Baek pitches today
Baek’s had a great spring training. Despite the headline at MLB.com (“Watch live as Baek makes case for rotation”) there’s just no way his performance against the Angels today (at one) could get him to crack the rotation unless coupled with an unrelated injury to one of the starters.
If you’ve been around for a while, you know I like Baek, especially in that I’d rather throw a 5th starter job to someone like him over spending $kajillion to fill it with an inferior option. I still can’t bring myself to cheer for an injury to get him a chance, though.
Happy Easter to those of you who celebrate it.
Situational hitting
If stressing the value of situational hitting and scoring the runner from third throughout spring training didn’t do any good, doesn’t that mean
– the manager doing the stressing and training was ineffective
– the players are all too inept to pick it up
or
– situational hitting isn’t a skill?
A game tonight! On TV! Against the hated Padres!
Woo-hoo! At seven!
Other then that, a couple random cuts. This will only really get interesting when we get down to the decisions like Dickey v Baek, Norton v Morse.
Community Projections: Erik Bedard
The results are in, and now that we’ve collected the data, we’re going to begin publishing the results of the 2008 USSM/LL Community Projections. You all had your chance to be the prognosticator, and now we’re aggregating the results into a blog reader consensus. In order to get through all the reviews more quickly, I’m going to handle the pitchers here and Jeff’s going to do the hitters over at Lookout Landing.
The first pitcher we’re going to review is the shiny expensive new guy from the great white north; Erik Bedard. It’s no secret that the majority of us weren’t particularly thrilled about his acquisition, thanks to the high cost of giving up Adam Jones, but we’ve made it no secret that we’re happy that Bedard is a Mariner. I’ve called him one of the five best pitchers in the American League, and even that may be an understatement of his abilities. Especially if the readers are to be trusted. Here are the results of the Bedard projection.
Average of 74 entries: 197 IP, 174 H, 29 2B, 4 3B, 17 HR, 59 BB, 210 K, 6 HBP, 47% GB%, 3.17 FIP
Optimsitic Entry (wcf51): 211 IP, 161 H, 17 2B, 2 3B, 11 HR, 41 BB, 233 K, 9 HBP, 62% GB%, 2.38 FIP
Pessimistic Entry (panev): 208 IP, 167 H, 25 2B, 2 3B, 22 HR, 30 BB, 115 K, 8 HBP, 54% GB%, 4.02 FIP
Dave’s Entry: 190 IP, 197 H, 34 2B, 5 3B, 18 HR, 44 BB, 184 K, 4 HBP, 48% GB%, 3.25 FIP
Jeff’s Entry: 188 IP, 171 H, 27 2B, 3 3B, 17 HR, 59 BB, 196 K, 6 HBP, 47% GB%, 3.40 FIP
Really, this is a pretty remarkable group of projections. You guys couldn’t love Erik Bedard any more if he was carrying your baby. The absolute worst projection in there has him pitching at the level of 2007 Fausto Carmona or Justin Verlander. The reigning pessimist in the crowd thinks he’s going to set a career high in innings pitched and be one of the 10-15 best pitchers in the league. And that guy’s out on an island of negativity!
More than 1/3 of the projections (26 of the 74) had Bedard posting a FIP of below 3.00. The list of pitchers who have posted a FIP below 3.00 in the American League in the last four years reads like this: 2005 Johan Santana. That’s it – it’s happened once in the last four years, but 26 of you think Bedard’s going to pitch at that level. Nine of you think he’s going to be even better than Santana was that year. That’s nearly as many as people that projected he’d post a FIP worse than 3.50 (11 did that, by the way). A 3.50 FIP would still have ranked fourth in the American League last year (3rd if you don’t include 2007 Bedard, since he can’t finish behind himself).
The people who are optimistic about Bedard think he’s going to have a hall of fame season and stay healthy. The people who are pessimistic about Bedard think he’s going to have an all-star season and stay healthy. And absolutely no one thinks he’s going to get hurt and miss more than a few starts.
You might all hate the trade, but good gravy, you guys love the guy we got back. The next time anyone decides that readers of this blog revel in negativity, I’m just going to point them to this projection. Negativity isn’t even in the zip code. This is an all out Erik Bedard love fest. If he’s as good as you guys think he will be, he’ll be on the very short list of Cy Young contenders at years end.
Zombies to pursue Ichiro for his delicious brain
Doctor: “Ichiro has a very fine prefrontal cortex”
I… hee hee hee. Thanks to msb for the pointer.
Thrill to the sight of Bob Melvin!
Yup, if you’ve got MLB TV, you can see the late game against the Diamondbacks at 4. Pretty exciting.
Other than that, not a whole lot going on, is there?
It’s speculation over news, but Jim Callis at BA wrote about the signs the draft slotting system may fall apart. This would be huge if it happened — especially since the M’s would likely be one of the last teams to abandon it in a year that appears to be talent-heavy. Their continued loyalty to the Selig line could be particularly costly.
There was a ridiculously cool interview Jonah Keri did with the A’s assistant GM on ESPN that I wanted to link to but they’ve apparently made it disappear, presumably to be flown secretly to a minor third party site to be tortured or something.
More cool stuff on the leaderboards
Erik Bedard threw the highest percentage of curveballs of any pitcher with over 100 IP, a whopping 34.2% of his pitches.
9% of Curt Schilling’s pitches are “unidentified”.
Jeff Weaver threw over to first a lot. But then, he did have a lot of runners over there.
Are the M’s the division favorites now?
No.
Or, rather, not unless things are a lot worse than we know right now. And many things go right for the M’s, and only the M’s.
But look! A kitten!
“Playing with flowers” by Dr. Hemmert, cc-licensed from this flickr stream
The pitching rotation of the Angels, the most-frequently-cited advantage over the M’s,
John Lackey isn’t going to do anything baseball-related for three or four weeks with a strained triceps. If everything goes well he’ll return in late April. Probably more like May, though.
Kelvim Escobar has shoulder issues and he’s targeting May to return to playing.
Even if the Angels put a couple of torch artists out there in their place (Horacio Ramirez is available), that’s not enough to close the gap. Between the two of them, they’ll make twelve starts from Opening Day through the end of May if the Angels stuck to a strict five-person rotation. Two of those should fall against the M’s.
Normally, figure they’re entirely responsible for the team winning 60% of their starts, and they lose every one of those games now. The swing would be from 7-5 to 0-12, 8 games.
For the most pessimistic view, take the BP Pecota-based standings. If the Angels drop 8 games, two conveniently to the M’s, that would put the A’s in the thick of the division with the A’s at .500, and the M’s still only at 75 wins for the season.
Or to get to “competitive” you can take the Diamond Mind sims I did, using the “A’s lose Harden/Gaudin all year” set of assumptions, and the M’s get to 80 wins and then it’s a race.
But favorites? The Angels offense is likely to score a hundred more runs than the M’s this year based on the PECOTA projections, and even if their rotation replacements are total disasters, they only have to push them out there for about eighty innings.
Eighty innings isn’t that much time. Replace a 3 ERA in those innings with a 6 ERA (eraisnotagreatmeasureofpitchereffectivenessandisusedhereforconvenienceonly)… if you figure the starters are currently going the full seven innings and you need to replace all seven, then it’s 84 IP * ERA = 28 runs for the aces, and 56 runs for the absolutely horrible 6 ERA pitchers.
That’s only three games difference replacing a team’s 1-2 pitchers with guys who will be chased out of town with torches and pitchforks at the end of a month.
And the Angels don’t stop being competitive if you assume that they’re going to entirely drop seven more games that Lackey/Escobar started.
To get to the Angels-are-done and the M’s-are-favorites, you need to get into even more speculative territory: that the pitchers are going to be out a lot longer and the Angels won’t be able to find anything but flammable replacements, that the bullpen collapses in the overwork, and particularly that the Angels manage to keep themselves together against the A’s and Rangers while giving generously to the Mariner cause.
Pitch Type Leaderboards
If you didn’t already think fangraphs was awesome, they’ve now gone and really done it – they’ve added pitch type and velocity data from Baseball Info Solutions for every pitcher in the game. They even included a leaderboard.
Among pitchers who threw 100 innings last year, Felix Hernandez’s fastball clocked in #1 at 95.6 MPH. His slider also clocked in #1 at 88.3 MPH. His curveball? #1, 82.2 MPH. His change-up slacked off, coming in #3 (86.6 MPH), behind A.J. Burnett and Josh Beckett. Moral of the story? Felix throws really hard.
Also, being able to throw a hard change-up is a tremendous asset. Here’s the list of 100 IP guys that throw their change at 84.0 MPH or higher: Burnett, Beckett, Felix, McGowan, Cain, Edwin Jackson (USSM approved offseason acquisition), Millwood, Escobar, Sabathia, Gaudin, Ramon Ortiz (the hilarious outlier on this list), Penny, Sheets, Lincecum, Billingsley, Peavy, Cabrera, Sosa, Smoltz, Snell, Greinke, and Bannister. That’s one hell of a list.
The patron saint of mixing up his pitches – Jesse Litsch. 19% fastballs, 11% sliders, 40% cutters, 16% curveballs, and 13% change-ups. The only other guy I found that came close to throwing five different pitches at least 10% of the time – Shaun Marcum. Marcum and Litsch are teammates in Toronto. Raise your hands if you think that’s a coincidence.
Speaking of Jesse Litsch, he’s the only guy who threw more cutters than Miguel Batista last year. If you’re wondering why Batista’s groundball rate fell in 2007 from his previous career norms, the cut fastball is why. He threw it 28% of the time in 2005, 26% of the time in 2006, and 39% of the time last year. Also, if you look at Batista’s velocity readings over the last three years, he’s clearly losing a tick off each of his pitches. We’re watching the evolution of a guy learning to pitch differently as his stuff deteriorates.
Mariano Rivera: 26.7% fastballs, 73.3% cutters. The average velocity on the fastball is 93.2, and the average velocity on the cutter is 93.6. 99.9% of the time, Mariano Rivera is going to throw a low to mid 90s fastball with movement, and hitters still can’t do anything with it. It’s really incredible.
And, finally, if you don’t think the M’s have an organizational mental image of what a reliever looks like, I present this page. Among the top 24 relievers in percentage of fastball thrown, we find Brandon Morrow, Jason Davis, Matt Thornton, J.J. Putz, and Rafael Soriano all in pretty close vicinity to each other. All five also throw a power slider, while Putz and Morrow mix in some splitters. Putz, Thornton, and Davis all have the same body type to boot. If you’re 6’5, throw hard, and have a slider, the M’s are probably interested in sticking you in the 8th inning of ballgames.
Jeff Sullivan has some more fun Mariner tidbits from this stuff over at LL. I heart fangraphs.
A game! On TV and everything!
FSN, 1:05! Against the Brewers! Thrill to spring training action!