Hurry Back, Adrian
Good news from Larry Stone concerning Adrian Beltre’s rehab – he’s rejoined the team and believes he’ll be able to return to the field this year.
“No doubt. That’s why I did it this year, because I’m pretty sure I’m going to be back. Hopefully, it will be 100 percent, and I’ll be able to help the team, because our team is doing really good now. We have a really good chance to win the west. The race is really close, and it’s wide open. That’s what make made my decision tougher. I know our team is winning, playing good, and we have a really good chance to get really hot in the last 2 1/2 months of the season, and who knows what will happen.”
This almost certainly will convince the M’s to not trade for a third baseman (besides Hannahan, who is just a stop gap kind of guy), I would imagine. If Beltre is able to get back before the end of August and give the team five good weeks, that will be a real boost to the club, no doubt.
How many runs is five weeks of Beltre vs. Hannahan worth?
(And is Beltre a good enough defender to slide to shortstop?)
No doubt about it!
Good news, definitely. There have already been a handful of errors at 3rd since he’s been gone :/
The true talent gap between the two is probably ~30 points of wOBA, and five weeks of baseball is about 120 plate appearances, so the difference is about three runs. Hannahan’s good defensively too, so the gap there is small enough to probably be mostly inconsequential over a month’s worth of games.
Three runs oesn’t sound like much, but that’s a third of a win, and wins go for about $4.5 million on the free market, so you’d pay something like $1.5 million to have Beltre instead of Hannahan for five weeks.
That assumes their fielding value is the same. UZR seems to think that’s about right, with Beltre at +10-+15 with the glove, and Hannahan in the same range (SSS Alert!)
And a third of a win might make or break this team right now. Yeah, getting Beltre back would help. Lots.
(One of these days I need to learn to do the wOBA/runs conversion myself.)
And getting Beltre back will help from the Type A vs. Type B standpoint as well…
Hurry back, Adrian!
wOBA to runs = difference in wOBA / 1.2 * PA
So, in this case, ((.325 – .295) / 1.2) * 120
Easy.
That 1/3 of a run, based on wOBA projections, is based on the assumption that a just-rehabbed-from injury Beltre, who, before surgery, was not hitting better than Hanahan, will meet his projection, both offensively and defensively. That doesn’t seem particularly likely to me.
Yes, God forbid that a player who was playing through injury would have surgery to fix the problem and then resume playing at his healthy career norms.
Why the sarcasm? It’s the language of a 15-year old.
I’d like to see Beltre come back, too, and it may be an emotional boost to the team, but performance-wise, it’s tough for me to believe that he’s going meet his wOBA projection the month after returning from shoulder surgery. The fact that he is *able* to play does not mean he will be 100% and in fact, it seems highly unlikely his shoulder will be 100% until he rests it over the off-season.
I’m going to ignore CCW and focus on the important question we should all be asking ourselves: How fantastic is it that August and September actually matter for Seattle Mariner fans this season? If this was any of the past half-dozen seasons, there would be no possibility of Beltre returning, because there would be no point. Thank God that’s not the case anymore.
Rob, for wOBA to runs, this is helpful:
Runs above replacement = ((wOBA – .300)/1.15) * PA
Divide by ~10 to convert to wins. (Then add defense, positional adjustment to see WAR).
Essentially, .300 wOBA is replacement level for a player whose defense contributes neutrally to his value. .340 wOBA is league average I believe.
If we have a player who is .340 wOBA for 600 PA during a season, then he is this many runs better than replacement:
(.340 – .300)/1.15 x 600 =
.0347 * 600 =
20.87.
So a .340 wOBA player with 600 PA contributes +21 runs over a .300 wOBA player.
I note that Dave uses 1.2 instead of my 1.15. I got 1.15 from “The Book”, but maybe that value has been updated? I think that .298 was technically the replacement level that TangoTiger mentioned, but .300 is close enough and easier to remember. I think it also changes slightly year to year.
I know adding Beltre and potentially a more offensively gifted SS doesn’t sound like much, but just imagine replacing Cedeno and Hannahan in the lineup. It may not be the Yankees lineup, but closing the black hole at the bottom of the order makes our odds of baseball in October so much more appealing. The difference between Langerhans and Johjima/Johnson in the 8 and 9 hole vs. Hannahan (God bless his defense) and Cedeno is night and day.
The divisor in wOBA changes every year, because wOBA is scaled to match league OBP, and that varies from year to year. It’s usually in the 1.15 to 1.25 range. I use 1.2 because it’s close enough every year and makes two points of wOBA = 1 run per 600 PA.
Novice question here, but I had been wondering what the “weighting” was in the “wOBA”. Based on Dave’s last post, I’m now guessing that “weighting” is the denominator (ie 1.15 to 1.25).
Is that right? Or is there some other “weighting” involved?
Thanks!
Given the high level of statistical expertise in this thread, I’m wondering if someone can answer a related defensive question for me.
Currently, we rank #1 in the AL in pitcher BABIP, #1 in strand rate, and #1 in the difference between ERA and FIP. Obviously, the key reason is excellent defense.
But is there a way to determine how much of that might also be related to luck? In other words, if the team UZR/100 (or whatever other measurement is appropriate) were to remain exactly the same for the rest of the year, could we expect the same performance in BABIP, strand, ERA/FIP,,,or is some (negative) regression to the mean to be expected?
Thanks.
That should have been UZR/150.
hey, look! baseball!
Statistics can’t show us pain, but the effects of pain can show up in the statistics. If the scar tissue was growing in Adrian’s left shoulder during the entire season, and he had–as he clearly did–batting statistics that were far below his projections, the pain is a plausible thesis for why. Thus, one can be optimistic that his batting upon return, recognizing that being out for two months and the loss of muscle mass, etc. through the surgery, will have their own effect, will return closer to his norms. Me, I’ll take a small sample size anomaly for five weeks of the Beltre of his last year in LA.
So, what’s going to happen with Beltre in terms of an extension for next year?
This is good news! And yes we need to resign Beltre, no options, at this moment, in the minors and Woodward and Hannahan are not the long term answer.
All of the outcomes of a player’s AB are weighted when they are added together. OPS weights them all the same by just counting bases — a double is worth twice as much as a single and half as much as a home run, a walk is the same as a single, etc — whereas wOBA uses things like run expectancy to weight them more appropriately (that is, it uses weights derived experientially rather than convenient, but arbitrary, integers). Dave walked through the process prior to the 2008 season; if you just want to see the formula Tango has it here (with a link to his complete explanation).