There was a lot of complaints over the offseason about the M’s ownership not being willing to spend what it takes to compete, especially with newcomer Arte Moreno tossing money at Bartolo Colon, Vladimir Guerrero, Kelvim Escobar, and Jose Guillen and retooling the Angels. Today, we get a reminder that having an owner who likes to spend money isn’t always a good thing. Moreno decided to give notable Mariner-masher Garret Anderson a 4 year contract that guarantees him at least $51 million; $48 million in salary, plus a $3 million buyout if they don’t exercise his option for 2009, which they almost certainly won’t.
Television analysts have fallen all over themselves to praise Anderson for his consistency, nice-guyness, and clutchness, and the past two seasons, he’s actually been a top level player, making lots of contact and hitting for power. However, he’s been overrated for most of his career, and sports a not-star-like .328 career on base percentage. As recently as 2001, he was getting on base just 31 percent of the time, and that isn’t an acceptable number for anyone but a middle of the diamond player with terrific defensive abilities, and even then, you don’t pay those types a lot of money. The Angels clearly expect Anderson to continue to play well through 2008 and wanted to keep him in Anaheim for the remainder of his career. Considering that they’ve just made him a Cirillo-sized anchor on the payroll, they shouldn’t have to worry about other teams knocking down the door to try and pry him away.
Here is what PECOTA expects from Anderson as he enters the decline phase of his career:
2004: .308/.345/.513, .282 EqA, 2.5 Wins over Replacement Level
2005: .278 EqA
2006: .276 EqA
2007: .266 EqA
2008: .263 EqA
By the end of this contract, he’s expected to be a league average player pulling in a well above average $12 million per year. His top comparison is Tony Oliva, a very good player whose 32-35 seasons represented a steep decline from his peak, dropping from 9 wins over replacement down to 2.5.
The Angels have an owner who is willing to spend money to win. Unfortunately, signings like the one today simply hamstring their efforts to get better, and signal that the new owner is closer to being another Tom Hicks than a real threat for divisional dominance.
Mariners versus the Angels, 3 games in Anahiem. The Mariners, after closely examining the ass the Angels handed them (forensic experts have assured the Mariners it was, indeed, their own ass), head back down for revenge. There’s no love lost between these two franchises, folks, and you can throw out the record books when these two teams collide. Uh… it’s a matchup of AL West division rivals.
Tuesday 7:05, RHP Pineiro v RHP Escobar
Wednesday 7:05, RHP F Garcia v RHP R Ortiz
Thursday 7:05, RHP Franklin v RHP Lackey
And, for some actual baseball news, the M’s have reacquired Aaron Looper. That didn’t take long. They swapped out Glenn Bott, last ranked 39th on the Future Forty. Bott has average stuff across the board with decent movement, and the best thing he has going is that he’s a southpaw. The organization has never liked him since he’s had a few run-ins with pitching coaches over the past several years. He was the definition of an expendable part. Not that there’s any room for him in Tacoma, but I’d certainly rather have Looper than Bott in the organization.
Continuing with the XBH/BIP stuff from below, I ran some correlations between different statistics to determine the usefulness of the metric and to see if there were any interferences from groundball/flyball tendencies. As a basic primer to correlations, 1.00 would be a perfect correlation, meaning that the results from each category mirror each other. The closer the decimal gets to 0, the weaker the correlation. A negative correlation means that the inverse is true; as one category rises, the other falls, and vice versa. Anything above .5 (or below -.5) is considered a moderate correlation, above .8 (or below -.8) would be a strong correlation, and anything in between -.5 and .5 is considered weak. Anyways, results below:
Correlation between XBH/BIP and GB/FB ratio: -.01.
In other words, there is no correlation whatsoever, and the two numbers have almost nothing to do with each other. The Dodgers GB/FB rate of 1.54 was the highest in the majors in 2003. The Mariners mark of .95 was lowest in the majors. Yet, they still managed to come in 1-2 in XBH/BIP. It does not appear that a team’s tendancy to induce large amounts of ground balls or fly balls has any impact on their performance in giving up extra base hits.
Correlation between XBH/BIP and ERA: .69
This is a moderate correlation, meaning that teams who generally do well in preventing extra base hits also generally do well in preventing runs, but there is a pretty sizable margin of error. Considering this stat completely ignores the effects of home runs, walks, and strikeouts, thats to be expected. For simply attempting to isolate one aspect of defense, it correlates quite well with how well a team keeps runs off the board.
Correlation between strikeouts and ERA: -.63
Team strikeout rates are moderate correlations to run prevention as well. There’s a lot more to defense than making the batter swing and miss, but it’s clearly a good thing.
Correlation between walks and ERA: .38
Throwing strikes helps, but keeping a low walk rate does little to insure that your team will prevent runs.
Correlation between home runs and ERA: .83
Home Runs are bad. If you give up a lot of them, you’re likely not going to have a very good ERA.
Correlation between OPS allowed and ERA: .97
That’s about as strong a correlation as you’ll find anywhere in the game. Pitchers with low OBP/SLG allowed will have low ERA’s. Pitchers with high OBP/SLG allowed will have high ERA’s. If you’re interested, the correlation between OBP and ERA is .945, while SLG and ERA is .952. Despite what Michael Lewis wrote in Moneyball, OBP is not anywhere near three times as important as SLG.
Basic conclusions:
XBH/BIP is a decent judge of outfield team defense and is not affected by ground ball/fly ball rates. Park factors not withstanding, it is apparent that the M’s pitchers have benefited tremendously from the trio roaming the outfield the past three years, and it is likely that the entire pitching staff has been somewhat overrated in local circles. To kick a dead horse one last time, it is apparent that Ryan Franklin has been bailed out by his defense more than any other pitcher in baseball, and his transformation into a pumpkin in 2004 will have almost nothing to do with his abilities and everything to do with his teammates.
Proof that our readers are smarter than we are. This showed up in our inbox from Anthony Passaretti:
Reading your post today on refining the extra base hits study, there is still
one more step to go. You mention that Seattle’s outfield defense comes out
slightly ahead of LA’s when looking at BIP, but is that really accurate?
Consider their flyballs:
Seattle: 1843
Los Angeles: 1273
That makes a heck of a difference. When the Dodgers traded Kevin Brown to the
Yankees, there was something on Baseball Prospectus about the percentage of
1B/GB. That inspired me to grab the numbers off ESPN.com to look at singles
per groundball, and doubles & triples per flyball. Looking at it that way,
Seattle comes out WAY ahead.
The league average for doubles per flyball was 18.1%. Seattle was first at a
psychotic 11.9%. In comparison, Anaheim was second at 14.5%. Texas was last
with a 21.4% mark. For triples, the league average was 1.9%. Seattle was again
well ahead at 0.8%, Minnesota second at 1.3%, and Colorado scored last with
2.8%.
The net result is Seattle is 135.3 extra base hits above average. Anaheim is
second at +71.1. Imagine that. Even the second best team in the majors was 64
gap hits behind. Texas was last in the majors at -59.6.
If we adjust all teams to the same number of flyballs, Seattle is +119.2,
Anaheim still second at +64.6, and Boston takes over last at -61.1.
It’s interesting to note that the top 3 teams in XBH/FB (Seattle, Anaheim,
Minnesota) were also the bottom 3 teams in 1B/GB. Of course, the fourth best
in the former (Oakland) was also the second best in the latter, so the
relationship isn’t perfect. Boston also did very well in 1B/GB, which is
baffling considering the presence of Todd Walker. Take from that what you
will.
Oh, and this year? Seattle has given up 23 doubles on 66 flyballs–three times
higher than their 2003 rate.
On the bright side, they haven’t given up any triples yet. So they’ve got that
going for them. Which is nice.
-Anthony
This isn’t the final say-so, either. For a perfect result, we’d really have to include park factors (which I’m assuming really help both the M’s and Dodgers and hurt the Rangers) and look at more than one year. But goodness, that gap is just huge, and I don’t think any park factor is strong enough to create the illusion that the M’s outfield defense last year was staggeringly awesome.
A few days and a lot of emails from smart readers later, and I’ve realized there were two big flaws in the conclusions I presented based on the extra base hit data from Saturday:
1. I assumed that all plays that weren’t extra base hits were turned into outs, which is obviously not true, as a good amount of the differences were likely from outfielders holding a runner at first and turning a double into a single.
If there’s a good way to figure out how often this occurs, I don’t know of it, so we’ll just call this a gray area that forces us to be less conclusive in our determinations about the exact effects of outfield defense. Turning a double or triple into an out is a lot more valuable than turning it into a single, so without knowing this, we can’t measure what the impact is completely, but I still feel that we can get ourselves in the ballpark with an estimate.
2. I used batters faced instead of balls in play, ignoring the effects of walks, strikeouts, and hit by pitches.
The second problem was a pretty easy fix, so I’ve rerun the numbers as a formula of (doubles + triples)/(batters faced – walks – strikeouts – home runs – hit by pitches). We’ll just call it XBH/BIP, which is short for extra base hits divided by balls in play. The numbers didn’t change much, which isn’t really surprising, but they did change a little bit. I maintain that this is a good, but not perfect, proxy for measuring outfield defense. The results are below, with rank in runs allowed in parentheses:
2001
Best: Oakland, 5.6 percent (3rd)
Mariners: 6.5 percent, 4th best in MLB (1st)
League Average: 7.4 percent
Worst: Texas, 9.4 percent, (30th)
2002
Best: Anaheim, 6.1 percent (4th)
Mariners: 6.8 percent, 9th best in MLB (11th)
League Average: 7.3 percent
Worst: Texas, 8.6 percent (27th)
2003
Best: Seattle, 5.4 percent (2nd)
League Average: 7.3 percent
Worst: Texas, 8.6 percent (30th)
By this metric, the M’s outfield defense was slightly better than Los Angeles’ last year, and the best of any team’s performance from their three gloveman in the past three years. The difference between the Mariners and Rangers last year was 154 doubles + triples. Even assuming that a decent amount of those were singles that the M’s prevented from reaching the gap, that is still an absolute ton of outs, and shows how big of a difference outfield defense can make.
Jolbert Cabrera looks like he’s not sure he should be playing first.
“Are you sure, skip? First?”
“Go get ’em, kid.”
“Uhhhh.. okay, skip.”
This may be the most frustrated I’ve been in a long, long time… and I’ve been having a rough month. I want to find this book I own because I need to look something up for a post I’ve been chewing on for weeks (oh yes, Dear Readers, there will be a massive post) but I’ve just finished unpacking my books and… it’s not there. I’ve been pulling books out of boxes for hours now, and I’ve been surprised every couple of minutes (“I own that?”).
So for a weird aside as I hunt for that elusive book (ironically, the book is on not getting lost, which is of no help if you lose the book), here are the last ten books I shelved:
Longest Day, Cornelius Ryan
Baseball Signs and Plays, Southworth
Basketball on Paper, Oliver
Essays in Existentialism, Sartre
Light in August, Faulkner
This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald
The 19th Emergency, Byars (a children’s book that actually goes well with Sartre)
Double Lives, Second Chances, Insdorf
Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Disgusting Sneakers, Sobol
Killing Pablo, Bowden
I pity the dude who has to go through my book purchase records and submit a report on what I’m cooking up.
On the start:
If I have a coin and I flip it enough, it will come up heads or tails about fifty-fifty (excuse this for a second). During the flipping, though, you’ll see it come up tails five times sometimes, heads five times sometimes… but that doesn’t mean you don’t have a fair coin.
However, let’s say that you’re doing a trial of 100 flips, and it comes up heads ten times right off the bet. The remainder of the series is going to be 50/50 flips, so it’s pretty likely this trial will come out with a higher heads totals than tails. You’re no more likely to get a ten-tail series in the remainder in the remaining 90 flips as you are to get another ten-head series.
So, to apply this to the team:
If you think the Mariners headed into this season as a .500 team, after a 1-5 start there are 156 games left and the team should win 78 games of those, ending the season at 79-83.
If you think the Mariners are “inherently” a 90-win team, then you’d expect them to win 86 games the rest of the season and wind up 87-75.
The good counter argument here is strength-of-schedule: that the M’s took it on the chin from the A’s, who should win about 90 games, and the Angels, who are a .500 team, and haven’t had a chance to beat up on the bad teams.
If there’s anything to take away though, it’s that these games do count as much as games down the stretch.
And while I’m writing: if you pay attention to the broadcasts — and I mean really pay attention — you’ll be amazed at the number of things they (and I’ve been listening to Rizzs/Henderson a lot so far) say that are flat wrong. I don’t mean “you have to be aggressive early in the count” or that kind of air-filler: I mean flat mistakes, and if you’re willing to extend it to logical leaps, it’s crazy-bad. It makes me wish I could do the Darth Vader force choke through the TV.
“The M’s teams that have scored the most runs haven’t hit home runs… gaaaaaaakkk–akkkk–ppttthhhhhh…”
Though that would be wrong, and I strongly discourage our readers from using force powers against the broadcasting crew.
Aaaaaah! Panic in the streets!
I should have known. This morning, I did some very rough work on the M’s outfield defense, and wished for a place that would keep team records of doubles and triples allowed, making comparisons easy. Well, Baseball Prospectus has them, labeled miscellaneous pitching statistics under their statistical reports. The lesson is either that I need to do better research or that they need a better site design. Or maybe both.
I’m not pretending this is perfect, as park effects definitely play a factor here, but I believe that we can get a general idea of how much of an impact outfield defense is having on a club by looking at the amount of doubles and triples a team is allowing. There is essentially no difference between a double and a triple for this purpose, so I’m lumping them together as extra base hits (and excluding home runs, since they obviously don’t matter for this purpose). Also, rather than going by innings pitched, I’m using batters faced as a denominator, since this accounts for the obvious difference between the opportunities for extra base hits in big innings versus 1-2-3 innings. BP’s reports go back three years, and after some fun sorting/subtotaling in excel, here are the results.
2001
The league average saw 5.2 percent of all batters faced leading to a double or a triple. Oakland had the best mark, allowing only 4.0 percent to turn into two or three baggers, while Texas ran away with the competition for last, allowing 6.7 percent of all batters to end up in scoring position. The Mariners finished 4th at 4.6 percent, just ahead of Houston, but well behind the top three of Oakland, Arizona, and Atlanta. Interestingly, the top 5 in doubles/triples allowed finished with 102, 92, 88, 116, and 93 wins respectively. The five teams averaged 98 wins apiece and all of them made the playoffs. The world champion Diamondbacks finished 2nd in this category.
2002
The league average saw 5.1 percent of all batters faced leading to a double or a triple. Anaheim led the way in the category, allowing 4.3 percent of all batters faced to reach second or third. Detroit finished last at 6.5 percent, while Texas continued to sabotage its pitching by coming in 29th at 5.9 percent. The Mariners were again above average, but slipped to 11th, as they allowed extra base knocks in 4.9 percent of all plate appearances. As for correlation with team wins, the top 5 in XBH allowed finished with 99, 92, 101, 99, and 67 wins respectively (Baltimore is the outlier there, betrayed by the second worst offense in the AL). The five averaged 91.6 wins per season, and four of the five made the playoffs. The world champion Angels finished 1st in this category.
2003
The league average was again 5.2 percent, remaining consistent from year to year. Los Angeles led the majors with 3.86 percent, barely edging the Mariners at 3.88 percent. These marks last year represent the best performances of any team during the past three years, and with a significant margin from the 3rd best team (Oakland in 2001). Texas relcaimed their position in last place, allowing 6.0 percent of all hits to go for extra bases. The top five teams won 85, 93, 88, 96, and 84 games, with only two of the five making the playoffs. The world champion Marlins finished 19th in this category, breaking the trend of tremendous defensive outfields taking home the title.
Correlating the performance in XBH per batter faced to won-loss record was something of a toy, and I was surprised at how strong the correlation was, honestly. A better idea of how valuable it is would be to tie it to team runs allowed, which would factor out the offenses effect on wins/losses. The best would be to normalize the numbers for situational park effects (not applying a blanket run scoring park factor, which would do more harm than good). If anyone wants to take up either of these tasks, drop me a line and I’ll send the spreadsheet to save you some work.
Basically, here’s the bottom line. Outfield defense appears more important than almost anyone realizes. The difference between the best and worst teams is about 2 percent. Each team faces a litlte over 6000 batters per year, so that 2 percent multiplies out to an extra 120 (!) outs turning into doubles or triples over the course of the season. That is nearly one per game. It also seemingly correlates well with team performance. Teams that allow a lot of extra base hits give up a lot of runs, and teams that don’t, well, don’t. If we buy into the DIPS theory, even a little bit, we have to assume that a large percentage of the differences between team’s XBH/BFP rates is made up of the talents of their outfielders. If the Mariners outfield defense is even half as bad as it looks right now, well, strike another blow to optimism.
The Orioles designated Jack Cust for assignment this week, bringing the total organizations who have given up on him to three. His raw offensive numbers are pretty staggering, showing both patience and power, and he’s long been a favorite prospect of statistically-oriented folk and one of the lightning rod players showing the divide between the scouting and statistical communities. The old school types have focused on his awful defense, poor conditioning, bad work ethic, and high strikeout rates while writing him off. The stats guys have pointed to his OBP and SLG numbers all the way through the minors, proclaiming him a born hitter whose bat outweighs all other flaws. The cries have already begun for the M’s to claim Cust as the heir apparent to Edgar or Olerud and a power bat off the bench.
I say pass. Cust is the poster boy for the magic of park effects, having spent his entire minor league career in bandboxes that play like Coors Field. High Desert, El Paso, Tucson, and Colorado Springs have park factors that are off the charts. As a result, his translated numbers take quite a beating.
2001 raw line: .278/.419/.525
2001 translated line: .220/.351/.410
2002 raw line: .265/.409/.524
2002 translated line: .209/.341/.415
2003 raw line: .285/.424/.426
2003 translated line: .257/.387/.393
Realistically, he hasn’t been all that different from Dave Hansen as a hitter the past three years. His power is overstated by the parks he’s played in, and he hasn’t gotten better. A glanse through his comparable players list generated by BP’s PECOTA system doesn’t exactly invoke hall of fame talents; Paul Sorrento is his only present day comparison, and I think that’s about accurate. Cust has the chance to be a decent, above average hitter against right-handed pitching with absolutely nothing else to offer and a bad attitude. You can’t use him to pinch hit against tough lefties, which is when the M’s will need to pinch hit 90 percent of the time, and he’s at best a wash with Dave Hansen, who we’re already paying to be on the roster.
If he was a right-handed lefty masher, I’d say go for it. If he had any defensive value at all, maybe. If he could pinch run occasionally, you think about it. If you thought he had a future as something other than a DH, which is inherantly the easiest position in the game to fill, then it would be an option. But a slightly above average one dimensional slugger with nothing to contribute and a habit for wearing out his welcome who fills a position we don’t need help at? No thanks.