Jeff Weaver
Yes, I’m alive, and no, they haven’t beaten my Mariner fandom out of me yet. After taking a much needed hiatus from blogging for a few weeks, I’m back, with many thanks to Derek for putting the good ship USSM on his back during January.
So, Jeff Weaver. The Mariners are reportedly on the verge of signing him to a one year contract to fill out their rotation. In an offseason that saw poor decisions stacked on top of each other like legos, it’s easy to just add this signing to the mix. The guy posted a 5.76 ERA last year, was released by the Angels halfway through the season, and generally pitched about as badly as Joel Pineiro, who we were all happy to see go away. He’s no one’s idea of a savior, and Weaver-Washburn-Ramirez-Batista adds up to a whole lot of expensive mediocrity behind The King.
However, like the Jose Guillen signing, I think there’s some things to like about this move. If you’ll recall last summer, I advocated picking Jeff Weaver up once the Angels dumped him, writing the following:
So, here’s a crazy suggestion; trade for Jeff Weaver. He’s been terrible for the Angels this year, sporting a 6.29 ERA and he’s due over $4 million for the rest of the year. The Angels are on the verge of replacing him with his brother Jered, who is simply a better pitcher right now.
However, Jeff Weaver is a great bet to pitch better as the year goes on. His 6.29 ERA isn’t close to his Fielding Independant ERA (5.20) or xFIP (4.61), which adjusts for HR/FB rate. Weaver’s peripherals aren’t much different than what they were previous years – 2.0 walks, 6.0 strikeouts, 39% GB rate. He’s a flyball pitcher who throws strikes and occassionally misses bats.
This year, he’s been struggling because teams are getting more hits on balls in play than expected, he’s giving up more homers per fly ball than expected, and he’s got worst Left on Base% of any starting pitcher in the American League. Basically, he’s the anti-Jarrod Washburn, who last year had those three things break in his favor and cashed in on non-repeatable skills. Weaver’s not going to keep giving up home runs at this rate, and he’s not going to keep giving up hits with RISP at this rate. He’s a great bet to pitch better in the second half of the year than he has to date.
Weaver didn’t pitch any better after signing with St. Louis, but thanks to the change of leagues, he did lower his ERA by a run. His unsustainably low LOB% went up, and stranding runners made him appear a little more effective. But, all in all, it was still a bad year, at least until October, when he pitched like an ace and reminded everyone that he was once a highly thought of pitcher.
He essentially had one big problem in 2006 – home runs. he gave them away like Bobby Ayala discount jerseys from the team store, surrendering a ridiculous 1.78 home runs per nine innings. As a flyball pitcher, he’s always had a bit of a home run problem, but in 2006, balls that had previously stayed in the field of play were clearing the wall, taking him from decent innings eater to suckiest suck who ever sucked.
Sometimes, a surge in home run rate can be a sign that a pitcher has lost some of his prior effectiveness. Other times, it’s just random variation that isn’t predictive of any future performance. There are reasons to believe that Jeff Weaver’s problems were the latter. Take a look at his peripherals with his career average in parentheses:
BB/9: 2.46 (2.46)
K/9: 5.60 (5.99)
GB%: 39% (40.8%)
FB%: 38.3% (37.1%)
LD%: 22.7% (21.5%)
His walkrate hit his career average right on the mark. His strikeout rate was down a little bit, but nothing close to dramatic enough to signal an end-of-career dropoff. His ball in play rates were basically steady with his recent production. The massive change was in his HR/F rate, which was a career high 14.9% while playing in a park that suppresses home runs. His park adjusted HR/F rate was 16.8% while playing for the Angels, a mark that was good for fourth worst in the league.
As we’ve talked about extensively around here, HR/F rate is far, far less predictive than all the other pitching markers. It’s wildly inconsistent due to outside factors and should not be evaluated as a part of a pitcher’s core skillset. As a group, pitchers who post HR/F rates outside of the normal range regress heavily back to the mean in future years. If we had 100 Jeff Weavers, 95 of them would post a lower HR/F rate next year.
If you project Jeff Weaver to have a normal home run rate in 2007, even if his other ratios take a small decline (he is a pitcher after all, and they do generally get worse over time), he still comes out as a decent back end starting pitcher. Fangraphs has gotten four notable projection systems to donate their 2007 data and made it available on their player cards, so we can look at Jeff Weaver’s projection through the eyes of one basic projection system (Marcel) and three more advanced formulas (Zips, Chone, and the Bill James Handbook). Here’s what they spit out:
BJH: 188 IP, 4.40 ERA
Chone: 198 IP, 4.59 ERA
Marcel: 168 IP, 4.98 ERA
Zips: 187 IP, 4.28 ERA
And, just for fun, here’s his PECOTA weighted mean projection, which is available to BP subscribers:
164 IP, 4.44 ERA.
The advanced systems that regress individual skills all have him pegged as a guy who would post an ERA around 4.50. Most of these are based on assumptions that he would re-sign in St. Louis, so we need to add half a run or so for the move to the AL, but Safeco then brings part of that back down. A Safeco-centric projection would probably put him around a 4.75 ERA or so.
On a one year deal, a durable guy who has shown an ability to eat innings and avoid the disabled list and projects to post an ERA south of 5.00 is a pretty nice pickup. Jeff Weaver is not the kind of arm you want to be committing to for multiple years, but he’s a decent innings sponge, and since Safeco is rather pitcher friendly, it’s a good spot for him to come attempt to rebuild his image.
If you asked me if I’d rather have Jeff Weaver or Gil Meche for 2007, I’d probably flip a coin. They’re both flyball ptichers with question marks about their mental preparation who have a mixed bag of historical performances. Gil Meche got $55 million for 5 years. In this market, a one year deal for Jeff Weaver looks like a bargain.
Jeff Weaver rumors
Yes, they’re out there. If it happens, we’ll post analysis.
(got the upgrade done)
Length and size of the deal varies by source.
MSNBC’s AP article
Rosenthal’s got a story out there, supposedly.
And Arthur Rhodes got a minor league deal, which is a nice little move.
New adventures and old stories
Dust off the old login and one finds that Felix isn’t fat any more, JJ Putz has an extension, and Jose Guillen has turned into a “potential thumper.” Derek’s been an Atlas both in terms of holding up the site on his own and in terms of supplying encyclopedic information. That last one isn’t altogether surprising.
It’s not that the offseason has lacked action. Rather, I think of it as when a physical confrontation begins with a series of furious slaps, and the bewildered recipient — who had thought himself strong, or at least inured to such assaults — slipped into something akin to catatonia. Then, when the action did actually slow, so did the poor survivor’s capacity for commentary. Stunned drooling became a realistic (if not preferred) alternative.
Offended by the analogy? It’s not the whole fanbase rendered to drooling disappointment. Like Ash says in Army of Darkness: Just me, baby. Just me.
For distraction’s sake, Okinawa is a fine place to be. I hide from sports news. Hibernate a little bit. Wrap myself up in the book I’m writing, seeking solace in new adventures and old stories — a few of which even involve my favorite baseball team. The loosely organized theme: loyalty is a virtue, and virtue is its own reward. Hang in through the tough times.
Let me load three tales into the chamber and see what spins out. One old, one new, one borrowed. Nothing blue, ’cause I don’t work that way.
TALE THE FIRST: THE TALE OF LAS VEGAS (OLD)
Before dipping to the land of Pachinko, I ventured once more to Gomorrah with a group of friends. You know, for the canyon hiking.
Read more
Mid-week newsathon
From the Everett Herald:
“Reliever Mark Lowe says his surgically repaired elbow is responding to surgery”
:Starter Felix Hernandez is in ‘amazing shape’ after an offseason of working out”
Yeah, if you put enough dip on a chip, it’s really a struggle to get it to your mouth… wait, what?
“You should see Felix,” relief pitcher J.J. Putz said Tuesday during the Mariners Caravan stop in Granite Falls. “He’s in amazing shape. I think he’s down to 175 pounds.”
That part is an exaggeration; Hernandez was listed in last year’s media guide as being 6-foot-3 and 230 pounds.
It was clear to Mariners personnel when Hernandez arrived from his home in Venezuela on Monday that he has taken this offseason seriously.
“He’s in great shape,” trainer Rick Griffin said. “He’ll walk into the room tomorrow and you’ll see.”
That’s potentially huge, season-changing news. Possibly franchise-changing. If Felix is going to take conditioning seriously, it’s going to help him stay healthy, first, but I’d also like to hope that he’s going to put that kind of energy into preparation through the season. One of the biggest fears has been that as an immensely talented kid, it’d be easy for him to check out and still put up decent lines – and to be distracted by off-field temptations until it cost him. If he’s entirely ready to sacrifice a good portion of his time off to keep in shape, that’s a great sign. The M’s can’t compete without a healthy, effective Hernandez.
Revised projections of the 2007 season
At the start of the month, I spent some time looking at the team and offered up a guess:
785 runs scored
770 runs allowed
Which works out to about 82 wins. Dave noted I was a little too optimistic about the bullpen and since then we’ve seen two good sets of projections come out: ZiPS and PECOTA. I may yet get to running some season simulations with Diamond Mind to see how the whole picture comes out, too.
The numbers I used compared to the projection systems’ “normal-case” turned out well. I was a little high for my Vidro/Guillen numbers, too conservative on Felix’s progress, I again disagreed with predicitions of Ichiro’s total collapse, and so on, but generally I did well. The big gap was, as Dave said, the bullpen, where I figured there’d be a little regression from Putz but the unit would remain generally solid. The projections are a lot lower. I was far more bullish on O’Flaherty than the numbers.
My sketch of the team put it at 82 wins without further moves, and the best projections by systems are a lot less optimistic – you easily drop 20+ runs pushing the ZiPS or PECOTA numbers for the bullpen in there, which puts the team at 79-80 wins on the season.
If the swing players (Lopez, Felix, Guillen/Batista/Vidro) all perform well, no one collapses, Felix and Ichiro stay healthy, and the bullpen’s good, then sure, the team blows that away and heads to the playoffs. That’s a lot of things to go right, though.
Tuesday news: no news for Tuesday
Booooooooooooooring.
Weekend news, recapped
Chase Utley gets a seven-year, $85m deal from the Phillies. Even if we don’t see salaries continue to grow at the current rate, that’s got a pretty good chance to end up an excellent deal for Philadelphia. As usual, the last years might not look so hot, but they may well get the full contract value in the first four/five seasons and the rest is gravy.
Rockies are reportedly close to signing Brian Lawrence
Reds close to signing Guardado to a minor league deal(mlb)
Vern Ruhle died.
Adam Jones’ comparable players
It’s been interesting this winter to see what comes out of the different projection systems. ZIPS, PECOTA, I check them all out because even when I think they’re way off, the way they look at the problem provides a new starting point to think about the player. If I don’t think Jones is well represented by a system, it’s worth considering why, and examining my reasons for thinking my prediction’s better than a fairly good system.
Take Adam Jones. ZIPS thought he was all potential (“all upside”). PECOTA sees the same things, it seems. The card is so weird when it came out I told Dave “I don’t even know where to start talking about this”.
So, to his comparable player list, which illustrates this: it’s the weirdest bunch of player-years ever.
The top two are Elijah Dukes 2006 and Brandon Phillps’ 2003. Carlos Beltran’s 1999 is between Chet Lemon’s 1977 and Rocco Baldelli’s 2003 (which is ahead of Sammy Sosa’s 1990). Jim Fergosi’s 1964 is #12, and Ruben Mateo’s 2000 is #16. #20 is Carney Lansford.
It’s legitimately crazy. And if I really disagree, I think the picture it comes out with is a little skewed. It feels like if Jones puts his game together, he’ll be really good, and if he doesn’t, he won’t be hitting enough to be a regular. I don’t see the middle road in his future.
I’m a fan, and I have faith, but I also acknowledge that when BA writes him up with the concerns for why he might not develop, those concerns are entirely valid, and if he doesn’t turn into what I hope we get to see, that’ll be why.
But if anyone finds a stranger list of comparable players, I’d love to hear about it.
Brian Lawrence probably won’t matter
Whether or not he signs here. Really.
He had shoulder surgery and didn’t pitch last year.
Almost no one comes back from shoulder surgery to retain their former glory.
Fewer still return to be that effective the year after a layoff.
The glory of Brian Lawrence was the perfectly good 2002 in San Diego where he went 12-12, threw 210 innings, didn’t give up many home runs, and put up a pretty nice K and walk numbers. From 2003-2004, he was pretty much the same low-walk, low-K every year, even though his W-L bounced around a lot.
If you get the perfectly healthy and rehabilitated Lawrence-in-decline, he’s overwhelmingly likely to be a below-average starter in the same general vein that Batista/Ramirez are. Healthy, he’d be an upgrade over the current candidates for the 5th starter slot… but probably not.
Of course, standard caveats apply: I’m not a doctor, I haven’t looked in his shoulder, I don’t know how he’s throwing, and so on and so forth. But the odds that he’ll be a significant contributor to any team next year are pretty slim.
Thursday’s news, the Putz deal
This ended up going into yesterday’s Q & A bucket after I collapsed from exhaustion, but the big news is that JJ Putz got a three-year, $13m deal. It’s a good move in a couple of ways: as Dave’s noted, the bullpen’s been getting a lot shakier through this off-season, and it really does help to have someone who can get some outs on the staff. I don’t agree that if you have that guy you only pitch him in the ninth when you’re up 1-3 runs, obviously, but the M’s have the money and the stability gets them somewhere.
The problem I see, though, is that Putz is unlikely to repeat the performance we saw last year. I’m not trying to say that he’s not good, or that his late-blooming development isn’t for real, but sustaining that kind of performance is extremely difficult, and next year, when he’s just really good instead of crazy good, I wonder if we’re going to see people ragging on him for sucking it up once he got the money. That’d be sad.
Money-value wise, as much as I hate to make this kind of rough comparison, look at what the Orioles were paying for relievers this year. Putz at this price, even if you’d agree with us that closers aren’t all that hard to find and make, is still undervalued to a lot of teams, and you could move him if you had to.
I know, that’s not an amazing endorsement, and I’m mixing some pretty lame analysis, but in my defense, I’m a little swamped with work and I really want to sneak off and go skiing.