change your bookmarks if you have any.

Calls to the Bullpen

2005-03-09T16:06:00.000-08:00

Did you know that Dave Ross was the Dodgers' player rep as noted in the Times today? I guess it makes some sense, as most player reps are guys for whom English was their first language; only Eric Gagne, Odalis Perez, Kaz Ishii, Giovanni Carrara and Cesar Izturis have been Dodgers longer than Dave Ross's brief career, and none of them grew up speaking English.
Word is that Izturis is working on a healthier lifestyle to prevent a second half decline. According to Gurnick, Izturis "batted .305 through July and finished at .288, hitting .259 over that period, leading to speculation that his 5-9, 187-pound frame can't quite take that kind of workload." Uhh, okay. If the speculation were up to me, I don't see how that would enter into the discussion. His BABIP was down from .328 through July to .308 after, which given the sample size is pretty typical variation and not sufficient to suggest fatigue. And it's not clear to me that fatigue or Izturis' small frame is responsible for his striking out more in August and September, which was as big a factor in his batting average decline as his lower BABIP. In reality, his poorer numbers from August onward are more a factor of chance and cherry-picking; July was Izturis' best month ever, so a sample which excludes it will be low. Here's a chart, where BIP/AB is balls in play per at bat and NipBA is batting average normalized for a .300 BABIP:
```
         AB   H  AVG   HR K   K/AB  BIP/AB BABIP NipBA
Apr-Jun  304  90 .296  2  30  .099  .895   .324  .275
Jul      116  38 .328  1  9   .078  .914   .349  .283
Aug-Oct  250  65 .260  1  31  .124  .872   .294  .266
```
While his numbers for August after July aren't as good as before July, the difference isn't significant as it's well within the bounds of normal variation.
Excellent, excellent work by David Pinto today at Baseball Musings. Pinto created graphs to show the intricacies of David Eckstein's defensive range. I was pretty inspired (both by Pinto and by working with Studes for THT), so right now I'm working on some graphs of my own which should debut soon. Actually, my apologies for such a brief post today; I'm working on a lot of other stuff right now.

Notes

2005-03-08T13:59:00.000-08:00

Two Dodger-related items at Baseball Prospectus (both subscription only) today. The first is Will Carrol's team health report. Will does a great job on these, but to be frank I didn't really learn anything new from his player comments. His discussion of Frank Jobe's rotator cuff work was pretty interesting, though. I think Will misstated his line about Greg Miller - he was out last season and will miss several months now, but last I heard he's expected to pitch this year. Also, I don't think Will is familiar with the work Wilson Alvarez has done with the Dodgers.

And the red light for OP and green light for Lowe - though both things you and I already knew about - caused me to briefly deliberate once again on how baffling it is that the near universal sentiment is that Perez at $8m per was a good and necessary deal while Lowe at $9m is terrible. Given the choice, I'd probably take the Perez deal, but it's no slam dunk. They're both overpaid.

The second item is Joe Sheehan's mention of Dioner Navarro as one of his "Not My Guys." Sheehan rightly states that Navarro's offense is tied closely to his batting average. However, his mentioning Navarro's .263 average across two levels comes across as extraordinarily naive. A 20-year-old putting up an above average BA and OBP in Double-A is pretty good, and the .250 he hit in AAA is, given his age, not shabby. The idea that Navarro is the next catching superstar is silly, but that doesn't mean he can't or won't be a very good player. The Ivan Rodriguez comparisons I've seen were, in my mind, mostly about his defense. I wouldn't expect Navarro to put up a career .184 ISO as Rodriguez has, but I also would expect him to walk more frequently than Rodriguez and he's got a good shot of hitting for average nearly as well as Rodriguez. And while it's unlikely his defense will be Rodriguez caliber, he could still be pretty good with the mitt.

Also, Sheehan's invocation of Mike LaValliere is puzzling; I don't know about you, but I'd take LaValliere's first six seasons in a heartbeat. He was an above average hitter at a defensive position and most metrics I've seen have shown his defense to have been excellent. Is Navarro less of a prospect because LaValliere was never allowed to be a full time player? Even so, the comparison is pretty poor in my eyes. LaValliere was a left-handed hitter who didn't sniff the majors until age 23 and didn't see any non-September playing time until age 25. Navarro has been an above average AA hitter at age 19 and 20. Not adding up in my mind.

Can Choi Keep Up his .819 OBP against Southpaws?

2005-03-07T23:06:00.000-08:00

Before I continue, a typo that had me laughing too hard to ignore it... From the latest Gurnick mailbag:

According to general manager Paul DePodesta, if Choi winds up with statistics similar to his season-ending totals of last year -- .251 batting average, .819 on-base percentage, 15 home runs and 46 RBIs -- that would be sufficient.

Did he really have a .819 on-base percentage? That would suffice in my book. A .251/.819/.251 season would be MVP caliber.

In any event, I wanted to take a look at a question which has come to th fore a bit more recently. Should Hee Seop Choi start on days when the Dodgers face a southpaw?

We can assume that Jose Valentin is not going to start on days when a left-handed pitcher is throwing, so that means that one of the APerez/Nakamura/Saenz trio would be starting anyway. That means the potential platoon mate would be the second-best of that group.

To get a quick and dirty idea of what kind of impact we're talking about here, I'm going to use the average projection from PECOTA, ZiPS, and Marcel that I found a few weeks back. In the quick and dirty spirit, I'll use each player's Gross Production Average. Choi's is .281, Saenz' is .265, Perez' is .248, and Nakamura's is .250.

To project each player's performance against southpaws, we can use the universal platoon ratio, which, given the sample size for each individual player, is normally a better predictor of future platoon ratio than past platoon ratio. Left-handed batters hit about 1.17 times better against right-handed pitchers and right-handed batters hit about 1.09 times better against left-handed pitchers. We can reverse engineer our general projections based on how many plate appearances against each type of pitcher they had in the past, since each player's projection is based on seasons where they had a certain number of PA against LHP. I don't have the actual numbers for Nakamura or Perez, but I'll assume that since they've been everyday players they've had the normal ratio of about 28% PA against LHP, although ideally I would find the actual data for Japan and AAA... Anyway, here's the table, with plate appearances being from 2002-2004:


      RHP PA  LHP PA   %LHP  ProjGPA PlatoonRatio ProjLHP ProjRHP
Choi    647      71     10    .281        0.85      .242   .285
Saenz   160     146     48    .265        1.09      .277   .254
Perez                   28    .248        1.09      .264   .242
Nakamura                28    .250        1.09      .266   .244

Using this method, Saenz comes out on top, followed by a virtual tie between Perez and Nakamura. However, Saenz is the one least likely to play third base, so we can figure that it will be one of the others playing in Valentin's stead. So let's compare Saenz to Choi. Saenz' has a .035 edge in GPA using these numbers. A rough run estimator for GPA is Runs = (GPA_1 - GPA_2)*1.2*(plate appearances). 698 starts were made in the NL last season, or 27% of the 2590 games played. The average starter lasts 27 batters, so we're talking about three plate appearances a game in 27% of the Dodgers 162 games. 3 PA times 44 games equals 132 plate appearances at stake. So 132 PA * 1.2 * .035 GPA difference equals five and a half runs, or half of one win.

So, the difference between Choi and Saenz starting, offensively, is half a win. I don't think there's too big a spread in their defensive talent, so let's assume it's simply a question of offense.

Now, there's another question at stake here: will playing regularly against left-handed pitching improve Choi's long-term ability, both in general and against left-handed pitching? The answer is almost certainly yes, but the magnitude of the impact is a different question. On the one hand, it's not a big deal to carry around a right-handed backup and platoon partner at first base. That's perhaps the most easily replaceable role in baseball. On the other hand, having to often remove your first baseman in the sixth or seventh inning for a pinch-hitter creates a number of strategic limitations, so it's certainly preferable to have your premier left-handed hitters have better than average platoon ratios. And while keeping a decent right-handed first baseman on the roster is easy and fairly inevitable, it's certainly better to not have to depend on one and to not have to spend a little extra for a very good one. And some of the value added from Choi getting experience against southpaws will be this season when he has to face left-handed relievers and it's not strategic or possible to remove Choi from the game.

I would argue that Choi should probably be the default starters against left-handed pitchers but that Saenz should get the nod in high-leverage games. That is, when the Dodgers are playing a clear rival for a playoff spot or are in a tight spot late in the season - in other words, when wins are at a premium - Saenz should face the southpaw.

With regards to pinch-hitting, the same philosophy should apply. Eighth or ninth inning of a close game and a lefty's on the mound? Bring in Saenz. Three-run lead in the seventh? Let Choi hit. Also, the possibility of the next time through the order has to be factored in. Saenz has a slight edge over Choi if the task is to one PA against a southpaw and one against a righty. However, if there's reason to believe that there will be another trip through the order and that Choi's spot in the lineup will occasion a higher leverage plate appearance the next time, then it makes more sense to leave Choi in the game.

(Bad Risky Business/Joel Goodson Pun Omitted)

2005-03-06T22:37:00.000-08:00

Joel Guzman has been generated an awful lot of Miguel Cabrera comparisons. Are these comparisons accurate?

Cabrera's development saw a rapid spike in 2003. Before then, he was clearly talented and young enough to develop, but he hadn't put up impressive numbers. Playing as a teenager in rookie league, low A, and high A, Cabrera held his own in each league but never excelled. At each level he put up offense just above league average. Every component of his performance in rookie ball at age 17 was just about average. His age 18 season in low-A saw his K rate become substantially better than average, but that was offset by smaller declines in his walk and hit rates. Promoted to high-A at age 19, he kept his solid K rate but saw his BB rate sink a bit further back. This was more than offset by a sharp increase in doubles power.

At age 20, starting the season in AA, Cabrera broke out. The doubles power he'd shown the previous year remained, but it was augmented by a huge improvement in his home run power. On top of that, Cabrera maintained his good K rate while putting up an excellent walk rate. He also saw a sharp increase in his singles rate. Cabrera's dominance of the Southern League prompted the Marlins to skip him past triple-A, and you know the rest of the story from here.

Guzman debuted in 2002 at age 17. Playing briefly in the Pioneer League and then even more briefly in the GCL, Guzman held his own against older competition but put up subpar numbers overall. He demonstrated patience at the plate, putting up an above average walk rate and a terrible strikeout rate. He hit the ball very hard, generating very good power numbers per balls in play. However, the K rate was way too high for Guzman to be productive.

At age 18, Guzman debuted in Sally ball at South Georgia. Once again, Guzman's power relative to the league was outstanding. It was tough to notice, though, in part because the Sally League is tough on hitters and in part because his K rate - while improved since rookie ball - was still very bad. On top of that, Guzman's hit rate on balls in play lagged below average and his walk rate was microscopic. Promoted to high-A Vero Beach at mid-season, Guzman's power dropped off but was still well above league average. His singles rate, K rate, and BB rate all improved slightly after the promotion.

At age 19, Guzman saw his breakout. Starting the season at Vero Beach, Guzman put up tremendous power numbers and a much improved BABIP. His K and BB rates again showed incremental improvement, but both remained well below average. After being promoted in July to Double-A, Guzman's power numbers relative to the league fell off a bit but remained outstanding. Meanwhile, his K and BB rates both improved.

In all, I don't think the Cabrera comparison is very apt. Cabrera's issue wasn't really conquering the strike zone, as he managed to do a fine if subpar job of that at each level. Guzman, on the other hand, has neither drawn walks consistently nor avoided striking out, although he's shown significant improvement in that area the past two seasons. Unlike Guzman, Cabrera did not consistently display solid power as a teenager and his challenge was adding home runs and doubles to his attack.

To give you an idea of what I mean, here's a comparison of a few metrics that I think tell this story well. I might get around to introducing these numbers and their respective scales in a little more detail later, so I'll give you the short version here. Each one is like "OPS+" in that it's expressed as a percentage of the league average. lwr+ measures a player's overall offensive value using a formula based on Tangotiger's linear weights ratio. wx+ measures the value of a player's extra base hits per batted ball. b+ measures the value of a player's batted balls. t+ measures the value of a player's plate appearances that don't result in a batted ball - HBP, BB, and K.


    Joel Guzman                    Miguel Cabrera
Age League    lwr+ wx+ b+  t+     Age League    lwr+ wx+ b+  t+
17  Pioneer    95 137 126  60     17  GCL       103  96 105  91
17  GCL        87  87  84 102      
18  SAL        92 156 120  27     18  Midwest   103  96 102  94
18  FSL        92 130 115  33       
19  FSL       134 200 163  55     19  FSL       109 131 111  96
19  Southern  117 164 132  66        
                                  20  Southern  172 197 182 129

To me, Cabrera just is not a very good comparison.

The issue for Guzman is not whether he can cut down on his strikeouts but rather how he'll cut down on his strikeouts. If he can start hitting more pitches but continue to hit them hard, he'll have no problem - in other words, if he can keep mashing while becoming less selective, there's no question that he's an outstanding prospect. Conversely, if his current selectivity is necessary for his power, he'll need to develop a better feel for the strike zone and turn a lot of those strikeouts into walks. So far, he's mainly done the latter, as his batted balls per plate appearance hasn't fluctuated much but his K and BB rates have improved. If he continues to do that - and continues to smack the balls he does hit - he'll be just fine. If Guzman can't cut down on his strikeouts without compromising his ability to pound the ball, then his future is in jeopardy.

Franquelis Osoria

2005-03-04T16:21:00.000-08:00

Most ardent Dodger fans already know about Ryan Ketchner, a swingman in the Seattle organization acquired last season for Jolbert Cabrera. Ketchner looks like he's not too far from being a solid third or fourth starter if his recovery from ulnar nerve transposition goes well.

Franquelis Osoria arguably had a better season than Ketchner last season, but he's suffering from IES (inflated ERA syndrome). He put up a 3.67 ERA in 81 IP at Jacksonville and a 6.48 ERA in 8 IP at Las Vegas. Those numbers don't make him look like a top prospect, considering that at 22 he wasn't particularly young for the competition. However, a look at Osoria's peripherals shows much more promise, as in 2004 he had an excellent ratio of 76 K to 19 BB while only giving up two home runs in 89 innings. By contrast, Ketchner pitched 126 innings with 102 K, 36 BB, and 11 HR.

Using their weighted three year numbers, Ketchner and Osoria are fairly similar; they have nearly identical walk/HBP rates and hit rates on balls in play. Ketchner is the better strikeout pitcher, though they're both good in that department. Osoria has been much better at keeping the ball in the park. Osoria is half a year older. There's a good reason Osoria was added to the 40-man roster last fall to avoid the Rule 5 draft.

Osoria doesn't project as a world-beater, but he's got a decent shot to be a solid contributor at the major league level in the next few years.

Memory/Lack Thereof Lane...

2005-03-03T23:00:00.000-08:00

How did I not remember this?

Florida Marlins traded Craig Counsell to Los Angeles Dodgers in exchange for a player to be named later (June 15, 1999); Florida Marlins received Ryan Moskau (July 15, 1999). (from retrosheet)

Craig Counsell played for the Dodgers? The Davey Johnson Dodgers? Counsell was terrible, of course (he is Craig Counsell); a no-slug, all-OBP guy whose walk rate isn't especially high and who depends on a lot of groundball singles isn't a good match for anybody, and Dodger Stadium in particular is a poor match. He was released March 15, 2000. The weird part is, this is about as close to a "win" as a one-for-one player swap to get Craig Counsell can be: Moskau, a first baseman whom the Dodgers picked in the 6th round the previous June, didn't amount to anything. Still, even giving up nothing to pay Counsell's salary isn't worth it.

The Dodgers ended up dumping a worthless utility infielder of their own shortly after releasing Counsell. On April 1, they dished Juan Castro to the Reds for Kenny Lutz. Lutz was drafted by the Reds out of Cincinnati in the fourth-round the previous June, and he never had any professional success. Fortunately, the Dodgers also picked up $150,000 in the trade, making it an unequivocally good deal for the blue crew; Castro was about as useless as possible for a player on a major league roster from 2000 to 2002, before slightly improving from terrble to bad the past two seasons. Now the Twins are giving him money to use up outs.

But the Dodgers weren't done excising their bizarre surplus of sub-mediocre middle infielders; they dealt Jose Vizcaino to the Yankees in June for Jim "The King" Leyritz. Leyritz didn't have much left in the tank, and he had fewer PA with the Dodgers than Hee Seop Choi before his major league career came to a close. Vizcaino was, well, Vizcaino. The Dodgers probably came out ahead on this deal, though, as Vizcaino was making a ridiculous $3.5 million in 2000 while Leyritz was only earning $1 mil. Sadly, I've been unable to locate the amount of money the Dodgers sent to the Yankees in the deal. Sigh.

THT Article Open Thread

2005-03-01T22:15:00.000-08:00

...if you've got anything you want to say about this.

Is This A Dead Horse?

2005-03-01T22:14:00.000-08:00

Imperabo, one of the Fourth Outfielder's favorite Primates, wrote this the other day during this discussion:

This is the one thing I do have concerns about with regard to Depo. He clearly puts a lot of weight on UZR (or something similar), and I'm afraid of it blowing up on us. The groundball staff won't be nearly as effective without good infield defense.

This is something I've considered as well. I thought I should take a closer look.

Let's assume the players at issue are Jeff Kent and Jose Valentin, since I don't think the Drew signing has seen much critique from a defensive standpoint. Firstly, how good do Kent and Valentin have to be at defense to be worth their contracts? If Kent is a +15 batter and Valentin a -10 batter (a low estimate, in my opinion), then with neutral defense they're +22 and -7 players when accounting for their positions. Baserunning makes those more like +20 and -5. Kent's getting an $8.5m average annual contract value and Valentin's getting $3.5m. For Kent, figuring $4m for an average player and $2m per extra win, his baseline is $8m, meaning he has to contribute 2.5 runs above average on defense to be worth the full $8.5m. For Valentin, since he'll sit a quarter of the time, his baseline is ($4m)*3/4 + (-.5)*3/4*$2m, which equals $2.25m, meaning he'll need to contribute 6 defensive runs above average to be worth the full $3.5m. At 3/4 playing time, that comes out to a rate of +8.

We'll deal with Valentin first. Valentin would have to be a pretty bad shortstop for anyone to figure him to be below average at third. Almost every defensive statistic likes Jose Valentin - He's been above average in David Pinto's Probablistic Model of Range in both 2003 and 2004. He has been above average in Davenports every season since coming to the White Sox in 2000. He has been above average in UZR in every season since 2000 except his -2 in 2001; he's also been at the top of the charts in UZR each of the past two seasons. He's been one of the best according to Studes' win shares calculations each of the past two seasons. While each of these methods has flaws, the fact that four different methods - including two using zone data and two not using zone data - show Valentin as being a very good defensive shortstop seems like a pretty strong preponderance of data. It's not just UZR that likes him.

Kent has certainly not been a favorite of most observers. However, we're not just dealing with UZR in his defense. Michael Humphreys' side-by-side comparison of UZR, ZR, Davenports, and Defensive Regression Analysis for 2001-2003 shows Kent as being above average by all four metrics, ranging from +2 to +12. Win Shares and Pinto's PMR were both down on him in 2003, but both had him near the top of the charts in 2004. That they were down on him in 2003 isn't terribly disconcerting, as the Davenport system has that as his only below average recent season (at -1). His 2004 Davenport was +10, and his 2004 UZR was +20. I also have Kent's 2004 ZR sitting around, and it's above average. Again, the consensus among several different methods seems to be that Kent is an above average fielder.

The other issue here is clearly one of misplaced expectations - most of us have seen that both Kent and Valentin dominated the 2004 UZR rankings and got excited. One season's worth of UZR, however, is not a sufficient sample size. A +20 over the course of one season doesn't mean that the player's true talent level is +20; it's probably closer to +5. Kent is probably in the +5 range defensively and Valentin at third is probably in the +10 or +15 range, with the caveat that both have shown an upward trend recently.

In summation, both Kent and Valentin look to be good bets to match their dollar value unless the available defensive evaluation systems are all pretty much junk. That's pretty good, considering that the average free agent signing is for above the player's actual value.

There's also another meta issue here. Paul DePodesta does not use any of these defensive metrics, or at least if he does he's using them to verify whatever proprietary methods he has going. If these signings (along with the Odalis Perez and Derek Lowe signings) signify that DePodesta's relying heavily on his defensive evaluation system, then we should be pleased since we have much evidence to indicate that his system is getting it right.

Contracts

2005-02-28T17:04:00.000-08:00

According to dozens of wire reports, the Dodgers have come to terms with the following 40-man roster cats:

Yhency Brazoban
Duaner Sanchez
Dave Ross
Hee Seop Choi
Jason Grabowski
Frank Brooks
Edwin Jackson
Joel Hanrahan
Orlando Rodriguez
Derek Thompson
Willy Aybar

They've also come to terms with non-roster players Joe Thurston, Chin-Feng Chen, and Henri Stanley, whose names should be given more color; I propose Thirsty Joe, CFCin' is CFBelievin', and Henri Ennui. If any of those three can make the roster - which, with the Nakamura signing, would probably require beating out both Dr. No and J-Grab in addition to staving off 40-man masters like Myrowvia, Jason Rep Inc., and Kriss C-Ross - they would probably take the spot yielded by Darren Dreifort's eventual return to the 60-Day DL.

There's also another potential spot on the 40-man roster if Houlton is returned to the Astros. In other words, the chances of Thurston, Chen and Stanley to make the top 40 depend on the D.J.

To the best of my knowledge, that leaves the following 11 40-man roster cats yet to be issued contracts:

Jayson Werth
Antonio Perez
D.J. Houlton
Cody Ross
Jason Repko
Brian Myrow
Dioner Navarro
Delwyn Young
Russ Martin
Franquelis Osoria
Ryan Ketchner

All-Time Dodgers GIDP

2005-02-28T11:30:00.000-08:00

Jon's eminently quotidian post today had me checking out those Dodgers sortable stats, and I was 3/4 of the way done making a spreadsheet of the Dodgers all time leaders in GIDP per plate appearance. Well, funny thing happened on the way to the opera; my computer froze, and I lost my work. Heck, I thought, maybe I should just use the sabermetric baseball encyclopedia to generate this for me. Here's the all-time Dodgers leaders in GIDP per plate appearance relative to league average, minimum 1200 PA, according to Lee Sinins' Sabermetric Baseball Encyclopedia:


GIDP                            RATE   PLAYER   LEAGUE   
1    Mickey Owen                 169       61       36   
2    Lenny Harris                161       47       29   
3    Eddie Murray                148       50       34   
4    Babe Phelps                 148       58       39   
5    Paul Lo Duca                147       72       49   
6    Joe Medwick                 145       51       35   
7    Roy Campanella              143      143      100   
8    Carl Furillo                143      207      145   
9    Don Zimmer                  139       43       31   
10   Bruce Edwards               139       42       30   
11   Norm Larker                 135       40       30   
12   Tommy Davis                 134       86       64   
13   Frank Howard                130       60       46   
14   Luis Olmo                   130       36       28   
15   Don Drysdale                130       34       26   
16   Tony Cuccinello             127       41       32   
17   Manny Mota                  127       57       45   
18   Mike Piazza                 127       75       59   
19   Eric Karros                 126      165      131   
20   Kal Daniels                 125       26       21   
21   Tim Wallach                 123       37       30   
22   Shawn Green                 123       88       71   
23   Wally Moon                  121       64       53   
24   Joe Stripp                  119       55       46   
25   Mark Grudzielanek           118       61       52   
26   Steve Garvey                117      164      140

Nice to have Don Drysdale show up on this list. Lenny Harris, Eddie Murray, Mike Piazza, and Eric Karros are the names that bring me back, which certainly betrays my age.

Two thirds of the recently jettisoned offensive nucleus make the list in Green and Lo Duca. For the curious, Adrian Beltre comes in at #53, with a rate of 96 - just better than league average. Jackie Robinson checks in at #55. Brett Butler comes in with the lowest GIDP rate (29!), although part of that comes from having fewer PA with a runner on first.

Hmmm... this has got me thinking about Tom Ruane's finding that ground ball outs are more valuable than fly ball outs and strikeouts even when accounting for GIDP; is a ground ball out less valuable for a TTO-heavy team in a park that is unfriendly to groundballs? I'll try to take a look at this soon.

Why Nakamura Is Suck

2005-02-27T23:07:00.000-08:00

If you're like me, you've probably thought you read the above phrase at least five or six times over the past few days.

Comparing the Projections by Component

2005-02-27T20:29:00.000-08:00

At Minor League Ball today, John Sickels started publishing some of his projections from a system he calls JSPS-2. He didn't mention any of the specifics, and I thought it would be fun to compare his numbers with ZiPS, Marcel, and PECOTA (I'm not the only one- Rob already has a comparison up at 6-4-2).

For this comparison, I wanted to look at the differences by component, rather than by counting totals, to see where the systems differ on each player's skillset.

Here's Dallas McPherson:

Dallas	lwts/600	$BB	$K	$HR	$H	$XB	$3B
JSPS-2	0.3	0.075	0.258	0.067	0.312	0.302	0.172
ZiPS	9.2	0.086	0.305	0.078	0.346	0.288	0.188
PECOTA	7.4	0.1	0.302	0.071	0.343	0.292	0.095
Marcel	-3.9	0.087	0.216	0.051	0.304	0.244	0.091

Including Marcel isn't done to find the best projection; it's more of a baseline, since it uses very little data for players with as little major league playing time as McPherson and the reliability rating it assigns to its McPherson projection is among the lowest for any player.

ZiPS and PECOTA both project very high $H's for McPherson. Although it's certainly a skill McPherson has excelled at coming up, I'm not sure if that's a reasonable expectation. This is the same concern I voiced about Delwyn Young a week ago. Sickels' system also expects McPherson to put the ball into play more than the others do, projecting lower K and BB rates than ZiPS or PECOTA. PECOTA really likes McPherson's ability to draw walks while ZiPS bets high on both home runs and triples.

To take a look at how hard each system projects McPherson to hit the ball, I calculated the average run value of McPherson's batted balls for each projection and then multiplied by 400 to approximate a season's worth of batted balls (we'll call this measure r400b for short, okay?). ZiPS is highest at +47 runs, PECOTA says +42, and JSPS-2 says +30.

Here's Jeremy Reed:

Reed	lwts/600	$BB	$K	$HR	$H	$XB	$3B
JSPS-2	-3.9	0.09	0.125	0.018	0.314	0.243	0.212
ZiPS	-2.3	0.099	0.104	0.023	0.302	0.209	0.172
PECOTA	-3.3	0.086	0.109	0.026	0.303	0.228	0.095
Marcel	11.3	0.096	0.155	0.034	0.339	0.228	0.077

Again, Marcel is only for color- it assigns a very low reliability to its Reed projection. ZiPS and PECOTA are very similar, with the only substantial difference coming from walk rate. JSPS-2 slots in between the two in walk rate but projects a good deal more strikeouts. JSPS-2 also projects high $H and $XB rates, somewhat compensated for by a lower HR rate. Using the same r400b measure from above, there's virtually no spread here: ZiPS -3, Pecota -1, JSPS-2 +0.

Reed's hype rollercoaster has been a lot of fun to watch, as his amount of hype is directly proportional to his batting average on balls in play:

NCAA, 2002: .342
Low-A, 2002: .339
High-A, 2003: .341
AA, 2003: .413
AAA, 2004 (Charlotte): .281
AAA, 2004 (Tacoma): .313
MLB, 2004: .426

My unstudied thought is that the .302-.314 $H range in these Reed projections is probably about right. I'd like to see what the spread in $H under JSPS-2 is, as the similarity between it's $H projections for McPherson and Reed is equal parts encouraging and disconcerting. I'm not really sold that the Mariners would be better off with Reed playing in the majors this season; I don't know that it's better for his development, and I don't see how it benefits Seattle enough to offset the impact of starting his service clock earlier.

In any event, I'm waiting with baited breath to learn more about how John Sickels is doing his projections and what the rationale behind them is.

My Least Favorite Stat

2005-02-25T13:53:00.000-08:00

Projected VORP.

This stat simply should not exist.

If you read this site, there's a good chance you're familiar with VORP (Value Over Replacement Player), a stat that quantifies a player's offensive value relative to a replacement-level offensive contribution at their position. VORP is a highly-contested stat in itself; in my humble opinion, it's waaaaaay overused by those who like it but completely misunderstood and foolishly discarded by its mainstream detractors. The question of quantifying a replacement-baseline as well as the question of measuring value are both problematic. Baseball Prospectus, for example, uses raw stats (1B, 2B, 3B, HR, outs, BB, etc.) in determining value, when a true measure of value would also evaluate context and add win probabilities and so forth. The difference is largely negligible, but it's there.

The problems with VORP, however, are easily dealt with if you know what you're getting into and you know about the context in which a player's VORP was earned. It's a useful summary.

However, a player's projected VORP, a stat I've seen bandied about on sites I frequent quite a bit since the release of BP's PECOTA spreadsheet, tells me very little. Here's an exercies: rank these four players in terms of who you would want to have playing third base for your team in 2005:

Player A: 19.3
Player B: 17.2
Player C: 17.2
Player D: 13.9

Doesn't tell you much, does it? You'd probably gravitate toward listing them based strictly on VORP, but you wouldn't be very confident in your decision. Now let's say I give you EqMLVr, the offensive rate stat upon which VORP is based:

Player C: .096
Player A: .069
Player D: -.017
Player B: -.039

If we prorate that production to 150 games, the difference between Player B and Player C is a full 20 runs, yet they're the same in projected VORP. Now, in a sense, projected VORP is right in creating that difference, and I'll explain why in a second. But if all you have is VORP, you don't know why the difference should be there.

Player A is Andy Marte, player B is Russ Branyan, Player C is Jose Valentin, and Player D is Eric Hinske. Now that you know that, you should be able to intuit why Valentin's VORP outstrips his MLVr by so much: he's counted by the system as a shortstop. Given that the difference between Valentin and Branyan in defense can be reasonably projected at about 20 runs, VORP seems to get this right. However, it gets it right for the wrong reasons: it uses playing time projections and defense-neutral position adjustments. If Valentin fielded like Derek Jeter and Branyan fielded like Scott Rolen, VORP projections would be getting this one clearly wrong.

Now, playing time projections are important for many reasons. For one, since PECOTA uses comparable players, a playing time projection can tell you about how often similar players stayed in the lineup. For another, the amount of playing time in the projection can demonstrate the context from which the projection was derived; Olmedo Saenz won't maintain his offensive rates as an everyday player and so forth.

That being said, the lack of opportunity Branyan received with the two Ohio-based organizations doesn't have much bearing on how good he will be if given a shot at a full-time job. As such, projected VORP is telling us about noise and not talent.

Now, we shouldn't expect VORP to tell us about talent; it's a value measure. The problem is that there's no reason to project value; when looking to the future, we want talent. If you're choosing a player for the season, you want to know their talent and their ability to manifest that talent (i.e. their ability to stay in the lineup and so forth). VORP combines them for us in an ad hoc manner. We don't need that.

For instance, if we know J.D. Drew is an injury risk and have a good idea of the relative probabilities of how many games he'll play, we'll already account for that in building the team by getting a quality fourth outfielder like Ricky Ledee and having players like Cody Ross and Chin-Feng Chen in the wings as right-handed hitters who will be average or better offensively if used as the starters against LHP. Thus, the generic replacement level isn't really germane in considering the actual amount of value that Drew adds to the team nor the value lost if he's injured. VORP essentially averages out Drew's injury risks to get playing time and then multiplies that by his offensive talent level to get VORP. What we really want to do is model Drew's overall contribution to the team; if he plays a full season, the team will score this many runs; if he misses 80 games, they'll score this many runs. Then we weight each scenario by its probability. This is a much better model for projected value.

On top of that, VORP acts as if it knows about a player's defense and baserunning by adding a positional adjustment. It doesn't. Wouldn't you rather know a player's position, defensive ability, and offensive ability separately then to merge them all together?

While VORP is a useful shorthand to describe a player's contribution in a season, it's far from complete. When looking at projections, our goal should be to stay as far away from shorthands as possible; they're distracting. If we care enough about a player's performance to want to project it, how is it possible that we don't care enough about the player's performance to contextualize it in determining value?

Of course, projected VORP doesn't make any claim to tell us the whole story. But I can't think of any reason to use it, and it is taken by many to actually tell most of the story of a player's future. Since all the data to calculate a player's projected VORP can be derived from PECOTA's numbers, projected VORP is only useful insofar as it saves you a little bit of spreadsheet programming. It is counterproductive in that it discourages attempts to combine that data in more useful ways.

Man, I'm cranky this week.

The Whining You Don't Want to Hear

2005-02-24T19:18:00.000-08:00

Too much school. Too much other stuff. Baseball to come soon.

If you haven't checked out The Baseball Analysts, the new home of Bryan Smith and Rich Lederer, you probably don't read my site anyway so this will fall on closed ears. But if you haven't, give it a whirl.

To tide you over, here's a bit from Ken Gurnick that interested me:

Kazuhisa Ishii, sounding confident despite fighting for a spot in the rotation, said he has resumed throwing the splitter he abandoned after arriving in the United States four years ago.

"It was a good pitch for me in Japan, but it didn't feel right with the American baseballs when I came here so I stopped throwing it," said Ishii. "I practiced a lot in Japan with American baseballs over the winter, and I think it can be good for me again."

Anyone got anything on this one?

Delwyn Not-So-Young

2005-02-18T13:10:00.000-08:00

Don't have much time today, but I wanted to pose a discussion question for anyone interested. Dayn Perry just ranked Delwyn Young, who spent last season as the second baseman in high-A Vero Beach, as the 36th best prospect in baseball. Young also was mentioned in a thread on the most underrated prospects in baseball at John Sickels' great new blog, with Sickels himself agreeing.

This came as a surprise to me, as I'd actually thought of Young as perhaps overrated. Young's put up great raw numbers, drawing walks at each level he's played at, putting up .200+ ISO's at each level, and putting up batting averages in excess of .280 at each level.

However, I'm not too sure I believe what Delwyn has done is sustainable. He strikes out a lot, and his $H (a.k.a. batting average on balls in play) has been between .414 and .424 at each level, which is close to off the charts. Even if that's largely due to his talent and not his environment and luck, it's pretty inconceivable that he'll be able to field a $H consistently over .350 in the major leagues. Young's excellent power certainly suggests he's smacking the ball pretty hard, but I think his raw numbers are setting expectations too high.

On top of that, Young has been somewhat old for each of his leagues. A 22-year-old in A-ball is certainly behind the curve for premium prospects. Given that reports of his defense aren't particularly good, I have trouble thinking Young projects as an above-average player at second base - or, for that matter, anywhere else.

Contrast Young to Willy Aybar. Aybar's batting averages have been in the .270 range outside of his first trip through the FSL, and his ISO's have consistently been about .150. His walk rate is pretty much the same as Young's. However, Aybar is a year younger than Young and has been playing a league or more ahead of Young in each season. Their translated performances in 2004 were of roughly equal value, and Aybar's still a year younger. Given also that, if I'm not mistaken, Aybar's defensive outlook looks to be substantially better in the long-term, I'm not sure that Young is that much more valuable. Perry ranked Aybar #98.

True, Young clearly has the better power potential of the two. But given Young's strikeout problems and given that they're not coupled with an outstanding walk rate, he might have a lot of trouble getting on-base enough. I have a hard time thinking it's reasonable to expect Young to be a better than average major league position player (not that there's anything wrong with that).

What do y'all think?

Dodger Stadium

2005-02-16T22:46:00.000-08:00

New article about Dodger Stadium at the Hardball Times by this guy. Check it out.

Some Like It Hot: The St. Valentin's Day Massacre

2005-02-16T16:35:00.000-08:00

From Jon's writeup of Jose Valentin today:

[F]rom July 1, 2004 through the end of the season ... Valentin was awful every which way - particularly so against right-handed pitching, which the Dodgers are counting on him to face at least at the outset of the 2005 campaign. 170 plate appearances is a tiny sample size.

As with Choi, you must always take sample size into account while judging a player. On the other hand, Valentin’s second-half features more at-bats than Choi had, and it comes attached to a player who has been declining for most of the century.

I absolutely cannot agree with this assessment. 175 plate appearances against RHP in one half of a season is a pretty tiny sample size. If you took Derek Jeter's first 175 PA of the year and attempted to conclude that he'd lost it, you'd be dead wrong. The fact that a failure in a player's performance is more recent is of extremely limited predictive value - see Mitchel Lichtman's study on hot and cold streaks. It is much more useful to look at Valentin's season as a whole; in-season trends are of very limited significance.

To say that Valentin had more PA than Choi is a little crazy, since Choi's sample size was microscopic. The lesser of two wrongs is still wrong.

Furthermore, though I think this effect was unintentional, Jon seems to be punishing Valentin for hitting poorly against his core constituency, right-handed pitchers. But his relative success against left-handed pitchers can't be thrown out the window because he won't be asked to face many LHP this season; those plate appearances still reflect his overall hitting skill. It's much sounder to actually use his full .162/.241/.350 line and adjust it upward based on the number of PA he had against LHP. His true talent against RHP relative to his true talent against LHP almost certainly did not change over this period of time.

In addition, there are a number of factors outside of Valentin's actual talent that could be intervening here. It could easily be that Valentin was facing tougher pitchers over that sample. It could also be that Valentin faced more fly ball pitchers over that sample, and the effect of that is almost as significant as the handedness of the pitcher, as Thomas Hanrahan has shown. He also could have had many more games in ballparks that reduced his effectiveness. I don't know if any of this is true, but over such a small sample size there's a good shot that some combination of the above is factoring somewhat heavily.

Furthermore, if we talk about a player's decline it's not very worthwhile for projecting a player's future to talk about a player's decline in total. Let's break down Valentin's performance by component:

	$BB	$K	$HR	$H	$XB
RHP
1st H	0.085	0.261	0.134	0.301	0.277
2nd H	0.089	0.288	0.064	0.167	0.125
LHP
1st H	0.103	0.426	0.029	0.353	0.308
2nd H	0.074	0.36	0.125	0.167	0.231
Total
1st H	0.09	0.306	0.11	0.314	0.283
2nd H	0.084	0.311	0.083	0.167	0.162

The walks and strikeouts stayed virtually the same. Home runs declined somewhat, and particularly against right handed pitchers. However, we're talking of a very marginal difference here - had Valentin had 11 HR against RHP in the second half and 12 in the first half, there would be no difference. Instead he had 16 in the first half and 7 in the second half. I'll leave to you to decide whether a difference of that magnitude constitutes true decline, keeping in mind both the size of the sample and the lack of controls (park factors, strength and type of opposition).

The other key difference was the number of hits on balls in play and the number of hits on balls in play that went for extra bases. This can be significant, yes; it can indicate a loss of bat speed or running speed or a change in type of swing. It can just as easily reflect changes in competition strenght and type, ballpark, opponent's defense, and luck, with luck being the most likely culprit. While the data may reflect an actual decline, the extent to which this data actually suggests an actual substantial decline in talent is very low. If anything, I think it suggests a serious decline in luck, so improvement may be more likely going forward than decline. Keep in mind, too, that his $H in the first half was much higher than it has typically been in the past, and that he has historically trended toward lower second half $H's:

2000: .294 1st half/.302 2nd half
2001: .321/.244
2002: .279/.248
2003: .268/.227

Now, it is significant that Valentin's $H's are declining from year to year; that does indicate decline. But it does not indicate overall decline, as the other components of his performance have not shown any substantial decline over the course of the century. If his $H had stayed constant over the past five seasons, Valentin's GPA's would look like this:

2000: .261
2001: .269
2002: .261
2003: .263
2004: .259

Given the relative variability of batting average on balls in play, it's actually fairly likely that Valentin's $H is set for a rebound.

***

Jon also states that "perhaps he is the hitter’s Derek Lowe - someone that general manager Paul DePodesta has figured will take unique advantage of Dodger Stadium." Jon hit this one on the head. I don't want to get into it here since I have a forthcoming article which will explain it in detail, but Valentin is the kind of hitter that benefits most from Dodger Stadium. The short version is that Chicago and LA both turn a lot of fly balls into home runs and stop them from being doubles and triples. Chicago does this moreso than LA, but LA does it much more than you think. However, Chicago is otherwise pretty much neutral, while almost all other aspects of Dodger Stadium hinder hitters. Thus, Valentin's relative value in Dodger Stadium is maximized.

***

In the comments to Jon's post, somebody quoted a previous post I'd made at length, and one of the things I'd pointed out in the post was that Valentin had been a much better performer with runners in scoring position. Jon took issue with that, arguing that batting with runners in scoring position is likely not a tangible skill. Here I'll first reference Andy Dolphin's study on clutch hitting, which is a must-read. Clutch-hitting is a skill with little spread in true talent, and a good deal of the observed spread is sample noise. However, for some players clutch hitting (and "choking") are real and significant factors. This is not necessarily an issue of performing under pressure; rather, it reflects how a batter's approach fits the situation. If a batter goes to the plate in a tie game with one out and a runner on third in the ninth and swings for a home run, the batter is not providing optimal value. A good batter can change their approach based on the situation. So there is certainly a skill involved.

Does Valentin have this skill? I would argue that he does. With runners on, he strikes out substantially less than he does with the bases empty, and his $H is much higher with runners in scoring position. Obviously, there are sample size issues here, but having a lower $K and higher $H in concert is pretty indicative of an alteration in approach.

Jon rightly points out that one should measure a batter's skill with runners in scoring position "by comparing players to each other, not by comparing a player's RISP stats to his own non-RISP stats. What kind of skill is it when a player is worse when the pressure is off?" That's an excellent point, but it's not relevant to the point I was making when I wrote about Valentin's RISP record. The point I was making is that Valentin's raw numbers undervalue him because his successes are concentrated in places where they are of more value. If you have two .250/.320/.410 hitters and one hits .245/.310/.400 with RISP and the other hits .290/.375/.480 with RISP, the second hitter is more valuable but the raw totals don't reveal it. This is a result not of clutch ability and high moral fiber but of the hitter adapting their skills to the game in better ways.

I'll use Valentin's 2002-2004 situational hitting to demonstrate this point. The base/out data is not freely available, but the baserunner data (i.e., none on, runner on first, etc.) is. Using Tango's base state linear weights, we can compare what Valentin's raw totals indicate to his actual totals. For the period, Valentin's raw lwts are -12, or -4.6 per 600 PA. Using base state data, however, he was +1 or +.3 per 600 PA. That's a 5-run swing per season or roughly half a win.

Now, sample size is still a major concern here, but Valentin had established a substantial trend here and the 02-04 data includes the only season from the 2000 and on data (i.e., what's publicly available) in which he did not demonstrate a large split, and the split for every season but 2003 was of roughly the same size. We should still regress the split, but my very cursory research suggests we should add a +3 RISP adjustment to Valentin's projection.

Once again, this is not an argument that Valentin is particularly clutch or of high moral fiber or whatever; this is an argument that his raw numbers slightly underestimate his value.

On top of all this, of course, is that Valentin is an excellent defender and very good baserunner; those components figure to add about 20 runs to his value (I have +13 for 3B range, +1 for double plays, +2 for baserunning, and +2 for runner advancement and avoiding double plays). Factor in position adjustment, and Valentin has to be a -25 or so batter or worse to be a below average third baseman. If you'll recall my comparison of Marcel, ZiPS, and PECOTA, he was -7, -9, and -25 in those projections. Given that none of those projections, with the possible exception of PECOTA, factors in his likely reduction in PA against southpaws or the +3 RISP adjustment, Valentin's a pretty solid bet to be above average.

The ERA of Innocence

2005-02-14T22:49:00.000-08:00

Noah Lowry=William Van Landingham

-Icaros in comments today at Dodger Thoughts

I don’t mean to pick on Icaros, a valued member of the Dodger blog community. However, I think it’s significant that someone like Icaros – who I know puts a lot of thought into what he writes when he leaves blog comments – would write something like that.

Lowry and VanLandingham do have several things in common. They both pitched in college and they both debuted for the Giants at age 23. VanLandingham pitched 84 innings with a 3.54 ERA in his rookie season while Lowry pitched 92 with a 3.82 ERA.

However, Lowry is left-handed and VanLandingham was right-handed. VanLandingham had a 6.0 K/9 and 4.6 BB/9 while Lowry had a much better 7.0 K/9 and 2.7 BB/9 in his debut. VanLandingham made up the difference by only allowing 4 home runs in his 84 innings, an anomalously low number even if he was, as I seem to recall, a heavy groundball pitcher. Even so, VanLandingham’s ERA benefited much more from defense and fortuity than did Lowry’s.

On top of that, the way Icaros evoked Van Landingham seemed to suggest that Lowry’s success was unsustainable. That’s an odd comparison since Van Landingham had his best season in his second year. Maybe Icaros meant to compare VanLandingham’s second season to Lowry’s first season. His K, HR and BB rate in his second season actually closely resemble Lowry’s 2004 performance. However, the raw numbers are clearly misleading; the run scoring environment Van Landingham played in was much more favorable to pitchers, and relative to league average VanLandingham’s performance didn’t match Lowry’s. On top of that, comparing VanLandingham’s sophomore effort at age 24 to Lowry’s debut at age 23 isn’t exactly apples to apples.

So the two are, through the very early part of their major league career, both above average pitchers pitching three years after being drafted out of college. There are hundreds of pitchers that meet that criteria, and there’s not much to suggest that within that population these two are very similar. In fact, their different peripherals indicate that they’re pretty different pitchers.

So why compare them? Because they’re Giants! Plain and simple. Even though what team two pitchers play for ten years apart has less predictive value than their breakfast cereal, it’s easy to compare the two. We get suckered into a comparison because of our emotions toward the players. I remember the last time the Giants had some hot stud young college pitcher – what a disaster that was! If Lowry flames out, we’ll point to the VanWarningsigns and congratulate our collective memory. If he succeeds, we’ll probably forget that we once made the comparison.

This speaks to what I consider to be perhaps Bill James’ greatest insight. Baseball is full of numbers, he argued, but the typical application of numbers in baseball was based not on the contextual meaning of those numbers but on the emotional and associational impact of the numbers. .304 average? Sign me up! 31 home runs? Wow, a big bopper! James argued that his goal was to strip away that veneer and determine which numbers were important and why.

Treating two pitchers as similar because they played for the same franchise is clearly folly, and I’ll bet that Icaros realized that soon after his initial posting when other Dodger Thoughts commentators described differences between VanLandingham and Lowry.

But still, they seem so alike with those mid-3 ERA’s and IP totals. The thing is, ERA’s and IP are firmly entrenched in our way of thinking about pitchers despite being of limited utility. While most readers of this site are probably quick to mock anybody who trots out Run and RBI totals, ERA and IP aren’t too different from those stats.

In terms of predictive value, the number of innings a pitcher throws in one season doesn’t heavily influence the number he’ll throw in future seasons. There will be correlation, of course, because pitchers are used in fashions that reflect their skill set and because some pitchers have recurring injury issues. However, those are reflected in other statistics as well, and IP doesn’t tell you anything substantial about a player’s true talent level that couldn’t be unearthed with other metrics.

Similarly, ERA doesn’t have great predictive value. A player’s ERA’s will often end up being similar in many years, but it’s the components of ERA that matter in determining how effective a pitcher is. To project pitching performance, it’s necessary to look at how often a pitcher strikes batters out, walks batters, and so forth; it’s not necessary to look at the player’s ERA. The difference between a player’s ERA and what their component figures would predict can be useful, but not because of anything inherent in ERA; ERA is just a way of checking how the other parts of the system add up so that we can see how a pitcher deviates from the standard model in terms of concentration of baserunners and runs and so forth. Those are things which are at the margins of what we look for in a pitcher anyway, though, so ERA’s value in such an endeavor is limited. Moreover, the actual data on how a pitcher’s baserunners and runs are concentrated is superior to extrapolations from ERA, so ERA is at best an imperfect intermediary.

In addition, ERA is useless without reference to the scoring environment in which an ERA is recorded. A 3.00 ERA in a 6 runs per game environment is very different from a 3.20 ERA in a 4.5 runs per game environment, but ERA itself doesn’t elucidate the difference.

While IP and ERA don’t offer much utility in deciphering a pitcher’s true talent level and predicting future performance they do, on face, represent a decent measure of actual observed value. The number of innings a pitcher eats is significant and the average of runs allowed is useful. However, ERA is a poor measure of value; run average is much better, because pitchers have a substantial impact on the amount of errors committed behind them and since runners scoring after reaching on error still have to be moved over. Run average is the useful measure of value, and while RA should always be adjusted for defense in some manner to determine a pitcher’s actual value, ERA makes an adjustment for defense which is entirely ad hoc and doesn’t tell us anything about the pitcher’s value relative to other pitchers.

IP is a pretty good measure of value, although the number of outs the pitcher is responsible for is ultimately what we are looking for and IP takes some short cuts that detract from our ultimately attaining that knowledge. But in another sense, IP doesn’t give a very good sense of value since it treats every inning pitched as the same. While the majority of innings happen in contexts that are close enough to make the distinction meaningless, innings pitched at different times have very different values. Michael Wolverton’s Support-Neutral pitching stats are a way to acknowledge this, and the work of Tangotiger and others on leverage index and win probability added does the same thing. Even then, the overall value of a pitcher to the team depends on how good and how rested the rest of the pitching staff is. Thus, innings pitched, while meaningful for basic calculations of value when more detailed data is not available, is not the best way to assign value.

I don’t mean to say that we should discard IP and ERA, though I wouldn’t mind too much if we did. It’s just that they both represent small parts of the story but measure things that are close enough to what we want to know that we settle for them. That act of settling is, in most cases, not necessary, and it always brings with it a strong risk of distorting our perception.

The point is, the numbers that we look at in attempting to compare players should be tested on two fronts. The first is the data's ability to determine the player's true talent level and thus future performance. The second is the data's ability to determine the player's actual value over a period of time. ERA and Innings Pitched do neither very well, and the franchise a player is employed by probably doesn't do either one at all.

re: Around the Horn: Bullpen

2005-02-10T22:57:00.000-08:00

Quick reactions to Ken Gurnick's Around the Horn: Bullpen, though this feels redundant to me:

Of all the "Moneyball" assumptions about Dodgers general manager Paul DePodesta, the one he really laid to waste was the minimization of the closer.

That's the one that had Eric Gagne fans dreading that DePodesta would include the franchise's greatest reliever in one of the many winter housecleaning moves to redistribute payroll, the way the Oakland A's did with Jason Isringhausen and Keith Foulke when DePodesta was an assistant there.

One of the great "Moneyball" misconceptions is that the sabermetrically-inclined devalue the importance of a dominant closer. That's inaccurate. The argument is that certain pitchers are overvalued because they have been used in the ninth inning. That's without question true; Jose Mesa and Dan Kolb come to mind from just this past offseason.

Eric Gagne is simply a great relief pitcher. He pitches most in the 9th inning, and pitching in the 9th inning is typically very valuable. So part of his recent value comes from him having pitched in the 9th inning in the recent past, but his ability - and thus his future value - doesn't derive from him having pitched in the ninth inning.

Jose Mesa, on the other hand, is a solid reliever but no great shakes. By virtue of recording a lot of saves last season, the Pirates awarded him a $2.5 million contract this season, pretty out of line with his actual value to Pittsburgh.

Pitching successfully in the 9th inning is a skill unto itself, but the distribution of talent among major league relievers in this skill is such that it's not a skill worth considering in most cases. A group of pitchers whose talent means a 3.50 ERA will probably all fare the same as "closers" because the added requirements of pitching in the ninth inning aren't substantially different from what pitching successfully in the rest of the game requires. There may be a few pitchers who excel or flop with a small lead in the ninth, but determining who they are is tricky and most people's attempts to do so are based on small samples. Looking at who has been a closer in the past will tell you next to nothing, and it's the last question of any relevance I would ask about a reliever.

Thus, the notion that closers are overvalued is not an argument that teams don't need good relievers or that good relievers shouldn't be used to protect leads. It's an argument that relievers become overvalued once they are deemed closers.

On top of that, the examples Gurnick cites as closers the A's included in "winter housecleaning moves to redistribute payroll," Isringhausen and Foulke, were both free agents, and the A's made a very strong effort to retain Foulke. Gagne, on the other hand, still had two arbitration-eligible seasons. Apples and pomelos.

The world knows well Gagne's achievements, but it's easy to overlook the spear carriers that make it possible. For the better part of two seasons, Guillermo Mota set up Gagne, but DePodesta dealt Mota at the trade deadline last July because that's what it took (along with Paul Lo Duca and Juan Encarnacion) to get Brad Penny.

Well, he also got Hee Seop Choi and Billy Murphy, although Murphy was squandered on Steve Finley. Mota certainly pitched well for the better part of two seasons, but the only time he was the "set-up man," so to speak, was in 2004; that 8th inning role was Paul Quantrill's in 2003.

The reason DePodesta was willing to include Mota and tamper with the chemistry of the best bullpen in the game was his confidence in relatively unknown Mota-clone Yhency Brazoban, who quickly hop-scotched from Double-A to Triple-A to Gagne's new setup man in a matter of months.

Must be a nature vs. nurture thing, since Mota's clone is three inches shorter and thirty pounds lighter. Brazoban is much more of a power pitcher than Mota, although they were both converted position players who were traded to the Dodgers. Maybe Brazoban is a Felix Rodriguez clone, too.

In any event, while Brazoban is good he's also easily the current Dodger most overrated by Dodger fans, non-Izturis category. Anyone check out his walk rate? When Brazoban is posting a 3.90 ERA in August and voices murmur about how the Dodgers ruined another can't-miss prospect, I'm going to be very angry.

Carrara is fearless and durable with the kind of mental makeup to rebound from a bad outing.

He would have to be after his 2003 campaign.

Duaner Sanchez might be the most intriguing arm behind Gagne's. He was picked up off waivers last winter, and his first full Major League season was a huge success with a 3.38 ERA over 80 innings.

Sample size + defense + park factor. Duaner is backing up Yhency on the overrated index. He's not bad at all, but he hasn't had a K:BB over 2 in two and a half seasons above AA. He has a ways to go.

Wilson Alvarez has the resume to be the fifth starter, but Tracy believes he is better suited as this stage of his career as a left-handed reliever, an area where the Dodgers lack depth. Non-roster candidates to back up Alvarez include Mike Venafro and Kelly Wunsch.

Alvarez is far too good of a pitcher to be used as just a lefty-killer. He also has shown a reverse platoon split of late, though that's probably more small sample hijinks than anything else. While the notion of there being an 8th-inning guy is highly problematic, if anyone should be it it's him.

Also, the quality of the lefties that DePodesta acquired for free this offseason is solid. Frank Brooks, whom Gurnick doesn't even note has blessed paw status, would be a pretty good LOOGY if given the shot. His AAA numbers last season don't look too good because the Pirates tried converting him back to a starter for a little while. Also, Kelly Wunsch has been a pretty good major league LOOGY for several years, though he's too liberal with the BB and HBP to be a top-tier lefty.

That Meager H

2005-02-08T21:42:00.000-08:00

The "meager" puns - phonetically inaccurate as they are - continued to follow me with my debut at The Hardball Times. Check it out. There should also be a Dodger-relevant article from me up at THT later this week.

Multiplicity: The Fourth Outfielder Challenge

2005-02-05T12:31:00.000-08:00

Taking a page out of a Michael Keaton movie I've never seen, I'm looking for folk who want to write for the Fourth Outfielder. The reasons why should be clearer in a few days.

This job description is subject to change, but here it goes:

Write one or more entries most weeks. The topic of the site is baseball in general and the Los Angeles Dodgers in particular. The site's principle methodology is applying sabermetric insight to the operations of the Los Angeles Dodgers. An interest in sabermetrics and some familiarity is required; expertise is not.

The ideal candidate will be skilled in applying baseball knowledge creatively and focusing on the interrelation of multiple concepts.

Compensation: none.

If you'd like to write here, e-mail me telling me why and what you expect to contribute. Writing samples (baseball or otherwise) are a plus, but not mandatory.

If you want to show off your skills, here are a few questions you can attempt to address to get my attention or get on my good side. Choosing one and going in-depth is probably more purposeful than attempting to briefly answer each.

1. How does Jayson Werth's disproportionate number of plate appearances against LHP last season affect his projections?

2. How much money should the Dodgers have been willing to pay Norihiro Nakamura?

3. What kind of value did the Dodgers receive on Eric Gagne's re-signing?

4. The 2005 Dodgers are in Houston and Cesar Izturis is at bat with Milton Bradley on first, none out, and Brad Lidge pitching. It's the ninth inning and the Dodgers trail 5-4. J.D. Drew is on deck with Kent, Choi, Werth, and Valentin to follow. Should Izturis bunt?

5. Rank the top eight players in the Dodgers' farm system by value.

Start your engines.

Marcel ZiPS alongside PECOTA, or How I Learned To Quit Worrying and Love Non-Humorous Half-Pun Titles

2005-01-28T17:21:00.000-08:00

By request of Tangotiger by way of Jon Weisman, I’m delving into three sets of offensive projections for the 2005 Dodgers to see how they stack up. The projection systems in question are Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA (subscribers only), Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS, and Tangotiger’s Marcel.

Projection systems have a bit of a Rorschach effect; the goals and methods depend on whomsoever produces them, and the results can therefore vary substantially in even very similar systems. The three systems in question here use a very similar process: take the player’s recent performance numbers and regress them. Simple enough, but the question of what population to regress toward varies substantially. In other words, what population (slap-hitting 5’7” guys, power hitting 6’2” guys, and so forth) players are grouped in for regression analysis differs greatly depending on the system. PECOTA’s at one end of the spectrum, putting a great deal of effort into finding a population of similar players for comparison, and Marcel is at the other end of the spectrum, using extremely basic population definitions.

Each approach has its merits. Better defining the population a player belongs to will yield a better projection. Taking the extra steps to do so, though, is often statistically problematic, as defining a player as part of a population on the basis of his performance record creates something of a cross-fertilization effect. For any group of players who are, from a true talent standpoint, very similar, some will have underperformed over a period of time and others will have overperformed. Thus, looking only at those players who hit one home run every 20 at bats over a three-year period doesn’t necessarily define the true population of a player who has hit one home run every 20 at bats over the past three seasons. Thus, there’s certainly an accuracy argument to be made for systems which privilege elegance and simplicity; the relative minimalism of Marcel and to ZiPSs is useful for reasons beyond their accessibility.

Throw on top of those concerns the highly contested world of statistic translations – different applications of park factors, different calculations for minor league equivalencies, and so forth – and you should expect a substantial amount of noise separating different projections. In other words, these projections, like bland soup, come with several mandatory shakes of salt.

Taking a look at the Dodgers, it’s pretty easy to catch a few general trends in the differences between the projection systems. For example, Marcel tends toward higher batting averages and lesser secondary production from most players than ZiPS or PECOTA.

Furthermore, how we compare projections can be somewhat problematic. The HBP, SF, SH, and IBB aren’t counted in the data that Baseball Prospectus publishes, and ZiPS is also SH and SF deficient. To convert the numbers into runs, then, I can either re-run all the numbers to give myself a guess of how many SF/SH/IBB etc. each system is working with, or I can use a blanket system which pretends that those events don’t exist. To maintain my admittedly limited sanity, I opted for the latter, using a modified linear weights system (which I have assonantly and perhaps asininely termed “Fake Weights”) to compare the projections. I could get into the formula here, but it’s probably of little interest to anyone; I’ll just say that I compared it with straight linear weights for the Marcels and the MLVR’s for the PECOTA’s to ensure it was about right. For each individual player, it shouldn’t really impact the differences between projections. The Fake Weights are not position adjusted.

For each player, I’ve listed their high and low projections with Fake Weights and Gross Production Average, as well as the average of the three systems. Fake Weights are prorated to 620 plate appearances since, well, playing time projections are worth roughly what the vice presidency was worth to Cactus Jack Garner. Also, try not to freak out by how low these look; they’re not park adjusted and they’re based on Dodger Stadium (or whatever statistical model of it the various projection authors chose to use; if I recall correctly, ZiPS and PECOTA both made minor ad hoc adjustments for the renovation). Also, I only looked at current Dodgers who appear on all three projection systems and have some degree of likelihood to make the club to start the season. Cody Ross, Henri Stanley, Chin-Feng Chen, and Brian Myrow were all left off one or more of the published datasets, and I didn’t get around to DFA survivor Joe Thurston.

J.D. Drew
High: ZiPS (+34.1, .312). Low: Marcel (+27.5, .303)
Average: .285/.395/.518, +30, .307
Marcel and PECOTA were roughly the same for Drew; Marcel gives him a slightly higher batting average while PECOTA assigns slightly more walks and power. ZiPS bets the over in all three categories.

Hee Seop Choi
High: PECOTA (+18.3, .292). Low: Marcel (+8.4, .274)
Average: .253/.367/.465, +12.3, .281
Choi is the kind of player for whom we can expect PECOTA to be higher than Marcel and ZiPS, since his power thus far in his major league career has been strangely absent (relatively speaking) despite having the minor league pedigree and the scoutish projectability. The only major difference among the projections is that PECOTA’s high on his power. I’d probably take the over on that +12.3.

Jeff Kent
High: Marcel (+15.1, .284). Low: ZiPS (+7, .274)
Average: .280/.342/.498, +10.6, .278
Marcel bets the over, ZiPS the under, and PECOTA’s .276/.341/.498 approximates the average.

Milton Bradley
High: ZiPS (+11.6, .281). Low: PECOTA (+7.5, .275)
Average: .278/.370/.447, +10, .278
Not a lot of spread here. Marcel digs his power, ZiPS digs his walks. No real substantive differences.

Jayson Werth
High: Marcel (+4.5, .269). Low: ZiPS (+0.4, .265)
Average: .257/.336/.465, +3, .267
Marcel likes his batting average and not his walks, PECOTA likes his power and not his batting average, and ZiPS only likes his walks. Not a big spread here.

Olmedo Saenz
High: ZiPS (+1.9, .271). Low: PECOTA (-9.2, .258)
Average: .259/.341/.446, -2.2, .265
PECOTA digs his walks but sees a batting average collapse (.244).

Ricky Ledee
High: Marcel (-0.9, .260). Low: PECOTA (-6.9, .249)
Average: .236/.331/.426, -3.8, .255
PECOTA’s not a fan of the Dodger’s older role players, jeering Ledee’s average and power. ZiPS strongly resembles that average line.

Mike Rose
High: Marcel (-3, .258). Low: ZiPS (-4.9, .255)
Average: .254/.349/.395, -4.2, .256
It’s tough to get these projection systems to agree more on one player’s offensive value, although they disagree substantially on how he’ll get there. Marcel is high on his batting average and power but low on his walks (.267/.333/.433), while the other two expect his walks to keep up but PECOTA says yes power no average and ZiPS says yes average no power. Cherry-picking the worst components yields .242/.309/.360; cherry-picking the best yields .267/.378/.433.

Antonio Perez
High: Marcel (-0.6, .260). Low: PECOTA (-11.9, .248)
Average: .260/.337/.406, -7.8, .253
If you want to wager on his rate stats, bet the over since he’ll see a ton more left-handed pitchers per PA than this data assumes. ZiPS roughly matches PECOTA on this one.

Jason Grabowski
High: ZiPS (-7.3, .253). Low: Marcel (-12.6, .245)
Average: .245/.325/.410, -9.4, .249
Only substantial difference here: Marcel doesn’t care for Grabowski’s secondary skills.

Jose Valentin
High: PECOTA (-6.7, .252). Low: ZiPS (-25, .229)
Average: .226/.297/.441, -13.5, .244
PECOTA (.235/.312/.445) and Marcel (.233/.301/.460) pretty much agree on him, with PECOTA more optimistic on his walks and Marcel more optimistic on his power. ZiPS doesn’t share PECOTA’s discipline optimism or Marcel’s power optimism and throws a skunky .209 batting average into the mix. This dish may need even more salt, since Valentin faced southpaws much more in 2004 than he will in 2005 and because his overall offensive value will likely outstrip his raw totals since he’s shown outstanding situational hitting tendencies.

Dioner Navarro
High: Marcel (+6.5, 271). Low: ZiPS (-25.4, .229)
Average: .264/.326/.387, -14, .243
Marcel (.286/.353/.451) seems to have messed this one up, and I’m tempted to say a data error (perhaps deriving from his wildly successful cup of coffee in September) is at fault. ZiPS pegs him at –23.1, so Marcel is clearly the outlier. ZiPS likes his average and not his power while PECOTA likes the power and not the average. It’s hard to imagine the Dodgers will burn a year of his service time this season.

Dave Ross
High: Marcel (-14.1, .235). Low: ZiPS (-22.6, .223)
Average: .228/.311/.410, -17.3, .242
Marcel likes his batting average, PECOTA likes his secondary average, and ZiPS likes neither.

Cesar Izturis
High: ZiPS (-18.6, .235). Low: PECOTA (-25.4, .225)
Average: .273/.312/.361, -21.1, .231
PECOTA, as has become a theme, is higher on his walks than the other two, but it doesn’t think much of his batting average (.261). ZiPS dislikes his “power” but sees him keeping most of his watershed batting average (.284). Marcel splits the difference on average, kind of digs the “power,” and is pessimistic on the walks.

Paul Bako
High: Marcel (-26.7, .224). Low: ZiPS (-41.3, .205)
Average: .224/.299/.321, -34.7, .215
His best projection is lower than anybody else’s worst projection, although it’s close. Kind of like Jose Valentin if you take away all of the home runs. He’s pretty much replacement level with the bat for a catcher, so if he’s about a run per week better than Ross behind the plate he makes sense. I’m not touching evaluations of catchers’ defense with a pole of any reasonable length, so I won’t engage in any conjecture.

Finding Fish in the Fruit Salad

2005-01-22T13:59:00.000-08:00

If you do your share of baseball reading, you've probably read several articles recently about the need for scouting and statistical analysis to coexist. I absolutely agree. Sometimes, however, I see something that makes it very hard to stomach the notion that most scouts are competent at what they do.

Sean McAdam's article about the best base stealer in baseball had that effect on me:

Consulting with a number of scouts and front office executives, the usual suspects surfaced: Seattle's Ichiro Suzuki, Tampa Bay's Carl Crawford and the White Sox's Scott Podsednik included.

But the one name everyone mentioned, without fail, was the Florida Marlins' Juan Pierre, who has stolen 203 bases over the last four years, an average of nearly 51 per season. Last year, he stole 45 (Podsednik had 70 to lead the majors; Crawford's 59 was tops in the AL).

Still, this isn't who steals the most, or even who runs the fastest. Pierre would lose both of those contests. Crawford may be baseball's fastest player, and Podsednik has more total steals over the last two seasons. It's generally agreed that Ichiro could steal far more often if he -- or the Mariners -- so chose.

But one expert after another said Pierre is the guy they'd want running if they needed someone to steal a big base.

"First of all,'' explains one major league executive, "he's got good instincts. Speed is one thing; instincts are another. He gets great leads, and that shows he's not afraid to get picked off. And that's another trait you look for: fearlessness. The great ones have it.''

Added a longtime scout: "Some guys -- for lack of a better word -- outrun the ball. Pierre's not one of those guys. But he's plenty fast enough and he uses his speed well. He's the kind of guy who maximizes his ability.''

That all looks pretty reasonable... except that Pierre was caught 24 times last season, with his 45-for-69 good for a 65% success rate. If you've read your Tom Ruane, you know that that's just not acceptable. 2004 was Pierre's worst SB year, but his success rate of 75% entering 2004 was only a little bit ahead of the break even point, and for a fast runner that's pretty unacceptable since the marginal value of a stolen base is less. For someone with Pierre's speed to be as unsuccessful as he's been, I'd tend to think of him as one of the worst base stealers in baseball. It's pretty tough to agree with the above statement that "the great ones have [fearlessness]" if that fearlessness means that they make decisions on the basepaths that reduce their team's ability to win the game. In fairness, it was a baseball executive who gave that quotation. However, the longtime scout's assessment that Pierre "maximizes his ability" clearly flies in the face of the available evidence.

Ah, but McAdam has the apologia for Pierre's success rate:

Pierre was caught 24 times in 69 tries last year -- a far less successful ratio than Podsednik, who was nabbed just 13 times in 83 attempts. But that, too, can be deceiving.

"He steals when it means something,'' says another talent evaluator. "He's not padding his total. Everyone knows he's going and he still makes it most of the time. That, to me, is the mark of a really great basestealer.''

That's a reasonable argument; if Pierre runs at times when the stolen base is very clearly the best strategic option, his numbers could be skewed. Let's take a look, using the splits at ESPN.com:

2004
2 out: 17 for 23, 74%
0-1 out: 28 for 46, 61%
"Close and Late": 4 for 4, 50%
Not close or not late: 41 for 61, 67%

2002-2003
2 out: 41 for 49, 84%
0-1 out: 61 for 95, 64%
"Close and Late": 10 for 14, 71%
Not close or not late: 102 for 130, 78%

That certainly doesn't support the thesis that McAdams reports; Pierre is actually having a disproportionate number of successes with 2 outs, which is the time when the negative value of a caught stealing is at its lowest, meaning that he's doing the opposite of maximizing his value by failing on so many steals with fewer than two outs. His 64% success in close and late situations over the past three seasons does somewhat skew his numbers, but he's only at 75% otherwise, so it doesn't drive down his numbers that much and he doesn't attempt too many of them anyway. As such, it's extremely difficult for me to lend credence to the scouting evaluations in question.

If you want to know what a 19-year-old player will do five years down the line, scouting will probably tell you as much or more than statistics. But there's a point at which scouting reaches diminished marginal returns, and statistical modeling gets better proportional to the amount of data available. As such, if you want to make an assessment of who the best fielders, baserunners, and so forth are, scouting will do a great job if you don't have the numbers, but if you have a reasonable amount of data collection taking place scouting is, from an evaluation standpoint, not going to add much to the discussion too often.

2005 Dodgers: Cesar Izturis

2005-01-19T00:01:00.000-08:00

You know about Cesar Izturis’ defense. It’s good, if overrated.

You know about Izturis’ batting. He’s a light-hitter, but he’s shown substantial improvement in each of his seasons as a regular. He doesn’t walk much, but that area of his game is certainly improving. He’s not a power hitter, but he gets a decent share of doubles and triples thanks to his speed. Given that his isolated power is so closely tied to his speed, it’s unlikely to expect it to ever exceed .100 or so. All told, Izturis’ value as a hitter depends on whether he can continue to rapidly improve his plate discipline and whether he can maintain a batting average in the .280 neighborhood. There’s reason for optimism, but not for enthusiasm, if that makes sense.

What I want to talk about is Izturis’ baserunning. No doubt his biggest advocates will, after devoting drool to his defense for a few moments, refer to his 25 stolen bases last season. His detractors would counter that he was caught 9 times, so his actual success (73.5%) was just above the 71% general rule for the break-even point on stolen base attempts. Given that Izturis was only 25 for 38 prior to 2004 and that the average player’s stolen base abilities peak at age 24, it’s unlikely to expect Izturis to be a great base theft going forward.

But that’s how we’d evaluate Izturis raw value as a base-stealer, not his baserunning in general. Baserunning value is heavily linked to the quality of hitters hitting behind the base runner. As such, the question about Izturis that interests me most is how can the Dodgers best leverage his baserunning abilities.

Tom Ruane has done the key work in understanding when runners should attempt stolen bases, and you may be surprised by one of his main findings: very fast baserunners tend to actually cost their teams runs by attempting to steal. Few runners are successful enough stealing bases to outweigh the heightened cost of losing a speedy runner from the basepaths. Fast runners on first base increase the chances of scoring runs because they tend to take the extra base on hits and they slightly reduce the number of double plays and substantially decrease the number of fielder’s choices so that more ground balls advance the runner. As such, the break even point for fast runners on SB attempts is much higher because the opportunity cost from a CS is higher and the value added from the successful SB is lower.

Also important is that if better hitters are coming up, the stolen base attempt is less valuable and the CS is much more harmful. In a lineup of nine completely average hitters, it wouldn’t matter where you put your fast runner. However, if the ninth hitter was removed and replaced with a pitcher, the most valuable slot for a base stealer would be #8, since there’s less risk in running and a proportionately higher reward. That’s the value of stolen bases, though; if the player in question also adds value through speedy baserunning, then their overall baserunning value might be more valuable elsewhere.

Now, if you read this blog regularly you’re familiar with the idea that the Dodgers’ offensive composition consists mostly of players who loosely qualify for “Three True Outcomes” status: hitters whose game consists of many home runs, walks, and strike outs. Alternately, it can be said that the hallmark of TTO hitters is providing offensive value without putting the ball into play very often. Jayson Werth, J.D. Drew, Hee Seop Choi, Jose Valentin, and Milton Bradley all very clearly fit the description, even if none of them have quite attained TTO-hero status thus far. When Dave Ross is productive, he also clearly qualifies. Jeff Kent is pretty much the opposite: he’s a well-rounded offensive player who puts the ball in play more than average.

As such, Izturis’ value as a baserunner can be leveraged best by hitting in front of Jeff Kent and refraining from stolen base attempts outside of situations where a one-run strategy is clearly warranted. When Izturis reaches base, his value from base advancement will come into play most if he’s followed by Kent because Kent puts the ball into play more than any of the other Dodger regulars. Thus, if Jim Tracy is hell-bent on having Izturis hit lead off, he should probably also restrict his stolen base attempts and put Kent behind him. That’s not to say that with a player besides Kent in the #2 slot Izturis should be attempting stolen bases; they’re actually of even less marginal utility in front of the TTO types because their walks won’t advance Izturis if he’s just stolen a base. If Izturis is on base with good hitters on deck, he shouldn’t be running in most circumstances, period.

Now, Izturis #1 and Kent #2 would best leverage Izturis’ baserunning value, but that doesn’t mean that his overall value is optimized in that situation. The leadoff hitter will receive the most plate appearances, so having Izturis hit first isn’t likely to be a great idea unless his OBP improves dramatically again. While Izturis’ speed and lack of home runs make him of the right skill set for a lead off hitter, the composition of his ability to get on base is not optimized by hitting first. Lead off hitters have the fewest runners to advance, so the value of Izturis’ solid batting average (if it does indeed remain solid) is partially diminished as a leadoff hitter. As such, he’s not a great choice for hitting leadoff if your team has another fast player who gets on base more often and draws a good deal of walks. A pretty good description of Milton Bradley, isn’t it?

Now, a good deal of Bradley’s value comes from his home run power, which is certainly not maximized by hitting leadoff. However, Bradley doesn’t hit that many home runs, so the loss isn’t too huge. Furthermore, though I hesitate much more than most to look at situational hitting to evaluate future performance, Bradley has shown a huge trend toward performing much better with the bases empty, including his home run power. Moreover, Izturis has been better with runners on and with runners in scoring position, and while the confidence level on those trends maintaining is fairly low given the sample size, it’s more reasonable to expect those trends to continue than to expect them to reverse. As such, Bradley looks like a much better choice to hit leadoff than Izturis. Izturis should probably figure in at seventh or eighth. I expect to get more into the nuts and bolts of the Dodgers’ lineup construction in the future, so stay tuned if this interests you.

But what about the money? Izturis gets between either $9.9m for 3 years or or $15.45m for 4 years, with another $450K possible if he wins the next three gold gloves. That’s not a great deal for an arbitration eligible player, and it’s certainly a high risk deal relative to arbitration. The reward kicks in, obviously, if Izturis continues the growth he’s shown at the plate and turns into a top-tier shortstop. I’m not sold that that outweighs the risk involved, but if the Dodgers got a good insurance policy than it probably does. If Izturis puts up the .284/.323/.360 line ZiPS projects, he’s only a few runs off of the .267/.313/.393 the average NL shortstop put up last season. Expanding the numbers to include the AL shortstops as well, Izturis is a little further behind the pack, but if he matches his defensive production from last season then he figures to be a few runs above average overall among major league shortstops. Given his youth, he figures to add in a few extra runs on top of that, so he projects as a marginally above average shortstop for the next few seasons. He certainly projects much better than the Cristian Guzman, who will make more money over the next four seasons, though comparing him to a free agent is misleading even before factoring in the Jim Bowden factor. Izturis is worth four or five mil per, and for an arbitration player over the next three seasons three and a half per is about right. As far as deals to buy out the entirety of a player’s arbitration years go, this is a good one.

I Can't Think of Any Pedro Feliz Puns

2005-01-18T19:00:00.000-08:00

I've been very busy, so my apologies for not posting for the past week. I'll try to get some in-depth stuff up about the Gagne and Izturis deals soon, but in the mean time I've got a little polemic about a different NL West signing.

Brian Sabean recently inked Pedro Feliz, and here's the requisite reportage that raised my eyebrows:

The 29-year-old Feliz, considered to be one of the team's key players for the future, gets a $200,000 signing bonus and will earn base salaries of $2,225,000 in 2005 and $3,625,000 in 2006. He can also make an additional $450,000 in bonuses each season based on plate appearances, and his 2006 salary could rise to as high as $4.1 million, depending on plate appearances this year.

Giants general manager Brian Sabean and manager Felipe Alou are committed to trying to find a starting spot for Feliz this year. They believe he's ready to be an everyday player.

Feliz hit .276 with 22 homers and 84 RBI last season, playing regularly for the first time, and made $925,000. Alou had promised him 400 at-bats, but Feliz finished with 503 and Alou sees him as a 600-650 at-bat player who can drive in more than 100 runs a season.

He played 70 games at first base last season, 51 at third, 20 at shortstop and two each in left and right field.

Feliz is primarily a third baseman, and despite the friendly triple crown stats his offensive value is fairly limited because walks:Feliz::flyballs:Lowe. His offense has been pretty much league average, which makes him a below average offensive contributor at the corners. His defense is, based on most evaluations I'm familiar with, hovering just above average.

For all of this, Feliz makes $2.425 this season and $3.625 in 2006, with up to $450K per season in plate appearance-based incentives.

Now, I'm not the biggest Edgardo Alfonzo or J.T. Snow fan, but Feliz is hardly an upgrade over either one of them, and I have no clue how a player of his caliber and age can be considered "one of the team's key player's of the future." Well, I take that back: if your methods of performance analysis are limited to the triple crown stats and if you think the average player's prime is ages 36-39, then this deal makes some sense, and that may more or less represent the world Brian Sabean is functioning in.

If Feliz is a regular, then he makes $6.9m for two seasons. That, by itself, doesn't look too bad; the general rule is that a league average regular makes $4 million per, and it's not unreasonable for a 40th percentile kind of player like Feliz to be making $3.4 per. That is, unless you own exclusive negotiating rights, in which case it's ridiculous. By contrast, the Dodgers signed Jose Valentin, a similar low OBP high SLG offensive performer whose offensive projection is roughly the same (with the obvious caveat that it's more walk and less single driven). Valentin, however, also has the distinction of being one of the best defensive players in baseball. Even if it's fiated that Valentin has to be used at third instead of shortstop, Valentin should be earning more, but his 2005 salary will exceed Feliz' average annual cost over the next two seasons by between $475K and $25K, depending on Feliz' playing time. Valentin was a free agent; Feliz was offered his contract to buy out his arbitration seasons. There's no way that, given the circumstances, Feliz should be making roughly the same amount.

Now, it's also true that we might expect Feliz and Valentin to make about the same amount because Feliz possesses overvalued skills and a good chunk of Valentin's skill set is undervalued. That, however, is not a reason to pay full price on Feliz; even if the arbitors are to get gooey-eyed from Feliz's triple crown stats and "youth", that doesn't mean the Giants have to pay for him. Non-tender him and move along. Finding a right handed corner infielder on the cheap who will give you league average is pretty darn easy.

What's more is that overpaying for Feliz is largely a result of the Giants' uberveteran philosophy. If their infield had a higher health index than that of Snow, Durham, Vizquel, and Durham, they wouldn't need to spend a lot for the first guy off the bench. Instead, they've pursued a strategy that typically requires both slightly overpaying veterans in free agency and having to overpay for young backups. There's somewhat less risk involved in this strategy because a major injury will have limited effect, but it requires overpaying all around. Given that the Giants are apparently quite restricted financially, it's not a strategy that makes a lot of sense to me. It's with its merits, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Bag Edition

2005-01-11T07:47:00.000-08:00

Here's a collection of questions I've received one way or another recently and my attempts to supply answers. Names have been removed to protect the innocent. No mail featuring the word "st0ck" made this mailbag, even though I receive about 20 times as much of that.

I don't get your rule 5 column. Matt Kemp was drafted at age 18, so he's not eligible. And Dowdy, Hamilton, and Hammes look pretty useless to me. Adding six players to the roster happens almost every year.

An apology is in order. Matthew Kemp made my list twice - once as Kemp and once as Brett Dowdy, who for whatever reason I confused with Kemp. My credibility is shot. Kemp indeed won't be eligible; I simply thought he would be because when I was quickly checking, "Midwest City" next to his named made me think he was drafted out of community college.

My point, however, was not "Look at these 10 guys who'll need to be protected next year!" My point was that there will be more players to protect than is typical next season, and there aren't many players who are scheduled to come off the roster. As of today, the Dodgers have 40 players on the 40-man roster, which shakes down to 39 with Dreifort on the 60-day DL.

Of those 40, 6 (Perez, Drew, Ledee, Kent, Alvarez, Lowe) are due guaranteed money next season. Two players (Dessens and Ishii) will have club options, and five (Weaver, Dreifort, Bako, Saenz, Valentin) will be free agents. Six (Carrara, Gagne, Penny, Izturis, Bradley, and super-2 Choi) will be arbitration-eligible. The other 21 players on the roster will be due the minimum.

So the Dodgers can be expected to discard seven players, but it's hard to see more turn over than that without trades.

How many spots will the Dodgers need? Well, that depends on how many players the Dodgers will have worth protecting. Guzman, Loney, LaRoche, Broxton, Miller, Navarro, and Megrew will all almost certainly deserve protection. After that, there's a crop of pitchers - Schmoll, Hammes, Hamilton, and the three acquired from Arizona - that have a solid shot of being worth protection. Schmoll had an outstanding season in 2004, and if he keeps it up will definitely be worth prtoecting. Hammes has done poorly so far, but his ceiling is high enough that if he has a good season next year he'd be worth protecting. Hamilton is a lefty who tore through A-ball at age 21, and if he repeats his 2004 performance in AA he'd almost certainly be taken in the Rule 5 Draft. Juarez' peripherals were excellent in 2004 and will probably be worth protection. If Beltran Perez steps up, he'll be worth protection as well.

So even if the Dodgers are ready to replace Weaver, Ishii, Valentin, Saenz, Dessens, and Bako with what they have on hand (which would probably be the case if Jackson, Hanrahan, Navarro, and Guzman or Antonio Perez step up, but otherwise could be difficult), they would still have no space for the crop of second tier pitching prospects.

Is that a reason to panic? Of course not. It is, however, a reason to believe that some of the young players currently on the roster or some of the players who are coming up will be traded. That doesn't mean Guzman or Loney is on the block; it does mean that we can expect at least players like Chin-Feng Chen, Joey Thurston, Dave Ross, and Henri Stanley to be moved.

You might be thinking that those guys are no big loss. Well, that's true in a sense; none of them look to have very high ceilings at this point. However, those are also all players who will have some value at least as role players at the major league level. Each one has value, and it would be unfortunate if they were simply discarded without the Dodgers receiving anything of value in return.

The argument is not that the Dodgers should go out and trade a bunch of young players before they expire; the argument is that, as a fan, I expect that these resources will be put to use soon.

* * *

I have been thinking about it and thinking about it. Why overpay for Perez or Lowe? Your answer has been as compelling as any I have seen, but I wanted to run something else by you.

Could it have something to do with the age old analogy of good pitching beats good hitting? Anotherwards, even though the wins shares generated by signing #2 SP's are less than if the cash was instead spent on superb offense, when push comes to shove, all those good bats you spent money on will underperform in the playoffs when they run up against good pitching.

Would the Dodgers be better off throwing 5 cheap SP's pitchers out there(say Dessens, Jackson, Harahan, Ketchner and Alvarez) and instead spend the 35 million being allocated to our rotation on Varitek, Beltre and Delgado?

Our lineup would be awesome(Izturis, Bradley, Drew, Beltre, Delgado, Kent, Varitek, Werth) and I think would be worth more win shares than having our current starting staff. In the playoffs though, wouldn't we be worse off?

For one, why pay for Delgado when you've already got Choi? For another, as unpopular as letting Beltre go was, his defense is replaced by Valentin and his offense, while excellent in 2004, is a major candidate for regression and it's hard to figure the difference between him and Valentin is worth $10 million.

Varitek is another similar case, as the difference between him and Mike Rose is not worth nearly $10 million. To pry him from Boston would have taken a bigger contract than the questionable one Boston signed him to, and he's a bigger long-term risk than either Lowe or Perez.

Furthermore, as I mentioned on Friday, there is a long-term cost in starting players' service time clocks early. Throwing Jackson or Hanrahan out there now is a short-term fix with long-term risk, so it can certainly be argued that part of the cost of paying for pitchers is offset by maximizing the long-term value of the prospects. By the way, Ketchner is coming off of ulnar nerve transposition, so he wouldn't be ready to start off the season anyway.

Is it a move about the playoffs? Well, using the log 5 method it really doesn't make a difference how a team is composed. If a team has a pitching staff with a .600 winning percentage and a .500 winning percentage offense, they'll have a .600 winning percentage against .500 teams. If they have a .600 winning percentage offense and .500 pitching, it's the same thing. Whether the average playoff opponent is pitching heavy or offense heavy makes no difference - versus a .550/.550 team, a .600/.500 team goes .500 and a .500/.600 team goes .500. An .800/.273 team does the same as a .273/.800 team against equal opposition. There are very, very marginal factors that can change the equation, but the point is that teams with better pitching don't have a structural advantage in the playoffs. (Don't confuse this point with a related issue of how the team's pitching is distributed; teams with three great starters and two mediocre starters obviously do better in the playoffs.)

It's certainly tough to swallow the amount being given Lowe and Perez, but their value relative to their potential replacements is much higher than Delgado's, Beltre's, or Varitek's.

* * *

do you know a site that give contract status and
salaries for players? espn lists their salary of the
current year, but i was looking for more info.

Dugout Dollars is the most comprehensive site, but at this point in time it's a little out of date, and if you're not using Internet Explorer it doesn't show up on the screen properly. For some things, it's certainly worth opening up IE to access it.

For everything else, Google it. Last time I checked, by the way, ESPN only has 2004 salary data listed.

* * *

i'm a little new at some of these statistics, as well
as to baseball blogs. both are very cool.

why is +10 a conservative estimate for choi? and what
does +10 mean?

and as a side question, do we need a catcher?

I tend to go a little fast and heavy with this stuff, so I apologize. +10 means that, over the course of 625 plate appearances, a player will be worth 10 offensive runs above the average major league position player. If you look at Choi's player card from Baseball Prospectus, you'll see that he was 2 runs above average with Chicago in 2003 and 13 runs above average last season in limited playing time. If you prorate that over 625 PA, he looks pretty darn good. By comparison, Green had 20 and 16 RAA in those seasons while logging about as many plate appearances as a player can.

There are several different ways to project a player's performance in an upcoming season. Among statheads, the most common involves regression formulas using different metrics. PECOTA and ZiPS are the two projection systems that you might hear the most about if you read internet baseball content, and they use similar regression formulas. PECOTA is more sophisticated in that it does more work to establish what population the player is in in order to establish what's called the player's "true talent level." ZiPS works on less data, so it's model doesn't incorporate quite as much and regresses a player's performance to more flat means. Anyway, ZiPS (PECOTA isn't available yet) has a projection which, prorated over 625 PA, has Green and Choi dead even (Choi comes out .03 runs ahead). I've got my own projection system I'm working on to get a little experience in this area, and in its latest incarnation Choi comes out a little ahead. Now, the wild card here is Green's labrum, which should probably make any projection system favor Choi because Green's population, statistically, should be modelled on players with torn labrums. However, there are certainly some who believe that Green is now "fully healed" and that his performance after the all-star break, rather than his performance in May and June, is a better baseline for his performance moving forward.

Ah, but how do we figure out these run values? The easiest way to do it accurately for a full system is called linear weights. It's a system first devised by Pete Palmer, and for basic performance analysis it's the clearest metric.

Do the Dodgers need a catcher? I'm not sure if I'm optimistic or pessimistic on Mike Rose. He's the minor league free agent catcher the Dodgers signed in the offseason. I predicted him hitting .245/.335/.340 on the blog last week (based on my projection system). The average NL catcher his .258/.321/.392 last season, so he's not far off average for a catcher; that's a difference of only a couple runs offensively, and I don't know much about his defense.

Was I being optimistic or pessimistic? ZiPS predicts a .252/.362/.370, so there's reason for optimism. Considering the shape the Dodgers are in elsewhere, they certainly don't "need" a catcher.

And if you're wondering, yes, I'm tip-toeing around addressing David Ross for a reason. I'm completely baffled by that guy, and it's going to take a lot of energy to write something worthwhile about him. Ditto for Paul Bako.

Conversations

2005-01-08T12:30:00.000-08:00

"Frank, how's it going."

"Going well, Paul. Jamie told me the darnedest joke this morning..."

"That's great, Frank. Listen, I wanted to talk about the payroll."

"OK, go ahead."

"Here's the thing: we're really getting to the point of marginal returns. We've got two guys we're looking at, both of them are pretty good. Each one's worth about five or six per."

"What are they asking?"

"That's the thing. We can get one for three at eight and the other for four at nine."

"Well, who else can we go after?"

"There's not much out there. And compared to the other stuff that's out there, these guys are much smaller injury risks."

"So we'd be giving each one about two and a half or three extra per year, over what, seven years? So, like, we're looking at $20 million extra here?"

"Yeah. Versus just picking up two guys off the street, we're looking at a difference of maybe ten wins here. Well, it gets complicated there, but certainly we don't have a lot of options if we don't overpay.

"What about the playoffs?"

"Yeah, that' where I was gonna go. These guys are worth that five or six as regular season players, but if we leverage their extra value at playoff time, they could be worth a little more."

"All right, what about further on down the line?"

"Well, the thing is that, well, there's not a lot out there next year, so even if we can get Joel and Edwin to take over for Kaz and Jeff, we'd still need to get someone. And for '07, it's pretty hard to say we can get Chad, Ryan, and Greg all ready at the same time, so with the attrition rate we'd probably need someone there."

"Okay, so it makes some sense to overpay by some here."

"Yeah, but we're still looking at overpaying by a considerable amount. The thing is, though, that I'm wondering if looking at everyone's value in dollar terms - well, I think we're getting to the point of diminishing returns. That is, if we're pinching pennies on every guy, we end up with a lower payroll and a team that's not quite as good. So, we've done a really good job of getting all the position players on the cheap and our bullpen costs almost nothing past Eric. So, I guess what I'm saying is the only way for us to leverage the competitive advantage that our payroll gives us is to overpay."

"Okay, I see what you're saying. But what about a couple years down the line?"

"Yeah, that's the other part. I mean, we're just stocked in the mid-minors, so unless all our player development goes haywire, we can expect to have this kind of situation for a while. Plus, we still got Darren coming off the books, which covers all the arbitration raises and then some."

"All right, so what you're saying is there's a reason for us to overpay here?"

"Yeah, I mean, we can keep the payroll at eighty-seven and make 95% of the cash, or we can push up to a hundred to make it the full way for the regular season. There's no way to predict what would happen in the playoffs, but we've done some work on that and we think this maybe helps us there enough that it's a pretty neutral investment."

"So what you're saying is, we have a payroll advantage that we can't leverage unless we do some of these ugly deals, and in the end it might be enough to pay off?"

"Yeah, I think that's how I see it. So really, my question to you is this: should I invest that money in these players, or should I invest it in player development, where the returns might be diminishing too?"

"Wow, that's a tough question. You know what? We've got to go for it. These jackasses whining about some fire sale - yeah, let's do it."

"Well, wait now, Frank, let's not get irrational. I mean, they're gonna forget once they see us winning, which we'll do either way."

"Yeah, but they'll forget more if we win more, and we can do that. I don't want anything going wrong with this season. If we win that World Series, we get a free pass for a long time."

"What's that free pass worth to you, Frank?"

"I won't get into that, but it's worth enough for you to sign these guys."

Wha wha wha???

2005-01-07T23:37:00.000-08:00

I come home for a couple hours before going out again, and this is what I have to put up with? My first reaction is that at least one of the following must be true:

1. The anonymous sources being oft-cited right now claiming the Dodgers are on the verge of signing Derek Lowe to a 4 year, $36 million contract are either have some extraordinary ulterior motives or are victims of a bizarre and expertly executed practical joke.

2. The Dodgers know a lot about Derek Lowe that I don't know and that Dave Wallace either didn't know or ignored until October.

What to make of these reports? My instincts say option #1. But let's do some optimism first.

For one, the starting pitching market in free agency looks pretty thin next season. If the Dodgers want to pick someone up, this might be the only time to do it.

Additionally, the Dodgers do have several injury risks on the staff. This is insurance, I suppose.

Lowe had an excellent season in 2002, maybe he'll repeat that? Thing was, that was built on a lot of luck and defense. His DIPS was only 3.66. Not so much. The past two seasons are probably much closer to his true talent level.

Lowe is an extreme groundball pitcher who had terrible luck last season. While I argued earlier this week that Dodger Stadium is a good destination for fly ball pitchers, that doesn't in itself reduce the value of ground ball pitchers. While I made an argument for an organizational philosophy that emphasized outfield defense and fly ball pitching, the counter-argument is that the ability to acquire starting pitching at any time is so limited that putting all one's eggs in such an organizational philosophy reduces one's options enough to nullify the advantage. This, of course, would be an example, as a limited free agent pitching market limits options.

It's not as if the Dodgers have actually implemented the strategy I advocated; they have (I think DodgerRoger used this phrase in the comments) the UZR all-star team in the infield. Based on past UZR data, I'll suggest roughly a +25, +10, +10, -8 infield for the Dodgers, which translates to a context neutral 37 runs saved above average over the course of a season. Meanwhile, their outfield should be around +25 by my estimation. Since Lowe is a groundball pitcher, he leverages the former much more than the latter. Going with some rough park and league adjustments and adjusting for Lowe's batted ball type ratios and the major difference between Dodger Stadium and Fenway, I translated Lowe's 2003 and 2004 performances to ERA's for the 2005 Dodgers. In making those translations, I didn't look at Lowe's defense-dependent numbers, with the exception of doubles (I could get into modeling that by batted ball types, but it's late).

What do the translations look like?

2003: 3.64
2004: 3.61

Looks pretty cool, huh? Keep in mind, of course, that a lot of the value added there doesn't belong to Lowe, per se. If I run those numbers for a completely average pitcher, the ERA looks like 3.90. Now, the average reliever has better numbers than the average starter, so let's say our baseline for the average starter would be a 4.05 ERA and that Lowe will be worth an extra .40 in ERA. Further, let's say Lowe can go 210 innings and the average starter only 160. If those extra 50 innings go to that average 3.90 pitcher, how much value does Lowe add? 10 runs. Yes, 10 runs.

Okay, maybe that's not fair. Maybe that average pitcher would put more strain on the bullpen, and his extra innings go to a replacement level pitcher who wows with a 5.00 ERA. Well, now Lowe's making us 16 runs versus this average cat. Judged by the standard that the completely average full-time player is worth $4 million, an extra $5 million for 16 wins looks pretty shoddy.

But maybe the Dodgers can't get that completely average guy. They have to allocate those 160 IP to Edwin Jackson or Joel Hanrahan or D.J. Houlton or a bewildered Elmer Dessens, and get a 5.00 ERA out of the deal, on top of that 5.00 strain on the bullpen. Now, Lowe saves a whopping 33 runs, or 3-3.5 wins.

Since they'd have to pay that replacement $320K, that's three and a half wins for the bargain price of $8.68 million! Score! And all it costs them is their first round pick in the amateur draft. Looks pretty rotten.

Then again, there is something to be said for it. It would help the long term development of Jackson/Hanrahan et al to stay in the minors, and it wouldn't start their service clock so quickly. So it could be argued, then, that if those guys will be good to go in 2006, signing Lowe or someone of his ilk means they'll get that prospects' 2008 season at the league minimum instead of at the arbitration price, and they could also hold onto the player for another year of his peak at the end for less than he'd make in free agency. Fair enough, I suppose; maybe worth $4 million.

Then again, that's not an issue with D.J. Houlton. If they don't use Houlton, he's lost anyway. Still, maybe there's not enough faith in D.J. to stop this.

On top of that, the hypothetical average pitcher isn't really available at this point. So getting Lowe for $9 million in 2005 maybe is worth 3.5 wins and saves another $4 million in the long run. Not bad; $1.4 million per marginal win. But there's still the matter of that first round pick; Logan White's got a pretty smoking record right now, so let's arbitrarily assign a $1 million price to losing that pick, since I don't have the data to quantify it otherwise. That's still only $1.7 million per marginal win. With the Dodgers' payroll advantage, that's not bad.

Except...

they still have to pay Lowe $27 million for three years in his thirties!!!

I have no idea what entity is responsible for this rumor, whether it's true or not. But that sure doesn't seem characteristic, now does it? $27 million for a pitcher whose performance the past two seasons is only a little bit above average? Keep in mind, for him to add a lot of value from leveraging the Dodgers' infield, they have to continue to have an excellent infield defense, and the three main defensive pieces are under the Dodgers' control for 1, 2, and 3 years, respectively. Maybe Joel Guzman is close and will be converted to a superb defensive third baseman. And defense is typically undervalued by other teams. Still, that's a big investment that requires continued leveraging, and it's tough for me to see how this is a worthwhile long term investment.

Maybe there's something about aging patterns of groundball pitchers I don't know about, or maybe DePo is, in a shocking turn, giving in to the conventional wisdom. Or maybe there's enough marginal revenue to be gained at playoff time that a slight increase in the team's odds in October is worthwhile.

Maybe.

But I'm really, really creeped out.

[Edit: One last point: at least Lowe won't be affected by the loss of foul ground since he gets no infield pop-ups anyway; infield flies in 1% of PA last season.]

Back on the Ledge

2005-01-07T14:28:00.000-08:00

Baseball Prospectus announced today that they're entering the crisis negotiation business. Their first target is Mark Shapiro, who reportedly is offering Kevin Millwood $7 million:

Maybe they think they can afford to chuck $7 million on a look-see. A much smarter look-see is the Red Sox signing of Wade Miller for the same length of time but at a fraction of the price.

Miller and Millwood were fairly comparable in 2002-03 (combined VORP of 67.4 for Millwood and 60.7 for Miller). Both ran into arm trouble last year and missed a considerable number of starts. When they did pitch, though, Miller was superior, boasting a VORP of 21.8 to Millwood's 9.3. Both have comparable strikeout rates (within a quarter-K per nine). Miller is two years younger.

Millwood, of course, has more "experience." . . . To our way of thinking, the Red Sox established what the market value is for moderately successful starting pitchers coming off injuries is when they signed Miller to one year at $1.5 mil. Because of that, anything beyond $2 million for Millwood is excessive on the Indians' part.

Now, there's a lot of fine analysis in there. However, a couple things stand out to me that I think are valuable lessons.

First, don't look at dollar figures too abstractly. Miller gets $1.5 million guaranteed, yes. But he also gets $3 million in incentives. Millwood is a pitcher who has, apparently, already recovered from his injury. The Indians deal has been held up for a while, reportedly, because the Indians are requiring Millwood to submit to an extensive battery of medical tests. Miller, on the other hand, still has a ways to go, and there are reasons to doubt whether he'll be able to pitch this season at all. So the cost of Miller's "look-see" is $1.5 million, and the cost of his performance is between $0 and $3 million. On the other hand, the Indians look like they'll only make this deal if they're fairly certain that Millwood can pitch a full season.

Second, all in one stats are what they are. VORP is value over replacement player, not talent or ability. For pitchers, VORP is runs above replacement per innings pitched times innings pitched. It's based on runs allowed and park factors. It doesn't make any allowances for defense or luck. Miller had a big edge in 2004, yes, but was that due more to his performance or to noise like sample size and defense? Let's take a basic look. I'm not gonna go all out on this, so here is each player's raw ERA, DIPS (defense independent pitching), ERC (component ERA), and BIPA (balls in play average) for the past five years. I've also added ERC% (ERC/ERA), DIP% (DIPS/ERA), and D/E (DIPS/ERC). First Millwood:

	ERC	DIPS	ERA	ERC%	DIP%	BIPA	D/E
2000	3.84	4.03	4.66	0.824	0.865	0.285	1.049
2001	4.28	4.72	4.31	0.993	1.095	0.266	1.103
2002	2.89	3.45	3.24	0.892	1.065	0.264	1.194
2003	3.39	3.69	4.01	0.845	0.92	0.278	1.088
2004	4.63	3.79	4.85	0.955	0.781	0.321	0.819

So it is pretty evident that the point about each player's age is relevant, as Millwood appears to be in gradual decline by DIPS. However, last year was the only season besides his injury-ruined 2001 where his ERC was over four, and until last season his ERC had outperformed his DIPS, indicating that the apparent decline in his balls in play skills last season was probably more a factor of sample size and luck. He has routinely had an ERA higher than his component ERA, so perhaps a projection for him should figure he's worse with runners on. However, the magnitude of that going forward probably won't be as large, so maybe DIPS/.95 is a decent baseline. That baseline would yield a 3.63, 3.88, and 3.99 ERA in each of the past three seasons, not park adjusted.

Now, let's look at Wade Miller:

	ERC	DIPS	ERA	ERC%	DIP%	BIPA	D/E
2000	4.39	4.4	5.14	0.854	0.856	0.285	1.002
2001	3.6	4.39	3.4	1.059	1.291	0.251	1.219
2002	3.63	3.63	3.28	1.107	1.107	0.281	1
2003	3.71	4.02	4.13	0.898	0.973	0.274	1.084
2004	3.78	4.58	3.35	1.128	1.367	0.253	1.212

He sure outperformed his DIPS last season, didn't he? There's really not any pattern here that I can discern which would indicate that he has balls in play skills or pitching with runners on base skills that make DIPS a poor baseline of his performance. His BIP skills have never been below the DIPS baseline, so let's go ahead and be optimistic by using DIPS/1.05 as his baseline: his ERA's the past 3 seasons would be 3.56, 3.83, and 4.36.

Millwood pitched dozens more innings in each of the past three seasons, and his performance indicators aren't really worse than Miller's. Is Miller really the pitcher that you want? Certainly, there's an argument to be made. But if the Indians have reason to expect a full season from Millwood, then the Miller price to compare him to is $4.5 million.

Is Millwood worth $7 mil? Would that be a better deal than the Miller deal? The answers to each are probably not quite, but I'd have to do a lot more work to increase my confidence level on that. My point is, the answer to those questions lies in in-depth performance analysis, not VORP. So if you try to talk Shapiro down from the ledge, you better know why he's out there in the first place instead of inferring the answer is simply "experience."

Free Agents With "Z" In Their Last Names For Whom the Differences Between U.S. Cellular Field And Dodger Stadium Would Be of Some Significance

2005-01-06T23:13:00.000-08:00

So the Dodgers at some point entered negotiations with Esteban Loaiza, according to various non-credible sources and possibly some slightly credible sources.

In my December post about the remaining free agent pitchers, I had Loaiza ranked pretty low. As in, rated below Aaron Sele low. Well, that's kind of an exaggeration, since I "rated" them by an ERA projection based just on 2004 data, not value. So let's re-think Loaiza. There have been four Loazia's of late: the mediocre Loaiza we knew from his entire career, the 2003 Loaiza who was a legitimate Cy Young candidate, the slightly below average 2004 Loaiza with the White Sox, and the unmitigated disaster Loaiza with the Yankees.

Looking at quality of batters faced, the 2003 Loaiza certainly benefited from weak competition (remember the Tigers?), so his feats should be slightly tempered. Likewise, the Loaiza with the Yankees' average opponent was pretty handy with a bat, so that disaster can be tempered a bit (just a bit). There's also the NYY media factor and the Mel Stottlemyre factor involved with that one, so I'm not sure how to incorporate that performance into this analysis.

So for now let's just look at 2004 Chicago Loaiza and decide that bizarro 2003 and Yankees Loaiza's are hoaxes that balance each other out. He gave up his share of home runs, but part of that is certainly the homerriffic U.S. Cellular Field. Adjusting for that, his FIP is a friendlier 4.80, which is nicer and translates to 4.46 in the NL. Loaiza's about neutral in all of his batted ball type peripherals, with substantial year to year swings. To translate that for the doubles advantage of a renovated Dodger Stadium, we get 4.38 ERA wise, and the Dodgers defense should lower that down to the 3.98 area or 4.15 if Shawn Green is hanging out in the outfield for most of that time. Keep in mind, that's what his 2004 Chicago performance would look like translated into a Dodger Stadium 2005 context. That's not an assertion of what his performance will be at Dodger Stadium; it's just a translation.

Loaiza had a one year spike in K/PA in 2003, and that's gone. He also had a steady increase in BB/PA over the past four years even before he was traded to New York, so I don't think it's likely that he's set for an improvement in his peripherals.

He could be valuable, no doubt, but I really don't see him as a likely value at anything over, say, $2.5 million. I think that the difference between having Loaiza in the rotation and having D.J. Houlton as a fifth starter whose spot is skipped when there are days off is fewer than 10 runs over the course of the season.

Then again, what I don't know about each of these guys could fill books. It could turn out that the real Loaiza was what we saw in 2003 and he pitched poorly before and after that as part of some master plan to be in the Dodgers price range this offseason. Sometimes - just sometimes - I get a little over-TINSTAPP'ed, and extend that line of thinking to all pitchers: there is no such thing as a pitcher (though I prefer the more Magrittesque ceci n'est pas un pitcher).

Then again, I wouldn't bet on each of the Dodgers' starters remaining healthy in 2005, so getting Loaiza as injury insurance makes some sense. Or rather, keeping Houlton on the bullpen, getting Loaiza for under $2.5 million, and either returning Sanchez or Brazoban to the minors or dealing one of them to free up the roster spot would make some sense. But I'm not sure how much sense.

[EDIT: Since I didn't make this clear, I'll say that at this point I think it's wise for both Hanrahan and Jackson to pitch at least a half a season in AAA. With neither having had success above AA, I don't consider either one a substantial candidate for the rotation at this point, but obviously that could change. And yes, I know the same is true of Houlton, but as a Rule 5 pick there's an incentive to use him.]

***

An actual free agent with a Z-inclusive surname has apparently signed. He goes by the name Pierzynski, and his price tag was $2.25 million. Before, I looked at his numbers and said that the difference between him and Mike Rose wasn't worth $3.7 million. Is it worth $1.9 million? I don't think so. As you'll recall, Pierzynski walks less than Jared did before he started eating at Subway, and he doesn't hit many home runs. Obviously, he's not the type that benefits from Dodger Stadium. Looking at his past stats, I'd expect that with the Dodgers he'd probably have an ISO (slugging percentage minus batting average, or extra bases per at bat) around .120-.130; even if he rebounds his batting average up to .310 he'll be about .310/.345/.440, with .300/.335/.425 being a better baseline, IMO. That's an above average offensive season in Dodger Stadium, especially for a catcher.

However, while I think Pierzynski will rebound his raw numbers from last season, I don't think it will be by as much as I used to. While his improved strike-out rate looked promising, it appears to have translated into more fly balls and fewer line drives. He's becoming more aggressive, and it's a bad thing. I don't have the infield fly data, but I wouldn't be surprised if an increase there rather than just bad luck was responsible for his lower average. Even if those fly balls aren't in the infield, they're not gonna help much in Dodger Stadium. His line drive rate seems to have fallen from the .230-.240 rate in 2001-2002 to only .190. Now that I've broken it down by balls in play, his 2003 clearly benefited from luck more than his 2004 was hurt by it. His (Hits - Line Drives)/AB was .11 in 2001 and 2002, .14 in 2003, and .09 in 2005. Given that he's swinging away more and that his speed is likely declining, it looks like 2004's raw numbers might be what to expect. In Dodger Stadium, that's even worse, since he'd lose some of those doubles. Given that SBC actually increases singles, doubles, and triples, I crunched the numbers and came out with a luck-neutral .268/.311/.394 for a hitting environment (tough on doubles/triples, neutral on HR/hits) like what I expect Dodger Stadium to be post-renovation.

Furthermore, Pierzynski's hacktastic approach obviously doesn't conform to the Dodger's modus operandi of seeing more pitches in order to tire opposing pitchers. I've yet to study the claimed benefits, but if there is indeed a significant benefit Pierzynski isn't interested in it. He placed dead last among major league players qualified for the batting title in pitches per plate appearance. So he's got that going for him, which is bad.

Mike Rose, on the other hand, looks a lot like post-Subway Jared when it comes to walking, and even though his batting average will probably reside around .240-.250 his OBP should hit .330 or so. A .90-.100 or so ISO should be about right for Rose, so let's say a .245/.335/.340 line. Rose doesn't rake, but the difference between him and Pierzynski comes out to 10 runs if you use the .300/.335/.425 baseline projection for Pierzynski. If my more thorough analysis is closer to what to expect from AJP, Rose comes out a fraction of a run ahead.

Pierzynski is pretty average behind the plate. I don't know much about Rose's defense; if he's very bad, well, picking up Pierzynski may have been worth it. If not, Pierzynski seems like he would have been a waste of cash if you ask me.

That being said, the friendly confines of U.S. Cellular Field will make Pierzynski look good enough that we can expect to hear some people whining that we should have gotten that guy with the fancier batting average and more RBI's who came cheap instead of this Rose fella. And they're entitled to holding that opinion, even if it's probably wrong.

Goshdarn it, Green

2005-01-06T18:03:00.000-08:00

So Shawn Green has, apparently, refused his trade. How big of a blow is this for the Dodgers?

Even at his peak, Green was only worth about 50 runs above average offensively, and the most conservative estimate possible for Hee Seop Choi is +10. There is absolutely no reason to believe that Green will repeat his peak numbers; just because an injury happened in between doesn't mean that a player will repeat his peak when he's three seasons older once "fully healed." I mean, Green would have to be as good now as he was at age 26-27 to put up 35 runs above average offensively; he only had those two dominating offensive seasons. So if we're generous to Green, we can pencil him in for +35 offensively. All right, that's an extra 25 offensive runs versus our conservative Choi projection, on top of which we can add 5 runs each for fielding and defense over Hee Seop. So Green, if we give him the benefit of several substantial doubts, is worth 45 runs over Choi, or 4-5 wins.

"Ah-hah!", you say, "they don't have to give up Choi to keep Green! He's a useful bench player." Okay, fair enough. Choi would be a good hitter from the bench. Can't argue that. But that's not a lot of value; since we're using that conservative +10 run prediction for Choi and a conservative -10 for the guys who would take that slot - Brian Myrow or Jason Grabowski - that's 20 runs over a 650 PA season. But Choi would only be used as a pinch hitter in that scenario since the only place he can play is first base, so at the very most we're talking one fifth of those 650 PA, or 4 runs. Plus, if Choi is the lefty pinch-hitter, the Dodgers are pretty short of bench space; there's the 8 starters, there's Antonio Perez, Olmedo Saenz, and Ricky Ledee, and with Choi that's 12. Assuming the Dodgers carry 11 pitchers, that leaves two spots on the bench, and one of those has to be a catcher. That means the Dodgers would have to choose between a middle infielder and a fifth outfielder. That's not a friendly choice; if somebody goes down with a one-week injury, the Dodgers would have to either DL the player to call up someone else, losing a week of the starter's value, or would have to go pretty bare bones at that position in the meantime, meaning either Ledee or Valentin would have to start against southpaws a few times and an in-game injury to someone else would mean the Dodgers would have to get pretty creative in the defense. Well, that pretty much cancels out those four bench runs from Choi.

"But wait!", you insist, "Green could also be used in the outfield!" Keen observation - but no value added. An injury to an outfielder would, absent Green, put a Ledee/Chen (or whomever would be the RHB fifth outfielder) platoon in place. Going conservative again, that's a -5 offensive combo with average defense. So if Green switches to the outfield, we get Choi back full-time with his conservative +10 offense, a +15 offensive swing. But Green's defense in RF is in the -20 range, so that advantage is negated, we lose those 10 fielding and baserunning runs from Choi again, making this a -15 run transaction, not to mention this mitigates the Choi pinch-hitting value added. No help here.

"Yeah," you say, "but Choi could still play as a backup for Green which would help Green's numbers." You're right; if Green rests more often, his value goes up. But the way to do that is to sit him against left-handed pitching, against whom he just can't hit well. Olmedo Saenz should be playing for Green regardless of who happens to be pitching, and that doesn't add any value to the favorable +35 offense estimate for Green above because when he's hitting that well he's pretty much at Saenz's level against southpaws.

So the most value keeping Green can add is 4-5 wins. At $8 million. The average marginal dollars per win is $2 million, so you can see that smart moves could easily have made up that particular difference. Plus, the Dodgers lose out on Dioner Navarro and William Juarez, whose rights would probably draw at least $4 million in a hypothetical auction. So keeping Green means the Dodgers pay $12 million for at most four to five marginal wins. Think about that rate for a second; if you gather up a team of replacement level players, you could expect to win about 40 games for $316K per player, or $8 million. To win 81 games at this rate, you'd need a $110 million payroll; to win 100, you'd need a $160 million payroll. Not good.

Now, let's consider that the above estimates were all done to maximize the appearance of Green's value! A realistic value appraisal of the two should probably favor Choi offensively, to the tune of 10 runs or so. Now, maybe Green would be benched against southpaws, in which case the runs swing back in his favor by a little bit, but if Green's back Jim Tracy will probably start him against southpaws for no reason, as is his habit. Green's edge in baserunning and defense mitigates the offensive gap, sure. But Green's also a bigger injury risk, so Green's decision to stay in LA essentially costs the Dodgers an injury risk, $8 million, a good catching prospect, and a fringy but decent pitching prospect while probably hurting the team in 2004 just a little bit. (Editor's note: I meant 2005, but I'll leave it as "2004" as a reminder of my total incompetence.)

ARGGGGGHHHHHH!

Now, in a sense I don't blame Green. He likes So Cal, the Dodgers will win a lot of games next season and the D-Backs will lose a lot. I'm guessing Arizona offered Green at least $14 million for the next two seasons, which I suppose one could argue that Green should expect to get in free agency next season.

But he won't be doing that anywhere near Southern California. The Dodgers will have no use for him unless his refusal to be traded forces a Hee Seop Choi trade, in which case he'd get an offer from the Dodgers of around 2 years, $9 million. Of course, Green won't accept that, and the Dodgers would be insane to offer him arbitration, so he'll end up somewhere else in a year anyway.

Think he can pull a Finley and end up with the Angels? Well, given that they already have four outfielders guaranteed a ton of money in 2005 (Anderson, Erstad, Finley, Guerrero) and Erstad is already playing first base, meaning Casey Kotchman will have to DH, which means the Angels have no use for Kendry Morales except as a super sub. Even if the Angels trade Kotchman to get Morales into the lineup, they won't have any use for Green unless one of their other outfielders is seriously injured.

Would he prefer playing with the Padres? I guess the plane ride from Arizona to LA is more expensive than the car trip from San Diego to LA, so maybe that's the factor. In any event, he could end up with the Padres as a cheaper alternative to re-signing Brian Giles. Cheaper. In other words, I really don't see how Green can expect to make close to what the D'Backs are probably offering by signing with the Padres next offseason, and it's hard to imagine the difference in travel times to LA between those two sites outweighing, for him, the difference in how much he'd earn.

I really respect Shawn Green as both a ballplayer and a human being. He says he's wanted to retire as a Dodger. If that's the case, I'm sure the Dodgers would love to have him; if Green proposes a 5 year, $5 million contract extension with incentives that amount to about $3000 per plate appearance, he'd be signed. That would make him an even richer man, financially, than he already is.

But Green wants more money than that. And of course, it's difficult to blame him much for that. But if he wants more money, he can't stay in Southern California. Them's the breaks. He has (well, had) a choice: a) the outrageous sum the D'Backs offer which allows him to stay close to home for another two seasons but requires him to swallow his pride a little bit and accept he's not the player he once was; b) the too high sum he'll make a year from now that requires him to play far from home but which probably won't equal what he'll make from the D'Backs.

Now, maybe Shawn just wants to play for a winner or he values the one extra year of living in LA more than the difference between a) and b) above, and maybe he knows baseball and/or Jeff Moorad well enough to know that Arizona is a train wreck. Well, that's fine. I just want to point out that this hurts the Dodgers big time and that if Green is doing this because he wants it both ways - playing in Los Angeles (or even playing in Los Angeles of Anaheim) and making a huge amount of money - he's not going to get it.

On top of that, the Dodgers have a Choi-ce to make (last time I wrote much about Hee Seop it was titled "a punless Hee Seop Choi post"; no such luck this time). Do they squander his development time either by benching him or sending him to AAA, saving a little at arbitration time but probably hurting his long-term value? Do they say the hell with it and play Hee Seop anyway and let Shawn Green sit on the bench until he'll accept a trade? Do they trade Hee Seop, leaving them to choose between a free agent and the so far star-crossed James Loney for 2006? Do they work to find a reasonable deal with Green so they can trade Choi? I think the first option is the least appealing; the best solution is probably to shop both of them aggressively, but only going after potential trade partners for Green who will irrationally dish out the dough for a major contract extension. That being said, it could be that the market for Choi is rough enough that giving him some time in Vegas is the best option, especially since there's pretty much no way that Tracy would agree to starting Choi over Green. Then again, there's also the Jayson Werth factor: all signs indicate he's doing fine, but his elbow could be bad enough that having Green to play right field for a month is important and then Werth or Choi could be leveraged to whichever team has to compensate for some major injury in May.

Of course, the best outcome would have been Green accepting the trade, but c'est la vie. I'm not sure whether I should be pointing out what a great job DePodesta would have done by fleecing the D'Backs on this deal or being furious that he based his plans on Green agreeing to a trade. I would lean to the former, since there's still plenty of time for things to work out, but this is certainly disappointing as a Dodgers fan.

UPDATE: Because I realized I'd probably soon be inundated with questions about it, no, Werth sitting against RHP with Green in RF and Choi at 1B doesn't change the equation. Werth is an above average defender, and should at least be about average offensively versus RHP. Only using a very optimistic projection for Green's offense offsets the defensive defecit between Werth and Green, and it would come at the expense of Werth's long-term development.

Ijon Tichy

2005-01-05T03:36:00.000-08:00

Last March, Dayn Perry wrote an excellent article arguing that the Dodgers' ballpark should play a major role in its personnel decisions. Perry noted that Dodger Stadium was pretty much neutral for walks and home runs but hurt singles and doubles and triples especially. From this, he drew the conclusion that the Dodgers should seek out "Three True Outcomes" hitters, and, as I noted on Friday, that's pretty much what they've been doing. I'll add here that Jeff Kent does not fit that paradigm, but that's kind of the point: Jeff Kent was signed because he came at a clear discount and because his value in other areas was relatively undervalued, and I'll also note that for purposes of lineup construction having a player like Kent in an order otherwise composed of TTO guys can provide value maximizing power. But that's a story for some other time.

When Perry wrote the article, the Dodgers were coming off of a season in which their run prevention was absolutely dominant but their run scoring was thoroughly wretched. Since then, DePodesta has completely overhauled the offensive, making very clear improvements, but the pitching staff, if we are to believe the clamor in the media, is in a state of total disrepair. DePodesta's job, right now, is to pick up pitchers. Logically, if park factors should play a role in what type of hitters the Dodgers should acquire, they should also play a big role in what type of pitchers they acquire.

Another Baseball Prospectus author, Jay Jaffe, referenced the impact of the Dodgers ballpark on the types of pitchers it should get on Monday. Jaffe casually noted that Javier Vazquez, a fly-ball pitcher, wouldn't benefit from Dodger Stadium while elsewhere implying that ground-ballers Mike Koplove and Derek Lowe would reap Chavez Ravine's benefits. I love Jay's work, but I think he's got this one backward.

You're already familiar, I'm sure, that the Dodgers had excellent defense in 2004. Defensive Efficiency Ratio shows the Dodgers clearly in front for 2004, even when park-adjusted (BP subscription required). But not all balls in play are created equally. One thing I've long been aware of, thanks to the stats at The Hardball Times, is that the Dodgers had the lowest Groundball/Fly ball ratio in baseball last season. Their G/F of 1.05 was significantly below the 1.23 league average. Fly balls are more likely to be converted into outs than ground balls, meaning that some of the Dodgers high DER should be a reflection of the type of balls they're responsible for. Fly balls hits, however, are for extra bases much more often than ground ball hits, as Mitchel Lichtman has found:

fly ball pitchers, on the average, will have a different $H [batting average on balls in play] than will ground ball pitchers, since a fly ball has a higher out percentage than a ground ball. In fact, extreme ground ball pitchers have a BABIP of .297 (1992-2003), whereas extreme fly ball pitchers have a BABIP of .281 (extreme = top and bottom 10% in G/F ratio for pitchers with at least 100 BIP in a season). Of course, the run value of a FB hit is greater than that of a GB hit, such that the actual run value of all pitchers BABIP is almost exactly the same, regardless of their G/F ratios.

So if two teams have the same defensive efficiency ratio - the number of balls in play converted into outs - they won't necessarily have the same run value for balls in play, and the tendency would be for the team with more fly balls to give up more runs.

So let's put this to the test. I collected all the pitching data for NL teams and looked at how many singles, doubles, triples, ROE's (reached on error), and outs they collected. I didn't have sacrifice hit data, since for some reason no team pitching stats page I found tracked that and I didn't feel like totalling all of those up by hand. Then I used linear weights to determine how many runs each team gave up. This wasn't quite ideal, as the lwts figures I had include ROE's as outs since they are used to evaluate offense, but the difference overall should be minuscule if I weigh ROE's as if they were singles. Doing that, I got linear weights run values for each team's balls in play, which I then normalized to the league average to come up with actual linear weights runs saved. The Dodgers did excellently, saving more than ten runs better than the next team, the Cardinals. The defense of the Dodgers and Cardinals saved 80.6 and 70.1 runs, respectively, with this measure, much better than third-place Florida (26.2 runs).

But how do these standings compare to DER? Well, I also calculated each team's net defensive outs, or (Team DER - league DER)*(Balls in play). Fortunately, the scale for outs and runs relative to league average in this context is virtually identical, so comparison is easy. Here are the final numbers, along with the net singles, doubles, ROE's, etc. for each team:

	ROE%	nROE	1B%	n1B	2B%	n2B	3B%	n3B	LD%	G/F	IF/Fly	$r	netO	diff
COL	0.008	23.3	0.229	-54.9	0.073	-26	0.009	-9.1	0.19	1.27	0.135	-65.6	-66.6	-1
CIN	0.015	-6	0.208	42.7	0.081	-64.7	0.007	1.7	0.192	1.14	1.14	-39.2	-26.3	12.9
ARI	0.021	-31.7	0.221	-16.3	0.067	1.1	0.009	-8.3	0.194	1.27	0.121	-48	-55.1	-7.2
PHI	0.01	15.1	0.206	46.1	0.071	-19.1	0.008	-3.4	0.181	1.09	0.137	23	38.8	15.8
SF	0.014	-1.7	0.212	22.4	0.068	-5.1	0.01	-13.7	0.183	1.24	0.125	-7.9	1.9	9.8
MON	0.013	1.7	0.22	-13	0.064	12.7	0.007	3.4	0.189	1.24	0.114	9.5	4.7	-4.8
MIL	0.019	-23.4	0.208	37.2	0.074	-28.9	0.007	1.3	0.179	1.17	0.127	-18.7	-13.7	5
PIT	0.012	5.4	0.225	-34.2	0.068	-4.6	0.008	-2.3	0.188	1.26	0.123	-30.8	-35.6	-4.8
NYM	0.019	-26.5	0.216	4.5	0.063	17.8	0.005	9.4	0.188	1.29	0.135	14.8	5.2	-9.6
SD	0.015	-7.6	0.212	22.4	0.07	-12.7	0.008	-3.7	0.19	1.14	0.117	-7.3	-1.7	5.6
FLO	0.008	21.5	0.214	11.5	0.066	6	0.008	-4.8	0.182	1.17	0.137	26.2	34.3	8.1
HOU	0.014	-1	0.223	-23.8	0.068	-4.5	0.008	-4.6	0.195	1.24	0.128	-30.7	-33.9	-3.1
LA	0.007	29.5	0.214	13.1	0.059	35.8	0.006	5.8	0.19	1.05	0.147	80.6	84.2	3.6
ATL	0.016	-9.4	0.235	-80.7	0.056	51.1	0.004	15.9	0.193	1.42	0.1	6.1	-23.2	-29.3
CHC	0.013	3.7	0.222	-23.4	0.059	31.8	0.008	-0.8	0.191	1.27	0.137	18	11.2	-6.7
STL	0.012	7.2	0.206	46.2	0.065	9.3	0.004	13.1	0.181	1.45	0.112	70.1	75.8	5.6
tot	0.013	0	0.217	0	0.067	0	0.007	0	0.188	1.23	0.127	0	0	0

"$r" is the lwts run amount, and netO is the net outs amount. "diff" is the difference between the two. You'll also notice the LD%, G/F, and IF/Fly columns, taken from THT (have you bought your THT annual yet? You really should; it's a great book and they should be getting some compensation for the great services their site provides). Now here's what should stand out: all the teams with a G/F below average had a higher net outs than net lwts runs and almost all the teams with a G/F above average had higher net lwts runs than net outs. The only exceptions were San Francisco and St. Louis. St. Louis seems easy to explain: they probably had the best infield but their outfield was weak, so their net reduction in XBH was probably more from the lack of GB than from defense. San Francisco can be similarly explained, as they had very poor outfield defense and played in a park that favors doubles and triples.

As you can see, the Dodgers gave up more lwts runs per out than average, as their G/F tendencies would predict. However, the difference was pretty negligible; the absolute value of their difference was the smallest of any team but the Rockies even while their difference from the G/F average was the second most extreme. You might intuitively expect the Dodgers and their FB staff to skimp on singles and be average with the doubles, but that's not how it worked. They were solid across the board. They were excellent in terms of ROE, good in terms of singles, excellent in terms of doubles and good in terms of triples. Contrast this to the other FB-heavy staffs: SD, PHI, and CIN all gave up a bunch of doubles while clamping down big time on singles - each of them saved more singles than the Dodgers.

Remember what I said about the Giants in explaining the reason they differed from the norm? It's the ballpark. The Dodgers gave up few doubles for a reason: Dodger Stadium hates doubles with a passion, and it's not fond of triples, either. Looking at ESPN's one-year Park Factors, Dodger Stadium was the worst venue for doubles in 2004; it's the anti-Fenway. Dodger Stadium keeps hits down in general, but not by as much as you would think. In fact, if you look at the Dodgers' league-leading IF/Fly ratio, the little evidence I have suggests that most of Dodger Stadium's hit reduction prowess lies in its abundance of foul ground. So while the Dodgers did, without question, have excellent defense last season, I think it's clear that a good chunk of their defensive success can be owed to the fact that they benefited from the rewards of fly ball pitching (cutting down on singles and ROE's) while playing in a stadium that eliminated the balancing risk of fly ball pitching (extra base hits).

Now, you might be thinking that this finding is counter-intuitive since the Dodgers had, by all accounts, outstanding infield defense last season. Agreed. The Dodgers terrific infield was, obviously, a tremendous part of their defensive success. One would expect that group to account for much more than 13 net singles saved. However, the Dodgers also had two of the worst defenders in baseball in the outfield - Shawn Green and Steve Finley - playing a solid chunk of the time, and while their other outfielders were all good (well, probably not Grabowski) Roberts was oft-injured and playing a position he wasn't familiar with and Bradley was similarly unfamiliar with left and right field while playing there late in the season. In fact, in September, with Finley in tow and Green playing several games in the outfield, the Dodgers DIPS wasn't far off what it was the rest of the season (given their competition and excursion to Colorado, that shouldn't surprise), but their ERC and ERA were both much higher, even though on the season their ERC and ERA were much lower than their DIPS. Is that the sample size police at my door? Anyway, factor in that Cora and Green were both poor defenders range-wise, and I think it all adds up to a solid explanation.

So, to clarify: the unique features of Dodger Stadium make it ideally suited to a fly-ball pitching staff. A little of that advantage may be ceded with the current renovation which will reduce the amount of foul ground, thus eliminating some of the pop fouls that have held down hits. However, I see no reason for the XBH inhibiting powers of Dodger Stadium to decline from the renovation, so going forward it's clear to me that the Dodgers should value FB pitchers more highly than GB pitchers.

Not to get all Ijon Tichy on you, but this wields a lot of explanatory power. I think this certainly supports the notion that Kaz Ishii can rebound, as I discussed earlier. He's adjusted his approach to get more fly balls, and that strategy can yield great benefits with good outfield defense, especially if he learns that he should still try to strike out southpaws, something he neglected to do last season. Furthermore, it would suggest to me that pitchers like Derek Lowe and (gulp) Odalis Perez are not well-suited to pitching with the Dodgers, and pitchers like Javier Vazquez and Kevin Millwood would be well-suited to LA. Now, you might think now: but if Dodger Stadium's neutral on home runs, fly balls pitchers will still give up a lot of home runs. Well, that depends on the pitcher; it's for that very reason that DIPS and FIP (metrics of defense/fielding independent defense) both include home run measures. Obviously, I'm not saying that given two pitchers the Dodgers should choose the one who allows more fly balls; when choosing pitchers, the Dodgers should, of two pitchers with roughly equal DIPS projections, choose the one that is more of a fly ball pitcher, all else being equal.

I've expressed, on numerous occasions, my feeling that Odalis Perez is not hot stuff, despite the flashy ERA's. Certainly, though he's not an extreme ground ball pitcher, the relative value of FB pitchers for LA hurts his case. He's actually had his most success with the Dodgers in years when he gave up more fly balls:

2002: 1.36 G/F, 3.00 ERA, 3.54 FIP, 2.34 ERC, 17.8 K%, 4.4 BB%, 2.4 HR%
2003: 1.99 G/F, 4.52 ERA, 4.39 FIP, 4.11 ERC, 18.3 K%, 6.0 BB%, 3.6 HR%
2004: 1.62 G/F, 3.25 ERA, 4.29 FIP, 3.29 ERC, 16.3 K%, 5.6 BB%, 3.3 HR%

Let's not go crazy with that, though, as he's kind of all over the place. He doesn't allow many line drives, so I'd expect his ERA in front of a neutral defense to be in the 4.00-4.10 range. The Dodgers will have excellent infield defense next season, perhaps better than what they had last year, and they'll have excellent outfield defense too. All told, I'd be surprised if Perez' ERA was higher than 3.80-3.90 or so, but I'd also be surprised if it was lower than the 3.25 of last year. Wow, I've just established a pretty slim margin of errorfor myself, haven't I? I'm not sure how much I like the Perez deal, as he's overrated (except by people who only look at W-L) but the Dodgers clearly did have a need to pick up someone, and in the current market $8 million per isn't a terrible deal for him, and I doubt paying a million per extra for Matt Clement would have been worth it. That being said, though I'm certain I know less about the injury status of the players involved than Paul DePodesta or others, from a performance analysis standpoint I think Kevin Millwood figures to be a better deal. Of course, Millwood's still out there, and the Dodgers do have enough cash left to get him, so who knows?

Furthermore, this fly ball business touches on that other Dodgers offseason bugaboo, J.D. Drew vs. Adrian Beltre. Simply speaking, if the Dodgers maximize the utility of their ballpark by acquiring fly ball pitchers - which, to an extent, they have - then they accentuate the significance of their outfield defense. UZR indicates Shawn Green's right field defense is out 20 runs below average in a neutral context; with a heavy fly ball staff, that could translate into a value of nearly 30 runs below average, or 3 wins. Conversely, J.D. Drew is in the +10 range, which means the swing between the two defensively could easily be exceed 4 wins with a FB staff. Now, J.D. Drew also appears to come with the cost of moving him to centerfield to ease his knees. If that's the case, he looks to be a roughly average centerfielder, and some of Milton Bradley's value is lost with the move to right field. However, I would expect that to be only about a 10-15 run swing, so overall we're still looking at a 3-run defensive improvement versus Green. You can talk until you're blue in the face about Adrian Beltre's defense; he's great, and he's a +20 win defender. But third base is smack dab between RF and CF on the defensive spectrum, and check out the major league positional averages for each position:

RF: .272/.348/.449
3B: .273/.340/.455
CF: .272/.335/.437

In a context-neutral sense, Beltre doesn't have any major edge over Drew based on their 2004 performance levels. Plus, while both Drew and Beltre had career seasons, Beltre's got a whole lot more regression to the mean potential than Drew. That is to say, Beltre's season was at the upper bound of offensive performance, and it's extremely unlikely that he can improve on it; if he declines, there's a long history of him performing at a much lower level, whereas Drew has established a performance level substantially north of Beltre's. So while it's true that, going strictly by age, Beltre is entering his nominal prime while Drew is already in his, that doesn't really portend that Beltre's performance relative to Drew's will improve. Given all that, I don't really see where Beltre earns $2 million per season more than Drew in a context-neutral sense. Heck, back in September I concluded my ridiculously long Beltre analysis by saying he'd sign for 5 years, $55 million. But in the context of Dodger Stadium, Drew already adds relative value because a value-maximized staff will be fly ball heavy. So independent of whomsoever else is involved, I think Drew is a better value than Beltre at 5 years, $55 million and it just so happens that the Dodgers would need to pay another $9 million for Beltre.

But, of course, there are others involved, in the persons of Shawn Green and Jose Valentin. Green is a better offensive player than Valentin, although the White Sox absurd decision to have Valentin start against southpaws last season makes his offense look worse than it really is. Valentin, if wisely deployed is about average offensively, and Dayn Perry would probably agree that Valentin's TTO prowess makes him a good fit for the Dodgers. Maybe you're really into that super-popular stat that Green was .253/.335/.399 before the all-star break and .281/.371/.529 after it. A much less popular stat is that in 2003 that same split would be .255/.317/.429 pre and .316/.408/.506 post. I don't see what reason there is to believe that the second half of 2004 represents his true performance level and not just small sample size noise. Given the likelihood of his torn labrum rearing its head again, +20 runs for Green's offense is slightly optimistic. So Green has a 20 run edge on Valentin offensively, but, as we established before, the addition of Drew creates a 30-run swing on defense. Given Valentin's tremendous defense at shortstop, he should match what Beltre did defensively, if not exceed it. So the offense of Beltre and Drew cancel out, the defense at third cancels out, and the outfield defense advantage gives an extra win relative to Green's offensive edge over Valentin. One win gained. If the Dodgers had re-signed Beltre at $13m per and kept Green in place, they'd be on the hook for $29 million in 2004. Now, they're paying $22.5 million to replace them with Valentin and Drew and to rid themselves of Green's contract. So if my arguments are accurate, the Dodgers save $6.5 million to pick up an extra win. They used that $6.5 million on the difference between Alex Cora and Jeff Kent, which probably adds a win or two defensively and two wins offensively. So for the same price, I see a four or five win improvement. On top of that, they get Dioner Navarro and William Juarez and owe Drew $9 mil less over the next five years than they'd owe Beltre. We could also throw into the discussion that the Dodgers have several solid third base prospects and few solid outfield prospects, enhancing Drew's marginal value. But why pile on?

Oh, one last bird to pummel with this particular stone. Derek Lowe. You know him, you love him, you can't get enough of him. Certainly, my fly ball conclusion doesn't help Lowe's case. He's probably better than I mentally give him credit for, and if he were plugged into the Dodgers he'd probably have a sub-4.00 ERA, given his 4.4ish DIPS in the AL the past two seasons and the Dodgers defense. In fact, there's not much separating him from Perez. That being said, Perez provides better marginal value due to his less extreme GB tendencies and Lowe's price tag probably isn't much lower than Perez' - heck, it might be higher.

This hasn't been a perfect offseason for the Dodgers, but it's been much, much better than almost anyone is giving them credit for, and I'm not sure that anyone could have done a better job than DePodesta has done.

Or maybe my computer just has a virus (hey, maybe Simers was inspired by what I wrote here).

Is This Malaise?

2005-01-03T23:51:00.000-08:00

Arrgh! Not another damned meta-post! Why are bloggers so self-important?

My research to writing ratio has been at an all-time high recently. I don't think I've done much other than researching players and reading (and re-reading) older sabermetric work over the past few days. The thing is, I keep finding answers to the small questions but keep begging the bigger questions. For instance, I thought my Ishii finding about his platoon splits was remarkable, and it represented perhaps the high-point of my blogging career. I have no idea why that is, and it doesn't appear that anyone else has the same opinion. But all my finding did was leave me wondering: can starting pitcher's have completely different approaches against different kinds of batters, a la Mike Myers, or is my analysis a pipe dream in terms of practical application? And of course, I still hadn't answered the question that matters the most, posed by DodgerRoger in the comments: what does that mean overall for the Dodgers and their allocation of resources?

These questions chased around, and combined with countless other questions, all of which I've investigated at length. And there's a sense in which I still feel frustrated, because inherent in the choice of the presentation of the data as well as the summary and conclusion of the data are contextual starting points, and the "master plan" of DePodesta and company gets more opaque every moment. One moment I'm wondering why it's so chic to overlook that J.D. Drew and Adrian Beltre occupy the same part of the defensive spectrum, the next I'm wondering why the common sense understanding seems to be that Dodger Stadium helps groundball pitchers, the next I'm wondering if there's any reason to believe the Derek Lowe rumors that for no apparent reason refuse to die, and the next I'm running a bunch of different simulations on how many runs the Dodgers will score in 2005 while debating with myself for hours over what constants to plug in for Jose Valentin.

And I've reached a significant insight. It's much more important to me to come to a useful conclusion than it is to choose a conclusion, even while it's also very important to me to avoid thinking along the lines of "I guess we just don't know." As such, I'm very prone to doing a lot of work that doesn't come to fruition, and I'm very prone to doing a lot of analysis geared toward disrupting errant assumptions rather than putting forth "my take." So if you want my take on the latest move at any given time, it could be awhile, and I hope that's something you're willing to endure if you get a kick out of what I do. In the meantime, however, you can expect me to post some ideas.

Here's an example. I wrote "Articulation of the Big Trade," which fit into my paradigm of doing things geared toward coming up with a different way to view a problem/situation than with defending the absolute merits of it. When I wrote that, I wasn't really arguing that the proposed trade would have been a good thing (though that's apparently the overwhelming impression I gave and my analysis was without question geared toward defusing the many poor assumptions I saw being used to argue against the trade) because I conseidered it too dependant on a ton of other things - a J.D. Drew signing, yes, but also coming to an understanding of the relative value of winning in 2005 and a myriad of similar issues. I probably came off as arguing strongly in favor of the trade, which is my fault.

But it didn't stop there. Now, I think Rob McMillin is an excellent blogger, but his analysis of that trade was as offensive to me as a Myrow/Saenz platoon at third base ever could have been to him. I mean, to me the notion of using year-old PECOTA projections as one's primary source of data is amazingly objectionable. That doesn't mean it's wrong, but it does mean that it was very difficult for me to take his arguments seriously. So I got out my torches and rallied the townspeople, looked up Dr. Frankenstein's address on mapquest, and got ready to bring it. But the more I wrote, the less comfortable I felt writing, not because I felt I was wrong but because I sensed that I was looking at the data to find the things that matched up with what I wanted to say, and even though I looked for everything and tried to balance the arguments to evaluate them I still couldn't eliminate the bias, and that was the vary same trait that I had gotten me so riled up about Rob's write-up. There's a line between opinion and analysis, and though I'm not sure how fine that line is I know I was too close to encroachment for my comfort. I will try my best not to do that.

Fundamentally, if you want Dodgers news this ain't the place for you. What I think the Fourth Outfielder is about, fundamentally, is the search for those things that are not readily apparent about the Los Angeles Dodgers and the application of that knowledge. If that interests you, pull up a chair, because I'd love to share what I come up with with as many folks as possible. Right now, I've got a lot of material, and it will eventually get refined into something you can use and enjoy.

With that in mind, I want to point out something that's been on my mind for quite some time, which I hope provides whomsoever is reading with a better understanding of the Dodgers' plans. If you're reading this, you're probably aware that every December baseball has what's called the Rule 5 Draft. Any player who has a certain amount of service time - 3-4 years, depending on the age at which the player was signed - is eligible to be drafted by another team if that player is not on the 40-man roster of the organization that owns her/his rights. Now that I've told you that, care to take a guess what this next list of player's represents?

Joel Guzman
James Loney
Greg Miller
Jonathon Broxton
Andy LaRoche
Michael Megrew
Zachary Hammes
Matthew Kemp
Brett Dowdy
Jamaal Hamilton

Those are players who would be first-time eligible for the Rule 5 Draft next season. There are, of course, more, but those are the ones I could easily think of who figure to be have a shot of sticking around if drafted. Now, maybe those last four guys don't profile as impact players, but there's a lot to like about each of those first six names, and I can't conceive of any of them being made available in the Rule 5 Draft. Now the Dodgers are on the cusp of acquiring Dioner Navarro and William Suarez, both of whom would have to be protected on the 40-man roster (as would Marcos Carvajal and Matt Merricks, if they're returned, and they would belong on the above list). Minor league players aren't an atemporal commodity; the Dodgers farm system would probably be the consensus pick as strongest in the mid-minors right now, and that depth can't just be held on to until it reaches the majors. And while I would expect to see maybe one of those players as a regular in 2006, it's unlikely that more than one or two of them could be regular contributors at that point and to force them into backup roles would be a waste of development time and would start their service clocks earlier than necessary.

So the Dodgers have a ticking clock on these player's development at the same time that their only potential free agents for 2004 are Jose Valentin, Jeff Weaver, and Darren Dreifort as well as Elmer Dessens and Kaz Ishii, each of whom has a club option. As currently constituted, there's not a whole lot of chaff on the Dodgers' 40-man roster. That means that three things can happen: 1. Valuable players will either be cut, lost in the rule 5, or promoted in ways that minimize their value. 2. Further along prospects will be traded for younger prospects with less service time. 3. Dodgers prospects will be traded for major leaguers.

My feeling is that the third option is both the most likely option and the most valuable option. Keep that in mind when wondering what the Dodgers next move after trading Green will be.

***

One more note: I don't know when it happened, but at some point Jay Jaffe of Futility Infielder added a link to me on his sidebar. Jay's been one of my favorite bloggers since the time I started reading baseball blogs; a link to his blog has been on this site since the beginning, and the name of his blog was the main inspiration for the name of this one. Consider me very much honored to have been linked to, and I urge anyone who enjoys this blog to check out Jay's site. His JAWS system for analyzing Hall of Fame candidacy is an excellent one, and I highly recommend that anyone scratching their head tomorrow when the final results come out checks out the work he's done.

2005 Dodgers: Kazuhisa Ishii

2005-01-01T22:43:00.000-08:00

So I've spent countless hours chasing Bluto's rainbows, trying to figure out this riddle wrapped in an enigma doused in maple syrup and topped with pebbles, chocolate sprinkles, and mud gravy. I've mixed more metaphors than a bartender at a poetry school in my aborted attempts to come up with some cogent and coherent analysis.

What's so maddening about him isn't that he's inconsistent. It's that he's just so darned consistent in his inconsistency. One day he's Senator Blutarsky and the next he stuffs his mouth full of cafeteria food and prepares his hands to expel said food all over the cafeteria, inciting a full-scale food-riot. There's not a lot of in-between, and there aren't any stretches where he gets his act together or stretches where he falls apart so much that you can isolate any trends. He's like Neil Young from 1980-1986. Ishii will put out an album with the promise of Little Wing and The Old Homestead, but that album's also going to have insufferable tunes like Lost in Space and Stayin' Power on it. And unlike with Young, there's no reason to expect that someday Ishii will release his Freedom album, full of solid games/songs and a couple of masterpieces. But, as you'll see, there may be reason to expect a relative gem like Young's Life.

This overwhelming inconsistency isn't just the way it feels; this is the data. Over almost any five game stretch in 2004, Ishii had at least two quality starts (6+ IP, 3 runs or fewer allowed) and at most three, with only two exceptions when he had five-game stretches with only one quality start. Even using the modified "good start" 6 IP/2 R standard, only creates one additional three-start stretch where he'd only mustered one good start in his last five. If you look at his FIP's (a stat that mimics ERA based on walks, strikeouts, and home runs and which correlates with future ERA better than actual ERA) and look at each five-start period (1-5, 6-10, etc), his low is 4.33 and his high is 5.68. That's not a substantial amount of variation. But it's not being achieved by consistent mediocrity; it's being achieved by bouncing from good to bad to terrible, and it's not much fun for those of us who have to watch it.

What's more, there's not something obvious like Ishii's rest pattern to finger the blame at. I broke down Ishii's starts by the amount of pitches he'd thrown in his previous outing. There was a slight pattern toward improvement based on the length of the previous outing:

101+ pitches: 5.84 ERA, .33 "Good Start" percentage
91-100: 4.94, .38
89-90: 4.23, .4
80 or fewer: 4.14, .5

As promising as that looks to support the notion that pitch count caps could solve this problem, two facts mitigate that: first, that looks more like ERA randomness, as his FIP in those four categories of starts looks different: 6.27, 4.60, 6.27, 4.58. Now, maybe you're the type of person who sees that and thinks "Okay, we can let him pitch up to 80, but once he gets to 80 he's got to get up to 91 but then stop after 100." I, on the other hand, think that indicates small sample size randomness, although a cap at 100 might not be a terrible idea. Second, Ishii's value largely derives from the fact that when he's on, he's on; his splits indicate that he's the rare pitcher who seems to improve the longer he's in the game, although that's more of a selective sampling issue than anything-- he lasts longer on those days when he's good, and on the days when he's bad it's evident from the start.

Another thing I discovered was that Ishii performed poorly on five days rest:

4 days rest: 4.44 ERA, 4.73 FIP, .44 "Good Start" percentage
5 days rest: 6.43 ERA, 7.77 FIP, .29 gs%
6+ days rest: 4.23 ERA, 4.43 FIP, .4 gs%

My intuition says that's small sample size foolery, but if I were working for the Dodgers I would look into either altering his between starts routine when he's working on five days rest or just having him be the guy whose slot in the rotation is skipped when there's a day off. I might check into these splits for his past seasons, but I haven't done so yet. This isn't huge, but there's at least some reason to believe this is an issue, and if it is that would be helpful as this is something that's probably correctable.

But let's dig into how Kaz' performance is distributed. Ishii is like a vision out of Michael Wolverton's dreams, at once alarming, terrifying, and beautiful. His good starts are truly good, and his bad starts are truly bad. According to the support-neutral stats at Baseball Prospectus, Ishii's pitching was such so that the average team could have expected to win 15.3 games and lose 15.7 games in Ishii's 31 starts. That means that, on balance, Ishii's performance was only a hair below average, and his schizophrenia is precisely the kind that tends to get undervalued just by looking at a player's rate stats. That's the good news.

The bad news is that Ishii's 2004 rate of run allowance versus his component/peripheral stats is at the outer bounds, and it's somewhat unrealistic to expect him to continue being as lucky on balls in play and the timing of the hits he's allowed as he has been. (I should note here that support-neutral stats, in their current incarnation, are based on runs allowed and runners bequeathed, not component or peripheral stats). That's not to say he's due for some sort of crash, but he'll need to actually improve his performance to remain in the neighborhood of average. While he has traditionally been better than average on BABIP and runs allowed versus runs created, if he repeats his 5.35 FIP chances are his ERA will reside north of 5.00, rather than cooling off down at 4.71. Using the DIPS and DIP% data at ESPN.com (it's not on the player cards; you have to look at the entire league stats to get it), Ishii's DIP% - the ratio of his Defense Independent Pitching to his actual ERA - has resided in the lofty 1.16-1.24 range in each season of his career. In 2002 and 2003, he outperformed his DIPS mainly by good timing, as his component ERA (ERC) to ERA ratio was in the same range. In 2004, however, his ERA was actually higher than his ERC, so the relatively low ERA was accomplished through some permutation of strong defense and his own ability to induce batters to hit balls in a way that would be less conducive to them becoming hits. This is perhaps becoming more opaque than I intended, so let me take a moment to summarize: in the past, he's outperformed his peripherals two different ways, but he hasn't demonstrated consistency in the way he's outperformed his peripherals, so we can rule out the likelihood of improvement vis-a-vis his peripherals and Bill James' famous "plexiglass principle" indicates that the stronger likelihood is that he'll soon underperform his peripherals.

Now, you might be thinking that Ishii could maintain his relative success with balls in play because a) the Dodgers have excellent defense and b) he changed his approach to get more ball in play outs in 2004 than in the past. Well, both points have evidence to support them, and I'll be getting more into the nuts and bolts of balls in play and the Dodgers defense pretty soon, so stay tuned. Did Ishii change his approach to take advantage of the Dodgers' D? Well, the optimistic narrative is that yes, he did. His pitches per plate appearance was down from 3.91 (2002) and 4.07 (2003) to 3.71, and whereas he walked 15.4% of batters faced in 2002 and 2003 he walked only 13.1% of his opponents in 2004. His groundball to fly ball ratio also dropped substantially, which contrary to popular perception means fewer hits on balls in play unless the pitcher in question has a real nice sinker (Ishii does not). Obviously, though, that comes at a cost, as he used to strike out nearly a batter per inning and in 2004 his K rate was awful. Nonetheless, it can be said that the apparent new approach worked to an extent, as his component ERA has dropped from 4.94 to 4.79 to 4.50.

There is, however, a pessimistic counter-narrative that looks like this: Ishii's stuff is declining, and batters started to get more aggressive on him but he was bailed out by a combination of luck and good defense. This counter-narrative would suggest that Ishii is due for further decline in the future, as one can't really regain those absent K's and that luck won't hold out forever. Furthermore, it could be argued that Ishii's ability to exploit the strength of the Dodgers' defense is far from unique, so this skill doesn't hold weight in comparison to potential replacements.

Which story is the right one? I have no idea. My first guess was that it's somewhere in the middle. Since, I've come around to the optimistic narrative a bit, and the reason why is Ishii's platoon splits. In 2002-2003, his left-handedness was fully evident, as his defense-independent performance would indicate a 3.23/5.40 FIP split, with a .291 BABIP from RHB and a .288 BABIP from LHB. In 2004, however, he had a reverse platoon split, with those FIP figures at 5.46 for LHB and 5.30 for RHB. His performance against RHB actually significantly improved because they managed a paltry .254 BABIP. Against southpaws, however, the BABIP saw no drop (.289) while the walks increased and the strikeouts disappeared; while his K:BB against RHB only fell from 1.10 to 0.99, against LHB it was cut in three: 3.03 in 2002-2003, 1.07 in 2004. Yikes.

Now, a starting pitcher's splits present two major sampling issues, the first being sample size and the second being selective sampling (they'll typically tend to face only left-handed hitters who are good enough to start against southpaws). That's an important caveat, but I can't help but look at the data and come to this conclusion: Ishii (or Jim Colborn or some combination of the two) decided to pitch to contact more in 2004, and this strategy was beneficial vis-a-vis right handed batters but disastrous against left-handed batters. The data supports this, and it has the ring of intuitive sense to it, since to the best of my knowledge the platoon advantage rests mainly in the ability to disguise the type of pitch and the pitch's location from the batter, something a pitch-to-contact strategy doesn't access.

Thus, my humble recommendation for building a better Ishii is for Kaz to maintain his apparent 2004 approach of trying to induce flyballs against right-handed batters while reverting to his previous strikeoutcentric philosophy against left-handed batters. What might Kaz look like if he did that? If Ishii faces left-handed batters 23% of the time (his 3-year average) and does what he did against southpaws in 02-03 while doing what he did against RHB in 2004, his ERC comes out to about 3.87. That's a) not fantastic given the defense it assumes as well as the hitting environment it's derived from and b) a high-end estimate since it relies on selective sampling. At the same time, I don't think it's overly optimistic to argue that, if indeed Ishii's performance in 2004 reflected the change in approach I've observed, Ishii could be slightly above average ERA-wise if he goes back to looking for the K when he faces soupaws. In concert with the belief that ERA somewhat underestimates his value due to the inconsistency of his outings as the support-neutral stats show, it's possible that Ishii could, overall, be solidly above average.

When the Dodgers give a contract to their 2005 pitching coach, could someone have him drop me an email?

(note: edited back to initial posting; the slight data error I "fixed" in the final paragraph was actually not an error)

Double Plays: A Dodgers Resolution

2004-12-31T22:49:00.000-08:00

Blogger ate the post I wrote this afternoon, so I threw this together and let's hope it shows up on the site eventually. I looked at all players with 5 or more "double play opportunities" using Baseball Prospectus' data and compiled each player's double play rate (double plays hit into divided by double play opportunities). I used the full season for all players who switched teams. League average is about .127.

Likely 2005 Dodgers:
Werth .026
Drew .068
Ross .070
Valentin .078
Izturis .098
Choi .118
Bradley .128
Ledee .146
Saenz .167
Grabowski .172
Kent .182

Drew's rate was outstanding, but it couldn't catch Werth, who was best among players with 50 or more double play opportunities. Every likely Dodger starter, if Shawn Green is indeed on his way out the door, is either average or better except Jeff Kent.

2004 Dodgers-no-more:
Hernandez .085
Cora .092
Roberts .100
Finley .118
Encarnacion .124
Green .164
Beltre .165
Mayne .200
Lo Duca .200

Green-Beltre-Lo Duca, which I suppose we could call the team's offensive nucleus from 2003-2004, was a relative double play machine.

Of course, avoiding double plays isn't a skill per se; it's dependent on a lot of other factors. A player's speed factors into how many double plays they hit into, obviously, but the rate at which the player makes contact as well as the type of contact the player makes is an even greater factor. The type of players who ground into the fewest double plays tend to be in that ever-heroic category, Three True Outcomes (if you're unfamiliar with the concept, check here, here, or here; take a moment to connect the mental dots if you don't get how TTO reduces double play rates). Thus, the accumulation of Three True Outcomes Disciples and the expulsion of contactophiles Beltre and Lo Duca, a trend that the coming of DePodesta should have foretold, should yield a decrease in twin-killings.

Jeff Kent is clearly the one Dodger who, in some sense, does not belong, as he's only an acolyte of one true outcome (home runs) and routinely leaves the runner on first out to dry. If it weren't for his undervalued defense and apparent distaste for Barry Bonds, he wouldn't fit in with this bunch at all.

Realignment

2004-12-30T15:09:00.000-08:00

Nothing says late December like a fluff piece. My fluff of choice: realignment, in this case realigning major league baseball by team name. What would baseball look like in 2004 with this sort of realignment? Here's the standings I've arranged, using third-order (competition-adjusted) wins from Baseball Prospectus:

NL
Animal Division
Cubs, 93-68
Orioles, 85-76
Tigers, 80-82
Marlins, 80-81
Blues Jays, 71-89
Diamondbacks, 61-100

Career Division
Rangers, 83-79
Brewers, 77-84
Mariners, 75-87
Pirates, 72-89
Royals, 60-102

Geograph Division
Yankees, 91-70
Astros, 87-94
Indians, 78-82
Metropolitans, 76-86
Rockies, 70-91

AL
Virtue Divison
Cardinals, 98-63
Braves, 88-73
Angels, 87-74
Padres, 83-79
Devil Rays, 73-88

Sportswear Division
Red Sox, 103-58
Athletics, 90-71
White Sox, 79-83
Reds, 67-94

Abstraction Division
Dodgers, 86-75
Giants, 86-75
Twins, 84-76
Phillies, 83-78
Expos/Nationals, 69-93

Since the team with more third order wins won six of the seven postseason series (the Astros beat the Braves despite finishing 1.1 games behind in third order wins), let's use them to predict the postseason:

Cubs over Astros
Yankees over Rangers
Red Sox over Dodgers
Cardinals over A's

Cubs over Yankees
Red Sox over Cardinals

Red Sox over Cubs

Nothing could derail the Red Sox march to glory, but the realignment would have aided the Cubbies in breaking their "curse." Other benefactors include the Rangers and A's, while the Braves, the Angels, and the Twins are the most harmed. The Dodgers and Giants went down to the very end over a division title once again, with the Dodgers coming out a half game ahead. The Virtue and Sportswear Divisions are stacked, while the Abstraction Division had a down-year due to the flop of the heavily-favored Phillies. And why do so many small market franchises name their teams after careers?

Tumbleweed

2004-12-29T15:32:00.000-08:00

I haven't been online since my last post, and I'm catching up today. Not much news, however, and nothing to write about. I might do a few more 2005 player profiles this week, but I'm also busy with several projects, some baseball-related and some otherwise. One could consider Eric Milton not signing with the Dodgers a nice Christmas present, but I can't say I ever thought it would happen, either.

To Critique

2004-12-24T18:31:00.000-08:00

Since when is the job of a baseaball writer to criticize a General Manager's job?

In the short life of this blog, I can only recall criticizing a few GM moves: the Jose Mesa contract, the Troy Percival contract, Jim Bowden's money giveaway, and Jim Hendry's failure to accumulate players who will reach base. I've also been puzzled by the amount of money given to some (Omar Vizquel and Jose Valentin come to mind) and pondered openly whether the investment was wise.

Yesterday I wrote, in response to the claim that "Paul DePodesta can't close deals" that he, in fact, has. In the comments, I was told this was a stupid thing to say because those moves were questionable. Wow, insightful. I mean, giving $70 million to Adrian Beltre or trading for a 41-year-old pitcher wouldn't be questionable, right?

When I started this blog, it was because I have a tendency to conduct research to analyze things that happen in baseball, especially with the Dodgers. That analysis and explication is what I enjoy. On the other hand, when a team either makes a move that is curious or fails to make a move that would have helped, I know there are plenty of other people around to jump all over it. All I'd like to do is provide an interpretation of what happens.

If a team signs a player whose skills are overrated, I'd like to talk about why. When a team likes a move, I like to show what effect it will have on a team. Things like roster and lineup construction can, more or less, be done in a vacuum. Things like trades and free agent signings, however, require the alignment of multiple actors. The current chic criticism of Paul DePodesta is he may know how to evaluate talent but he doesn't know how to execute. Well, something tells me that the combination of those two skills eludes almost everyone, so I have no business pretending that I can say what a GM should do when I don't know the limitations and context in which that GM acts.

My job isn't to show I'm smarter than any General Manager, even though that seems to be the expectation of a lot of people. If you want your blogger to tell you what GM's should do, there are more than enough places to find that, and I won't mind if you don't come back around here.

Reasons to Expect a Full Season From J.D. Drew (Reasons, Not Answers)

2004-12-23T22:09:00.000-08:00

From The State:

Drew has battled injuries throughout his big league career that began with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1998. He hadn't played in more than 135 games in a season before last year.

A turning point came in October 2002 when he had surgery to remove the diseased portion of his right patella tendon.

"It was nasty," he said of his knee. "It affected me for two years, it limited my game."

It hampered his swing and contributed to other physical problems because he was compensating. Drew appeared in a career-low 100 games in 2003, hitting .289 with 15 homers and 42 RBIs.

St. Louis traded him to Atlanta last December.

"I had the opportunity last offseason to strengthen my leg," he said. "I went into last year not knowing how it would react. It reacted great. Every day it got stronger and stronger."

And that showed on the field.

"I'm looking forward to another healthy year," Drew said. "The thing I learned last year is the more you're on the field, the more consistent you can become."

...

Drew said he's been at the gym five days a week since Thanksgiving preparing for next season and will continue that kind of preparation until shortly before the start of spring training.

"Oh, man, it's great," he said. "I can do my leg workouts like I want to. I know how to maintain it now. I feel so much better. The benefit I have now is the experience, knowing how to handle it."

From Will Carroll (subscription required):

Drew, as I've noted in the past, would do better in center by avoiding the dangers of handling sharp turns in the corners, but one trainer pointed out to me that a park with ample foul territory would have roughly the same effect if he stayed in right.

From Ken Gurnick:

"Not to start a controversy," Drew told a Thursday press conference to announce his five-year contract, "but I'd like to start in center field. Playing behind Jim Edmonds [in St. Louis] and Andruw Jones [in Atlanta], there was no opportunity. You tip your cap and carry their Gold Gloves home for them. If the opportunity presents itself, I'd like to give it a shot."

General manager Paul DePodesta, clearly enjoying the moment in an otherwise rocky offseason, seemed fine with moving Bradley to right field to allow his new centerpiece to play center field.

"I don't anticipate it being a problem," DePodesta said. "I talked to Milton earlier in the winter about the possibility of him playing one of the corners if we made certain moves. He didn't really care. He said he'd fit in anywhere if we felt it would make the team better. We'll let it play itself out. We're in a great spot whoever ends up in the corner. Milton was unbelievable moving when we got [Steve] Finley, but he could end up in center field, too."

...

He said when his knee hurt, slamming on the brakes in the corner bothered it the most. He said he could play right or center, but in left field, "I'm a lost cause. It feels so odd to me."

J.D. Drew Walks

2004-12-23T21:19:00.000-08:00

Two paraphrased statements:

Statement A: 5 years, $55 million for injury-prone J.D. Drew? DePodesta has lost his mind.

Statement B: How could DePodesta only offer Beltre $10 million per? That's crazy for a young player in his prime who is MVP-caliber.

There's a lot of people who have more or less made both of the above arguments. I just don't see how that's possible.

J.D. Drew has major injury issues. He's missed a lot of games in his career due to injury. Last year that didn't happen, and his in-season trend was positive (8 of the 17 games he missed were before May7, and most of the rest were in late September when the Braves were resting their players).

Adrian Beltre has major effectiveness concerns. He's been unproductive a lot in his career. Last year that didn't happen, and his in-season trend was positive (his only non-outstanding month was in May).

Why does Drew's history of losing time to injury make him a terrible risk while Beltre's history of not being very good is easy to overlook? Why is one a corner which can be neatly turned in the span of a season while the other isn't?

If Drew misses a lot of time to injury while Beltre continues to play as he did in 2004, then Beltre is obviously the better deal. But if Drew stays healthy while Beltre reverts to his 2001-2003 self, then Drew is obviously the better deal. But if Drew and Beltre both repeat their 2004's Beltre only has a slight edge and if Drew continues his injury problems while Beltre regresses then Drew has a slight edge.

Consider this: despite missing a lot of time to injuries, Drew produced more runs above replacement than Beltre in each season from 2001-2003. Moreover, if you're going to take your chances on a risky player, it's a lot better to do it in the outfield where decent fill-ins are more readily available than in the infield.

I won't try to speculate on what Drew's injury chances are. Will Carroll indicated there was reason for optimism, and he gave a yellow-light to both Drew and Beltre. However, Beltre's still a player who doesn't walk much and whose success in 2004 came mainly from converting strikeouts into home runs. As I've written extensively before, there aren't really any seasons that compare to Beltre's 2004, and the only one that looks pretty close - Rico Petrocelli's in 1969 - proved to be a fluke. In the end, I like Beltre's chances going forward, but he's still a large risk. Drew, on the other hand, has seen his offensive segments stay pretty consistent over the years with the two changes being that in 2002 he struck out a lot and in 2004 he drew a ridiculous amount of unintentional walks. Everything I've learned about baseball leads me to believe that the odds of a player repeating a sudden spike in walks are much higher than the odds of a player repeating a sudden spike in home runs.

The point is, two players with shaky performance records were signed to expensive long-term deals, and there's no reason to assume that the success of each in 2004 only alters the prognosis for one of them.

A lot of people are criticizing DePodesta for not coming through with big deals. That's just bitter rationalizing combined with selective sampling. Jeff Kent and and J.D. Drew and the Penny/Choi trade don't count, but Adrian Beltre and the two unfulfilled Diamondbacks trades do? I really don't get why DePodesta should be tarred and feathered for not offering more than he was willing to offer. I don't think DePodesta has done a perfect job as a general manager, but I can't point to anyone else who has either. And if Peter Gammons' account is correct, I think anyone castigating DePodesta for pulling out of this trade is either a jerk or clueless.

I don't like being characterized as a "DePodesta apologist." Simply stated, I think baseball analysis is both easier and insightful when you empathize with the actors involved rather than blindly criticizing them. If you take the time to figure out why a decision was made, you can then evaluate both the goals the decision sought to address as well as how effective the decision should be in accomplishing those goals. I'm not trying to apologize for DePodesta. I'm trying to cut through the veil of opaque quotations, planted rumors, and entrenched reputations that the media provides us in order to look at the purpose of the moves that baseball teams make and how effective those moves are. How successful I am in doing this is subject to a number of limitations, but I'd like to think that examination of evidence is a much better way to go about this than reacting based on one's gut.

2004-12-22T21:56:00.000-08:00

More quick notes, since my internet access for the next week is very limited:

The thing that continues to be overlooked about Paul DePodesta's moves, in my opinion, is that they always leave a lot of flexibility. Both Kent and Valentin left the Dodgers with a lot of flexibility, and the Penny/Choi deal last season was remarkable in the way that it worked whether the deal for Randy Johnson would work out or not (and please, I'm not interested in debating whether DePodesta should have predicted a) Penny's biceps injury and b) sudden declines from Ross, Mayne, and Choi). J.D. Drew can play any of the outfield positions, and with Green's ability (albeit limited) to play first base, so the Dodgers have four trading chips in Bradley, Werth, Green, and Choi. I'd prefer to see one traded for pitching, though I'm not in a good position to speculate on the logistics. Given the chance to bench one of them, I'd probably go with Werth over Choi. Realistically, Werth should platoon with Green, not the de facto Choi-Werth platoon. Olmedo Saenz is going to be more productive starting against southpaws than Green, and I'm still not even sold that Choi shouldn't start against LHP.
Obviously, DePodesta has left himself open to criticism over his inability to land a free agent starting pitcher. I think it's pretty wise not to overpay for pitchers, especially since Brad Radke is the only one who was out there I thought was low risk and therefore worth considering overpaying for. I'm surprised Clement signed for as little as he did, frankly, and overpaying for him would have been defensible. In the end, both Clement and Radke appeared to make decisions largely based on geography, so I can't find much fault in what happened there. That having been said, it's still my opinion that Kevin Millwood, signed to an incentive-laden deal, could end up being the best deal of the year. Derek Lowe, on the other hand, has me disturbed, and could be a bad panic move. I'm trying to do some research on Lowe to see if I can understand this possibility, but you'll have to wait on that one.
Does Penny, Brazoban, and Green for Randy Johnson and Mike Koplove make sense? Probably not, since Johnson, based on everything I've read, wants to be traded somewhere where he'll get a contract extension, and guaranteeing $32 million to a pitcher in his age 41 and 42 seasons is awfully risky. Then again, I'm still not clear how DePodesta is ever going to fill out $100 million payrolls over the next few years if he's as prudent as he has been.
Wow, I beat the AP on this one by four days.

I should be able to get more up over the next few days, but in case I don't let me say I hope everyone enjoys whatever December rituals they partake in.

Quick Arbitration Notes

2004-12-21T18:06:00.000-08:00

Don't have much time, real quick:

Was it only a year ago that Cora was inciting angry pitchfork frenzies from Dodger fans? Now the comments over at Dodger Thoughts are congested with claims that DePodesta and his crazy calculator don't believe in defense with Cora being non-tendered. This is really, really, silly. By any reasonable metric, Valentin and Kent were among the best defenders at their respective positions last season. Cora, on the other hand, was somewhat underwhelming, and ranked poorly in Michael Lichtman's Ultimate Zone Rating system. I remember talking to several Dodgers fans in April who wanted Cora out as soon as possible. Now he has a good offensive season and his defense is the reason to keep him. Losing Cora isn't my favorite thing, but he's not as good as either Valentin or Kent and would have come at almost the same expense.
Am I the only one surprised by Tom Wilson being non-tendered? To be honest, I thought he didn't have enough service time to qualify, since he only spent two full seasons in the majors and just small parts of 2001 and 2004, and he didn't, so far as I can tell, log enough service time this season to qualify as someone with under three years. Someday I'll understand this. In any event, this was probably the right decision since Wilson's not good enough to be guaranteed the $400,000 or so he'd get. Still, Wilson is a good backup catcher, and this is a tad disappointing.
$500,000 for Carrara? I think that that's pretty darn cheap. Shouldn't fans be calling into radio talk shows about what a good deal DePodesta made here? He re-signed someone who had a much better season than Brazoban for near the minimum. What's more, I'm not sure Carrara doesn't deserve True Dodger status; I'll always remember his three spot starts in 2001 when he gave up only a run in each. He's more of a True Dodger than Brazoban, as far as I'm concerned.
Much ado about nothing on the trade front, or so it would seem at this time. There's a reason one should be slow to analyze any deal that involves a reduction in payroll: the deal itself doesn't dictate how that cash will be spent, and as I argued on Sunday context is everything.

Happy solstice.

A Clarification On Vazquez

2004-12-20T01:42:00.000-08:00

I guess when I've written about Javier Vazquez I've started with an unconscious and inaccurate assumption that my audience reads Yankee blogs frequently, as I do (not because I like the Yankees, but because so many of the best baseball bloggers are Yankee fans). If you've read as much about the Yankees as I have in the past year, you would probably recognize my "poor intruction" quip as a reference to Yankees pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre. I won't pretend to have the final word on Stottlemyre's merits, but I think that he has enough of a record of recent failure and Vazquez had enough of a record of success that his second half in 2004 is more likely, to me, to be an anomaly than a change in true performance level.

If you're interested, check out what Larry Mahnken wrote here. Jay Jaffe, maybe my favorite blogger, wrote about it here and here (with Cliff Corcoran nodding along), talked about Stottlemyre in relation to Vazquez here, and made a funny quip about it here. Also, Pat Jordan discussed Vazquez in an interview with Alex Belth, and if he what he says is accurate (I frankly don't know) than Vazquez looks like a solid bet for major improvement.

And while we're on the topic of Yankee blogs, check out what Fabian had to say about Navarro and Duncan at Replacement-Level Yankees Weblog today.

I have two finals Monday and have to get out of Dodge shortly thereafter, so I might not have time to write anything until Tuesday or so. I'll see what I can do, especially with Icaros' generosity in the comments.

Brad Penny In The Higher League

2004-12-20T01:20:00.000-08:00

I tried to resist, but to the anonymous poster who talked about Brad Penny having pitched in the higher league, here were his numbers in the 2003 postseason:

22 IP, 5.73 ERA, 9 BB, 13 K, 3 HR

I don't think that means Penny is some sort of postseason failure, because I don't believe that very small sizes of data and selectively-sampled subjective observation can determine a player's worth in important circumstances. I'm willing to believe all sorts of theories about ballplayers, but in analysis and decisionmaking I'll side with Rick Peterson's adage: "In God we trust. All others must have data."

An Articulation of the Big Trade

2004-12-19T14:05:00.000-08:00

How we conceive of a trade involving numerous components largely depends on how we articulate it. If this trade is "our top reliever, starter, and hitter, plus another starter, for one starter and two scrubs," it obviously doesn't look very good. Let me articulate it in a way that makes sense to me.

Transaction #1: Dodgers trade Brad Penny for Javier Vazquez and $4.5 million.

This part doesn't look bad. Penny is the bigger injury concern, for one. Vazquez has a longer track record, and he's been a much better pitcher - his numbers from 2000-2003 are much better than Penny's from 2001-2004, and his best season was much better than Penny's. Penny is coming off of a better season and is two years younger. However, there's reason to believe that Vazquez simply suffered from a lack of good instruction in the scond half, and that this would be corrected with Los Angeles. This draws the Jeff Weaver comparison, with the caveat that Vazquez' potential is much higher than Weaver's. Vazquez is a fly ball power pitcher, and if the Dodgers do indeed sign J.D. Drew they would have excellent defenders in all three outfield positions, whereas the Yankees had pretty terrible outfield defense last season. That combined with the league differences mean that if Vazquez repeats his pre all-star break performance from last season his ERA should be under 3.00. Additionally, Penny's career high in innings pitched was 205 in 2001, and he's only had one other season with more than 143 IP; Vazquez threw 217.2 or more innings in each season from 2000 to 2003, and was on pace to continue that streak before his disastrous second half in 2004.

From a money standpoint, this isn't a victory, with Penny likely to earn about $6 million this season. If Penny is good in 2005, then the D'Backs will get two seasons of Penny for about $13-15 million while the Dodgers get three seasons of Vazquez for $34.5 million minus the $4.5 million, so the average annual value is only $2-3 million or so higher and the Dodgers get an extra year.

Transaction #2: The Dodgers trade Yhency Brazoban and Brandon Weeden for Mike Koplove and Dioner Navarro.

In terms of the two relievers, as I wrote yesterday there's not a very big difference and the Dodgers might even come out ahead. They do give up the chance of Brazoban's much higher peak, but that's easily swamped by the difference between the two semi-failed 20-year old prospects. Weeden hasn't been able to keep his walk rate low enough to project well, and he spent his age 20 season in low-A. Navarro spent his age-20 season in AA and AAA, and while he didn't hit the ball very hard last season he still has good plate discipline (a K:BB ratio of only 1.3 last season despite being very young for his competition) and could easily regain the line drive ability of his 2003 season. Given that Navarro plays a premium defensive position, this is a major victory from a prospect standpoint.

The Dodgers lose out on six years of Brazoban for three years of Koplove, and Koplove will probably earn $3-5 million over the next three seasons in arbitration. Given that relievers are easier to replace than any other position, the Navarro grab makes this a solid win in my book.

Transaction #3: The Dodgers trade Shawn Green and $2.5 million for Eric Duncan.

A salary dump for a very good prospect. The Dodgers lose a year of Green and gain $13.5 million. However, that's probably more than enough to obtain J.D. Drew, who will almost certainly be more productive per plate appearance, and is far and away the better defender. Drew's injury history makes this a more even proposition, but the fact that the Dodgers also get Drew on hand for several years under this scenario makes it a likely win, even before considering Eric Duncan. Duncan, as I said yesterday, was #18 among all hitting prospects in 2004 according to the future DT's. He draws a good amount of walks, and his doubles power at age 19 suggests his home run power will soon develop. He has to work on his strike-outs, but he's not really behind the curve in that department. Overall, this looks like a win.

Transaction #4: The Dodgers release Kaz Ishii, paying off the rest of his contract.

Here's where the Dodgers take the biggest hit. Unable to unload the disappointing lefty - whose pitch count splits and platoon splits buth suggest he'd be pretty useless as a lefty out of the bullpen and who is not sustantially different from replacement level as a starter - the Dodgers eat his contract to make room on the 25-man roster. Certainly not a win, but not a big loss either.

Overall, if Drew really is next to come, the Dodgers upgrade rigth field and a spot in the rotation talent-wise while trading the injury concern from the rotation to right field. They unload a pitcher who's pretty useless. They don't appreciably downgrade the bullpen in the short term and acquire two very good prospects. The moves increase their 2005 payroll by a factor of (Drew's salary - $8-10 million), depending on how much Koplove and Penny make in arbitration. For 2006 and 2007, they increase the payroll by $21.8 million plus Drew's salary minus the amount they'd end up paying Penny in arbitration for 2006, and in exchange they get two seasons each of Vazquez and Drew instead of one season of Penny.

Then again, the potential Drew signing could be completely mucked, so who knows?

I know I perhaps look like a major Paul DePodesta apologist, somehow desperately seeking to justify his actions. I'm not. The simple fact is that my analytic paradigm is probably similar to his and within that paradigm he seems to be making pretty good decisions, and expecting the ideal is unrealistic.

The Apocalypse Nears!

2004-12-18T22:01:00.000-08:00

Let's play the match game:

Actual 2004 Stats
Reliever A: 144 ERA+, 4.71 FIP, .168 LD%
Reliever B: 167 ERA+, 3.59 FIP, .195 LD%
Reliever C: 110 ERA+, 4.30 FIP, .162 LD%

2005 ZiPS Projections
Reliever A: 132 ERA+, 3.50 FIP
Reliever B: 116 ERA+, 3.51 FIP
Reliever C: 109 ERA+, 3.76 FIP

And while I'm at it, let me throw in a couple more:
Reliever D: 160 ERA+, 3.47 FIP
Reliever E: 140 ERA+, 3.29 FIP

And keep in mind, when looking at those FIP's, that Relievers A, C, D, and E all pitch in parks that heavily increase offense in general and home runs in particular while Reliever B pitched in a park that in 2004 substantially reduced the number of walks issued (and all of the ZiPS projections are based on them remaining in those ballparks).

None of them is head and shoulders above the others.

Reliever B is prodigal son Yhency Brazoban in 2004. Relievers A and C are former prodigal sons Damaso Marte and Mike Koplove, respectively. Reliever D is Koplove's career prior to 2004 and Reliever E is Marte's career prior to 2004; Koplove is 28 and Marte turns 30 in February.

It's possible that Brazoban will soon become a dominant major league pitcher. But he also walked 4 batters per 9 innings in AA this season. He should be a productive reliever for years to come, but so should Koplove and Marte. Moreover, Koplove and Marte are both coming off of seasons where they underperformed expectations, and they both had dominant seasons in 2003. Even though there's reason to believe that the true performance level of each is higher than what they did in 2004, both are apparently not thought of highly by their current team. Meanwhile, because of the circumstances surrounding Brazoban's call-up, as well as some luck and outstanding fielding behind him, he's being hailed as the next sliced bread.

Now, I don't know about you, but I think the notion of buying low and selling high has some currency. There is a lot of frustration being expressed by Dodgers fans right now that the team is making moves for the future at the expense of the present, but the sentiment toward trading Brazoban is overwhelmingly negative. These sentiments are difficult to reconcile in the face of objective analysis; Brazoban's value relative to the others lies mainly in his upside, not in his immediate impact. Brazoban looks, to me, like an overvalued commodity while Marte and Koplove look like undervalued commodities.

Again, I'm not saying that the proposed trades are all roses. But the simple truth remains that one must trade talent in order to receive talent, and it's very unlikely that Paul DePodesta is acquiescing to trades without studying their ramifications. The very fact that the proposed trades appear, at first glance, to be to the detriment of the Dodgers is, to me, evidence of their intelligence (evidence, not proof). If a trade looks one-sided, it is probably because the common sense understandings of the value of the different players involved are inaccurate in light of the actual data.

This cuts both ways, of course: if you realize that a player's perceived value outstrips the player's actual value, you may begin to undervalue the player. That's certainly something to consider, and it is a criticism which has merit in light of the Lo Duca trade. That being said, if your gut reaction is that something looks bad, that doesn't mean it is bad and it might indicate it's actually very good. In any event, it certainly doesn't mean that you should toss your hands up in disbelief, refuse to even look up the relevant data, cancel season tickets, and take your ball and go home.

And one more thing: anybody who calls Dioner Navarro and Eric Duncan "a couple of minor-leaguers" or says they're "overhyped Yankees prospects" looks pretty silly in my book. C'mon, folks, these aren't kids who are inflated by the Yankee hype machine and impressionable scouts filing overexcited reports, this is a catcher who hit .341/.388/.471 in AA at 19 years old and a third baseman who placed 18th among minor league hitters according to the Future DT's. If anything, I would argue that, by virtue of being in the Yankees system and all the attendant baggage that brings, they are more likely to be undervalued. This is especially true of Navarro, who's already being treated as if he were a failed prospect by virtue of one disappointing season playing against much older competition - he was 20 last season and split it between AA and AAA. Navarro might not have very good sceondary skills offensively, but neither did Paul Lo Duca and y'all liked him just fine.

Payroll

2004-12-18T05:29:00.000-08:00

The Consumer Price Index was released on Friday. I haven't seen this reported anywhere, so I thought I'd point it out here. The CBA says the major league minimum for 2005 is $300,000*((CPI-W Nov 02)/(CPI-W Nov 04)), rounded to the nearest $500. For minor league service time for players on the 40 man roster, the minimum is $50,000*((CPI-W Nov 02)/(CPI-W Nov 04)), again rounded to the nearest 100. The Nov. '02 CPI-W was 177.4, and the Nov. '04 CPI-W was 186.8. This means the new minimums, so far as I can tell, are $316,00 (major leagues) and $52,600 (minor leagues for 40-man roster players).

In light of this and the Valentin signing, I've updated my payroll data. An average of $320,000 for players not yet arbitration eligible seems right. I haven't seen any salary data for Alvarez, so he's not included, and obviously things will change soon with the arbitration deadline and trade rumors pending. The Dodgers now have eight players under contract, pending Valentin's physical, for $55.23 million. They also have eight arbitration eligible players on the 40-man roster, whose price I've estimated at $21.9 million total, although it should be noted that the likelihood of all of those players returning is in the neighborhood of zero. With Dreifort likely to be disabled on the 60-day DL, an accurate payroll baseline would include 25 slots, 12 on the 25-man roster (to account for likely DL time) and 13 on the 40-man, and we should probably add in a month of salary for eight September call-ups. Using $320,000 for the average minimum Major League contract and $53,000 for the minor league contracts, that sets the baseline at $82.1 million. Frankly, I have no idea whether the $100 million benchmark is supposed to include salaries for minor-leaguers on the 40-man and September call-up salaries, although I'll note that if I were running a team I would probably do that. If we want to use the more conservative estimate of opening-day 25-man roster payroll, the baseline is $80.3 million, although I should note again that the salary for the arbitration-eligible players was all guessing on my part and it's unlikely they'll all return.

(note: the above was edited 12/18 at 10:30 pm when I discovered the cost of living adjustment for major leaguers was rounded to the nearest $500, not $100 as I'd stated previously.)

2005 Dodgers: Jose Valentin

2004-12-17T21:46:00.000-08:00

Wow, another guy I forgot to mention, mainly because he's a shortstop. At $3.5 million, I do think this deal might have been more expensive than the market for him, but not by a wide margin.

I think I've seen two or three stathead-types point out this offseason that Valentin's batting average dropped low enough last season that he ceased being an underrated commodity. The thing is, though, that Valentin absolutely cannot hit southpaws and the White Sox started him against them frequently, to the tune of .191/.262/.404. Against northpaws, he hit .226/.298/.503. Obviously, that's inflated somewhat since Mobile Phone Villa in Chicago is the easiest place in baseball to hit a home run; I project that to .213/.282/.449 in 2004 LA, which certainly doesn't look very good. However, that's a .239 GPA, and league average for 2004 LA is .243. However, Valentin had a batting average on balls in play of .234 against RHP, which even with his tendencies is not likely to stay so low; .250 might be more reasonable based on his line drive rate in 2004. Looking at his overall numbers, everything has stayed very much the same year to year except his batting average on balls in play, which has declined steadily every year. Dodger Stadium likely won't help that, unless the remodeling makes a big difference. Whether that decline should be expected to continue and to what extent is an interesting question. Given all that, I'd say Valentin should be just under average offensively (because he still will have to take the occasional PA against LHP), which with his outstanding defense makes him 8-14 runs above average over 130 games.

Another thing I discovered about Valentin truly astounded me. Check this out:

2000: .323/.420/.541 w/ runners in scoring position, .257/.309/.476 otherwise
2001: .302/.411/.593 RISP, .247/.309/.476 otherwise
2002: .351/.416/.670 RISP, .224/.280/.432 otherwise
2003: .229/.306/.466 RISP, .239/.310/.462 otherwise
2004: .248/.347/.571 w/ RISP; .206/.261/.443 otherwise

It appears Valentin has a significant and undervalued skill. With a runner on second, he just takes over. I don't know what the explanation for it is, but something tells me DePodesta may have known about this. Wow. I might look into this more deeply using linear weights in the future, but suffice it to say this might make his offense above average overall.

Like the Kent deal, this signing is smart in that it gives the Dodgers a lot of flexibility. Consider the infielders on the Dodgers' 40-man roster that are major-league ready:

Jeff Kent
Hee Seop Choi
Jose Valentin
Cesar Izturis
Alex Cora
Antonio Perez
Olmedo Saenz
Joe Thurston, kind of

By UZR, Valentin was the best defensive shortstop in baseball last season and the best from 2000-2003. So the Dodgers have a lot of room to maneuver. I know a Cesar Izturis trade would result in beer and tacos being vomited over LA Times sports sections all over Southern California, but that doesn't mean it's not a good idea.

Now, wherever Valentin plays he'll need a platoon partner, and I suspect that would be Antonio Perez, although Olmedo Saenz can still play third base, kind of. Despite what I said about Izturis, this is more likely a signal that Cora won't remain with the club because of his handedness, whether as a non-tender or in a trade. I would think the Dodgers could get something for Cora in a trade - the Cardinals still have exactly zero middle infield pieces.

All in all, this is a good deal. Obviously, he's not Adrian Beltre. But he's not bad either, and even if DePodesta paid him more than he could have gotten away with it's still good value.

Trash Talk

2004-12-17T14:43:00.000-08:00

From Rob McMillin in the comments:

Tom, I'm scraping my jaw off the floor after reading your alternatives when I ponder that you actually consider them alternatives. Stats-based analysis is what you do best. Please show me how any of the scrubs you would plug in at third -- or anywhere else on the field -- are going to replace Beltre's 2004 production. This was an offensively dismissive piece for those of us who realize that Beltre's 89.1 VORP won't be easy to replace. Yes, my reaction to Beltre's departure has been very emotional, but before you decide that it's just not important, you'd better have a realistic plan that doesn't involve the team descending into mediocrity.

Rob, here's the thing. I gave a list of alternatives which would be a) cheap and b) around average. The key is that they are both. Yes, an expensive Tony Batista signing would be apocalyptic. But it's not going to happen.

I don't like using the term Moneyball, but I think you can boil its thesis down to this: a team has a finite amount of resources, and the key to winning is to maximize the productivity created by those resources. If a team reduces the amount of resources it spends to win, that decreases winning. If it decreases the efficiency with which it uses those resources, that decreases winning.

So far, the Dodgers have done neither of those things. In fact, DePodesta said yesterday that the payroll would be $100 million and it would be ridiculous to think otherwise.

If the Dodgers bring back all of their arbitration eligible non-free agents they will have at least $20-25 million left to spend. Even if the free agent market is totally dry - and it isn't - there are still teams looking to free up payroll in a number of ways.

Yes, it's still possible - some might even argue it's likely, though I wouldn't - that DePodesta will mess up and not find any useful way to allocate those resources. If that happens, I'll be angry. But that simply has not happened yet.

Jeff Kent will not replace the 2004 productivity of Adrian Beltre, but he will replace a good deal of it. Kent was good for a 55.2 VORP last season. Throw in Beltre's minor edge in defensive value and that's a four win swing. Heck, let's add in an extra win for the difference between Jose Hernandez and Antonio Perez. Where are we going to get those wins from?

Well, Hideo Nomo ain't coming back, and his vorp was negative 23.2. But I guess that's balanced out by no Paul Lo Duca. But odds are that whatever the Dodgers do at catcher will be, even if by a slim margin, above replacement level, so that gives us back 15 runs. But we're still missing four wins.

Four wins. $20 million. That is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a difficult task.

The thing is, and I wrote this before, teams do not need slugging third basemen to compete. They need a sum total of talent. Just because Brian Myrow or Kevin Youkilis or Alex Cora is not your idea of a great third baseman does not mean that the team becomes worse when they're used to replace Adrian Beltre because the team can (and will) make other improvements.

Hell, maybe they won't. Maybe DePodesta will screw it all up and reveal that Ayn Rand put him up to it just to dash the hopes of countless Dodgers fans. When that happens, be angry.

When one player leaves, don't be angry. Be analytical. Don't look at the team's public statements and try to parse them so as to come up with the worst interpretation possible; that doesn't help anyone. Don't compare rumored deals to prison rape. If the team ends up winning 60 games and Frank McCourt comes up behind Vin Scully and whacks him over the head with a chair while Vince McMahon emerges from the visitor's dugout with an evil grin, you might look like a genius, but so will every other beer and tacos couch potato and hack columnist. If the team wins 100 games, you'll be competing for Jon Edwards' title.

If, absent unforseeable, catastrophic injury, the Dodgers don't win 89 games - their Pythagorean total last season - this season and fail to make the playoffs, I will shut down this blog, move to Southern California, and scrub Rob McMillin's bathroom floor for a month. When that's done, I'll determine how many beatings to distribute among Paul DePodesta and Frank McCourt for sealing my fate. I'm a very, very, non-violent person, but for you, Rob, this I will do.

In Which I Remember Another Option

2004-12-17T01:16:00.000-08:00

10. Sign Placido Polanco. Polanco has played third base before, including parts of last season, and the guy is an excellent defender everywhere in the infield. I'm not certain that he'd be willing to sign somewhere where he'd have to be a third baseman, and he would cost a first round draft pick. However, the market for him looks pretty bare right now outside of St. Louis, so he might come at a reasonable price. Realistically, he wouldn't be a huge upgrade over Alex Cora, and his offense is concentrated in batting average. Nonetheless, he's worth considering.

So Long And Thanks For All The Fish

2004-12-16T20:58:00.000-08:00

I've only read a single Bill Plaschke column in my life, but here's what I predict from him tomorrow:

So this is what we get.

A computer whiz knocks on the door with a bunch of fancy numbers, trades away the team's heart and soul all-star catcher for an unproven pitcher, lets the best player in baseball leave the team in free agency, and then trades the pitcher and the team's best remaining hitter for someone who was booed out of New York and a couple of minor leaguers.

Anyone wanna fix this guy's computer?

It's not all bad; we've still got a washed-up second baseman, convict centerfielder, and a whiff-o-matic first baseman.

Hey, who can complain?

Here's the deal. Adrian Beltre has spent most of the past five years as my favorite player in baseball. It was great that he finally had a breakthrough year.

But Beltre didn't say goodbye to me, and Paul DePodesta didn't take him away from me. Both of them calculated their interests, and the result was Beltre playing for a different team. It made Peter White happy, so why should I complain?

It's easy to come up with silly explanations for why things ended up the way they did. It's easy to use anecdotal evidence to call this a firesale or something silly like that. Frankly, I don't care. I'd rather assess the situation and look forward.

If a baseball team makes a bad decision, I enjoy gathering evidence to make the argument that they've made a bad decision. If they make a good decision, I enjoy gathering evidence to make the argument that they've made a good decision. The thing is, the Dodgers didn't make much of a decision. Beltre chose one of two offers. The Dodgers offered a good deal, the Mariners offered something marginally better, and Beltre took it.

You might say DePodesta made a bad move in that he didn't have a backup plan. That's ridiculous. Earlier today, I looked at evidence to discuss different alternatives. They all look like decent backup plans to me. The thing is, a baseball team doesn't need to have a slugging third baseman. It doesn't need to have an all-star catcher. It doesn't need to have a flamethrowing set-up man. It needs to win, and there are a ton of different ways to put together a winning team.

Beltre was worth around 11-13 wins last year. That's a big loss. Brazoban was worth about two and a half wins, Lo Duca and Mota three and a half each. Finley was worth two and a half and Green was worth about four. Ouch.

But Hee Seop Choi should be worth four or five wins, Javy Vazquez should be worth five to seven, and Jeff Kent should be worth six or seven. And odds are good that the combination of Tom Wilson, Mike Rose, and Dave Ross can make up most of Lo Duca's production. Plus, the Dodgers won't give any innings to Hideo Nomo.

I can pretend J.D. Drew's in the bag, and that that makes up the remainder. But why? Here's why I love baseball: because there's so much data, and all of it can be analyzed, and it's a blast to analyze it well. Saying DePodesta is trying to remake the team in his own image, Frank McCourt is trying to raze the Stadium, or Jamie McCourt is really one of the Crab People, dwelling underground and plotting to take over the earth, seems like such a waste of time to me. Why analyze what we have no significant data on when we have so much data?

What I'm saying is that, try as we might, we don't know what the Dodgers' plans - and contingency plans - are, and I see little reason in trying to evaluate their decisions in light of them unless there's substantial evidence that the decisions they've made have left them without a reasonable course of action. There isn't. Just because the average beer and tacos baseball fan isn't familiar with Brian Myrow or Kevin Youkilis doesn't mean that they're not somewhat viable alternatives.

Here's something Bill James had to say on the subject, courtesy of Rich Lederer:

I’ve never said, never thought, that it was better to be an outsider than it was to be an insider, that my view of the game was better than anyone else’s. It’s different; better in some ways, worse in some ways. What I have said is, since we are outsiders, since the players are going to put up walls to keep us out here, let us use our position as outsiders to what advantage we can. Let us back off from the trees, look at the forest as a whole, and see what we can learn from that. Let us stop prentending to be insiders if we’re not. Let us fly over the forest, you and I, and look down; let us measure every tract of land and map out all the groves, and draw in every path that connects each living thing. Let us drive around the edges and photograph each and every tree from a variety of angles and with a variety of lenses; and insiders will be amazed at what we can help them to see.

This is not the time to analyze the motives of anyone involved. This is the time to do what, in my heart, I think fans should do: analyze the situation and think of what they would do, and analyze what has been done in the context of the best reasonable course of action. It's not okay to criticize the team that doesn't score because they didn't bunt the runner over in the eighth because it didn't result in runs being scored; to criticize a decision, you look at what can be expected and make an argument about what would be most beneficial in that context. If you think DePodesta and the Dodgers should have offered 6 years, $80 million, don't say "Now, we'll have to sign Darren Oliver and Joe Randa and win 65 games." Account for the extra expense and what it would mean to the team. Give a detailed account of the available players, both in the Dodgers organization and outside of it. Make your argument on analysis, not speculation. That's what a fan does, in my book anyway.

Billy Beane has famously argued, and I'm paraphrasing here, that the first third of the season is to see what you've got, the second third is to get what you need, and the final third is to win. The Dodgers entered this offseason with, by almost all accounts, one of the top farm systems in baseball. Now they've added two of the top eighty picks in next years draft and two of the top eighty prospects in baseball, if the trade reports are indeed accurate. That doesn't ensure that the Dodgers can get what they need to make the playoffs in any given year or to win the World Series in any given year. But it does mean they're in a pretty good position to do so.

The first entry in this blog was, in part, about my emotional attachment to the baseball player Adrian Beltre. When, sometime in the future-- maybe months from now, maybe years from now, maybe decades from now-- I make my last entry, it will no doubt be about the emotion of baseball. Emotion is there, and it's important. Baseball is a wonderful thing to be in love with, but it will love you so much more when you give it your love too. Baseball players, managers, and executives will break your heart, but as long as you love baseball enough the wounds will heal.

In Case You Were Wondering

2004-12-16T15:27:00.000-08:00

Using the same methods I used in the Free Agent pitchers review, with the caveat that I didn't adjust for home run park factors because I'm missing the 02-03 data for the Expos:

Javier Vazquez
2004: 4.36, 198 IP
Weighted 3-Year: 3.601 217 IP

Special Non-Stottlemyre Bonus Round:
2003: 2.99, 230.2 IP
Weighted 3-year ('01-'03): 3.06, 228.2 IP

Keep in mind, this is based on his batted ball types in 2004, not for his career, and is based on the Dodgers' outstanding 2004 defensive efficiency ratio.

Vazquez has, in his career, registered a lot of strikeouts. His strikeouts dipped to near average in both 2002 and 2004 and peaked in 2003. He maintains a low walk rate, but that worsened a somewhat in '04 as well. Despite the offense-favorable environment he played in with Montreal, he kept his home run rate below average until coming to the Yankees, at which point he gave up a ton of them.

Bye Bye, Belly

2004-12-16T14:11:00.000-08:00

Looks like, though I was right about several important things, I was wrong in the end. Would you believe I blame it on the Blue Jays going after Koskie?

In any event, this leaves the Dodgers with several options. Here are the broad strokes I see:

1. Jeff Kent can move to third. Sure, he can. However, both Baseball Prospectus and UZR gave him very high marks last season at second, while UZR had Cora below average. Given Kent's age, I'd say that edge comes more from experience, not athleticism. That means I'd like the second option better.

2. Alex Cora/Antonio Perez platoon at third. They have the athletic skills to do it, and with all of spring training should be able to do it. Alternately, Perez can still be dealt and Olmedo Saenz can be the platoon caddy, leaving Hee Seop Choi to start against LHP. I don't think Mike Edwards belongs in this discussion. Another alternative would be to sign minor league free agent Luis Garcia (or someone like him) to be Choi's platoon buddy.

3. Brian Myrow/right-handed platoon caddy. Should be above average offensively, below average with the glove, and plays for the minimum.

4. Joe Randa. Ol' Joe can work the leather and be within spitting distance of average with the bat. His defense makes him average or better, so he could be better than Myrow, but in any event would be more costly.

5. Kevin Youkilis. The Red Sox have no use for Cora/Izturis with Renteria signed, so my earlier conditional speculation is gone. Still, Youkilis' base on balls skills should make him above average, and his glove is around average, and he shouldn't cost all that much with the Sox already having re-upped Bill Mueller.

6. Sign Carlos Delgado. I don't know what he's asking, but at least Seattle's not bidding anymore, and there is the Shawn Green connection. With Delgado on board, Choi could be flipped for something good. I don't much care for this option, but I can conceive of circumstances where it makes sense.

7. Brian Myrow at first base, Choi used to get Youkilis (or his equivalent) and something else good. Again, not a stellar option, but I can see its utility.

8. Keith Ginter. Yesterday I suggested Alex Cora might be dealt to be Ginter's platoon partner; today I'm suggesting they may be swapped for each other. Ginter's glove inspires the phrase "no great shakes" like no other, but the damage is minimized at third base (and he might improve there if he plays the whole season there). A Cora/Ellis or Cora/Scutaro platoon would probably be more productive for the A's than Ginter, so this one makes some sense. Myrow could spell Ginter against northpaws.

9. Sign J.D. Drew or, heck, Carlos Beltran. Not likely, but the premise would involve spinning one of the current outfielders for something. Can't envision any such scenarios at the moment, but maybe it will come to me later.

Obviously, I wouldn't be too pleased if Beltre's absence isn't coupled with a major upgrade in the rotation.

By the way, put me down for Beltre hitting .310/.365/.590 in Seattle next season.

Rating the Remaining Free Agent Starters

2004-12-16T02:02:00.000-08:00

Here's my methodology. I looked at the remaining free agent starting pitchers according to ESPN.com. I removed Carl Pavano, who has already decided on the Yankees, and Roger Clemens, who has accepted arbitration. I removed Pedro Astacio, Omar Daal, and Andy Ashby, who haven't pitched enough recently for their stats to provide meaningful insight. I removed Shawn Estes, Jamey Wright (whose 123 ERA+ occurred despite the 11th worst FIP in the league and 17th worst LD%, 60 innings minimum), Steve Sparks, Todd Ritchie, Todd Van Poppel, Darren Oliver, and Terry Mulholland because I can't conceive of them being viable options. I removed Hideo Nomo because there's pretty much no way to predict his performance (or at least, to predict a performance with some degree of confidence that would involve him not being horrific) at this point.

Next, I compiled the career data for each player. I also took each player's batted ball types from the Hardball Times for 2004. Unfortunately, this data is not available to the public outside of THT's 2004 stats, so I couldn't use pre-2004 data; I just pretended that the 2004 numbers would be close enough to stand in for every other year. Using these statistics, I computed ERA's for each pitcher with the formulas in JC Bradbury's study of balls in play. I also ran park adjustments for home runs based on the 2004 ballpark factors for HR, normalized for Dodger Stadium. This is, I know, not quite ideal, but it should be close enough. I also decided to normalize the stats for the National League and a .711 defensive efficieny ratio, which is what the Dodgers had last season (the best in baseball; all of these ERA's will look low because of that). For each player, I ran several ERA's, but the two I'll use here are one based purely on 2004 data and one based on a 5-4-3 distribution of 2004, 2003, and 2002 (what I'll call "Weighted 3-Year"). These are not projections; rather, they are interpretations of past data.

Before I start, it should be noted that every one of these players is past their nominal prime (age 27) and each one has pretty much declined over the past three years except for some of the oldest ones.

1. Matt Clement
2004: 3.41, 181 IP
Weighted 3-year: 3.26, 194 IP
Will Carroll gives him the yellow light, as he's been subjected to the Dusty Baker philosophy on pitcher usage the past two seasons and his arm bore the results in 2004. Nonetheless, everybody else on this list is a health hazard of equal or greater magnitude. Clement's best year was in 2002, and he declined somewhat in 2003 and stayed at that level in 2004. But he's still quite good, striking out a lot of batters, not allowing many home runs (at least, that is, when the Friendly Confines are taken into account), and maintaining a high but reasonable walk rate. Doesn't give up many line drives.

I've seen concern over his home/road and day/night ERA splits. I spent entirely too much time running the data to see if that concern was legitimate. While his ERA splits are completely ridiculous in that regard, his peripherals are not. I compared all Cubs pitching data for just about every pitching rate stat for day/night and home/away over each of the past three years with Clement's, and while his stats showed schizophrenic sample size hiccups in each individual year, his stats for the whole 2002-2004 only partially bear out the bizarre split benefit hypothesis. I'll use fielding independent pitching, a rate stat combining HR, K, and BB, to demonstrate. His FIP was 101% of the average for home Cubs and 91% for night Cubs, showing a relative reverse split, so there's no reason for concern there. His day/night split, on the other hand, was significant, 88% in the day and and 108% at night. His K and BB rates were both slimly better during the day, and his home run rate is substantially lower during the day even though the rest of the Cubs tended to give up slightly more home runs in the day. An interesting thing to note, and something any team that signs him should take into consideration. Ultimately, though, this is a pretty minor concern, since the preponderance of day games with Chicago was already built into his home/away splits and he fared better on the road, rate-stat wise.

2. Kevin Millwood
2004: 3.47, 141 IP
Weighted 3-year: 3.27, 187 IP
Carroll gives Millwood the red light, but I'm not quite as skeptical. He had elbow tendinitis in 2004, but he was fine in 2002 and 2003. His performance really hasn't declined all that much, and I would think he'd be available for a one year deal in the three or four million range, which I'd consider a pretty good deal. He still gets a lot of K's and is very stingy with home runs; his walks increased last season, but not by a whole lot and it was balanced out by an increase in strike outs. He gives up more line drives than is normal, but the margin isn't huge. I think he's worth the risk, at least relative to these other clowns.

3. Odalis Perez
2004: 3.75, 196.1 IP
Weighted 3-year: 3.57, 199.2 IP
A favorite "underrated" player who's actually pretty overrated. Excellent walk rate, lousy strikeout rate, lousy home run rate. He had one brilliant season in 2002; all the evidence points to that being an outlier. The longballs came back in 2003, and in 2004 they stayed. He reduced his walks in 2004, but at the expense of his strike outs. He doesn't give up many line drives, but he doesn't have magic BABIP powers either. Carroll gave him a red light, too.

4. Orlando Hernandez
2004: 3.57, 84.2 IP
Weighted 3-year: 3.53, 107.2 IP
El Duque could do a lot of different things. He's a decent choice, provided he's actually cheap (who knows) and can log some innings (who knows). His peripherals are all over the board, with good seasons achieved through various means in 1998, 2002, and 2004 sandwiching a steady decline from '99-'01.

5. Derek Lowe
2004: 4.26, 182.2 IP
Weighted 3-year: 3.95, 198.2 IP
Groundball extraordinaire who had bad luck last season but isn't all that good to start with. His 2002 was pretty good, but he's probably turned the corner on it. Good control, few strikeouts, very few home runs.

6. Aaron Sele
2004: 4.29, 132 IP
Weighted 3-year: 4.34, 135.2 IP
He doesn't have much of anything left in the tank, but none of the guys below him ever had much in the tank to start with. He can't strike folks out any more, and his walk and HR rates are precisely average. Batters aren't getting many line drives against him, so he's not total scrap heap material. Nonetheless, I'd bet on D.J. Houlton doing better than him, perhaps by a lot.

7. Esteban Loaiza
2004: 4.69, 183 IP
Weighted 3-year: 3.53, 189.2 IP
Had an amazing season in 2003. His home run rate was ridiculously low for U.S. Cellular Field, he had an outstanding walk rate, and his K rate was well above average, the only time in his career his K rate reached average. His 2004, on the other hand, saw his walk rate approach average, his home run rate sink well below average, and his K rate revert to his old balls in play self. There's no reason to expect anything close to 2003 again.

8. Eric Milton
2004: 4.86, 201 IP
Weighted 3-year: 4.36, 132 IP
He's got wins, so he'll probably have dollars. He shouldn't, though.

9. Jose Lima
2004: 4.89, 170.1 IP
Weighted 3-year: 4.59, 112.2 IP
At least, unlike Billy Beane, this guy's @!#% works in the playoffs. Reports indicate he won a raffle at a magic store, getting himself a lifetime supply of smoke and mirrors. I think he used up the whole supply last season.

10. Ismael Valdez
2004: 5.74, 170 IP
Weighted 3-year: 4.81, 158.1 IP
Even Lima's raffle prize couldn't save him now.

An uninspiring group. Clement and Millwood in tandem, though, would be pretty solid.

Evaluating Edgar

2004-12-15T17:10:00.000-08:00

I've mainly switched this blog to Dodgers analysis, but today's Renteria signing had me wondering: was Renteria's 2004 the result of bad luck or decline?

The answer: decline.

Renteria did have some degree of bad luck in 2004. He's an excellent line drive hitter, and his .220 LD% would indicate that his .317 batting average on balls in play was about the low end of what should be expected. However, even if he'd accomplished his career high .348 BABIP from 2003, he'd hit .314/.348/.428; good, but not $40m, 4 years good.

Renteria simply saw a marked decline in every area of offensive performance. I looked at the five year period from 2000 to 2004, and 2004 was Renteria's worst year for BB/PA and HR/PA and his second worst year for K/PA. Conversely, 2003 was his best year for K/PA and trailed only 2000 for top marks in BB/PA and HR/PA. Additionally, his 2003 featured a career high in doubles/triples per plate appearance, while his 2004 returned to roughly his career average.

Put differently, in 2000 Renteria drew walks and hit home runs at a solid clip with a decent strike out rate. In 2001, the home run rate came down, the strike outs increased a tad, and the walks disappeared. In 2002, the walks regained a little bit, the K rate improved by a lot, and he added some doubles power. In 2003, the home runs, walks, K's, and doubles all improved substantially. In 2004, the plate discipline disappeared and some of the home runs came with it.

Defensively, Renteria is worth maybe a win above average, if UZR is to be believed. Offensively, he's either average (2004), outstanding (2003), or somewhere in between. Based on the shape of the data, I'd say odds are that he improves a little bit over 2004 but not by much; 25-35 runs above replacement looks about right to me. All told, Renteria's worth about five, perhaps six, wins above replacement. $10 million per looks kinda steep to me.

Keith Ginter On the Move!!!

2004-12-15T15:15:00.000-08:00

I must be some kind of geek, nerd, or what have you, because when I saw the Keith Ginter trade I thought it was a blockbuster. The A's traded Justin Lehr and Nelson Cruz for Ginter. Lehr is a decent reliever but not something the A's needed. Cruz is an outfielder who struggled in the minors for years but had a breakout season in 2004 at age 24, and could be a late bloomer. Ginter is a poor fielding, solid hitting infielder who has played mainly second base and third base.

There are two ways to read this trade for the A's. The first is that they've solved their whole at second base by picking up a player who can provide above-average offense and substantially below average defense. As an everyday second baseman, his bat is worth about 1-1.5 wins above the average offensive player and his glove should be worth about two wins below average, making him slightly below average overall; not bad for the league minimum.

The second way to read the trade is that Ginter, whose defense doesn't at all match the A's apparent 2004 philosophy (good defense, not a lot of strikeouts from the pitching staff), provides offense that is good enough for him to be an excellent right-handed platoon caddy, even with his poor fielding. That's something the A's obviously could use, as they have more lefties than the entire nation of Elbonia. At the same time, however, one wonders if this could signal an impending trade for a left-handed second baseman. Someone, perhaps, who does what the A's typically look for in a player, namely reaching base and playing good defense.

Being even more speculative, perhaps our southpaw glove man with on-base skills would be someone who could be relinquished by his current team fairly easily, perhaps if they have a young second baseman waiting in the wings or have recently acquired a second baseman. And heck, it would certainly help if that second baseman was relatively cheap and property of a GM that Billy Beane liked to deal with.

Processing...

Results: CORA, ALEX, 2B-L, LOS ANGELES

But what do the A's have that the Dodgers would want? If memory serves me, there were some rumors about a trade between the two franchises over the weekend, but I just can't recall the name of the young gentleman Oakland was reportedly offering. One wonders if Mr. DePodesta could acquire said gentleman for Mr. Cora and a pitching prospect of some sort. One wonders.

Trading For Victory

2004-12-15T12:09:00.000-08:00

Every stathead has a few bizarre player fetishes. Here's my biggest one.

Using JC Romero's formula for ERA based on K/9, HR/9, BB/9, and batted ball type data, I ran two names using their 2004 data and the Dodgers' 2004 Defensive Efficiency Ratio of .711:

Player A: 3.75 ERA
Player B: 3.78 ERA

That small difference in ERA should be made up for by the fact that Player A's average opponent hit .256/.325/.407 and Player B's average opponent hit .259/.327/.417. Player A is 9 months younger than Player B.

Player A will probably make $7 million or more next season. Player B will make just over the league minimum.

Player A you know. His name is Odalis Perez. Player B is named Victor Santos, and he's property of the Milwaukee Brewers.

Santos was signed by Detroit out of the Dominican Republic in 1995. He improved solidly in his first several years of pro ball, and at age 22 he was impressive at double-A and looked like a solid prospect. Unfortunately, injury struck, and his 2000 season was wasted. I'd tell you what kind of injury struck, but I haven't found that info anywhere. In 2001, he began the season with the Tigers pitching long relief, and he did well, although his high walk rate was an ominous sign. In May, he was made a starter but didn't fare well. He was sent back to the pen and then down to AAA, where he made six unimpressive starts. The Tigers, so far as I can tell, decided he'd be better off as a reliever and called him back up. He finished the year with a 3.30 ERA in 76.1 innings.

In spring training, 2002, the Tigers flipped Santos to Colorado for Jose Paniagua. The Rockies decided to give Santos some time in Triple-A, which unfortunately meant going to Colorado Springs. Santos racked up a lot of K's in Colorado Springs and didn't surrender many walks, but fly ball pitchers simply don't fare well in that environment, and his 5.72 ERA showed it. The Rockies called him up after the Dennis Reyes trade (see the Konerko entry for more on that gem) and gave him some time out of the bullpen and two starts. Santos couldn't maintain his control, though, putting up a 7.6 BB/9, the major factor in his 10.38 ERA. When the season ended, Santos was released.

Santos ended up with the Rangers' organization in 2003. He played for most of the year in AAA Oklahoma, putting up a 3.41 ERA. He was called up in June and made four spot starts but was hammered pretty badly, posting an ugly 7.01 ERA. In December, he signed with the Brewers.

The Brewers started Santos in AAA Indianapolis and called him up to pitch out of the bullpen. In May, he was added to the rotation. Through July 31, he was doing great, with a 3.66 ERA and excellent peripherals. After that, though, his numbers started to look ugly. Upon closer examination, however, his late season swoon makes more sense. He did have one very bad start against the Mets in early August, but then faced Atlanta, Chicago, and then Philadelphia twice, three contending teams with good offenses, and had a 6.05 ERA in 22.1 IP. However, in those four starts he only gave up 12 BB and 3 HR while K'ing 20, certainly not excellent but not as bad as it looks. In his next start, he shut down the Pirates but developed a blister on his middle finger that cracked his nail, making it difficult for him to throw. He skipped his next start and then was awful in three of his last four starts, although he did dispense with the Cardinals in one of those starts. I think it's fair to argue that this final month, which came when he'd had a finger injury and occurred in the first season since 1999 that he'd pitched 150 innings in a season, is not a fair indicator of his true performance level.

Part of Santos' success was almost certainly Mike Maddux, who's pretty much universally regarded as an excellent pitching coach. Moreover, Santos doesn't have a history of pitching many innings in one season. I don't think either of those factors are strong enough to make me think Santos won't be capable of putting together a strong season in 2005.

The Brewers have several candidates for slots 3-5 in their rotation behind Ben Sheets and Doug Davis. Chris Capuano, Wes Obermuller, Ben Hendrickson, Jorge de la Rosa, and the newly-acquired Jose Capellan are all younger than Santos, and the Brewers, so far as I can tell, are pretty high on them all. The Brewers are in need of bullpen help after trading away Dan Kolb and Luis Vizcaino.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers have an elite closer in Eric Gagne, a promising set-up man in Yhency Brazoban, and will probably re-sign Wilson Alvarez, who has been excellent out of the bullpen. They've also got Duaner Sanchez, Giovanni Carrara, and Elmer Dessens and will see if they can get D.J. Houlton to stick on the roster. Even if Houlton doesn't stick, that's still six relievers, assuming neither Dessens or Alvarez are moved to the rotation.

So why not a Carrara and cash for Santos trade? I'm totally ridiculous, as you can tell, but darn it, I like this idea, and I'd love to see the Dodgers investigate it.

More Pierzysnki

2004-12-14T19:59:00.000-08:00

In my last Pierzynski post, I said I wasn't sure he'd be worth trading for. I had assumed at the time that the Giants would put him on the block; I wasn't expecting them to waive him. Now that he's on waivers, the equation is different.

Before: does (Pierzynski) + (Rose/Wilson) -$4,200,000 -$320,000 = 2(Rose/Ross/Wilson) - 2($320,000) - (Carrara) ?

Now: does (Pierzynski) + (Rose/Ross/Wilson) -$4,200,000 -$320,000 = 2(Rose/Ross/Wilson) - 2($320,000) ?

To be honest, I don't know exactly why I suggested Giovanni Carrara as an example of someone who could be traded; I really couldn't think of who the Dodgers could offer that fits SF's paradigm.

How to answer this? Well, I used Tangotiger's formula for linear weights rate runs created, which should be a good approximation of value. I have ZiPS data for Mike Rose, Dave Ross, and Tom Wilson, but I don't have it for Pierzynski. So to compile A.J.'s numbers, I took his 2005 stats, converted his two triples into doubles, converted one of his HBP into an out, took away one home run, and made his batting average on balls in play equal .300. Some would call that arbitrary; I'd prefer the term ad hoc adjustment.

Using these numbers, per 650 plate appearances, Pierzynski is good for 76.6 runs, Wilson 73.6, Rose 73.3, and Ross 66.3. A combo of Pierzynski and Wilson would thus fare best offensively, and they'd be platooned. That would mean about 225 PA for Wilson and 450 for Pierzynski, with Wilson's numbers improving since he'd face mostly southpaws. Wilson actually has a very big platoon split, so I adjusted his numbers up to 85 RC/650 PA. Their combined total, then, is 82.5 runs over 675 plate appearances. Pierzynski's defense is pretty average, and Wilson's is fairly poor, so that duo would be about 5 runs below average, so we'll credit them with 77.5 runs.

Mike Rose is a switch-hitter, so a Rose/Wilson platoon could also optimize Wilson's production. However, I don't know what Rose's left/right splits are, so I'll be conservative and use Wilson's overall numbers. With the same 225/450 split, they'd provide 76.2 runs over 675 PA. I don't have any substantial data on Rose's defense; I've heard it's not bad, so let's pencil him in for -5 runs, bringing this duo's total to 66 runs.

Ross' defense isn't good enough to make up the gap vis-a-vis that duo, so I didn't run the data for him.

Based on this, it looks like Pierzynski's marginal value relative to what the Dodgers have on hand is about one and a half wins. Not bad, but given the likely size of his contract in arbitration, probably not worth it. Three million for an extra win is a poor investment. Now, there are other intangibles involved: Tracy might not entrust the job to Mike Rose and/or Tom Wilson, fans might not appreciate Rose/Wilson, and so forth. However, Pierzynski isn't exactly an Intangibles All-Star, either, so I don't think that's grounds for a decision. Moreover, ZiPS is certainly not the end-all, be-all of future performance, so you can take this analysis with a pinch of pepper. That being said, I think ZiPS' projections for Rose and Wilson are pretty reasonable, and the margin of reasonable error is not large enough to make Pierzynski a prudent investment.

I think, all told, that Pierzynski is likely undervalued. However, the Dodgers have done a good job of amassing talent that is even more undervalued already, and the extra money for Pierzynski would be better off helping out the pitching staff.

2005 Dodgers: Chin-Feng Chen

2004-12-14T16:34:00.000-08:00

With Ricky Ledee signed as the Dodgers' fourth outfielder, there's a good shot they'll have a right-handed bat on the bench who can play the outfield. The obvious in-house candidates, all of whom are on the 40-man roster, are Jason Repko, Cody Ross, and Chin-Feng Chen. Chen has the inside track for two reasons. First, he had the best offensive season of the trio in 2004. Second, the other two are young enough that they'd likely improve more from another season in AAA than a season as a role player in the bigs.

Chen has gained a degree of notoriety over the years. A highly touted prospect signed out of Taiwan, Chen dominated the high-A California League at age 21 in 1999. Promoted to AA in 2000, though, he struggled mightily. More accurately, he made the transition well in every facet of his game except hitting home runs: he'd hit 31 in '99 and only 6 in 2000. He was demoted to high-A to start 2001, and fared pretty poorly. But midway through 2001 the Dodgers decided, in spite of his rough and power-devoid showing with Vero Beach, to promote him back to AA. This time he dominated, putting up outstanding numbers; the power, walks, and line drives were all out in full force.

2002 saw Chen in Vegas, where he hit a disappointing .284/.352/.503. Obviously, that line can only be disappointing when one is hitting in the PCL and has high expectations, but it seemed an indication that Chen may have topped out. That notion was strengthened in 2003, when he showed only marginal improvement, hitting .281/.360/.530. At the age of 26 in 2004 and repeating the PCL for the third time, Chen's power again made slight improvement as he hit .289/.359/.584, but that improvement certainly was not enough to put him on the fast track.

At this point Chen is likely a failed prospect. One could still conceive of him having a Calvin Pickering-type breakout, but there's no reason to expect it. Nonetheless, a team could do a lot worse than having Chen on the bench. He's no great shakes with a glove, but he ain't Manny Ramirez or anything. Offensively, if he's used exclusively as a lefty-mashing pinch-hitter or spot starter when Olmedo Saenz has the hiccups, he should be above average in terms of raw production, putting up an EqA in the .265-.275 range. In fact, let's play a little game:

Line A: .232/.305/.398
Line B: .240/.316/.448
Line C: .250/.329/.466

Line B is Chen's 2005 ZiPS projection. Line C is that same projection adjusted to resemble what he'd do if two thirds of his plate appearances were against left-handed pitchers. Line A? Shawn Green against left-handed pitching in 2004. Green could still possibly be the Shawn Green of yore who was pretty good at hitting lefties, but if his splits from the shoulder-injury era continue then a platoon would likely be wise. This isn't simply small sample size wizardry, either; Green had 203 PA against lefties last year. And considering that Shawn Green was the worst defensive right fielder in baseball for the 2000-2003 period according to UZR, the defensive drop-off would probably be negligible or even reversed. Now, whether Jim Tracy would tolerate platooning Green and whether Green would tolerate being relegated to pinch-hitter for 35 games is itself a different story. But from an analytical standpoint, I think I endorse a Green/Chen platoon, at least until such time as Green demonstrates he's playing as he did during his peak or Chen demonstrates he's already peaked.

Picture of the Month

2004-12-14T14:28:00.000-08:00

Detective Minaya Still Searching For Clues On How To Build A Winning Team

2005 Dodgers: Kelly Wunsch

2004-12-14T12:01:00.000-08:00

The Dodgers signed Kelly Wunsch to a minor-league contract on Monday. Wunsch was a big-time prospect way back in the day, going in the first round in 1993. He was slow to make progress in the White Sox system, and in 1999 he was converted to a reliever. He finally cracked the major league roster in 2000 as a lefty out of the pen. He had solid years in 2000, 2002, and 2003, but in 2004 his inflamed teres minor muscle kept him on the DL at the start of the season. He was relegated to Triple-A, and didn't see much playing time, in part because of the shoulder.

Wunsch's injury history in concert with his marginal value is certainly enough to keep him from being worth guaranteed money, but he's the kind of guy who could do well enough to deserve a spot on the roster as the situational lefty. He K's batters from both sides of the plate at a strong clip, but his walks keep him from being outstanding. He's also pretty stingy with the long ball. He's better against lefties, but he hasn't been a slouch against the northpaws either. If he's well, he could provide 30-40 innings with a sub-3.00 ERA. If he's not, he'll probably just hang out in Vegas most of the season, perhaps seeing action in September when the rosters expand.

Wunsch's signing solidifies the likelihood in my mind that Scott Stewart gets non-tendered. Stewart's performance record isn't bad, and his peripherals last season weren't as bad as the ERA would indicate-- he just gave up too many gopher balls in his limited playing time. Still, I'd be surprised to see him back since he'll make at least $700K.

Another effect: Wunsch is a side-armer, and it would be just delightful if he and Steve Schmoll were a side-winding left/right duo out of the bullpen.

Departed Dodgers in the Rule 5 Draft

2004-12-13T21:46:00.000-08:00

Major League

Marcos Carvajal: High-ceiling pick. Dominated low-A Columbus with good stuff; his K rate was exceptional and he only allowed 2 home runs in 72 IP. Has control problems, though, with a lot of walks and wild pitches. This pick was a gamble by the Rockies by proxy of the Brewers; with the Rockies' needing to use a lot of pitchers per game, it's doubtful he'll stick on the active roster. That being said, with his stuff he could really pick it up and be a solid or eventually dominant reliever.

Matt Merricks: Acquired in the Tom Martin salary dump, Merricks is a lefty starter who does everything pretty well but doesn't excel in any particular area. He was pretty good with high-A Myrtle Beach in 2004, but his shrunken K rate in his brief stay with Vero Beach wasn't very encouraging to the Dodgers. He's probably a better bet to stay with the Rockies than Carvajal, but he doesn't look to have a very high ceiling.

Shane Victorino: Plucked in the Rule 5 draft for the second time, Victorino has an okay shot at sticking around with the Phillies if, as expected, they dump Marlon Byrd. If he hits like he did in Jacksonville, he's ready to be a major league backup, and could eventually develop into an average major league outfielder. If he hits like he did at Las Vegas, he'll be offered back to the Dodgers. I don't think this is much of a loss for the Dodgers; they protected three better fourth/fifth outfielder candidates in Henri Stanley, Chin-Feng Chen, and Jason Repko, and Repko offers has more long-term value than Victorino. The Dodgers don't have that much organizational depth in the outfield, but Victorino's loss isn't really impactful.

AAA

Arturo Lopez: His K numbers improved repeating low-A in 2004, and that's the most he really has going for him. Could eventually develop into a useful LOOGY; probably won't.

Brennan King: Third baseman drafted in the 2nd round back in 1999 who spent the last three years in Jacksonville. Finally flashed a little bit of power in 2004, but at the expense of plate discipline. I don't think he's likely to ever make the majors, and he'll never be a starter.

Alejandro de Aza: He's got good plate discipline. Aside from that and decent speed, not much, although his youth and a left-handed bat could propel him to eventually being a role-player. Hit .255/.346/.352 at Columbus.

Brett Wayne: Shortstop from St. Mary's College who didn't hit in the GCL in 2002 or the SAL in 2003. Converted to a reliever in 2004 and fared well in Columbus, but he'll be 25 next season. Doesn't have a high enough ceiling to be of any concern to LA.

AA

Jared Price: 7th round pick in 2000. A catcher with decent power and walks who strikes out way too much for those skills to be worthwhile. Hit .241/.303/.418 in 192 PA with Columbus at age 22 in 2004; that's his best season yet.

Steve Langone: Boston College grad soon to be 26 had an excellent season with Jacksonville. I'm somewhat surprised the Dodgers didn't protect him, not at all surprised the Red Sox grabbed him. Has never been a priority in the Dodgers system despite producing excellently throughout his professional career. He certainly fits better with the Boston organization than with LA. Wouldn't expect him to be more than an eventual September call-up, but it wouldn't really surprise me if he could toss some league average innings in the bigs eventually. I have no idea what the scouts think about this guy.

2005 Dodgers: D.J. Houlton

2004-12-13T20:32:00.000-08:00

Check it out:

Houlton: 4.96 ERA, 158 IP, 137 K, 58 BB, 28 HR
Ishii: 5.33 ERA, 152 IP, 121 K, 102 BB, 19 HR

Those are the 2005 projections for D.J. Houlton and Kaz Ishii from Dan Szymborski's ZiPS system.

Houlton was drafted at the age of 20 out of Fullerton in the 11th round of the 2001 draft by the Astros. He made 13 starts in the Appalachian League that year and was absolutely dominating, with a 71 K and only 7 BB. He was solid in High-A in 2002, with a K:BB ratio of 4.6 and a 3.14 ERA. In 2003, he was good with AA Round Rock before being called up to AAA New Orleans, where he struggled, especially in giving up the long ball. In 2004, the Astros for whatever reason decided to keep him down in AA, where he pitched 159 innings over 28 starts with a 2.94 ERA, 159 K, 47 BB, and 14 HR.

According to John Sickels, Houlton isn't a scout's pitcher, succeeding with a decent fastball and a lot of junk. His results in K:BB can't be argued with, and it looks like going forward the key question for him is whether he can prevent home runs.

He's only pitched 60 innings above AA, and those weren't very successful. However, that happened in 2003, and at age 25 he could be an effective swingman for the Dodgers, probably not quite league average but probably more valuable than Ishii. If it turns out he's not, the Dodgers are only out $50,000.

Sorry I don't have that much to say about Houlton. Wouldn't it be great if Sabean could be convinced to deal Ishii for Pierzynski, straight up?

A.J. Pierzynski

2004-12-13T17:48:00.000-08:00

A.J. Pierzynski has been cannon fodder for the BABIP Army. Balls in play were kind to him in Minnesota and openly hostile in San Francisco. Pierzysnki's LD% was .192 in 2004, which means that a batting average on balls in play (BABIP) of .300-.310 should be about right. Here are his actual numbers from his four full seasons:

2001: .289/.322/.441, .325 BABIP
2002: .300/.334/.439, .338 BABIP
2003: .312/.360/.464, .335 BABIP
2004: .272/.319/.410, .270 BABIP

What happens if we normalize those numbers for a .300 BABIP?

2001: .267/.301/.420
2002: .268/.303/.407
2003: .281/.330/.433
2004: .301/.345/.439

Based on K/BB/HBP/HR, 2004 was Pierzynski's best season. It's not as simple as all that, of course, since it wouldn't surprise me if a player reducing his strike-out rate tends to reduce his BABIP. However, it's entirely unreasonable to expect his BABIP to reside below .300 with his line drive rate above average as it was in 2004 without major external factors. But .300/.345/.439 is, in the eyes of this analyst, a good baseline for Pierzynski's offense over the next two years.

I tried to find data that would explain the BABIP decline. Obviously, the change in league and strength of competition from AL Central to NL West should account for some changem but not of that magnitude. I looked at home/road splits and found no real trend, other than that his road BABIP in 2004 was a ridiculous .254 (his home BABIP was still too low). All signs point to this being largely just a fluke.

With Pierzynski only turning 28 in a few weeks and with the Giants picking up Matheny, Pierzynski looks like a minor steal. He'll likely make about $4 million in arbitration. Is that good value? His defense is between average and good, and his offense should be above average, especially in the context of catchers (and since he's left-handed, the offense of his backup would also see improvement). Using the Net Win Shares Value calculator and a few performance estimates, he comes cleanly out above average.

But if you're like me, you probably have no idea what the Dodgers could give San Francisco to get Pierzynski. Giovanni Carrara and Willy Aybar? Cash? To reiterate, I have no idea. He'd be better than whatever permutation of Mike Rose, Brent Mayne, Tom Wilson, and Dave Ross the Dodgers use, but I don't know how likely it is that the difference in marginal value would overwhelm the expense.

Totally Arbitrary Rumor-Fueled Speculation And Some Payroll Numbers

2004-12-12T23:09:00.000-08:00

This mention (BP subscription required) of walk-God Kevin Youkilis along with endless Beltre to Seattle rumors got me thinking: if Boston's negotiations with Edgar Renteria don't work out and LA's negotiations with Adrian Beltre don't work out, will we see Alex Cora for Kevin Youkilis? Would that in turn mean the stathead fantasy of twin Youkilis/Myrow and Choi/Saenz platoons at the corners for the Dodgers, perhaps with a Mike Rose/Tom Wilson platoon at catcher? The Dodgers would rock out with their walks out.

Anyway, I just wanted to visit the Dodgers' payroll data. Seven Dodgers are under contract: Dessens, Dreifort, Green, Ishii, Kent, Ledee, and Weaver. Their contracts total $51.73 million for 2005 (caveat: that's assuming Kent has an even 8.5/8.5 breakdown, something I haven't seen confirmed). In 2006, $10 million is owed between Ledee and Kent, and the Dodgers would either owe $1.3m to Dessens or pay a $250K buyout and have $3.3/1.1 (2006) and $4.0/1.1 (2007) options on Ishii, meaning the Dodgers are on the hook for a guaranteed $12.2 million.

Eight arbitration-eligible players are on the Dodgers roster: Bradley, Carrara, Cora, Gagne, Izturis, Penny, Saenz, and Scott Stewart. This isn't my area of expertise, but I made the following estimates for each:

Bradley: $2.5 million
Carrara: $1.2 million
Cora: $2.3 million
Gagne: $7 million
Izturis: $2.5 million
Penny: $4.5 million
Saenz: $1.0 million
Stewart: $900 thousand
Total: $21.9 million

Be sure to hold those numbers against me at the First Annual "Things I Was Wrong About" conference. It wouldn't surprise me to see Saenz or Stewart non-tendered; I'd say there's a pretty good chance that one of them will be.

If all the arb-eligible players are brought back, then my estimates make a $73.63 million total for 15 players. That means ten more roster spots will have to be filled, and with the likelihood of some folks being on the DL at any given time and to account for the money to be spent on September call-ups, we'll bump that up to 13. Those 13 will make about the $300,000 minimum for the season; I'll use $310,000 for the average since some will get a little over the minimum. That's 28 players, and there will still be another 12 players on the 40-man roster who, to my understanding, will cost $50,000 each. That brings the Dodgers' payroll baseline to $78.3 million. Every player making above the minimum who gets acquired or subtracted would then increase or decrease the payroll by their salary minus $310,000.

So if the Dodgers are going to have a payroll of $100 million and bring back everyone who is arbitration eligible, they'll be adding $21.7m in contracts above the minimum. If, for example, Beltre is re-signed and makes $13 million in 2005 and the Dodgers get Clement for $8 million in 2005, they'd have a $98.7 million payroll. If they deal Cora and non-tender Stewart on top of that, they could acquire someone with a $4.2 million price tag. Of course, the notion that $100 million is a drop-dead budget is fiction, and were that the case free agent contracts would probably be structured to pay more in later years with the Dreifort and Green contracts coming off the books.

Dodgers Acquire Hudson for Paul Konerko and PTBNL

2004-12-12T19:36:00.000-08:00

Ten years ago, the Dodgers planted the seeds for a mass exodus. The 13th overall pick in the 1994 amateur draft was Paul Konerko, a right-handed first baseman from Chapparal High School.

On July 4, 1998, the Dodgers, 13 games off the lead in the NL West, sought bullpen help and turned to Cincinnati, which was getting a good year from Ohio native and 1996 free agent pickup Jeff Shaw. In exchange for Shaw, the Dodgers gave up the highly touted Konerko, who was blocked at first by Eric Karros, and a 21-year-old lefty named Dennis Reyes. Shaw gave the Dodgers what they wanted, registering a 2.12 ERA in 1998 and 2.78 in 1999 and registered 129 saves in his four-year stay. When Shaw left, the Dodgers had no relief ace but seven legitimate starters for the rotation, prompting talented prospect Eric Gagne's move to the bullpen. Karros, meanwhile, excelled in '98 after Konerko was traded and had a career year in 1999 before fading into mediocrity in the new milennium.

Reyes was an okay pitcher out of the bullpen for the Reds who could make an occasional spot start, but they weren't particularly enamored with him after three years on the job and he, along with the eminently gloved Pokey Reese, was sent to Colorado before the 2002 season for former Reds teammate and fellow lefty Gabe White and prospect Luke Hudson. Reese wasn't of much use: he'd earned a $3.2 million salary in 2001 and was therefore due to be overpaid in arbitration after putting up atrocious offensive numbers. The Rockies swapped the rights to Reese with Boston for the rights to Scott Hatteberg, who was also due to be overpaid by arbitors in spite of a bad 2001. Two days later, both players were non-tendered and ended up signing with the Pirates and A's, respectively. Luke Hudson was solid in triple-A in 2002 before being called up to the Reds, but injury cost him the 2003 season. In 2004, Hudson rebounded and was solid in nine starts with Cincinnati. Gabe White was solid in 2002 and 2003 before being dealt to the Yankees for cash.

Reyes wasn't done being dealt. At the July 31, 2002 trading deadline, the Rangers were all but eliminated and tried to make a deal for the future with the equally-dead Rockies. The Rangers picked up Reyes and former Rookie of the Year awardee Todd Hollandsworth and sent Gabe Kapler and Jason Romano to Colorado. Reyes was firebombed with home runs in Texas, and his ERA soared; he was non-tendered in the offseason. Hollandsworth also stunk it up in Texas and left via free agency. Not a good haul as far as deals for the future go. The Rockies didn't fare much better. Kapler didn't contribute much to the Rockies and was sold to the Red Sox in 2003 to be Trot Nixon's platoon caddy.

Jason Romano keeps the chain going, though. The Rockies flipped him to Los Angeles in the offseason for Luke Allen, who despite being named Luke is not a pitcher. Allen and Romano were both about as spare as parts can get, and each were value-less in limited major league time. Romano, however, had the good fortune of playing in the middle infield one day in spring training when a Devil Rays scout happened by. On the basis of Romano's excellent spring training numbers against late-inning AA competition, the Devil Rays thought he'd do a better job as a utility man than former uber-prospect Antonio Perez, and Perez was swapped for Romano. Days later, the Rays found out that Romano was not a middle infielder by trade and was, overall, fairly worthless. He was waived and picked up by the Reds (those cats can never have enough outfielders), where he contributed nothing and was injured. Perez had an unspectacular season with Las Vegas, but still translates as well above replacement level and could regain the promise he displayed in 2003. Now he's being mentioned as a key piece in the Tim Hudson deal.

Oh, and what about that fellow Konerko? He was blocked with Cincinnati by Sean Casey and used to fill the Reds' hole at centerfield left by Reggie Sanders departure after 1998. The Reds picked up the promising Mike Cameron from the White Sox. Konerko has spent the last six seasons being one of the better first basemen in baseball with Chicago.

Mike Cameron had a very good season with the Reds in 1999, but the Reds wanted to acquire a bona fide superstar. Ken Griffey came over from the Mariners in exchange for Cameron, mediocre starter Brett Tomko, quasi-prospect Jake Meyer, and some kid named Antonio Perez. Meyer didn't accomplish much, and he's been in more organizations than a high school kid seeking yearbook picture immortality. Cameron was an underrated player with the Mariners for four seasons before becoming a Met last season in free agency. Griffey has spent the last five seasons splitting time between being a good but no longer dominant player, being the target of trade rumors, and hanging out on the disabled list.

Tomko contributed two characteristically mediocre seasons to the Mariners before being jettisoned along with backup catcher Tom Lampkin and infielder Ramon Vazquez to San Diego in exchange for catcher Ben Davis, the decline phase version of formerly utile utility man Alex Arias, and the appropriately-named Wascar Serrano. Lampkin was a competent backup for the Padres in 2002 and then called it quits. Arias was released by the Padres before the season started. Vazquez was solid for the Padres in 2002 and 2003 before having a tough go at it in 2004, and is now part of a rumored deal that would bring Dave Roberts and Byung-Hyun Kim to San Diego for Vazquez and Jay Payton (who would take over the role of Coors-inflated but useful lefty masher/Trot Nixon caddy role from the aforementioned Gabe Kapler). Wascar Serrano stunk up Tacoma for a year and then stunk up the Northern League with the Kansas City T-Bones in 2003. To my knowledge, he's out of baseball.

Tomko was his normal mediocre self with the Padres in 2002 before the pitching-starved Cardinals came a-callin', parting with Luther Hackman and a PTBNL for Tomko's services. Hackman contributed to the Padres by eating 76.2 innings and vomiting 51 runs; he wasn't retained by San Diego and spent last season with Nashville and Buffalo. The PTBNL became Mike Wodnicki, a swingman who didn't play above A-ball until turning 24 in 2004, when he was released and signed back on with the Cardinals' organization. Tomko was mediocre with the Cardinals in 2003 before rebounding to mediocre with San Francisco after signing as a free agent in 2004.

Ben Davis, the other key player in the Tomko to San Diego deal, had two disappointing seasons with the Mariners before being sent to the White Sox along with Freddy Garcia for Miguel Olivo, Jeremy Reed, and Michael Morse. Davis wasn't much help to the White Sox and Garcia's ERA fell as his long fly ball outs in Safeco became home runs in Mobile Phone Stadium. Olivo took over as the Mariners' token disappointing catcher. Morse was suspended in 2004 and was underwhelming in the Arizona Fall League, but nevertheless continues to draw misguided A-Rod comparisons. Reed's value, like Bob Dylan, is still largely Tangled Up in Batting Average, so his .397 average in his September call-up has Seattle fans hot and bothered about the new Mariner Messiah.

The final player in the Griffey trade was Antonio Perez. Perez spent 2001 and 2002 earning the title "failed prospect" before being traded to Tampa Bay for Randy Winn in the compensation deal for Lou Piniella. Piniella has gone on to inspire numerous Floridians while managing the uninspiring Devil Rays. Winn has managed to be equal parts overrated and underrated in his productive but not overwhelming stay with Seattle. Perez had a breakthrough season in 2003, but the Devil Rays didn't like him as much as Jason Romano, and you know the story from there.

2005 Non-Dodgers: Steve Finley

2004-12-12T03:17:00.000-08:00

Consider this:

2004 EqA's:
Hee Seop Choi: .286
Jayson Werth: .282
Shawn Green: .280
Milton Bradley: .274
Steve Finley: .271

If the player ranked last on that list also happened to be the oldest on the list and would be the second-highest paid, would there be much reason to want to add him to the team if the other four were already on the team and there were only four lineup spots available? Only under extraordinary circumstances.

I'm willing to take it on faith that Steve Finley's offensive numbers won't fall off of a cliff next year. After all, his .263 batting average on balls in play was out of step with his career .292 and .301 from 2001-2003 as well as his good line drive rate. His spike in home run power isn't likely to be repeated wholesale, however, so I'd say .285/.340/.470 is about right for him, although in Dodger Stadium that could be more like .275/.325/.455. That's darn good. Unfortunately for Finley, that's not as good as a reasonable projection for any of the other four outfield/first base candidates for the Dodgers.

Maybe Steve Finley's defense is good. The data doesn't indicate that it is, for the most part; he's been terrible according to UZR and was consistently below average over the past several years with Arizona. However, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the park he played in made his defense look superficially bad; his rate stats in his brief time with LA were well above average, and the only other player to log a full season at The BOB, Devon White, had his worst year defensively. I'm not willing to believe, however, that Finley was worthy of a gold glove or that he was better defensively than Milton Bradley, who was better both rate-statwise and zone rating-wise.

There's just no way that paying Steve Finley to play for the Dodgers in 2005 is a practical strategy. The three young players who could be traded to make way for Finley would all be undervalued in trades: Choi because of his August struggles, Werth because of his elbow, and Bradley because of his history rage-related incidents. With the Dodgers in need of upgrading their rotation and signing a third baseman, anything that would require them to commit a lot of money to Finley would hurt the club.

Finley was a good shot to accept arbitration. The judge wouldn't have ordered Finley to pay bail because he simply wasn't much of a flight risk. Despite various rumors about the Giants and Tigers offering him long, expensive contracts, in the end he settled for $14 million over two seasons. Finley was unlikely to get an expensive contract that stretched into a third year, simple as that, and if he wasn't likely to exceed $15 million over those two years, he could have expected roughly that much by accepting arbitration, since his increased HR/RBI/Run totals and flashy gold glove in 2004 probably would have gotten him in the $8.5m-$9.5m range in arbitration. With the frontrunners for Finley's services at the time reportedly being geriaphiles San Francisco and Detroit, the Dodgers would have only a sandwich pick and a third round pick to gain. Given the depth in the Dodgers farm system, that benefit is swamped by the need to maintain control of the 2005 payroll.

I wonder how big a deal this would be if Steve Finley's game-winning sac fly on October 2 hadn't carried over the wall. When it was hit, everyone was happy that he'd won the game; it becoming a home run was beside the point. But Green, Werth, and Choi all kept the inning alive, with Choi representing the winning run and Werth's hit constituting the most important offensive contribution of the inning. And without Bradley's contributions, the Dodgers likely would have been eliminated in September. It's remarkable that letting Finley go can be considered a callous, unemotional decision when the decision to keep him would require dealing or marginalizing one of the players who contributed more to the team over the course of the season (okay, Choi doesn't meet that standard, but his big double against the Rockies sure hit me harder from an emotional standpoint than Finley's grand slam). No matter what Tom Hanks said, there's room for crying in baseball, but this is neither the time nor the place.

2005 Dodgers: Joe Thurston

2004-12-11T21:05:00.000-08:00

The standard narrative is that Joe Thurston has spent the last two seasons earning the title "Flop." Joey Ballgame seemingly fell off a clip, with his Vegas numbers falling from .334/.372/.506 in 2002 to .290/.345/.401 in 2003 and .284/.356/.394 in 2004.

That decline, however, probably should not have come as a surprise. His batting average on balls in play in 2002 had been a ridiculous .360, way up from his .322, .335, and .292 in 1999, 2000, and 2001, respectively; Thurston's 2002 was simply a good example of a big rise in BABIP creating unrealistic expectations for a player. On top of that, his home runs had jumped in 2002 even though he'd never projected as much of a power hitter. In fact, there was reason to predict a substantial decline, as his walk rate in 2002 was half what it had been in his previous three seasons in the minors while his strikeout rate only managed a marginal gain. In 2003, he found out that his "What the heck, let's just swing at this darned pitch and see what happens" approach was not suited to long-term consistency; his BABIP shrunk from .360 to .307. The 44 point deflation in batting average and his failure to maintain the anomalous power outburst of 2002 made his 2003 an ugly year, although he did manage to regain some of the lost walk rate.

In 2004, Thurston perhaps was being instructed to be more selective, which would explain the tandem of increased BABIP, walks, HBP, and strikeouts. The increase in strikeouts, however, nullified all the other gains in terms of value. His ability to be struck by pitches is noteworthy, meaning that his secondary average is a bit better than his terrible base on balls rate would indicate. But it's pretty clear that his ability to convert balls in play into hits and to hit for power in 2002 was out of line with the rest of his career, although he still looks to be a good line drive hitter.

Thurston's production at Vegas over the last two seasons indicates he'll probably hit for decent but not very good average, draw an occasional walk or HBP, and hit a reasonable amount of doubles. My analysis projects him out at .260/.298/.345; Dan Szymborski's ZiPS is only slightly more optimistic, forecasting .271/.308/.372. I don't know what Thurston's platoon splits are like, so perhaps he'd be a bit better than that if he only faced northpaws.

In my Ricky Ledee profile, I wondered if the Dodgers should fill a slot on the bench with a left-handed contact hitter for use in pinch hitting situations with runners in scoring position because most of the players they have on hand are most valuable due to their walks and home run power. When I made that comment, I had in the back of my mind the thought that perhaps Joe Thurston could fulfill that role, with the pinch hitting of Ledee (and Brian Myrow) being used mainly when no one was on base. To test this hypothesis, I used the linear weights data from Tangotiger's site. I used two projections for each Ledee and Thurston, one composed from the subjective analysis I'd done for each and one using the ZiPS forecasts.

Thurston didn't fare quite as well as I'd hypothesized. That extra bit of batting average isn't enough to swamp Ledee's advantages in OBP and SLG. With no runners on, Ledee is 3 runs better than Thurston over the course of 100 plate appearances using both projections. With a runner on first, Ledee is 5 runs better per 100 PA using my projection and five and a half better using ZIPS. With runners in scoring position, that gap is narrowed to only 1.1 R/100 PA (ZiPS) or 1.7 R/100 PA (me). The only runner situations where Thurston has an edge involve first base being open with a runner on third, beating Ledee by 1.4 R/100 PA (ZiPS) or .6 R /100 PA (me) with only a runner on third and beating Ledee by 2.5 R/100 PA (Z) or 1.4 R/100 PA (me) with runners on second and third.

Contrary to my prior assumptions, Ledee's advantage actually grows slightly when there are two out. Ledee's scores increase across the board except with runners on first and second and two out, where Thurston is still far inferior but not by as wide of a margin, and with runners on second and third, where Thurston's advantage grows to 2.8 R/100 PA with two out.

So Thurston's the better player to put up with runners on second and third, but the Dodgers will probably pinch hit in that situation only 20-30 times per season, meaning that Thurston's advantage there means less than a run over the course of a year. Thurston could, of course, still squeeze onto the 25-man roster if two of Antonio Perez, Alex Cora, Cesar Izturis, and Adrian Beltre are not with the team, injured, or unavailable, but would probably be the last bat off the bench in that situation. Factor in that his defense is believed to be okay but unspectacular, and Thurston's a long shot to contribute much in 2005 and, unless he shows improvement for the first time in two years, is a long shot to become a very useful contributor at any point in his career.

Jaw Dropping

2004-12-11T17:18:00.000-08:00

Jose Capellan for Danny Kolb? I am completely dumbfounded. Yes, completely.

2005 Dodgers: Jeff Kent

2004-12-09T21:27:00.000-08:00

Splashy.

Normally I feel like there's some insight I can add on a player, but in this case there's not much to say. Batting average wise, Kent's a good line drive hitter with a good strikeout rate since 2000, and his very good home run power combines with those factors to make him well above average in any year. At his peak, he drew a lot of walks and HBP's, but he's been below average in those respects over the past three years. His home run power is very good, and his doubles power is almost as good. He was helped out some by Houston's ballpark in 2003, but hurt by San Francisco's ballpark (I would write their names, but I frankly can't remember when each changed its name, although I know they both at one point had Enron logos), so his three-year totals are a pretty good indication of his ability. In Dodger Stadium, his home runs, doubles, and triples will all decline (though only the triples will be down by a lot), and his walk rate could decline a bit too, but his batting average should stay about the same. Given his age, a slight additional decline per year is reasonable, so I'd pencil him in for about .285/.345/.485 in 2005 and .280/.340/.470 for 2006. That's pretty much in agreement with Dam Szymborski's ZiPS, which has him at .275/.339/.485.

Kent's defense at second base is perhaps underrated at this point; based on the Prospectus rate stats, he's been substantially above average at second base in every season from 2000 to 2004 save 2003 when he was average. His defense could well equal that of Alex Cora, although I'd guess with his advanced age that Cora will be slightly better over the next two seasons. As a first baseman, where those in the anti-Choi crowd would like to see him played, he's been a pretty bad fielder in his limited playing time, and whether he could re-learn third base to be above average is an open question. I'd say it's most likely that the Dodgers will do something to obtain value for one of Alex Cora or Cesar Izturis and re-sign Adrian Beltre, and that's probably the intelligent way to do it.

How valuable is Kent? Based on the above projections, I'd argue that he's worth about one win above replacement for every twenty games he plays, meaning he'll be worth 6 wins at 120 games, 6.5 at 130 games, 7 at 140 games, and 7.5 at 150 games. Given his age, I'm gonna use my subjective number generator and guess he's good for 138, or 6.9 wins. That's pretty good for $8.5 million a season, although it doesn't by any means qualify as a steal. I don't think that's particularly good value, but that's not sufficient reason to be critical. Of course, given that I'd project Troy Glaus' value as 5-6 wins above replacement and he's just signed for more money than Jesus, this deal certainly looks good in the context of the Free Agent class of 2005. And if Kent is, indeed, a Dodgers fan, I'm happy for him.

2005 Dodgers: Elmer Dessens

2004-12-08T17:50:00.000-08:00

The signing of Elmer Dessens by Los Angeles yesterday was fairly unexpected. Dessens arrived in LA on August 19, 2004, coming from Arizona in exchange for toolsy Jereme Milons, a "toolsy" 21-year-old outfielder who'd spent most of the year in low-A Columbus, where he was fairly underwhelming. Dessens was acquired in the wake of the revelation of Darren Dreifort's most recent injuries, as the Dodgers had noticed his solid performance since switching to the bullpen with Arizona. Yesterday, he was re-signed to a one-year deal worth $1.3 million with a $1.3 m option for 2006 or a $250,000 buy-out.

Dessens has always been more on the control side of the spectrum than the power side. His K rate normally hovers about 20% below league average while his walk rate is normally about 25% better than league average, which combined with his dead-average home run rate have made him very, very league average over the years. His career Defensive Efficiency Ratio numbers also show nothing significantly different from league average. Looking at a period of just the past three years, this overwhelming sense of complete averagitivity holds up.

When Dessens was switched to the bullpen in 2004 after being used only as a starter since being a swingman with the Reds in 2000, his numbers saw a substantial improvement. As a reliever, his K rate shot up to league average while his walk rate became about 60% of league average. These factors made his fielding independent pitching index drop to 4.11, comfortably below the 4.31 league average. The Baseball Prospectus reliever report had him pegged for a 4.00 Fair Run Average on the season, based on the runners he inherited and bequeathed to others. However, relievers in the current era fare better than starters; FIP correlates with ERA, where major league average for relievers was 4.15 in 2004, and Fair Run Average is based on run average, where MLB relievers averaged 4.56. Either way, we can probably expect Dessens to be marginally better than league average.

How valuable is a slightly above average reliever who can go a couple innings at a time? Since becoming a reliever on May 10 last year, Dessens pitcher 71.2 innings, including three not very successful spot starts. Let's pro-rate that usage to figure he's good for 85-90 innings a year. If his run average is about 4.10, we can expect him to contribute about 16 runs above replacement level over a season. If he declines to a 4.60 run average, that figure becomes 11, and if he improves to 3.60 it goes up to 21. For all those estimates I'm using park-neutral numbers, so the overall value operates independent of the fact that those aren't terribly impressive numbers for pitching in Chavez Ravine. Based on those expectations, it's fair to expect Dessens to be worth about 1.5-2.0 wins above replacement. More simply, his expected level of production should match that of Duaner Sanchez in 2004, although the two aren't terribly similar otherwise. Using the MDMW and NWSV methods, this projects as an above average deal either at two years, $2.6 million or at one year, $1.55 million (if the option is declined with the $250K buy-out).

Overall, this was a pretty solid move. Gagne and Brazoban are pretty set in the bullpen with Wilson Alvarez presumably returning as well, but the Dodgers had a need for a reliable innings eater. Duaner Sanchez' 2004 was good but featured peripherals that indicate an ERA a run higher would have been more appropriate, Kaz Ishii probably has no value as a reliever, and Giovanni Carrara's career was last seen auditioning for an illustrated dictionary under the listing "mercurial". While Franquelis Osorio and Steve Schmoll show promise, they haven't pitched enough against high-level competition to guarantee their success in 2004, and it does make sense for them to start the season in Vegas before taking over when someone becomes injured or ineffective. All in all, Dessens fits a pretty important role for the Dodgers, who don't have to pay much for him and have no reason to overspend for a marquee free agent reliever.

Additional Second Base Notes

2004-12-08T10:37:00.000-08:00

If Tony Womack had converted balls hit in play into hits at the same right he had over his career in 2004 (at age 34), his line would have been .282/.317/.360. Womack has had exactly one season in his career where his Rate at second base was over 90 (where 90 means that over 100 games you cost your team 10 runs versus the average second baseman). He's never had a season at shortstop where he played more than 6 games with a Rate better than 97. My optimistic side says he's worth about 10 runs over replacement offensively and 8 defensively, or a total of 2.0 wins above replacement. My pessimistic side says 6 runs on offense and 6 on defense, or 1.4 wins above replacement. $2 million for that is pretty silly since those figures require that he play nearly every day, meaning that the opportunity cost of bringing a free agent like Polanco or Kent on board pretty much negates the value of this deal. Think of it this way: The Yankees are paying Womack $750K/yr more than the Dodgers are paying Ledee for about a half a win per season extra in more than three times the playing time.
The Astros declined to offer Jeff Kent arbitration and have said they'll talk to Craig Biggio concerning whether he wants to return to second base. When Biggio last played second base, his age was showing and he wasn't very good defensively. Based on Chris Burke's success in New Orleans, I don't really see the need to "ease him in" as the Astros have discussed. Realistically, if I were the Astros I'd be looking to sign Beltran quickly if possible but move on if he's unrealistic and allocate that money toward acquiring a shortstop and catcher with Biggio moving back to centerfield where he was actually about average defensively and Jason Lane assuming a starting role.

Brief Notes From Arbitration Deadline Day

2004-12-07T23:35:00.000-08:00

$25 million spent on bringing Jaret Wright to an organization with the anti-Mazzone and praying Tony Womack repears his career year is pretty good evidence that the Yankess aren't going to start being very prudent in the near future. This doesn't improve them at second base, which makes the Carlos Beltran signing just a little more inevitable and probably means that Boras can extort even more from the Yankees in their desperation to improve.
The Cubs did a good job bringing back their middle infield at a reasonable price, but the Henry Blanco deal is sure to leave some Northside heads raw from scratching. Blanco certainly has a lot of defensive value, which actually is enough to compensate for his sub-replacement level offense. I think it's unlikely to expect him to repeat his stellar defense from 2004, but let's try to see what value he is. Over his career, Blanco has been worth 14.1 Wins Above Replacement using Baseball Prospectus' WARP1 over 458.7 adjusted games at catcher, meaning he's worth one win for every 32.5 9-inning games he plays. In 2004 data, that figure is 36.8, so let's make that figure 37 games since he's already 33. I think a good short-hand for whether a deal is reasonable is if the deal can yield an expected marginal dollars per marginal win (MDMW, or salary above the minimum divided by wins above replacement) of $1.5 million, which is slightly better than average. He's being paid $2.1 million above the minimum for two seasons, so if he keeps producing at his career rate he'd need to log about 466 innings over two years for this deal to make sense. Paul Bako has played almost twice that much over the past two years, so this is not a terrible deal. I think it's easy to have a knee jerk reaction against any deal with a per annum value above a million, but I wouldn't really be concerned about deals of this magnitude. The big value mistakes tend to be in contracts worth between $3 million and $7 million, where very marginal differences in value garner several million dollars worth in expenses, rather than in deals that sign backups for a little over a million, which isn't too bad of an investment in situations where there's reason to expect the backup to play often. Now, if you're the Twins and you already have Punto but you spend for Castro, that's a different story.
Dodger fan favorites disappear, and with good cause. There's simply no way Jose Lima would be worth what he'd make in arbitration. No way. And there's a good chance Steve Finley would accept arbitration; players with his service time, one-year home run totals, and "Gold Glove" awards are good shots to win their arbitration claims, and the Dodgers don't really have a place to put him without benching or trading Werth or Choi (and if you think they'd ever get fair value in a trade for Milton Bradley, you probably haven't put much thought into the issue). Even though there are whispers about Finley getting multiyear offers, that sounds like bluster to me, pretty much a Detroit-San Francisco "we have incentive to overpay for 2005 performance and aren't afraid to go into debt after that" bidding war at a time when both are nearing their spending threshold. And if it was Detroit or San Francisco, the draft pick compensation would be in the third round, if my recollection of the intricacies of the CBA is correct, due to the Percival, Benitez, and Vizquel signings. Jose Hernandez? Probably not worth the $3-4 million he'd get in arbitration, and the Dodgers do have useful replacement middle infielders on hand.
An Elmer Dessens profile should be up tomorrow.

2005 Dodgers: More Ledee

2004-12-07T21:33:00.000-08:00

When I wrote up Ricky Ledee yesterday, I was so busy considering the value of the contract that I neglected to do an analysis by offensive segment. I don't think I'll get around to a full player profile tonight, so I thought I'd give a more in depth look at what to expect offensively from Ledee.

Ledee has, historically, been a moderately low batting average, moderately high secondary average type. Over the course of his career, he was walked frequently, especially over the past three seasons. Earlier in his career when he played for the Yankess, his home run and doubles power were above average, but when he was traded to Cleveland and shortly thereafter Texas his slugging fell off a cliff. During his stay with Philadelphia from 2002-2004, however, he turned up his home run production substantially and maintained average doubles power. Ledee's tendency to strike out has always played a key role in keeping his batting average down and his overall value with it; he's typically struck out at a rate about 20% above league average. Since strikeouts correlate with increased home runs, I like to use a little measuring stick called Batting Average on Balls Out of Play (BABOP) to see how a player's home runs and strike outs balance out. The average major league hitter had a BABOP of .146 in 2004; Ledee's career BABOP is .114, and his BABOP from 2002-2004 is .152, which pretty much tells Ledee's story as an offensive contributor: he didn't hit enough home runs when he was younger to make up for his strike outs, but since he came aboard with Philadelphia his power has kept him above average offensively.

Ledee's history of converting balls in play into hits has been subpar. His batting average on balls in play (BABIP) was roughly league average in his early years but has dropped to about 10% below league average at the same time that his home run power has gone up over the last three seasons, which is unsurprising since he's probably hitting more high fly balls. His lack of production with San Francisco had a lot to do with low BABIP; his .182 BABIP with the Giants was far, far below league average (.298) even though his line drive rate, a strong indicator of BABIP, was right at league average. This was in stark contrast with his time with Philadelphia in 2004, where his numbers were inflated by an uncharacteristically high BABIP even though his line drive rate was substantially below league average. Using his batted ball types, we could have expected a BABIP of about .290 while with the Giants and .270 with the Phillies, with the result being that his overall production would look like .252/.366/.480 with the Phillies and .189/.267/.226 with the Giants. Now, obviously that's still a terrible job he did with the Giants, mainly because he swung for the fences without making contact quite a bit, finishing with no home runs and a strike out rate almost twice league average. But I can't think of any circumstances where I'd consider his 60 plate appearances with the Giants after being traded a better sample of Ledee's ability to hit home runs and avoid strike outs than the sum total of the last three years.

So what can be expected from Ledee? At age 31, he certainly could be declining, something any projection should account for. But it's also unlikely that his K, BB, and HR numbers will decline much over what they've been in recent years. At Dodger Stadium he'll probably also lose a few hits due to the park, and maybe a few home runs since Philadelphia's been a better home run environment than Dodger Stadium. His ability to draw walks will probably only see marginal decline, and the same is probably true of his ability to avoid strike outs. Given that and that Ledee has hit .236/.336/.437 over the past three seasons, Ledee should probably good for production at a .225/.325/.400 clip over the next two seasons with the Dodgers, which is pretty much exactly average (production-wise) for a player at Dodger Stadium. And yes, average offense over 300-400 plate appearances probably is worth $2.5 million if it can play centerfield.

Now, of course, Ledee won't be hitting in a vacuum, and a couple things need to be considered. First, DePodesta has been somewhat fetishistic in his public statements regarding Ledee, which leads me to believe that there's a solid chance that DePodesta has had advance scouts cover Ledee and perhaps has discussed Ledee with 2004 hitting coach Tim Wallach (who I presume will remain with the organization in 2005) to strategize potential areas for improvement in Ledee's game. That might be a pipe dream, but I find it unlikely that DePodesta would have considered trading for Ledee and eventually signing him without getting adequate scouting on him.

Second, this signing is a bit disconcerting in that Ledee is roughly the same type of hitter as Brian Myrow and Jason Grabowski-- lots of walks and good power, not many singles. As I alluded to in my discussion of Myrow, I think a well constructed bench should, ideally, have both hitters who are capable of getting on base and hitters whose main skill is slapping line drive singles, since there are high-leverage situations (i.e., runner on second) where a .275/.295/.350 may be more valuable than a .220/.335/.380 type of hitter. Hopefully I'll flesh this out more in the player profile I'm planning to post tomorrow, but while I agree that a player like Ledee is likely to be undervalued by the typical fan or GM (although I don't think the Dodgers paid substantially more than he would have eventually gotten), his signing provides a context for the realization that DePodesta might undervalue players who don't draw many walks.

2005 Dodgers: Ricky Ledee

2004-12-06T23:35:00.000-08:00

The Dodgers signed Ricky Ledee to a two-year contract worth $2.5 million. Was this a good deal? Let’s consider his likely usage patterns.

First, the Dodgers already have three outfielders lined up to start in 2005 in Shawn Green, Milton Bradley, and Jayson Werth. Green will likely return to right field with Hee Seop Choi manning first base, as I doubt that Jim Tracy will plunge back into anti-Choi madness (also known as “Dusty’s Disease”). However, Werth is currently in recovery from his elbow injury, so the Dodgers may need someone to take over in left field for extended periods of time. Moreover, even when Werth is 100% the jury’s still out on whether he’s good enough to play regularly against right-handed pitchers, so picking up someone who can be adequate in the outfield against righties makes sense for the Dodgers. Furthermore, Milton Bradley has demonstrated a penchant for missing the occasional game, and beyond Werth, who can pass at centerfield but not excel, the Dodgers don’t have much in the way of major-league ready centerfielders. Grabowski can’t play centerfield. Jason Repko was the centerfielder much of the year at Vegas, and his seasonal major league equivalent average was .227, just below replacement level for NL centerfielders in 2004. Chin-Feng Chen fared better last season, with a .243 MjEQA, but my understanding is that his defense at centerfield is not above replacement-level. Henri Stanley had a cumulative .230 MjEQA last season while Cody Ross’ was .226, and neither is, to my knowledge, a defensive stud. That means that the best the Dodgers could do, without giving up any talent in a trade, would be to plug a player just slightly above replacement level for the league minimum.

Ledee has a .253 career EqA, and his EqA over 737 plate appearances in the past 3 seasons is .267. His EqA last season between the Phillies and the Giants was a paltry .245, substantially below average, but he was mainly used as a pinch hitter in high leverage situations; if adjusting for the quality of his opposition, that figure raises to .253. It’s certainly possible that Ledee experienced a sharp decline from which he will never recover on July 30 when he was traded, but I think a much more plausible explanation is that he simply wasn’t given much of an opportunity with the Giants and may have had issues with the hitter’s background at SBC Park, where he hit .069/.156/.103 after the trade. Whatever went wrong while he was in San Francisco is almost certain to be correctable, and I’d say that he’s a solid bet that he will be a hair above league average. His defensive has, historically, been just a hair under league average, and there’s no trend to indicate a decline.

How much is he worth, then? If he ends up being simply a fourth outfielder with 150 or so plate appearances, then his average win shares baseline is about 4. If he plays more often that that, due to extended injuries to one of the other outfielders, his baseline could equal about 10, although he might have to hit left-handed pitching more often, which brings his offense down a hair. If he takes over in a full-time platoon, that baseline can stretch up to 13. If Green, Werth, and Bradley all are completely healthy and there’s not much need for Ledee, his baseline could conceivably shrink to 2. So what amount of value could we expect from Ledee in these situations, if his contract is worth $1,250,000 per year? Here’s a chart using somewhat conservative estimates of his value (in part to restrain optimism, in part to reflect that his potential replacements would be slightly above replacement-level), Net Win Shares Value (NWSV), and Marginal Dollars per Marginal Win (MDMW):

ExpWS	WS	WSAR	NWSV	WARP	MDMW
2	2	0.5	-528,137	0.4	2312500
4	4	1	-106,275	0.8	1156250
7	6.5	1.3	104,656	1.4	660714
10	9	1.5	315,588	1.8	513889
13	11.5	1.8	526,519	2.1	440476
7.2	6.6	1.22	146,842	1.3	711538

For the NWSV calculations, I didn’t adjust for contract type; if considered only in the context of free agents, Ledee becomes somewhat more valuable. The last line is the mean of the five scenarios. What does this mean? A positive value for net win shares value is good, so unless Ledee collapses or is hardly used at all $1.25m is a pretty good deal. Using marginal dollars per win, Ledee also fairs well; the major league average last year was roughly $3 million, or $2 million if the Diamondbacks are thrown out of the equation. The $711,538 mean generated by this subjective analysis would represent a better MDMW than any major league team had in 2004. If a team with a $50 million payroll had that MDMW, they’d win 107 games. All in all, this looks like a pretty good deal to me.

Given the Dodgers’ resources and the shape of the free agent market, this was probably a pretty good deal. As I argued above, the Dodgers don’t really have anyone on hand to capably fill the fourth outfielder/backup centerfielder role, and they have a clear need for one with Jayson Werth’s injury concern and uncertain ability to be a sufficient everyday player. $1.25 is above the magical seven-figure threshold, so this is the kind of deal that’s likely to be called overspending. Perhaps, but the outfield market is thinner than the soup they served in Battleship Potemkin. Who who would be a better value? Doug Glanville? Tom Goodwin? Richard Hidalgo? Danny Bautista? The reality is that it’s unlikely that anybody with experience playing centerfield in the major leagues will sign for less than 900 grand or so, and Ledee is probably the best among this thin crop. Sure, the Dodgers could sign part of the Beltran/Finley/Magglio/Drew/Dye group for a lot of dollars, but none would be available for under $5 mil (well, possibly Dye) and doing so would foreclose the possibility of trying to find out if Jayson Werth can be a cheap and productive outfielder for the next several years (or, alternately, trashing Hee Seop Choi and bringing Shawn Green back to first base). With a pitching staff to rebuild, a third baseman to re-sign, and reasons to upgrade at second base and catcher, that seems like a substantial misallocation of resources. And even if they were to sign a bigger name and trade Werth or Finley, there’s still not a capable fill-in if injury strikes.

Look at it this way: With Ledee, the Dodgers can have a full outfield/first base setup of Green, Werth, Bradley, Ledee, Choi, Saenz, and 2 of Myrow, Grabowski, Repko, and Chen for $22-23 million and are very likely to get above average production overall, very unlikely to be stuck with a black hole at any of those positions if injury or ineffectiveness strikes, and have a good chance of that being one of the six or seven most productive OF/1B combos in baseball. Given that the vast majority of that comes from an inherited sunk cost (Green), I’m impressed. Now that the Moneyball genie is out of the bottle, there’s a tendency to think that any player making more than the minimum who is not playing an everyday role is simply overpaid and a waste of resources. That’s definitely true of the Juan Castro’s of the world, but Ledee is not a hack skating by on having played in the majors before; he’s very likely to be significantly above both hypothetical replacement level and the actual replacements the Dodgers have on hand, and paying an extra million a year for a win or two is not a bad idea.

This is not $43 million for Darren Dreifort or $16 million for Cristian Guzman. This is not the Twins, where the organization has an abundance of useful spare parts and should be channeling its limited capital into buying top-tier impact players but instead overspends for Juan Castro. This is an organization which has no appetizing replacement on hand and which is using its marginal resources to buy effective marginal pieces.

2005 Dodgers: Brian Myrow

2004-12-05T21:35:00.000-08:00

Last year's exile of Tanyon Sturtze to the Bronx yielded the Dodgers an oft-overlooked player with an ardent cult following in Brian Myrow. Myrow's profile resembles the Moneyball corollary to Steve Garvey. Whereas Garvey was hyped because of his overvalued batting average, his major market and playoff-bound team, and his good looks and media savvy, Myrow is the textbook stathead fetish: he walks more often than Jared from Subway (and in 2002 and 2003 also was hit by a bunch of pitches), he's considered too old to be a prospect, and he was stuck behind an overyhped "toolsy" prospect in Drew Henson for an organization (the Yankees) with an irrational fear of unproven players, even though he possessed the skills (a left-handed on-base machine with some pop) that the Yankees ostensibly covet. He screams undervalued, which perhaps creates the tendency among folks like us to overvalue him.

Myrow toiled with the independent Winnipeg Goldeyes for three years after finishing his collegiate career at the University of Michigan before the Yankees signed him. He raged through the Florida State League and the Eastern League over the next year and a half while playing second and third base, but Henson's presence in Columbus prevented him from being promoted. In his full year at AA in 2003, he was a monster: .306/.447/.525, good for a .266 major league equivalent average. When Aaron Boone went down, Myrow became the cause du jour for a select few Yankee fans, touting him as a superior candidate for the job than anything the Yankees were considering at that point. Predictably, the Alex Rodriguez trade foreclosed that option, since Myrow's defense at second base is, by all accounts, terrible. With Henson's return to football, Myrow was promoted to Columbus, but was moved to first base since his defense at third was not so great. He was somewhat disappointing for Columbus, hitting .268/.365/.433 for a MjEQA of .230. After being traded to the Dodgers, he tore it up with the 51's to the tune of .359/.444/.601 for a MjEQA of .269, playing some first base and some outfield in addition to reportedly learning how to play catcher. I don't know whether the disparity in his performance between Vegas and Columbus is indicative purely of small sample size, response to the different offensive environment disproportional to the reported league and ballpark effects, or intelligent thinking by the Las Vegas coaching staff and/or the Dodgers player development staff; his MjEQA for the year was .249, but there's some reason for optimism that the Vegas Myrow was a better indication of what to expect.

Currently, Myrow is playing for Escogido of the Dominican league, and he's leading the league in on-base percentage. Myrow turned 28 in September, so it's possible that he's already peaked, but it's not unreasonable to think he's a "late bloomer" with a different development curve. His defense probably won't be very useful, but his offense should at least hover around league average if he's finally awarded a cup of coffee.

I think that Myrow should probably be with the Dodgers for all of 2005, but somebody needs to sit Jim Tracy down and talk to him about what kind of commodity Myrow is. He can spot start at third or first, though that assignment should go to Olmedo Saenz if a southpaw is on the mound, assuming Saenz is brought back, and he might be capable of logging brief time in the outfield. He played some left field for Las Vegas last year, so if he starts to really smoke the ball he could be a platoon counterpart to Jayson Werth. Myrow will probably be used most, however, as a pinch hitter. What needs to be understood, however, is that there are different ways to use pinch hitters. Myrow's best skill is drawing walks; his batting average is unlikely to ever be league average and I wouldn't count on him showing a ton of power, although he's showing doubles power in the Dominican winter league. Fundamentally, Myrow is a guy you should turn to when you need to get a baserunner and avoid an out. So if the Dodgers have no one on or a runner on first base with a right-handed pitcher on the mound, Myrow's a good call; if there are runners in scoring position, especially with two out, the Dodgers would be better served with a line-drive, batting average type, particularly if weak-hitting players are due up. Looking at the Dodgers' roster, I'm not sure who fits that description (with the possible exception of an improved Jason Repko or Henri Stanley), so this idea might be for naught, but Myrow is precisely the kind of player whose value can be maximized by understanding what to expect.

If Myrow were simply inserted into the Jason Grabowski role, he could be very useful. Grabowski and Myrow are very similar; they're left-handed hitters who don't offer much in the way of defense who toiled in the minor leagues for a long time before getting a shot in the bigs until turning 28 (assuming Myrow does, indeed, get a shot at the bigs this season). Both have decent average and power while demonstrating above average ability to draw walks. But Myrow's performance in the minor leagues has been slightly better, and his current performance in the Dominican league leads me to believe he'd be a better option than Grabowski. Whether DePodesta can get something of value from some club for Grabowski is an interesting question, but if he can, it seems like a worthwhile move if the Dodgers pick up a left-handed fourth-outfielder, as various reports have suggested they might soon do.

2005 Dodgers: Schmoll Change

2004-12-04T19:26:00.000-08:00

Don Murphy's grand slam in the eighth inning of the Arizona Fall League championship was remarkable not simply because it provided the Phoenix Desert Dogs with the league championship. So far as I can tell, that first pitch grand slam was the first and only home run yielded by Dodgers farmhand Steve Schmoll in 2004. Schmoll pitched 65 innings at High-A Vero Beach, 19.2 innings at AA Jacksonville, and 19 regular season innings in the AFL and was simply dominant at all levels. His 1.83 ERA with Jacksonville was his highest at any level, and his combined stats across the three levels look like this:

103.2 IP, 28 R, 20 ER, 1.74 ERA, 89 H, 29 BB (25 unintentional), 88 K, 8 HBP

He's certainly not a strike out machine, but his K rate is definitely not bad and neither is his walk rate. He obviously benefited somewhat from the league contexts he played in, but his success is overwhelming in any context. The sample size issues with the AFL are a significant concern in player evaluation, but Schmoll truly excelled there: his 1.43 ERA was the fourth lowest in the league among all pitchers, trailing only Huston Street (0.98 ERA, 18.1 IP), Wes Wilkerson (0.98 ERA, 18.1 IP), and Justin Wechsler (1.23, 7.1 IP).

Chances are slim you're very familiar with Schmoll. In high school, Schmoll played catcher and pitched before leaving for school at the University of Maryland. Schmoll attempted to walk on with the Terps his freshman year but wasn't given a roster spot. In his sophomore year, he dropped catching and made the 2000 team as a pitcher. His first two seasons were unremarkable, and he was moved to more of a relief role in 2002, where he still struggled but saw his strikeout rate increase substantially. In 2003, he had a solid season split between starting and closing, including breaking the school record for strike outs in a season. As a fifth-year senior, he was eligible to be signed before the draft, and under the advice of Clair Rierson the Dodgers snagged him in the ensuing bidding war. Schmoll was then sent to Ogden of the Pioneer league, where he put up a respectable 3.75 ERA in 36 innings. On the basis of his excellent 13.25 K/9 with Ogden, Schmoll started the 2004 season with Vero Beach, and he thrived up to and including his late season advancement to Jacksonville.

A reliever who keeps the ball in the park as successfully as Schmoll has is certainly exciting, given the research Dayn Perry has done. True, he also will be 25 next season, but he developed his sidearm throwing motion only two years ago, and its reasonable to assume that he still has a lot of development potential. Due to his sidearm delivery, he's drawn comparisons to Chad Bradford. Their minor league numbers don't really sustain that comparison; Bradford never struck out batters as frequently as Schmoll has, and his full season in high-A at age 23 wasn't close to what Schmoll put up, in large part due to his high walk rate. After that season, Bradford developed much better control, and was extremely stingy with walks from 1998 to 2002 before regressing at age 29. If Schmoll ends up emulating Bradford's sharp drop in walk rate at a similar age while maintaining his higher strike out rate and his invulnerability to the long ball, watch out.

It's hard to judge just what Schmoll's ceiling is, but it's also pretty evident that he's a solid pick to be a useful contributor to a major league club within the next year or two. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and predict that, with only Gagne, Sanchez, Brazoban, and Carrara set at the major league level, Schmoll will see playing time with the Dodgers some time before September 2005. In fact, there's a chance he'll beat out Franquelis Osorio and whatever free agents DePo pulls off the scrap heap to take a job on the Opening Day roster. Not bad for someone who was cut from his college team as a freshman.

Coming Soon: 2005 Dodgers Previews

2004-12-04T16:03:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I wasn't able to write over the holiday week, and between school, the general lack of baseball news that interested me, and my displeasure with my various aborted attempts to write something about the steroid business of the last week, I've ended up not producing anything substantial. Over the next month or so, however, I intend to post a 2005 preview for a member of the Dodgers organization nearly every day, starting this weekend. The Dodgers are replete with interesting players at this time. At the major league level, most of their players are somewhat unknown commodities, due to injury concerns (Shawn Green, Brad Penny), disappointing 2004's (Dave Ross, Edwin Jackson), unprecedented performance in 2004 (Cesar Izturis, Yhency Brazoban, Adrian Beltre if he's re-signed), questionable ceilings (Milton Bradley, Jayson Werth), inconsistency in the big leagues (Alex Cora, Hee Seop Choi), and inconsistency in the high minors (Chin-Feng Chen, Antonio Perez). The only Dodgers whose performance in 2005 I feel can be prognosticated with a small margin of error and with strong confidence are Olmedo Saenz, Kaz Ishii, Jeff Weaver, and Eric Gagne, and even then Saenz and Ishii are question marks because it's anyone's guess how they'll be deployed. Throw in question marks surrounding farmhands like Joel Hanrahan, Greg Miller, James Loney, and Brian Myrow as well as the combination of two young and talented folks running the show in Paul DePodesta and Logan White, and this is an organization rich in analytical fodder.