Beyond the Box Score

Gold Gloves vs. UZR: The Laziest Article I've Ever Written (AL Edition)

2009-11-11T01:20:29Z

More photos » by Ted S. Warren - AP

During a pitching change in the sixth inning against the San Diego Padres in a baseball game Tuesday, June 23, 2009, center fielder Franklin Gutierrez (center) ponders aloud "You think I'll get a Gold Glove this year?" Left fielder Wladimir Balentien assures him while right fielder Ichiro Suzuki (kneeling right) snickers. "Gold Gloves?" he thinks as he stares off into the diamond. "I have a million of those." (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

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So, today we got to see the American League Gold Glove awards as voted on by coaches and managers. The following is the list of players who won for the American League

Player	Team	Position
Mark Buehrle	CHA	P
Joe Mauer	MIN	C
Mark Teixeira	NYA	1B
Placido Polanco	DET	2B
Evan Longoria	TBR	3B
Derek Jeter	NYA	SS
Adam Jones	BAL	OF
Torii Hunter	LAA	OF
Ichiro Suzuki	SEA	OF

If you are reading this site, I do not think you need to be told that the Gold Glove awards reward players for their name, good looks, reputation, lack of errors, and degree of difficulty, whether real or fabricated by a player's skill. What it does not generally reward is actual defense, though that occasionally gets thrown into the mix as well.

In what will undoubtedly appear as a lazy article (after all, it's so easy to pick on these things, why even bother?), I am going to pit the Gold Glove awards with UZR to see how much agreement there may be. Of course, so as to not raise the ire of one MGL, I will not be quoting single-season UZR totals. Rather, I'll do something simple: a 3-year pseudo-Marcels projection of defensive worth based on both UZR and the Fans Scouting Report. I'll take the single-season UZR leader (yes, I know, but this allows me to not have to do too many projections) and the 2009 GG winner and run a weighted Marcels, weighting UZR at 75% and the Fans at 25%. I'll then regress each total by 75 games of average defense for infielders and 100 games of average for outfielders.

For outfielders, I'll look at the players with the best UZR + positional adjustments, so as to account for the fact that you can pick any three outfielders. For catchers, I'll use the defensive estimates done by devil_fingers in this post, and TotalZone data available at B-Ref courtesy of Sean Smith. Catcher defense is regressed 125 games; I do not have a basis for this, but I figured it should be regressed the most because we know the least about it. I won't be looking at the pitchers, though it is worth mentioning that Buerhle also won the Fielding Bible Award for pitchers this season, so that probably goes down as an agreement. Finally, because the 2009 FSR is still in the voting format, 2009 data will only include UZR. Sorry.

Let's find out how the voters did against the numbers (why do we always have to fight?).

First off, here are the players the Gold Glove voters selected.

Player	Position	Defense
Joe Mauer	C	+7
Mark Teixiera	1B	+2
Placido Polanco	2B	+9
Evan Longoria	3B	+15
Derek Jeter	SS	+0
Adam Jones	OF	+2
Torii Hunter	OF	-2
Ichiro Suzuki	OF	+9

As you can see, the list is not all that bad. Among the players listed here, the Fans Scouting Report agreed a whole lot more than UZR did with the GG voters. Teixeira has come out as around the second best first baseman in baseball over the last few years, behind only Albert Pujols, but UZR has had him with two seasons of below average play and one very strong 2008 campaign; overall, he ended up at around +2 runs. Torii Hunter ends up as the only player in the negative side; here the Fans and UZR disagree heavily, with UZR rating Hunter as solidly below average while the Fans have still have him as one of the best center fielders in the game.

I was rather surprised to see Derek Jeter rate as an even shortstop under this methodology. The Fans have him as slightly above average (+2 and +1 runs in 2007 and 2008 respectively), while UZR has him over the three-year span as a -4 run defender per 150 games. it is worth noting that in the 2009 FSR, Jeter ranks in the middle of the pack as well at shortstop, around the likes of Juan Castro, Tyler Greene, and Miguel Tejada.

Ichiro was an interesting case as well. Each of the three years, UZR rated him well, even with his move to center field in 2007. The Fans, however, were off the charts in favor of Ichiro, labeling him likely the best defender in baseball. The Fans had Ichiro at +27 and +22 runs in 2007 and 2008 respectively. Taking the conglomerate, Ichiro ended up at +9 runs, still the second best total listed here.

There were still places where UZR, the Fans, and even the GG voters agreed. Everyone came to terms on how ridiculous Evan Longoria is at third base, and no one should be surprised there. Similarly, Placido Polanco received reviews from the Fans that were very similar to his UZR numbers, at least in 2008. And Adam Jones received high marks in '08, in concordance with his solid UZR. Jones however was hurt in that his second season in 2009 weighed in more than half of his rating and he happened to receive poor marks from UZR; the Fans still rank him very highly among center fielders, and his numbers would have looked better had I used this season's FSR data.

The Numbers Tally

In comparison, let's take a look at the leaders in terms of UZR or catcher defense this season. Note that in the case of third base, Longoria was the UZR leader and the award recipient, so I went to the second-ranked player for the comparison. Also, in the case of second base, the leader was Ben Zobrist, but I felt with such little data at our disposal in terms of his second base play, his skewed 2009 UZR would have a significant hold on his projection, so I went with the next available player, Dustin Pedroia. Finally, I added four outfielders, three of them center fielders, for comparison. Only one corner outfielder, Carl Crawford, would have approached the amount needed when combining both UZR and positional adjustment.

Player	Team	Position	Defense
Gerald Laird	DET	C	+7
Kevin Youkilis	BOS	1B	+3
Dustin Pedroia	BOS	2B	+8
Chone Figgins	LAA	3B	+9
Cesar Izturis	BAL	SS	+7
Franklin Gutierrez	SEA	OF	+21
B.J. Upton	TBR	OF	+8
Rajai Davis	OAK	OF	+7
Carl Crawford	TBR	OF	+10

As mentioned, the GG voters nabbed two of the UZR leaders (at third base and at second base, if you don't count Zobrist). It would appear as if they did a very good job in that department, as this methodology shows Longoria as absolutely dominant defensively and Polanco a very defensible choice given the difference between him and Pedroia. Mauer and "One Man, Five Tools" Laird came out fairly even in the projection, so there should be no quibble in handing the award to the future AL MVP. Likewise, the Youkilis vs. Teixeira debate came fairly even, so deeming Teixeira the winner is certainly a decent choice.

The shortstop position was a very interesting find. I was quite surprised to see that Cesar Izturis came out on top this season, though he carries a very good reputation. I was also quite happy to see strong agreement between the Fans and UZR on Izturis' year-to-year performances. Overall, he would have been a solid choice. I recognize also that I left Elvis Andrus out of the picture for similar reasons to the Zobrist argument. He did end ever-so-slightly behind Izturis on the leaderboard, so I do have that to back me up. With the type of regression Andrus probably would have received for not having played a whole lot, I imagine Izturis would still have come out on top.

It is perhaps in the outfield where the voters missed the mark. Two of the three winners of the Fielding Bible awards, center fielder Franklin Gutierrez and left fielder Carl Crawford, came up missing in the final awards, while a player that, according to this projection, actually hurt the team's defense when compared to the average was awarded (another) Gold Glove. The decision to take Hunter in this case seems very poor when in comparison to the options available. Gutierrez's exclusion was expected but still heinous in light of how good he was this year and how good he has been the past three seasons.

Any of the above choices, between Crawford, Upton, Davis, and Gutierrez, would have been much better than Hunter in this case. Replacing either Jones or Ichiro would be more questionable, and admittedly I did not factor in positional adjustments into these, so Ichiro's numbers as a center fielder and right fielder are counting the same, as are Gutierrez's.

Conclusion

The voters actually did a decent job overall, minus the one giant oversight of Gutierrez and the awarding of yet another Gold Glove that Derek Jeter likely did not earn. Compared to recent results over the last few years though, this year's ballot was a nice change of pace, even though it included a lot of the "old guard" in terms of defense. I hope that in a few years, we can expect to see less of Jeter and Hunter and more of Gutierrez, Andrus, and Crawford on these ballots, reflecting a changing of the guard in defense, a changing of the system and how it is run, or maybe even a more open view on defensive metrics, at least in the context of rewarding good defense.

Expect the National League version tomorrow, or later still, depending on how infuriating it looks. I'm a pessimist.

wOBA to WAR Conversion Spreadsheet

2009-11-10T17:33:26Z

Update 2 11/10/09 - 4:20 MST - In column B of the spreadsheet there was some extra calculations that added 2 extra runs to all calculations. I think they were an artifact from once wanting to add WAA. They have been removed and the spreadsheet is corrected.

Update 11/10/09 - 4:00 MST - An error was found in the spreadsheet. I will post a corrected version later tonight once I get a chance to make the correction. Sorry for this inconvenience. -Jeff

Last Friday, Justin ran an article on free agent first basemen with their 2009 wOBAs. Justin and I determined that it needed a baseline wOBA for reference. The overall league averages can't be used because each position has its own run adjustment depending on its difficultly. For example, 2B is much harder to play than 1B, so if Chase Utley and Ryan Howard have the same wOBA, Chase's value is worth more since he is playing a more difficult position. Fangraphs has a great explanation of the process for each value in the WAR calculation.

I created a spreadsheet that has the projected RAA, RAR and WAR for each position assuming a certain wOBA.

For the spreadsheet I made the following assumptions:

The player plays an entire season thereby getting the entire positional adjustment and has 700 plate appearances
Player is a league average defender. If defense is needed, use a multi-year average of UZR from Fangraphs.
The values for "League Average wOBA," "conversion of wOBA to runs, PA per year," "Run to Wins Conversion" and positional adjustments are set to the current league scoring conditions. The spreadsheet can be downloaded and these values can be manipulated as each user sees fit.
No assumptions are made for league adjustments (AL being more difficult than NL) in the calculations.

Here are the wOBA values for each position needed to get league average and replacement level production:

	Average Level	Replacement Level
All Players	0.327	0.289
C	0.310	0.273
SS	0.32	0.38
2B/3B/CF	0.326	0.289
RF/LF	0.342	0.305
1B	0.350	0.313
DH	0.366	0.329

Examples for using the spreadsheet.

Example 1. Justin's look at 1B Free Agents

Here is the graphic Justin posted Friday:

Values are in the graphic, but no reference for meaning. Instead, if we look at the preceding table, we can see that a 1B needs to hit .350 for league average production. There are only 5 free agent first basemen that meet this criteria (LaRoche, Mientkiewicz, Branyan, Johnson, and Delgado). Also we can find that 6 players contribute at below replacement level when batting (Garciaparra, Cairo, Millar, Tracy, Betemit and Aurilia).

Example 2 - The Royals are considering having Jose Guillen be the permanent DH next season. What does his wOBA need to be to contribute positive WAR for the Royals?

This answer is actually pretty simple. He needs to bat a wOBA of 0.329 since there is no defensive adjustment to add. Currently, Bill James, the only person out with projected wOBA, has Jose projected to hit a wOBA of 0.321. Jose's production isn't enough to get DH replacement level production. Then by going back to the spreadsheet, it can be seen that if he gets 700 at bats he will have a -0.5 WAR. The Royals should be looking for another DH if they are hoping to have at least replacement level contribution from the DH spot.

I hope that you find this spreadsheet useful, and let me know if you need any further explanation.

Assorted Links

2009-11-10T15:11:15Z

A history of MLB parity, part 1 (part 2)

Type B free agents had a higher average 2008/2009 WAR than their Type A counterparts

The Great General Manager Debate: NL Central edition

Did Moneyball increase the correlation between OBP and salary? Maybe.

How many championships has Mariano Rivera been worth? (part 2, part 3, part 4) Hint: the answer is 2.

A Few AFL PITCHf/x Leaders

2009-11-10T00:42:00Z

More photos » by Manuel Balce Ceneta - AP

Drew Storen can do this for real, too.

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I like the Arizona Fall League. I've been tracking and classifying a lot pitches, thanks to the PITCHf/x installations in Peoria and Surprise. Nearly 10,000 pitches through Saturday's Rising Stars Game.

Let's take a look-see at some of my favorite stats. These are based only on PITCHf/x data. Some, such as ground ball rates, can be expanded to cover the non-PITCHf/x games, too. But I'm not. I'm also collapsing across pitch types due to sample size issues and a lack of finality on many of those classifications.

Anyway, on with the Strasburg. I mean Storen. I mean show.

The minimum pitch total I'm using is 59. Read Hardball Times on Tuesday and you'll figure out why. Hint: Aaron Crow's pitch total.

	Whiff
Lee Hyde	0.458
Sergio Santos	0.396
Michael Dunn	0.377
Scott Gorgen	0.373
Craig Kimbrel	0.353
Robert Wooten	0.345
Stephen Strasburg	0.339
Daniel Moskos	0.333
Zach Braddock	0.333
Jenrry Mejia	0.317

	B:CS
Drew Storen	1.4
Michael Dunn	1.4
Zach Braddock	1.4
Robert Wooten	1.4
Daniel Meszaros	1.4
Dustin Richardson	1.5
Matthew Long	1.6
Mike Leake	1.6
Logan Ondrusek	1.6
Aaron Hartsock	1.6

	In Wide Zone
Wilton Lopez	0.646
Logan Ondrusek	0.646
Mike Parisi	0.632
Jeff Lyman	0.604
Carlton Smith	0.597
Ryohei Tanaka	0.591
Bryan Augenstein	0.589
Ian Kennedy	0.580
Michael Dunn	0.579
Drew Storen	0.577

	GB%
Aaron Hartsock	75%
Stephen Strasburg	73%
Carlton Smith	69%
Josh Wilkie	67%
Connor Graham	64%
Jeff Mandel	63%
Jenrry Mejia	63%
Wilton Lopez	62%
Tommy Mendoza	59%
Javy Guerra	59%

	LD%
Wilton Lopez	0%
Spencer Steedley	0%
Steve Hirschfeld	0%
Brennan Garr	4%
Sergio Santos	5%
Joshua Fields	6%
Javy Guerra	6%
Aaron Hartsock	6%
Daniel Meszaros	7%
Drew Storen	8%

Notice how well Mejia and Strasburg rank in Whiffs and Ground balls? Storen is all over the place, along with Dunn.

Past Performance Does Not Guarantee Future Gains

2009-11-09T17:32:07Z

More photos » by David J. Phillip - AP

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I know faithful BtB readers would never fail to discount attrition risk or regress expectations to the mean. I know this because you're a smart group of people. But I also tend to accept the presumption that cognitive biases sneak up on us when we're least cautious. And the more "enlightened" we come to think of ourselves, the more we might potentially open ourselves to blind spots.

Take free agent valuations. These things aren't easy, especially when you consider that few of the publicly available prediction models have released projections for the 2010 season. So much of the commentary you see out there is relying on guess work. And can you fathom when cognitive biases might play their most prominent role? Could it perhaps be when the analysis is unmoored from rigorous statistical data?

Take Pedro Feliz (that's "Pete Happy" in English). The Phillies held a team option on his services for the 2010 season: they could exercise it and pay him $5 million to stay in the City of Brotherly Love, or they could decline the option and pay him a $500,000 buyout. Thus, the marginal cost of a year of sterling defense and head-desk inducing limp noodleism was $4.5 million. Yesterday, the Phillies declined Feliz's option and will likely seek to fill their hot corner needs from the hot stove.

How can we tell if this was a good move?

One place many have begun their analysis is FanGraphs. There, they have calculated each player's value in terms of WAR. They have also taken the extra step of multiplying each season's WAR figure by the price of a marginal win on the free agent market in a given year to get a sense of how much each player was "worth."

Here are Feliz' values for the previous five seasons:

	Team	WAR	Value
2005	Giants	2.6	$8.70
2006	Giants	1.9	$7.00
2007	Giants	2.8	$11.50
2008	Phillies	1.5	$6.70
2009	Phillies	1.3	$5.70

And because I know you like a good graph:

As you can see, Feliz has been in decline. However, he has never been worth less than $4.5 million in any season in the last five years. Thus, the Phillies were wrong to decline his option, correct?

Well, no. First, we have to come up with an estimate of Feliz' value if he plays 162 games. Then we have to discount that figure by the probability that he gets injured. Playing next season at age 35, and with this probability is increasing year-over-year at a faster rate than it ever has, it is likely that there is at least a 10% chance Feliz spends a month or more on the disabled list. There is also a non-zero chance he suffers a career ending injury, etc.

So if our original estimate is that Feliz' value will be approximately $5 million in the event that he is healthy, it is almost certainly true that the Phillies made the right decision in declining his option.

This conclusion is reinforced once we take the necessary step of evaluating the other options. The two most commonly discussed are Chone Figgins and Adrian Beltre.

Here's a typical discussion of Figgins, who is rather difficult to value:

So with all this information at our disposal, I ask – what’s the value of Chone Figgins? Since 2007, FanGraphs calculates that he has been worth a total of $50.9 million, with a high of $27.4 million in 2009 (while getting paid a paltry $5.78 million). But with Figgins finally eligible for free agency, would you pay Figgins $50 million over the next three years?

Figgins' FanGraphs values are even more all over the map:

	Team	WAR	Value
2005	Angels	2.7	$9.20
2006	Angels	0	$0.10
2007	Angels	3.1	$12.50
2008	Angels	2.4	$11.00
2009	Angels	6.1	$27.40

And here's a graph:

Eyeballing that chart, you are likely willing to discount his outlier season of 2009, despite the fact that it is the most recent. It was fueled largely by a career high 16.3 fielding runs above average (by UZR), and perhaps you don't trust UZR's year to year fluctuations (motivated by good reasons).

So let's say you throw out his outlier 2006 and 2009 seasons, and expect him to be worth between $9 million and $12 million. We'll split the difference and say $10.5 million. Again, that is if he is healthy. He will play next season at age 32, so perhaps the risk there is lower than it is with Feliz.

But does the bigger fluctuation in value (think of a beta value) make Figgins worth less than his expected value? Possibly. If teams are looking for production certainty, they may be willing to pay a premium. However, we ought to wonder whether the fluctuations are related to something inherent about Figgins, or are simply a combination of luck and circumstances.

In any event, if the Phillies are going to pay what is essentially par for the third baseman, perhaps they would like to guarantee a higher level of production than that which Feliz can be counted upon to provide.

The important thing is not to allow the ready availability of FanGraphs numbers, which are evaluated in hindsight, color your expected valuations. To do so is to fall prey to a common set of cognitive biases.

And, of course, if they want to make the ballsy play, they'll go after the riskiest but also probably the best option: Adrian Beltre.

Assorted Links

2009-11-08T15:47:40Z

Harry on Bard's breaking ball: "That which we call a slider, by any other name, would smell as sweet."

Visual scouting reports for batters using R. Or, alternatively, Jeremy Greenhouse keeps things hot.

How slot-busting is like breaking marijuana laws and other observations on baseball parity, by Bill Baer.

J.C. Bradbury's hot stove myths, or GMs are smarter than you think.

The metaphysics of Yankee hating.

Geoff Young found himself thinking about Brooks Kieschnick. I sympathize.

The Coming Avalanche of Non-Tenders?

2009-11-07T18:00:08Z

A team with a player in his "arbitration years" has essentially three options. First, it can go through the arbitration process (using what is known as "Final Offer Arbitration"). Second, it can reach a contract to avoid arbitration, whether it is a long term deal or merely a one-year deal that splits the difference between the amount the player seeks and the team has offered. Finally, the team can non-tender the player, which is shorthand for saying that the team declines to offer the player a contract at all, making him a free agent.

"What kind of crazy team would ever do this?" you may be asking. Plenty of them, argues Buster Olney:

Baseball's financial structure appears to have reached a tipping point that can be defined simply. "The arbitration process is now outdated," said a highly ranked executive, "because the players can get more money in arbitration than they would through free agency."

So now teams are about to adjust to this reality, and this is why multiple general managers expect that dozens of young players with three, four and five years of major league experience will be cut loose rather than offered arbitration in the next 41 days. Not a handful, but dozens.

You can find a speculative list of potential non-tender candidates here. What is to be done about this coming avalanche of non-tenders?!

Let's begin with the example Olney gives from the outset of his column: J. J. Hardy. In fairness, the column was published last Sunday, and trade talks are notoriously difficult to predict. Nevertheless, we now know that Hardy was traded to the Twins for Carlos Gomez.

However, the fact that Hardy was not non-tendered does not necessarily mean Olney's front-office type (FOT) was wrong. What, then did he mean?

Certainly, it would be irrational for a team to submit to the arbitration process, which can be very unpredictable given the all-or-nothing style of arbitration employed, if they could simply rehire the player on the free agent market for less. But that set of circumstances is actually quite rare. Why?

Expected surplus from arbitration

First, we have to assume that the expected surplus value of the player after arbitration is nearly zero. Otherwise, a team would be better off trading the player to another team (thus realizing the surplus) either before or after offering arbitration (whether it was before or after, I think, would depend on the team's risk aversion).

Put another way, we assume that in a competitive free agent market, teams will bid the price up until the expected surplus value approaches zero. So for free agency to be the superior option, the player's surplus value in arbitration must be even lower than it would be in free agency, which is to say the expected surplus value will be zero or negative.

Information asymmetry

One feature of the free agency market that has been commented on previously is the "Winner's Curse." When there are many bidders to an auction, and they have varying degrees of information about a player's abilities and value, some bidders will probably have valuations that are in excess of the true value (imagine a normal distribution about the player's true value). There is a good chance that the team who wins a player's services has paid more than the true expected value of that player, thus generating a negative surplus.

But wait, it gets better. The team that overvalues a player's services the most is not likely to be the team that non-tendered him! Because the team that non-tendered the player was able to observe him on a day-to-day basis, they will likely have the best gauge of his health and skills. In economic terms, the information asymmetry between that particular team and the player is lower than the asymmetry between that player and all the other teams individually. So in turn, the team that non-tendered the player is less likely to overbid for that player's services. Aren't they?

Endowment effect

You may have wondered why, if a team has good information about a player's abilities, they would still go through arbitration and eliminate the true expected surplus value. The reason they might is because that other team who would have paid a premium for his services on the free agent market is still out there, and is a potential trading partner. So a savvy team might still offer a player arbitration when he would offer them negative expected value, in the hopes of trading him. Don't believe me? It has happened before.

But when the time comes to trade him, will the GM necessarily do so? I have been talking almost exclusively about expected value, which is an estimate of the player's value from the starting point of the offseason. But down the road, the possible outcomes are as numerous as the grains of sand on the beach. The player could realize his latent potential.

If he did, and the GM had traded him away, the GM might look pretty stupid, don't you think?

Behavioral economists refer to what is known as the "endowment effect," which can be stated two ways. One way of stating the effect is to say people try to avoid losses more than they seek gains. (In economic jargon, they are more risk averse to losses than to gains from their perceived starting position.)

Another, I think more lucid, way of explaining it is by describing the experiment that Duke economists Dan Ariely and Ziv Carmon did to demonstrate the effect's existence. They called up Duke students who had been entered into the lottery for Final Four tickets at Cameron Indoor Stadium. They asked them, if they had won tickets, how much they would be willing to sell them for. If they had not won tickets, they asked them how much they would pay to buy tickets. The students who had won were willing to sell for an average price of about $2400. The students who had not won the tickets were only willing to buy for about $170.

The students who already had the tickets valued them much more highly than the students who didn't have them, and this caused the radical divergence in their reservation prices.

Before a team either trades away or non-tenders a player, we have to ask whether they might value the player more highly because of the endowment effect.

Conclusion

I have the benefit of hindsight, which tells me that the Brewers did not non-tender J. J. Hardy. Even if they did not want to pay his salary, they were able to trade him to the Twins for a cheaper player. The reason such a trade was possible is because both players have positive net expected values. Simply because Milwaukee wanted to acquire a surplus at a cheaper price (perhaps because of its preference for a lower payroll) does not mean they would be willing to get rid of the surplus altogether.

Before assuming a team will non-tender a player, we must first ask if there is any surplus available to a potential trading partner. Then we must ask if the general manager would be willing to risk looking like a fool if the player has a career year. Finally we must ask if the team's valuations are affected by the endowment effect. If all of these bars are cleared, then perhaps we can say a player will be non-tendered.

But it seems like a stretch to argue there is a coming avalanche of non-tenders.

Minnesota: Fielding TargetView Before & After JJ Hardy

2009-11-07T08:01:00Z

Twins 2009 UZR/150, before JJ Hardy/Carlos Gomez Trade

See the excellent BtB analysis of the trade HERE.

Team Fielding Comparison after the jump.

Twins UZR/150, after JJ Hardy/Carlos Gomez Trade

Revised Chart assumption: Span moves to CF and Cuddyer takes RF.

	Metrodome	Target Field	Difference
LF	343'	339'	-4'
CLF	385'	377'	-8'
CF	408'	404'	-4'
CRF	367'	367'	0'
RF	327'	328'	+1'

Field Dimension Comparisons

Questions for consumption: How will the shorter wall at Target Field (not affiliated with TargetView) in LF-CF change the fielding needs for Minnesota? Does this make the acquistion of Hardy even more valuable by 'walling-off' the left fielder with higher-UZR fielders? Does this give the Twins more flexibility in finding a powerbat-but-can't-field-Donkey-type in LF?

Or is it the other way around? Would the Twins have been better off by pursuing a better 2B to protect the holes in Right, assuming that bringing in the LF wall actually makes the left fielder better by giving less ground to cover?

Edit: Here's the original and probably mistaken UZR TargetView Chart with Cuddyer in center -

Data Sources: Fangraphs (UZR/150), Wiki (Field Dimensions)

The "30 parks on a budget" challenge

2009-11-07T03:18:15Z

The World Series is over. You're looking at another off-season of trying to figure out if your team should sign some middle-of-the-road middle infielder who won't bring the pennant next year either. And because you can only do that for about 15 minutes before crying, you need something to do that can keep your mind on baseball, so that you don't have to resort to *gasp!* watching the NFL, NBA, NHL, EPL (go Everton!), WWE, or SCOTUS. (Tonight on Monday Night Litigation, it's Sotomayor vs. Alito. Justice will prevail!)

No, let's do something baseball-related. Let's plan a baseball road-trip, the best baseball road trip ever. And let's do it on a budget.

Your mission is simple: In 2010, you will (in your imagination) travel to all 30 MLB parks, see 30 games, and you will figure out how you would do it at the lowest possible cost. At least in theory. (It's a free country, so if you actually want to do this in real life, you can... but the point is that it's a fun mental exercise.) Using the real 2010 MLB schedule, and some other web-based resources, you will put together an itinerary that would allow you to meet your goal. The person who can do it in the lowest amount of cash will win a cookie and bragging rights. (Note: no actual cookie will be awarded.)

I will tell you, this "game" is horribly addictive. Worse than Farmville. You won't think so at first, but it is.

Intrigued? The rules are below...

The goal: Using the real 2010 MLB schedule, you will create a tour that will take you to a regular season game at all 30 MLB parks. Obviously, you'll see all 30 teams at least once. The visiting teams are unimportant and if you end up seeing the same visiting team three or four times during the season... well, you'll just get to know that team a lot better. You just have to follow...

A few general rules:

You are a total loser and have no friends anywhere in the USA. It's tempting to say "Well, when I get to Chicago, I'll just bunk out with my old college roommate who lives near Wrigley and walk down to the game. And when I get to Phoenix for the D'Backs game, I'll just barge in on my aunt who lives out there. Even though I never talk to my aunt." That's not the point. And you should send your aunt a holiday card.
You now own a car. Congratulations if this is your first car. It's a red one. You may or may not end up using it.
You get one freebie city, and it's the MLB city which you are sitting closest to right now. If you live in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, or Los Angeles/Anaheim/California/whatever the Angels are calling themselves these days, read on. In that city, you do not have to stay in a hotel or pay for food. You can stay in mom's basement and eat her home cooking. In other words, what you're doing already.

Getting started: You may start your tour at any point in the MLB schedule, but you have to be able to say, "I'll start at the Team A/Team B game on this date." You can take as long as you want, although, as you'll see in a moment, it behooves you to be faster. However, you must either start and end your trip in the MLB city that is geographically closest to you. This is for those who live in eastern Montana. You can magically start the trip in Minneapolis without having to factor in the trip from Montana to Minnesota.

If your closest MLB city is a two-team city (see the four above), your first game must be for one of the teams in your city (so either Mets/Yankees, Cubs/White Sox, Angels/Dodgers, or A's/Giants... and let's not pretend that Oakland is a separate city) and the last game must be the other of those teams. Your pick as to which is which, but for the last game, you have to treat it like you are on the road and book a hotel, etc. This is because in the course of the month to month and a half that you were away, your friends and family members realized how much they hated you all along and will not help you out at all when you get back.

Getting there, part one (city to city): The biggest issue in a trip like this (and maybe the whole point) is getting from city to city. You have a few options.

You can drive your own car around the country for all or part of the trip. If you do that, you have to live by a few rules. First off, your car has to find its way back home, so if you're starting in Atlanta and you use the car to go to Tampa for your stop there but then catch a flight to the next part of your trip, you eventually need to come back to Tampa and drive the car back to Atlanta. However, for each day that you leave your car in your non-home city, it's $10 for parking/car storage. Also, your car can not magically follow you, and since you have no friends, you can't just have Larry drive the car to the next city to meet you there. Even if you did have a friend named Larry, he wouldn't like you that much.
Your car gets 30 mpg (city or highway) and gas costs $2.40 per gallon. Yes, I know gas prices vary widely across the country. But we need a standard to make things fair. So, each mile costs you eight cents to drive. All distances will be measured by the Mapquest door-to-door road distance. If you want to turn it to "shortest distance," that's fine. Then again, "quickest route" might help you in other situations. We'll pretend that you won't get lost. Somewhere out there, my wife just snickered.
You could rent a car. You have to find a published rate at one of the major rental companies in the city you'll be in and tack that on to your running toll, plus pay the 8 cents per mile in gas. If it's a one-way rental (you'll rent the car in Boston and drop it off in Philly, you have to get a quote based on that.)
You could take the bus/train. If you can find a company that runs a regular route between those cities (no personal charters!), then you can take to the roads that way. However, you have to abide by the schedule that they set. So, if their bus/train pulls into the station at 4:00 am... think about that for a minute... do you really want to be at a bus station at 4:00 am. You have to be at the bus station 30 minutes before the bus leaves.
You could fly. Again, you have to find a published rate on a flight, but you have to abide by their schedule. If you are flying, you have to be to the airport an hour and a half before the flight is scheduled to depart. The flight can be on any airline. And you have to use the full price of the ticket after adding in fees and charges. They all have to list that now.
Some folks might want to fly to a "secondary airport" because sometimes the prices are cheaper. (For example, flying into Canton/Akron "airport" and then driving to Cleveland.) That's fine, but factor in the rental car/bus to Cleveland. Hey, it might save you a few bucks and this is a competition of doing this in the least amount of cash.
As much as I love William Shatner, no, you may not use Priceline and say "well, I'll just get a flight for $25." You have to go for the pre-published rates. You can, however, use any of the major travel sites to help you do your research and fly whatever airline will get you there the cheapest. And no, you can't use frequent flyer miles. This is also cheating.

Getting there, part two (within the city): Once you are in the city, you have a few options for getting around. You will need to book a hotel, as you have no friends. You may select any hotel you like anywhere you like, again so long as the rate is published. Obviously, this will go toward the final tab for the trip.

If you're driving into town in your own car (or renting a car, most likely at the airport), you can drive right to the hotel door and park in their parking lot. However, some hotels have parking fees. Choose carefully. Hostels are fine... if you like waking up in a room full of European tourists who speak about as much English as you speak of Portuguese. Depending on the age and gender composition of that group and your own preferences on the subject... well... there might be kids reading this.
if your hotel has a free shuttle from the airport to their front door, bully for you!
No shuttle? At the airport, you can usually get one of those "hotel vans" to take you where you're going. Nothing like a 12-passenger van that smells like a diesel leak and has you crammed in nice and tight. Those come with a cost though too, but you can shop around on those.
Taxis are $2.00 per mile. Again, the Mapquest door-to-door distance rules. Never insult the barber before the haircut, but stiffing the cabbie the tip after the ride is optional.
Walking is free, but you can only walk 4 miles total per day, and you walk at 4 mph.
Now, not only do you have to get to the hotel, you also have to get to the ballpark and possibly back. Public transportation is allowed. You need to factor in the cost to ride it, but if you can show a route that goes from your hotel to the ballpark and back (you can also use it from the airport/bus station), that's fine. Again, you are at the mercy of their time-table. Also, if you need to walk to the stop/station, you have to deduct that from your four mile walking allowance.

The reason that you're doing this, the games: You must attend 30 games. And that means that you'll need a ticket to get in. You're welcome to pick the cheap seats (this is after all about doing things on the cheap), but really, if you ever actually do this, it means you have way too much money to burn. Spring for some good seats!

Remember that some teams price different types of games differently. For example, some teams are cheaper on the weeknights in May than the Saturday in July.

You must list the 30 games that you'll be attending, and they must be actual games that are scheduled to be played. Don't worry about rain (or if you're touring the North in April, snow). Again, it's your choice as to when you would start. However, you can't go home. Once you start, you have to complete all 30 games before setting foot back at your front door. So none of this "I'd hit Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, San Diego, and Colorado" then fly home to Kansas City for a few days and eat free food, and then head out again..." What you're really doing is buying yourself an extra day of free accommodations because you know you'll need an off-day on the road. That's cheating. You can stop through along the way, but no lingering.

Other costs: For every day that you are on the road, add $25 in per diem/food expenses. This applies even if you don't go to see any games. You still gotta eat. (And yes, someone out there is saying, "But I can live on five dollar footlongs." I say to you man does not live on bread and cold cuts alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of Joe Morg..." I think I'd better stop there before I get smote.

I'll assume that you have no baggage costs on planes. Ever since airlines started charging per checked bag, everyone pulls their roll-aboards onto the plane and gate checks them, which slows down boarding by about ten minutes per flight. Not that I'm bitter. I'll assume you're living out of your carry on. And that you brought at least 30 pairs of clean underwear. Or that you found a random laundromat on an off-day.

The time element: This could get fun. Not only are you competing against your wallet, you have to actually make this a believable itinerary. So, if your flight lands at 6:55 in Pittsburgh, and first pitch is at 7:05, you're not going to make that game, so don't try to pretend that you will. You are not magic. There are several time restrictions in this exercise by which you must abide.

As previously mentioned, any time you are taking mass transit of some sort, you must abide by their published time table. Most public transportation systems have on their website the ability to get door to door times for any trip. Your walking speed is 4 mph.
If you are in a car of some sort, the Mapquest "time to travel" will rule all questions of how long it will take to get there. This includes taxis.
For any airplane flight, you must be able to make it to the airport an hour and a half before the slated departure time. In happy news, we'll pretend that none of your flights will be delayed and will all land exactly when they say they will. Isn't that a hlarious sentence? For a bus or train, you need a half hour of cushion.
You will also be "stuck" at the airport for 15 minutes after a flight lands if you are taking public transportation or hailing a taxi, and 30 minutes for car rentals and hotel shuttles (free or paid.)
You can't check into a hotel before 3:00, but you should do so before going to the game. An itinerary item that says "2:38-3:00 Screw around in area near hotel" is fine if you just need to kill time. For a 7:00 night game, that should be fine. But for a 1:00 day game, this could be more interesting, because you must also check out by noon. If you're catching a flight after the game, you can check your bag at the hotel for $5.00, but you have to go back to retrieve it and pay the costs associated with getting back to the hotel.
You must be at the ballpark 30 minutes before the start of the game. Why? You're doing a tour of ballparks! You want to be able to spend some time walking around the park and taking the obligatory "This is me next to the sign that says Welcome to ~~Enron Field~~ Minute Maid Park" picture, right? Earlier is fine.
American League games last 4 hours from first pitch time (this includes the time to get out of the stadium, back to the parking lot/train station/bus stop). National League games are 3.5 hours long. Interleague games go by home park. Some of them might go extra innings, but we can't plan for that now.
You must get 8 uninterrupted hours of sleep every day. No sleeping on the plane. Or on the bus. (Trust me on the bus.) Only at the hotel. You can pick your hours either by preference or around your travel plans. You must also allow one hour after wake up time before you can check out of the hotel. You need a shower. (Trust me on the shower.)

That's a lot of rules. If there are disputes, post them in the comments. I'll be happy to rule on them/clarify them.

So what should this look like? Let me give you a sample of what I have in mind.

April 5th, 2010

Time	Event	Distance	Cost	Link
	Per Diem		$25.00
7:11 - 8:08 am	Belmont and Sheffield to MDW (red and orange lines)		$2.25	link
8:15 am	Arrive MDW
9:45 am - 2:29 pm	MDW to HOU, Delta 1567/879 (connect in ATL)		$118.20	link
2:44 pm - 3:04 pm	Hobby Airport to Howard Johnson Express Inn via taxi	14.07 mi	$28.14	link
3:04 pm	Check into HJ Express		$48.37
6:01 - 6:25 pm	Houston Metro Routes 36, 121 to Minute Maid Field	0.61 mi walk	$1.25	link
6:35 - 10:35 pm	Giants at Astros, 7:05 pm first pitch	--	$7.00	link
10:35 pm - 10:59 pm	Houston Metro Routes 121, 36 to HJ Express	0.61 mi walk	$1.25
11:00 pm - 7:00 pm	Sleep

Belmont and Sheffield is near where I used to live in Chicago so I'm using that as my starting place. Let's say I'm starting out from there and going to Houston for my first game of the trip. (Why Houston? Why not?) I've accounted for my transportation and lodging and put together a realistic time frame, plus accounted for all my expenses.

I didn't do a thorough job researching this. I could probably find a cheaper way to get to the hotel than taxi, and maybe there's a bus route that would have gotten me there cheaper than the flight. I also should really have put up the page that had the price quote for the hotel, but I closed that window.

Now, I'm in Houston with no car and 29 more parks to see. But I did get to see Opening Day in Minute Maid Field. Probably Tim Lincecum vs. Roy Oswalt. And in doing so, I spent a couple hundred bucks. Could I have done it cheaper? Probably. Can you?

If you do accept the challenge, post it here as a FanPost or link it off your own blog or something. I'd love to see if anyone can actually put one of these together, and if there are several, who can do it cheapest.

A Complete and Lenghty List of Baseball-Related Things Miguel Olivo is Good At

2009-11-06T21:49:00Z

1. Hitting for power.

Hardy for Gomez: A Defensive Win-Win

2009-11-06T18:49:22Z

More photos » by Jim Mone - AP

Minnesota Twins' Carlos Gomez lays down a sacrifice bunt against the Houston Astros in the fifth inning of a baseball game Friday, June 19, 2009, in Minneapolis. He'll get to do more of that now that he's heading to Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)

Browse more photos »

The hot stove just keeps a'burning, as news has come out that the Milwaukee Brewers have dealt shortstop J.J. Hardy to the Minnesota Twins for center fielder Carlos Gomez.

What does this trade mean for the teams involved? First off, it shows teams are very interested in defensive prowess in their players, as both Hardy and Gomez are well renowned for their gloves. But what about their overall value? The Trade Value Calculator has the (approximate) answer!

The Players

From the Milwaukee Brewers, we have the embattled J.J. Hardy. Hardy went through a torturous season in which he saw his wOBA drop from a career best in 2007, to league average mark in 2008, down all the way to a horrendous .292 this season, all according to FanGraphs. Partly as a result of his poor offensive production, the Brewers demoted him in late August, sparking the controversial claims that Hardy was demoted in order to manipulate his service time and allow the Brewers (or another would-be suitor for Hardy's services) to gain an extra year of team control before sending him off to free agency.

At the time, I spoke about Hardy's struggles with BABIP, Hardy's power numbers also suffered a drop, a result of a significantly lowered home run rate. Still, as I mentioned back in the linked article, Hardy was hitting average marks in pretty much every category except BABIP, so one could suspect that a bounce back season is in order for Hardy.

Doing a simple Marcel projection on his offensive numbers, then regressing to the mean of .330 yields a projected wOBA of .328. For this quick estimate, using Hardy's career UZR/150 of 11 runs seems fair. Based on the playing time Hardy saw in 2007 and 2008, projecting 150 games on him does not seem to be a stretch. At that kind of playing time (630 PA), here's what the Calculator says we should expect.

Hardy over the next two years, if we use the 40/60/80% market salary scale for an estimation of arbitration, could be expected to yield $10.5M in surplus value, not including any free agent compensation picks.

What about his counterpart in the deal? Carlos Gomez was once the prize of the Johan Santana trade from the Twins to the New York Mets, though most analysts say that neither the crown jewel or the entire bundle was worth Santana. Gomez began playing full time in center field last season for the Twin and was up and down. On the one hand, Gomez's defense was stellar. UZR measured Gomez at around 16 runs above average in 154 defensive games at the position, an absolutely stellar mark. This year, he continued the trend, posting around seven runs above average in 108 defensive games, splitting time with the plethora of Twins outfielders.

This would have all been well and good, if not for the other aspect that position players often have to do, the hitting. Gomez proved to be a terrible offensive player last year, posting a .294 wOBA according to FanGraphs. And he did no better in 349 PA this year, recording a .277 wOBA. Gomez walked less than the average player (career BB% 5.0%) and had no pop in his bat (career adjusted ISO .088). Furthermore, he's shown a tendency to strike out far more than a no-patience contact hitter ever should (career K% 21.9%)

For Gomez, I did a similar Marcels projection for his offense and on his UZR defense, regressing 100 defensive games to a mean of 0. For offense, I have Gomez projected at a .290 wOBA. After doing the projection/regression of his defense, Gomez comes out to a +10 runs / 150 defensive games. Giving Gomez the type of playing time he received in 2008 as a starter (approximately 4 PA per game, like a 7th hitter in the NL) and projecting him at 150 games and 600 PA, the calculator shows this.

That value does drastically underestimate his defense from 2008, when he was a 2.3 WAR player according to FanGraphs.

Conclusion

Even at the reduced level of production that Gomez is projected at, the years of control give him a slight edge in terms of value over J.J. Hardy. The time Hardy spent in the minors this year is going to help Minnesota recuperate some of the value lost by sending a decent piece to the Brewers. Overall, I think both teams will end up happy with the players they have acquired. I am almost certain that the Brewers' and Twins' pitchers will approve.

Red Sox Acquire Jeremy Hermida

2009-11-06T15:56:08Z

More photos » by Tom Mihalek - AP

Browse more photos »

The Red Sox have acquired outfielder and former first-round pick (11th overall) Jeremy Hermida from the Florida Marlins. In return, the Marlins will receive two minor league southpaws: Hunter Jones and Jose Alvarez.

Hermida has frustrated Marlins fans during his four full seasons in South Florida. Take a look at his WAR totals for each of his years in the major league, including his 2005 cup of coffee:

Year	WAR
2005	0.6
2006	-0.7
2007	2.7
2008	0.1
2009	0.3

Aside from his strong 2007, Hermida is only slightly above replacement level. He is certainly a below-average corner outfielder. What did the Red Sox give up to acquire such a dubious asset?

Hunter Jones is the more advanced of the two prospects, and will likely compete for a bullpen job in the spring. He will be 26 years old next season. According to MinorLeagueSplits.com, Jones had an equivalent FIP of 5.72 this past season in 53 innings out of the bullpen at Triple-A Pawtucket. He walked 4.1 batters per nine innings and struck out just 6.6 per nine. He is a lefty, and the results from 2008 were stronger (50.2 IP, 50 K, 14 BB). In 12.2 major league innings, he struck out 9 and walked 7.

Jose Alvarez split time between class-A affiliates in Lowell (MA) and Salem (VA) this season. Cumulatively, he tossed 107.2 innings as he pitched both out of the bullpen and in the rotation. His major league equivalent FIP between the two clubs was 5.11. In those 107.2 innings, he struck out 74 and walked 16. He has the virtue of generating more ground balls than fly balls.

Overall, this is a deal that reflects the major league needs of the two clubs. Hermida, in his second year of arbitration, is set to get a raise from the $2.25 million he earned in 2009. Given that he is unlikely to produce more than one win, especially coming off the bench, his surplus value is close to zero.

Neither of the prospects the Marlins received in return are set to be world-beaters, but each could provide some league average innings out of the bullpen down the road.

Free Agent Friday: First Base 2010

2009-11-06T08:55:18Z

Click charts to enlarge. Full data after the jump.

				2009 STATS & VALUE
First basemen	AGE	TYPE	CLUB OPTION	WAR	UZR/150	wOBA	ISO
Russell Branyan	34			2.8	2.4	0.368	0.269
Adam LaRoche	30	B		2.4	-0.5	0.357	0.211
Nick Johnson	31	B		2.4	-6.6	0.373	0.114
Fernando Tatis	35	B		1.5	3.0	0.338	0.156
Eric Hinske	32			0.8	26.0	0.344	0.189
Carlos Delgado	38	B		0.8	-2.0	0.394	0.223
Miguel Cairo	36			0.2	N/A	0.304	0.156
Jeff Bailey	31			0.2	6.8	0.331	0.208
Frank Catalanotto	36			0.0	N/A	0.315	0.104
Hank Blalock	29			0.0	-12.5	0.313	0.225
Tony Clark	38			-0.1	10.0	0.313	0.242
Ross Gload	34		$2.6M	-0.1	4.6	0.316	0.139
Doug Mientkiewicz	36			-0.1	-47.6	0.358	0.056
Nomar Garciaparra	36			-0.3	-30.6	0.309	0.106
Rich Aurilia	38			-0.5	25.8	0.236	0.066
Chad Tracy	30			-0.6	2.5	0.296	0.152
Kevin Millar	38			-0.6	-10.4	0.302	0.139
Wilson Betemit	28			-0.7	-17.2	0.267	0.111
Daryle Ward	35			N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Dmitri Young	36			N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

Data Source: FanGraphs.com, FA/Age Source: mlbtraderumors.com

Which Side Won When Bobby Abreu Re-signed for $19 Million with the Angels?

2009-11-06T04:54:04Z

Bobby Abreu re-signed with with the Angels today for $9 million guaranteed in each of the next two seasons with a $9 million vesting option for 2012 that includes a $1 million buyout. The option is guaranteed if Abreu has 550 PA in 2011 or 1,200 in 2010-11 combined. On the surface, this deal looks decent, but will Bobby be able to contribute enough to warrant his salary.

Batting: Bobby projects to have a 0.365 wOBA for next season (I weighted of the pre-season projections with a value of 2 and a weighted value of 1 for the 2009 season). This computes to about 20 RAA (runs above average) for 600 PA in a season. Adding in the adjustment for a replacement player with 600 PA of ~20 runs, his value from hitting puts him at +40 RAR (runs above replacement).

Fielding: Bobby's is not the best fielder as seen by is UZR values of -14.4, -2.5,-25.3, and -12.1 for the years 2006 to 2009. It can be assumed that his fielding is somewhere near or above -10 UZR or 10 runs worse than the average corner outfielder.

Replacement: A -10 UZR value for a corner outfield is a magic number for staying in the OF or being the DH. The positional adjustment for a corner OF is -7.5 runs. The adjustment for the DH is -17.5 runs. If Bobby is worse than -10 UZR he should be moved to DH where he won't have to take the field and accumulate negative UZR. With Vladimir Guerrero a free agent, the DH spot looks to be Bobby's for the taking.

Total Runs and Wins Added:

Corner OF: 40 RAR + -10 UZR + -7.5 positional runs = 22.5 RAR

DH: 40 RAR + 0 UZR + -17.5 positional runs = 22.5 RAR

Taking the 22.5 RAR and converting it to wins (22.5/10.5) leads to 2.1 WAR contributed by Bobby. With the current FA rate of $ per WAR at $4.4 million, Bobby's production should demand a salary of 9.25 million. Looks like both the Angels and Bobby came out pretty even on this deal. Congrats to both sides for a fair contract.

Umpire Strike Zone Analysis - The Basics and Batter Handedness

2009-11-05T19:51:28Z

Ever since I have seen and used Pitch F/X data, I have been trying to grasp the difference between the umpire-called strike zone and the textbook strike zone.

The official rule book definition of the strike zone has changed over the years. Since 1996, the offical definition according to MLB is:

"The Strike Zone is that area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the bottom of the knees. The Strike Zone shall be determined from the batter's stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball."

On TV or on MLB Gameday there is a nice box that shows this perfect strike zone. After working and observing PitchFX data for a while, the strike zone is not that perfect and the following is a look at the basics of the called strike zone and how the batter handedness effects it.

Basics

When looking at the strike zone home plate umpires call, we must remember the following points:

1. Umpires are humans

2. Humans produce inconsistent work and make mistakes.

3. For the foreseeable future, computers will not call balls and strikes.

With this understanding, the umpire's strike zone generally consistent in size. Umpires' zones should be investigated, but not for evaluating the umpires. Instead, their strike zone tendencies should be known so it can be seen how well pitchers and hitters adapt to the different zones, which is a great part of the game baseball. Gamblers, who have more at stake than team pride, have been tracking umpire stats for years to see how they affect game scoring.

I have looked at a few cases of suspect umpire calls (Milton Bradley, Shane Victorino and Zack Greinke) and in each case the umpires did nothing different than what they do every night. They call their own unique game and the hitters and pitchers that adapt first usually will have an advantage.

Handedness

The strike zone that umpires call isn't a perfect box as shown on MLB Gameday. When an umpire positions himself behind the catcher, he moves to the inside part of the plate (depending on batter handedness). This adjustment can be seen the following two images.

Because umpires are positioned to see the inside pitch, they call balls and strikes more consitenly on the inside versus the outside. Besides the lack of consistency on the outside part of the plate, the strike zone shifts inside between 0.2 to 0.4 feet depending on the batter's handedness. The shift can be seen in the following image of 3000 called strikes vs LHH.

Note: The Gameday zone shown is 1.5 feet off the ground to 3.5 feet tall and extends 1 foot in each direction from the center of the plate.

Finally, the called strike zone is circular in shape as can be seen in the preceding image. Whenever it is said that the umpire is not calling the corners, it is probably because the corners aren't generally called.

To deal with all these aspects, I created a strike zone that is shaped like a cross (since corners aren't called, I won't count them) and shifted to the inside part of the plate. A circle would be ideal, but the cross is easier to display in graphics and use when running queries on the original data in SQL

I tried several ideas to position the zone and I decided on the following method. I found, through trial and error, the zone where there was the same percentage of pitches out of the zone called balls as there were called strikes in the zone. Initially, I created the zones by eyeballing one of the previous plot and then I adjusted the dimensions until the percentages were close. Here are the dimensions, the percent of balls and strikes in and out of the zones and 4 images depicting the zones against actual called balls and strikes.

Left Handed Hitters
Zone 1		Zone 2
x coordinates	y coordinates	x coordinates	y coordinates
-1.1	1.5	-1.4	2
0.3	3.5	0.8	3

Right Handed Hitters
Zone 1		Zone 2
x coordinates	y coordinates	x coordinates	y coordinates
-0.4	1.5	-0.75	2
0.8	3.5	1.25	3

Corrected Zone

Right Handed	Total	Pitches in Zone	% of total
Total Balls	340226	291631	85.7%
Total Strikes	169836	141429	83.3%

Left Handed
Total Balls	275819	238158	86.3%
Total Strikes	133829	114038	85.2%

The zone for left-handed hitters is shifted even more inside than that for right handed hitters. I have tried to find a good explanation for this shift and have had no luck.

Previously I did a similar study that didn't adjust for handedness and found zones that, at best, had a 79%/85% Strike/Ball split. I think the 85%/85% split is much better, especially since it is that way for two separate zones. If you want the queries to use on your own dataset, here is a document that contains them.

Using these 2 zones, I created 3 boxes using the smallest, average or largest extents of the cross for use in other queries. Here are the extent boxes, along with the percent of called balls and strikes.

Left Handed		Right Handed
Small Zone
x coordinates	y coordinates	x coordinates	y coordinates
-1.1	2.2	-0.4	2
0.3	2.8	0.8	3
Average Zone
x coordinates	y coordinates	x coordinates	y coordinates
-1.250	1.850	-0.575	1.750
0.550	3.150	1.025	3.250
Large Zone
x coordinates	y coordinates	x coordinates	y coordinates
-1.4	1.5	-0.75	1.5
0.8	3.5	1.25	3.5

Square Zones

Big Zone
Right Handed	Total	Pitches in Zone	% of total
Total Balls	340226	263410	77.4%
Total Strikes	169836	152849	90.0%

Left Handed	Total	Pitches in or out of Zone	% of total
Total Balls	275819	211072	76.5%
Total Strikes	133829	128172	95.8%

Average Zone
Right Handed	Total	Pitches in or out of Zone	% of total
Total Balls	340226	317308	93.3%
Total Strikes	169836	125755	74.0%

Left Handed	Total	Pitches in or out of Zone	% of total
Total Balls	275819	261143	94.7%
Total Strikes	133829	99009	74.0%

Small Zone
Right Handed	Total	Pitches in or out of Zone	% of total
Total Balls	340226	336697	99.0%
Total Strikes	169836	73726	43.4%

Left Handed	Total	Pitches in or out of Zone	% of total
Total Balls	275819	274076	99.4%
Total Strikes	133829	42138	31.5%

Uses

Small Zone: This zone can be used when looking at the heart of the plate. 99% of all balls are out of this zone, so any pitch throw here will probably be a strike.
Average Zone: This zone can be used in place of the cross for simplicity.
Large Zone: I plan on using this to see which batters do or don't have knowledge of the strike zone. Most (>90%) pitches inside this zone are strikes, so that batter should be swinging at any pitches out here.

Please let me know if there are any questions. I will be looking at zone difference depending on pitcher and batter handedness in the next installment.

Baseball on a Budget -- Final Results for the Pat Burrell League

2009-11-05T19:47:06Z

Back in February, our previous leader Sky got the ball rolling a project to see if people could put together a competitive baseball team on a limited budget. It was based off a draft that ESPN ran. Two league were created, teams were drafted and then the wait began. There was no trading throughout the season, so the team you draft you were stuck with.

I sponsored the Pat Burrell league. I kept a spreadsheet for the participants to enter their team totals, but each team was to keep track of their own player's total. I have sent out quite a few reminders, as I am sure the league can testify to, so everyone has had a chance to update their numbers by now. As of right today, I have the WAR totals for each team, but not the PA (limit 6500) and IP (1500) for 5 teams. With that being said, the winner of the Pat Burrell league is:

viktor06

Here are the final results:

Name	Total WAR	Total WAR plus Replacement Wins (48.6)
viktor06	64.7	113.3
oldjacket	57.4	106.0
NYRoyal	52.0	100.6
TucsonRoyal	50.0	98.6
Jason Collette	47.0	95.6
Daniel Berlyn	43.4	92.0
acblue	29.5	78.1

vivaelpujols	67.3	115.9
Markakis and Wieters 4 Life	48.6	97.2
philkid3	43.4	92.0
Marc Normandin	42.2	90.8
MatthewA	35.6	84.2

As a whole I am amazed at the amount of WAR only 12 teams were able to accumulate. As a league, we totaled up for 581 WAR, while spending 720 million, or 1.24 million per WAR. I thought I was doing pretty good by getting 50 WAR, but viktor06 and viva crushed me. Well congrats again to viktor06.

How did my strategy play out:

I aimed to get the max PA with good players and no PA for the rest of my players. I figured 10 players with 650 PA would put me at the PA limit. So for each picked, I reference Ron Shandler's fantasy guide that rates the player's health and tried to take only players with an A rating. I decided to then only aim for 12 full time position players (some players would still get hurt) and the rest of the players should see no playing time. That stategy played out great as I ended up with 6480 AB.

With pitchers I wanted to also go for a few healthy studs. We were limited to 1000 starting innings, so I aimed for 6 starters to go 200 innings, account for 1 starter going down. The rest of the pitchers I went with the best available pen guys. All went pretty decent here except, by the time in the draft I got around to getting a pen, most decent players were taken.

Possible changes for next year.

$50 million dollar limit - The win total were extremely high and taking away $120 million should remove 100 WAR from the draft. Maybe even take it down to $45 million.

Total IP to 1500 - There was no good way to keep track of the WAR between the two, so just have a total for IP

Thanks again to all the participate and can't wait to do it again.

Chicago White Sox Acquire Mark Teahen for Josh Fields and Chris Getz

2009-11-05T16:14:30Z

UPDATE 2 (12:31 PM, Tommy): The trade has been confirmed by the Chicago Sun-Times.

UPDATE (12:05 PM, Tommy): According to ESPN's Buster Olney, talks between the Royals and White Sox are "not that far along," although he adds that "the expectation of rival GMs is that the Royals at some point are going to trade Teahen, who is expected to make about $5 million next season and has become too expensive."

---

Kansas City receives: 3B Josh Fields & 2B Chris Getz

Chicago receives: INF/OF Mark Teahen

A Bill Madden report has Teahen pegged to replace Jermaine Dye in right field next year. Throughout his career he's logged nearly 2,500 innings in the outfield - mostly the corners - and has a -1 UZR to show for it. That's not horrible, especially not when contrasted to Jermaine Dye's dead-horse act the past few seasons. His bat is what it is. Over the last three years his wRAA have ranged from -8.5 to 1.4, with a -3.9 year thrown in for good measure. Given the move to a more hitter friendly park, Teahen's raw offensive numbers should improve. He is 28-years-old and Cot's accredits him with service time of 3.155 (years.days). Add a year and Teahen will become a free agent for the first time following the 2011 season.

In return, the Royals are dealt two players who fit into their puzzle somehow.

Fields is a former top prospect who struggled in 2009 offensively and defensively. He's torn up Triple-A enough to show he's got some bat, but outside of 2007, it's yet to translate. Fields has a penchant for striking out one-third of the time and while he walks at a league average rate, there's only so much offense you provide when making contact less than 70% of the time (like he did in 2009; 71.1% for his career). He's shown some pop, mostly in 2007, and the Royals are banking on Fields at least taking Teahen's role as a super-utility player. Maybe he puts it together with a change of scenery, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Getz meanwhile failed in his first season as a Major League second baseman. His minor league track record suggests he can hit better too, and unlike Fields he's not a boom or bust hitter. He walked a fair amount in the minors and strikeouts were rarely an issue (nor was power). Scouting reports suggest he's a decent defender at second base, although they also peg him as a future utility man.

This doesn't seem like a win for either club. The White Sox get the better player for right now and shed players without roles, but at the same time Teahen is unlikely to morph into something more than an average player at best. Meanwhile the Royals free up some cash and get players who may replicate Teahen's performances over the past few years at a reduced cost.

Interesting way to start the off-season.

Speed Check - AFL vs. MLB

2009-11-05T02:45:10Z

Stephen Strasburg's fastball is raising some interesting questions. While Strasburg was on the mound on Monday, a Tweet and an email (so old fashioned) came in asking about the Surprise, AZ, PITCHf/x data. Was it hot?

Strasburg throwing 101 was a surprise to many, and seeing him sit near 98 for a few innings raised more questions. I took a look at the two PITCHf/x installations in the Arizona Fall Leauge (Surprise and Peoria) this morning at the Hardball Times.

The basic conclusion was, no, the system in Surprise isn't hot. Relative to Peoria, that is.

Assuming the two systems are pretty much on par, the opportunity came up to compare AFL pitchers to themselves as MLB pitchers. Using release speed (55 ft. from home plate) I was able to compare data from 14 pitchers.

Nothing fancy and statistical, but, as you browse the baker's dozen + 1 set of images below, I think you'll probably reach the same conclusion I did.

The years shown in the parentheses indicate the MLB seasons the pitcher appeared in. The scale is to the game (actually at bat) and varies by pitcher. September 2009 call-ups will have a vastly different x-axis scale compared to a pitcher who worked back in 2007. But it's the y-axis (MPH) that matters.

Bryan Augenstein (2009)

Randor Bierd (2008)

Josh Butler (2009)

Michael Dunn (2009)

Matt Harrison (2008-2009)

Wilton Lopez (2009)

Ian Kennedy (2007, 2009)

Joe Martinez (2009)

Andrew Miller (2007-2009)

Mike Parisi (2008)

Dustin Richardson (2009)

Travis Schlichting (2009)

Mitch Talbot (2008)

Donald Veal (2009)

AFLf/x ain't hot if you ask me.

Andy Pettitte vs. Pedro Martinez: WAR by Age

2009-11-05T00:35:25Z

More photos » by Mike Carlson - AP

Browse more photos »

With just a few minutes before first pitch in Game 6, let's take a look at how the two starting pitchers (neither a stranger to the postseason) have performed by age.

By seasonal age, each is as old as the other. However, Pedro, born 10/25/71, is eight months older than Pettitte, born 6/15/72.

Note: all WAR data taken from Rally's database, except 2009, which is not yet available from Rally and so comes from FanGraphs.

Pedro's career has followed a much more predictable trajectory, while Pettitte's career has been more of a drunkard's walk. Last weekend, I called Pettitte slightly above average, but he has been much more consistent in recent years than his opponent this evening.

Their fastballs are similar: Pettitte's (89.0 mph average) clocked in just a tick above Pedro's (88.5) this season. Both liberally mix in cut fastballs with plenty of movement and neither is reluctant to throw an off-speed pitch for a strike. In many ways, they are mirror images of each other: Pettitte the lefty version of Pedro.

It ought to be a good matchup.

Assorted Links

2009-11-04T16:25:22Z

Jay at Fack Youk teaches Mike Lupica the difference between ex ante and ex post judgments.

Sure, the Nationals have options for their rotation. Are any of them worthwhile?

Meanwhile, in Arizona, Strasburg slowly improves. Just sayin'.

Maybe Nationals brass will catch him on TV in the AFL Rising Stars game and slot him in.

If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.