In the wake of the 2013 blizzard that dumped two plus feet of snow on most of New England at velocities upwards of 60 MPH, one could be forgiven for failing to notice that Fangraphs had finally released the entirety of Dan Szymborski’s ZIPS projections for the Boston Red Sox. But given that plenty of words have been written touting PECOTA’s 86 win, tied-for-second place in the AL East forecast for the club, it seems reasonable to assume more than the storm is at work. Specifically, Red Sox fans might be underreporting ZIPS because it forecasts a great deal of underperformance from our roster.

ZIPS is conservative by design, which is a useful counter to overly optimistic forecasts such as Bill James’ projections. Even so, the future ZIPS anticipates is not one kind to the Red Sox. If ZIPS projections for the starting rotation hold, in fact, it’s likely that the club will struggle to reach .500. It’s not all bad, but it’s definitely not good. Here then are the highlights and lowlights from the ZIPS 2013 numbers.

The Good

The good news from ZIPS is easy to summarize.

• Pedroia will remain an effective, star-caliber player, putting up a .289/.357/.456 line from second base. That plus his defense makes him the only 5 win player on the roster.
• Ortiz will remain an elite offensive force at .294/.288/.558, although the optimism here is tempered by ZIPS belief that Ortiz will be limited to 418 at bats. In spite of his DH status, ZIPS expects Ortiz to be the second most valuable position player at 3.4 wins. Which is a compliment to Ortiz and a criticism of our roster at the same time.
• Napoli, though not projected to rebound to his 2011 levels of performance, will easily best the .275/.325/.425 line our first basemen put up last year at .248/.347/.488. Even so, the combination of his defense and limited playing time – presumably due to injury – leaves him just shy of a two win player (for context, Adrian Gonzalez was worth 2.6 wins to us last year, in spite of the fact that he was traded in August).
• The playing time forecast for new shortstop Stephen Drew is actually relatively positive: ZIPS sees him accumulating 450+ at bats. The problem is that his expected offensive performance (.250/.322/.396) is a far cry from his 2010 peak (.278/.352/.458). Still, given that our shortstops hit .234/.272/.359 last year, Drew represents a considerable upgrade – assuming he’s healthy enough to field the position adequately.
• David Ross was told that he would play more than a typical backup with the Red Sox, but ZIPS sees him getting fewer at bats, in fact, than last season: 163 versus 196. When he plays, though, he’ll be much better than a typical backup, getting on base 31.5% of the time and slugging .414. Given that our starting catcher (until he’s traded, anyway) didn’t get on base even 30% of the time last year and isn’t forecast to this year, I’ll take it.
• ZIPS doesn’t love Koji Uehara’s health, calling him for to contribute a mere 39.7 innings, but it loves his performance when he’s on the field, anticipating a 2.72 ERA/2.80 FIP with 49 strikeouts against 6 walks. The fact that he’s the only pitcher ZIPS really likes is the real problem here.
• One quick aside: ZIPS thinks Jackie Bradley Jr. could put up a .249/.329/.367 line in the majors right now, which would be more than adequate if the reports on his defense are even partially correct. He won’t make anybody forget Ellsbury’s 2011 season, but that’s not too far from what Ellsbury was when he came back last year. Good depth to have.

The Bad

• Ryan Lavarnway already has questions as to whether he’ll stick at the catcher position – at least outside of the Red Sox organization – and his 2013 ZIPS forecast makes it improbable that he’d have a career at anywhere else on the diamond. Here’s hoping his .243/.311/.388 projection is light across the board, particularly because ZIPS sees him getting 500+ at bats. If you’re looking for reasons to be optimistic, it seems at least possible that ZIPS is overweighting his major league numbers from last year; Lavarnway’s average on base percentage in five minor league seasons is .376.
• If you were wondering whether Iglesias would ever hit, ZIPS is not likely to inspire much confidence. Last season, ZIPS forecast an anemic .251/.289/.311 line for Iglesias, which he actually underperformed – subtantially – with a .118/.200/.191 in 77 plate appearances. This season ZIPS expects little change with a .254/.298/.304. Everyone is rooting for the kid because his glove is that good, but the chances that he’ll ever be adequate at the plate are growing dimmer.
• It’s easy to expect Jon Lester to improve this season, because established major league pitchers of his age do not typically drop off a performance cliff that quickly barring injury. Even if you buy into the regression to the mean theory, however, there are some alarming trends in his numbers that act to throttle expectations. Here are his K/9 numbers the past four years: 9.96, 9.74, 8.55, 7.28. And his average fastball velocity over that same span: 93.5, 93.5, 92.6, 92.0. Add it all up and ZIPS forecasts an improvement, but a modest one: a 3.97 ERA and a 3.91 FIP over 188.3 innings (which would be his lowest innings total since 2007). If Lester doesn’t throw something close to 200 innings, at a better rate than that, we’re likely in trouble.
• If ZIPS is low on Lester, it’s lower on Buchholz. Which is certainly understandable given his early season struggles last season. What’s interesting about ZIPS is that it holds with Buchholz’ historical ability to outperform his FIP – often substantially so. Five out of his six seasons in the majors, Buchholz has underperformed his FIP. ZIPS continues this trend, forecasting an ERA of 4.16 against a FIP of 4.43. It also doesn’t expect Buchholz to exceed the 150 IP threshold, which he’s done two out of the last three years (2011′s back fracture held him to 82 IP). Like Lester, the Red Sox need him to outperform this projection if they are to contend.
• ZIPS actually expects Doubront to improve somewhat from 2012. While the left hander started strong last year – and was actually the club’s best starter in stretches – his overall line was impacted by late season fatigue. In 2012, he put up an ERA of 4.86 and a FIP of 4.37. ZIPS expects a 4.59 and 4.36 this season. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it’s forecasting only 120+ IP from Doubront, down from last season’s 160+. Given the already existing concerns about his innings jump last season and the fact that he reportedly showed up to camp overweight, the ZIPS projected innings mark could be more accurate than the Red Sox would like.
• One of the few bright spots last season, Junichi Tazawa was stellar after his call up posting a 1.82 FIP over 44 IP with 9.20 K/9 and 1.02 BB/9 rates. It’s hard to expect a pitcher to improve on those numbers, but ZIPS forecasts a substantial regression. Specifically, it calls for a 3.94 FIP over 80 innings, with 74 strikeouts but a spike in walks to 30. Still a useful reliever, but hardly the revelation he was last season.

The Ugly

• If there was one forecast it would be reasonable to question, it might be Lackey’s. Like all projection systems, ZIPS is based off on performance metrics, and Lackey’s are compromised at least in part by the fact that the last season he was on the field he was pitching with a damaged elbow ligament. It’s reasonable to expect a bit more upside, then, than projection systems will anticipate. The problem is that Lackey’s numbers are so poor, even outperforming them will leave him significantly below average. To begin with, ZIPS expects very little in the way of innings pitched: 127, or twenty starts or so. Over that span, ZIPS expects an ERA of 5.24, a FIP of 4.86 and a K/9 of 5.53 against a BB/9 of 3.19. ZIPS expects Lackey, ultimately, to be worth less than a win, to be less valuable than Rubby De La Rosa, Craig Breslow, Franklin Morales and Brandon Workman. If all of that is true, the Red Sox will have a serious hole to fill in the rotation.
• The good news for Bard is that ZIPS expects him to throw 65+ innings at the major league level. The bad news is that it doesn’t expect him to throw well. ZIPS sees Bard putting up a 4.50 ERA / 4.68 FIP, which are not the numbers of a premier reliever. And while it projects something of a recovery in his strikeout rate – 8.05 K/9 (8.81 career) – it believes he’ll continue to have a problem with walks. Specifically, it expects him to walk 41 batters over those 66 IP (5.59 BB/9) – an entirely unacceptable number for a high leverage relief pitcher. If true, Bard’s going to be toiling in middle relief if he’s lucky, and more likely to be living in Pawtucket for a few months.
• There was a great deal of skepticism in the industry following Cherington’s signing of Jonny Gomes, and ZIPS shares it. For the player commonly assumed to be the regular left fielder, ZIPS expects only 391 plate appearances. Which would be a blessing if his line approximates the forecast .240/.332/.423. That’s acceptable if you’re a catcher; it’s not a starter in left field – at least for a contender.
• Perhaps the player that ZIPS is hardest on is the sophomore third baseman Will Middlebrooks. SBNation’s Marc Normandin, among other writers, believes that Middlebrooks is an anomaly that projection systems are ill-equipped to handle. As written here in December, I’m highly concerned about his approach at the plate. If ZIPS is correct, those concerns are appropriate. ZIPS expects Middlebrooks – whose 2012 line of .288/.325/.509 masked signs the league was adjusting to the rookie – to regress to .255/.292/.434. His defense and a projected 19 home runs make him almost a two win player, but a third baseman who can’t get on base even 30% of the time (the average major league third baseman last year had a .323 OBP) is not a positive. As indeed so little of the 2013 ZIPS projections are for the club.
]]> http://rotoballs.com/2012/02/12/player-profile-jose-bautista/ Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:22:01 +0000 rotobrian http://rotoballs.com/2012/02/12/player-profile-jose-bautista/ http://travieontigs.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/2012-detroit-tigers-projected-lineup-rotation-bullpen-bench-with-stats/ Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:53:00 +0000 Travis Hensley http://travieontigs.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/2012-detroit-tigers-projected-lineup-rotation-bullpen-bench-with-stats/

Lineup:

1. Austin Jackson, CF AVG .275 HR 10 RBI 55 R  91 SB 30

2. Brennan Boesch, RF AVG .270 HR 18 RBI 75 R 66 SB 8

3. Miguel Cabrera, 3B AVG .332 HR 32 RBI 126 R 114 SB 3

4. Prince Fielder, 1B AVG .290 HR 36 RBI 130 R 110 SB 1

5. Delmon Young, DH AVG .282 HR 20 RBI 82 R 62 SB 4

6. Alex Avila, C AVG .277 HR 17 RBI 79 R 72 SB 4

7. Jhonny Peralta, SS AVG .272 HR 15 RBI 69 R 65 SB 1

8. Andy Dirks, LF AVG .260 HR 8 RBI 31 R 42 SB 10

9. Ryan Raburn, 2B AVG .265 HR 16 RBI 61 R 53  SB 5

Bench:

Gerald Laird, C AVG .235 HR 3 RBI 25 R 30 SB 3

Brandon Inge, 3B AVG .226 HR 10 RBI 32 R 43  SB 2

Ramon Santiago, IF AVG .266 HR 5 RBI 37 R 46 SB 2

Don Kelly, IF/OF AVG .270 HR 8 RBI 31 R 30 SB 4

Rotation:

1. Justin Verlander, W/L 20-8 ERA 2.75 K’s 240 BB 60 IP 230

2. Doug Fister, W/L 15-9 ERA 3.00 K’s 150 BB 40 IP 220

3. Max Scherzer, W/L 14-10 ERA 3.82 K’s 185 BB 61 IP 198

4. Rick Porcello, W/L 13-9 ERA 4.20 K’s 120 BB 47 IP 186

5. Jacob Turner, W/L 8-8 ERA 4.10 K’s 85 BB 35 IP 110

Bullpen:

CL Jose Valverde W/L 3-2 ERA 3.15 K’s 66 BB 29 IP 65 Saves 41

SU Joaquin Benoit W/L 4-2 ERA 2.86 K’s 70 BB 18 IP 64 Holds 27 Saves 2

SU Octavio Dotel W/L 2-2 ERA 3.65 K’s 64 BB 21 IP 57 Holds 12 Saves 1

MR Al Alburquerque (out till mid-season) W/L 3-1 ERA 2.75 K’s 50 BB 25 IP 44 Holds 2

MR Phil Coke W/L 4-2 ERA 3.99 K’s 69 BB 30 IP 70 Holds 1 Saves 1

MR David Pauley W/L 5-3 ERA 4.15 K’s 45 BB 23 IP 55

MR Daniel Schlereth W/L 2-1 ERA 4.30 K’s 48 BB 27 IP 43

LR Collin Balester W/L 4-4 ERA 4.55 K’s 42 BB 23 IP 40

]]> http://cst.mlblogs.com/2012/02/03/2012-detroit-tigers-projected-lineup-rotation-bullpen-bench-with-stats/ Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:53:00 +0000 Travis Hensley http://cst.mlblogs.com/2012/02/03/2012-detroit-tigers-projected-lineup-rotation-bullpen-bench-with-stats/

Lineup:

1. Austin Jackson, CF AVG .275 HR 10 RBI 55 R  91 SB 30

2. Brennan Boesch, RF AVG .270 HR 18 RBI 75 R 66 SB 8

3. Miguel Cabrera, 3B AVG .332 HR 32 RBI 126 R 114 SB 3

4. Prince Fielder, 1B AVG .290 HR 36 RBI 130 R 110 SB 1

5. Delmon Young, DH AVG .282 HR 20 RBI 82 R 62 SB 4

6. Alex Avila, C AVG .277 HR 17 RBI 79 R 72 SB 4

7. Jhonny Peralta, SS AVG .272 HR 15 RBI 69 R 65 SB 1

8. Andy Dirks, LF AVG .260 HR 8 RBI 31 R 42 SB 10

9. Ryan Raburn, 2B AVG .265 HR 16 RBI 61 R 53  SB 5

Bench:

Gerald Laird, C AVG .235 HR 3 RBI 25 R 30 SB 3

Brandon Inge, 3B AVG .226 HR 10 RBI 32 R 43  SB 2

Ramon Santiago, IF AVG .266 HR 5 RBI 37 R 46 SB 2

Don Kelly, IF/OF AVG .270 HR 8 RBI 31 R 30 SB 4

Rotation:

1. Justin Verlander, W/L 20-8 ERA 2.75 K’s 240 BB 60 IP 230

2. Doug Fister, W/L 15-9 ERA 3.00 K’s 150 BB 40 IP 220

3. Max Scherzer, W/L 14-10 ERA 3.82 K’s 185 BB 61 IP 198

4. Rick Porcello, W/L 13-9 ERA 4.20 K’s 120 BB 47 IP 186

5. Jacob Turner, W/L 8-8 ERA 4.10 K’s 85 BB 35 IP 110

Bullpen:

CL Jose Valverde W/L 3-2 ERA 3.15 K’s 66 BB 29 IP 65 Saves 41

SU Joaquin Benoit W/L 4-2 ERA 2.86 K’s 70 BB 18 IP 64 Holds 27 Saves 2

SU Octavio Dotel W/L 2-2 ERA 3.65 K’s 64 BB 21 IP 57 Holds 12 Saves 1

MR Al Alburquerque (out till mid-season) W/L 3-1 ERA 2.75 K’s 50 BB 25 IP 44 Holds 2

MR Phil Coke W/L 4-2 ERA 3.99 K’s 69 BB 30 IP 70 Holds 1 Saves 1

MR David Pauley W/L 5-3 ERA 4.15 K’s 45 BB 23 IP 55

MR Daniel Schlereth W/L 2-1 ERA 4.30 K’s 48 BB 27 IP 43

LR Collin Balester W/L 4-4 ERA 4.55 K’s 42 BB 23 IP 40

]]> http://bluejaysanalysis.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/blurred-expectations-unavoidable-for-adam-lind/ Tue, 08 Mar 2011 18:00:26 +0000 Thomas Pinzone http://bluejaysanalysis.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/blurred-expectations-unavoidable-for-adam-lind/ After an apparent breakout season in 2009, Adam Lind regressed somewhat drastically trying to follow it up in 2010. The idea of Lind being able to play left field was all but completely abandoned in 2010 and he served as the team’s primary DH for much of the season. That was a move that couldn’t be argued against heading into 2010 because his defense was well below average and he looked to have a good enough bat to bring solid value from a DH role.

That however, is not what happened last season as Lind went from being a 3.5 fWAR player in 2009 to a -.3 fWAR player in 2010. His health had nothing to with the drop in production either, Lind played in 150 games last year after playing in 151 in 2009. The drop came entirely from his bat as his batting runs above average fell by 40 runs, from 35.9 to -5.9. Moving almost exclusively to DH actually helped his fWAR in 2010. His fielding and positional adjustment cost him 22.4 runs in 2009 but only 17.2 runs last year.

It was a rough going at the dish in almost every way for Lind last year. He did manage to hit 23 homers and bang out 32 doubles. That helped him to a .188 isolated power, easily clearing the league average .145 ISO. The power numbers certainly weren’t poor, especially when compared to the .162 and .156 isolated power marks he had in half seasons back in 2007 and 2008. But as was the theme for 2010, they pailed in comparison to his .257 isolated power and 81 combined doubles and homers in 2009.

In hindsight, Lind’s 2009 .305 batting average looks like somewhat of a fluke. Where his power is a less of a question, Lind probably isn’t likely to have all that many seasons in which he hits .300 or better. But after 2009 Lind had a half season in which he hit .238 in 2007 but then followed it with a half season of hitting .282 and then the .305 mark from 2009. At that point it would’ve seemed safe to think he could be a .270-.290 hitter through his prime years. He then promptly hit .237 in 2010 and now we don’t know what to expect do we?

Batting average isn’t the end all be all of offensive production and the fact his power shined in an off year is comforting when looking at his batting average. The only issue with Lind’s fluctuating batting averages is that he doesn’t do a particularly good job with drawing walks, the only way(outside of getting beaned 25-30 times a season) of keeping an on-base percentage up with a low batting average. After walking in just 5.5 percent of his plate appearances in his first 676 trips to the plate before 2009, Lind drew a walk in 8.9 percent of his plate appearances in ’09. That too dropped in 2010, back down below the league average to 6.2 percent.

Strikeouts were never a major concern for Lind through 2009. After striking out in 22.4 percent of his at-bats in 2007, he went down on strikes in a below average 18.5 percent of his at-bats in 2008-09. Not much of a shock at this point, but that headed in the wrong direction last year too, as he struckout in 25.3 percent of his at-bats. There wasn’t any salvation to be found in his swinging strike rate either, after two seasons of swinging and missing about 7.5 percent of the time he jumped up to 10.7 percent in 2010, safely on the wrong side of the league’s 8.5 percent average.

The plate discipline is discouraging, again because it’s clear he has power and a better walk rate would lessen the concern over his batting average even more. The best indicator of what happened seems to lie in his swing rate. The table below shows his swing rate, swinging strike rate, as well as his walk and strikeout rates from the last four seasons. As you’ll see, more good things tend to happen for Lind when he’s able to swing less often.

	Swing Rate	Swinging K Rate	K%	BB%
2007	50.1	10.8	22.4	5.1
2008	49.8	7.8	18.1	4.6
2009	43.8	7.2	18.7	8.9
2010	50.0	10.7	25.3	6.2

Lind has exactly one season with an above average walk rate and one season when he swung at less than the league average amount of pitches. That season was 2009 for both stats. Then in 2010 Lind suffered from a self induced one-two punch of swinging more often like he did previous to 2009 and missing on those swings more than ever. It’s no surprise then to see his walk and strikeout rates both suffer accordingly.

Also, looking back at 2007 we see the other time that he had a swinging strike rate above 10 percent and the matching worse than average strikeout rate. That is no coincidence. Swinging less doesn’t guarantee more walks because of called strikes, but it would seem to be the case for Lind. He needs to rediscover whatever the mindset was that he had in 2009 with regards to his propensity to swing the bat. He could just hit .300 again too and then the walk rate wouldn’t matter much at all, but that’s not something he can control to the extent that he can control his plate discipline.

The one area of his hitting in 2010 that has come under an unfair amount of scrutiny is his hitting of left handed pitching. It was absolutely horrendous, that’s not the issue, Lind had a .156 wOBA against lefties in 2010. The issue relates to the sample size in which Lind failed so badly to produce in. He only faced a lefty 145 times last season, not nearly enough to convict Lind as one who needs a caddy against lefties. To put this in better perspective, it’s interesting how quickly his 2009 .335 wOBA against lefties was forgotten. That came in 179 plate appearances. The reality is that Lind isn’t as bad against lefties as 2010 nor as good as he was in 2009 either. Hopefully, for Lind’s sake he isn’t shielded from lefties by John Farrell this season when he’ll be all of twenty-seven years old through half the season.

That last bit of data is perhaps the most interesting of all Lind’s numbers. His age. He is headed into what would be expected to be his peak period of performance across 2011, 2012 and into 2013. Writing off his ability to hit lefties now would be a mistake. The age factor also leaves ample amounts of optimism that Lind can return to the middle of the lineup force that he was in 2009. As mentioned above, the power is there, that’s a given, but if he wants to be a well rounded hitter he’ll have to at least approach a .260-.270 average and get back on track with his plate discipline.

His projections from Bill James and Marcel both expect a better season from Lind in 2011 than last season, but James’ projection is more optimistic of the two. James’ projects Lind to hit .282 with a .216 ISO where as Marcel has him down to hit only .268 with a .195 ISO. They both essentially agree on his walk and strikeout rates as they both come in around a 7.3 percent walk rate and a 21 percent strikeout rate. The systems, being the unbiased, non-human, computer models that they are, play it safe with the projections. Neither forecasts anything quite like 2009 but the possibility of another .380+ wOBA season shouldn’t be totally ruled out either.

Even though Lind certainly has plenty to deal with at the plate this season, he’ll also be returning to the field in 2011 and perhaps playing more time away from DH than he has before. It won’t be the semi-familiar confines of left field either, Lind is currently learning to play first base in spring training with expectation of being the team’s everyday first baseman this year. That’s good in the sense that Lind has shown fairly convincingly he can’t handle the outfield. But first base isn’t much different from DH in that the majority of his value will still be tied to his hitting.

There’s more or less no way to project how Lind will fair at first base either. Adam Dunn made a similar move from left to first base in 2009, in his first season at first he had a -14.3 UZR in only 67 games. Then when playing there full-time in 153 games last year he had a respectable -3.1 UZR. But previous to 2009 he had already played 127 games at first, Lind has played 11. Lance Berkman might be a better comparison, after never starting a game at first previous to 2005 he played 84 games that season and at least 100 games at first in each of the next four seasons. After a -3.5 UZR in 2005 he posted better than average UZRs for each of the next three seasons.

It’s at least plausible then to envision Lind developing into an average defensive first baseman. But nothing he does defensively will matter if he can’t produce at the plate. There’s every reason to think he can do that too, but that doesn’t guarantee that it will happen either. The Jays have invested in Lind through at least 2013 at a little over five million a season. He won’t have to do much for the Jays to break even on that deal, about 1.5 fWAR would do, but the Jays didn’t sign him with the intent of being happy to break even. They are expecting more and Lind should be ready to deliver as he enters his prime.

]]> http://bluejaysanalysis.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/perfect-time-for-yunel-escobar-to-return-to-form/ Fri, 04 Mar 2011 20:32:11 +0000 Thomas Pinzone http://bluejaysanalysis.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/perfect-time-for-yunel-escobar-to-return-to-form/ This marks the start of this site’s 2011 individual player previews. Roughly one player per day will be covered right up until the start of the season. Each preview will hope to have a catchy title in light of the next 30 entry’s here starting with “Season Preview”, but that’s what the focus will be on here until opening day. Enjoy!

Last season was Yunel Escobar’s worst offensive season in his relatively short career. Between Atlanta and Toronto he compiled a career worst .301 wOBA and had a below average bat for the first time in his career. He faired better after joining the Blue Jays but even then his numbers in Toronto were off his established level of production. There are several reasons to think last season will end up being nothing more than an down year and the most glaring reason is his age heading into 2011.

Escobar is right in the middle of what is considered to be a baseball player’s prime years of production. He’ll be 28 this season making his age a non-factor when trying to decide if last season was the start of a decline. A decline that was limited only to his hitting. 2010 marked the third straight season Escobar had a better than average UZR at the second most demanding defensive position in the field. Escobar’s 3.4 UZR/150 from 2008-2010 ranks eighth among qualified shortstops in all of baseball in that time.

Escobar might not seem overly durable at first glance, having not played more than 141 games in any of the last three seasons, but he ranks sixth among all shortstops with 3493 innings played in the last three seasons. The combination of durability and excellent defense puts him at the top of John Dewan’s Defensive Runs Saved(DRS) metric crediting him with 44 runs saved since 2008. TotalZone agrees with DRS as that system also had him saving more runs with his glove than any other shortstop over the last three years. Only UZR pushes him further down the list, but it’s indisputable that Escobar is an elite defender.

That takes a decent amount of the cause for concern over his hitting away. If he was the light hitter he was last season all the time, the Jays could live with it because of his defense. But we’ve seen that Escobar can be much more than what he was at the dish last season. In his first three seasons he had wOBAs of .367, .337 and .357 from 2007 to 2009. He never hit below .288 or had a batting average on balls in play below .311 and those two numbers came in the same season. Last season he easily had his worst marks in both categories hitting just .256 with a .288 BABIP. The BABIP wasn’t all that bad but Escobar seemed to have established an ability to keep it above .300 previous to 2010. The first place to look after that realization is his batted ball rates.

	LD%	GB%	FB%	IFFB%	HR/FB	BABIP
2007	21.1	56.0	22.9	3.2	7.9	.364
2008	17.1	58.2	24.7	3.6	9.1	.311
2009	19.8	50.2	30.0	3.6	10.1	.317
2010	18.0	53.6	28.4	10.6	3.3	.282

Between his line drive, groundball and flyball rates nothing jumps out as a clear indicator to what drove down his BABIP. Yes, his 18 percent line drive rate was the second worst of his career but he survived his career low 17.1 percent in 2008 well enough and had a .311 BABIP that year. Escobar isn’t a power hitter meaning he’d prefer to hit groundballs to flyballs as his flyballs have never left the yard at a higher than average rate in his career. His 2010 ground and flyball rates were both the second “worst”, as far as Escobar is concerned, of his career but not glaringly bad either.

In short, he doesn’t look like he was that far off the approach that made him a good hitter in the past. He did however have the worst results on his flyballs, by a large margin, last season as he hit more infield flyballs, 13, than the 11 he hit in his entire career previous to 2010. His percent of flyballs that turned into homers was also drastically lower than ever before. It might not seem like much, after all we’re only looking at roughly a quarter of the balls he put in play, but it did have some effect on his overall numbers.

For example, in 2008 and 2009 Yunel averaged about 11 home runs per 567 plate appearances but hit just 4 in last season’s 567 plate appearances. He also hit about ten more infield flys in 2010 than he averaged in the past. If just three of those ten “extra” infield flys turned into hits, coupled with the seven homers, Escobar would’ve batted .276 with a .351 on-base percentage instead of .256/.337. It doesn’t take much to bump a batting average twenty points over the course of a season.

That’s not saying he should of or deserved those extra hits but it goes to show that Escobar isn’t facing a gigantic battle to fix his issues at the plate this coming season. The homers and BABIP drop also dragged his isolated power down from 2009′s .136 to just .062 last season, his first season with an ISO below .113.

One area at the plate that Escobar had little to no trouble with in 2010 was his plate discipline. He dropped his strikeout rate for the fourth straight season, down to 11.5 percent of his at-bats. Escobar also had his second best walk rate at 9.9 percent, which was safely above league average for the third consecutive season. That combined to give him the sixth best walks per strikeout ratio, .98, in all of baseball. He also continued to have below average swinging strike rates in 2010, missing on just 6.1 percent of his swings.

The league average wOBA last season was .321, easily the lowest of Escobar’s career. That allowed him to have a modest, given his defense and position, 88 wRC+ in a down year. Still, even in his off year at the plate he was still worth 2.2 fWAR thanks to his stellar defense. As was mentioned in the opening, he’s at the perfect age where he can be expected to return to being a 3.5-4.0 fWAR shortstop like he was in 2008-2009. Both the Marcel and Bill James projections, which factor age into their projections, agree that his bat can once again be above average in 2011.

	Batting Avg	BB%	ISO	BABIP	HR	wOBA
Bill James	.285	10.4	.097	.313	8	.333
Marcel	.273	9.4	.104	.299	9	.326

Marcel isn’t as optimistic, and usually isn’t, as the James projection. Not just for the sake of being optimistic, you won’t see that happening here too often, the James projection seems more obtainable given Escobar’s age and past performance previous to 2010. Both systems do agree however, that Escobar will see better numbers across the board in terms of his hitting.

The long term outlook for Escobar as a member of the Jays depends on several variables outside his control. The team has Adeiny Hechavarria coming up through the minors who profiles as a weak hitting, slick fielding shortstop. His bat still has a long way to go and it’s no guarantee he’ll be ready for the show in 2012, more likely not until 2013. That would be Escobar’s last season of arbitration eligibility and would be his age thirty season. That could make him attractive to a number of teams if he continues to be the player he is. There’s also the possibility that the Jays current second baseman, Aaron Hill, could be gone by then and Escobar could simply slide over to second when Hechavarria is ready.

It’s an enviable position for the Blue Jays to be in as they’re not committed to either Escobar or Hill long term at the moment. That gives them a host of options to cover the middle of their infield for at least the next couple of seasons. Where Escobar fits into that, no one knows, but for now he’s locked in at short and the Jays would be hard pressed to find someone better.

]]> http://bluejaysanalysis.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/the-jose-bautista-extension-from-all-angles/ Thu, 17 Feb 2011 17:51:39 +0000 Thomas Pinzone http://bluejaysanalysis.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/the-jose-bautista-extension-from-all-angles/ At the risk of the final details of the deal changing, we’re going to look at this deal from every possible angle. The angle of hindsight will be the ultimate of all angles in judging how this deal plays out for the Blue Jays but that’s a long ways away from where things stand as of now. And even then hindsight won’t make a difference in determining if this deal made sense at the exact moment pen was put to paper.

That moment hasn’t happened yet and there has been no confirmation of a deal from Alex Anthopoulos or anyone with the Jays as of yet. It has however, been reported that Jose Bautista will arrive in camp tomorrow and will not be in Arizona for his expected arbitration hearing. For all intents and purposes it’s safe to assume that the reported deal for 65 million dollars over five years is as good as done. That on it’s own isn’t a mammoth deal by today’s standards, it is however incredible that Bautista is the one receiving it.

There’s also a rumored option year at the end of it that could push it to a six year, 78 million dollar layout but for now we’ll focus only on the guaranteed portion. The guaranteed portion breaks down to 13 million dollars annually. However it is actually dispersed from year to year is largely inconsequential, it’ll still add up to 65 million in the end.

One of the first things that can’t be ignored in this deal is that it does appear, regardless of what Anthopoulos states publicly, that the Jays have taken most of the 71.7 million dollars saved by trading Vernon Wells to the Angels and turned around and given it to Bautista. When compared to paying Wells 86 million dollars for four years of service, paying Bautista for five years of service, Frank Francisco and Juan Rivera for one each, and pocketing 6.7 million, it’s clear the latter of the two 86 million dollar investment options is far superior.

As you’ll see in better detail below with Bautista, Wells projects out to end up providing 57 million dollars of negative value relative to his salary had he played out his contract with the Blue Jays. They figure to do better keeping Bautista around for five years. But that alone doesn’t justify the contract, just because they found a better way to spend the Wells money doesn’t make it a winner. The Jays had an endless number of options with what they could’ve done with the Wells money, time will tell if they jumped the gun on spending it.

But enough with beating up on the Wells contract, Dave Cameron over at FanGraphs projected Bautista to wind up being worth just under 65 million dollars over the life of his deal. He basically stated that if Bautista establishes himself as a 3.4 fWAR player this season and follows the natural decline of .5 fWAR per season, coupled with the cost of WAR on the open market inflating by five percent upwards each year from this off seasons five million dollars per fWAR value, the Blue Jays will break even on their investment.

Below, you’ll see my projection that borrows the inflating cost per fWAR from Cameron but starts off with a baseline of 3.7 fWAR in 2011. That figure came from averaging all three of Bautista’s available FanGraphs projections for wRAA over 600 plate appearances and factoring in his expected defensive value of -9 runs as a full-time third baseman, which is borrowed from earlier projections done here.

Projections	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	Total
fWAR	3.7	3.2	2.8	2.3	1.8	13.8
$/WAR	5	5.25	5.51	5.69	6.08
Value	18.5	16.8	15.3	13.1	11	74.7 million
Avg. Salary	13	13	13	13	13	65 million

This projection is more optimistic than Cameron’s and looks good for the Jays. His yearly value projects to be higher than his salary in four of the five seasons and ends up with a surplus value of 9.7 million dollars and a total of 13.8 fWAR. The projection allows for a sizable decline from 2010′s outstanding offensive production. Last season he was worth 48.8 batting runs above average per 600 trips to the plate. To meet his projection above he’d need and only provide 23.3 bRAA per 600 PAs in 2011.

It sounds good but the catch is that projects Bautista as a third baseman for the life of the deal. He split time between third and right and is known to favor right field. He’s also better defensively in right, but not enough to overcome the positional adjustment in value moving from third to right field. He is better off at third, at least for now, it’s possible he’ll decline enough defensively that the Jays would have to move him off and back into right field in the later years of the deal. That would put a hit in his value, even more so if he wound up DHing here and there in the last couple years.

Outside of Bautista’s own ability to play third, the Blue Jays have moved their top prospect, Brett Lawrie, off second base to third base this spring. That isn’t going to be a problem this season but if Lawrie is ready to go Opening Day 2012, the Jays have a problem. Here’s what happens if we give Bautista one year of full-time third base duty in 2011, followed by four years in right field full-time.

Projections	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	Total
fWAR	3.7	2.7	2.2	1.7	1.2	11.5
$/WAR	5	5.25	5.51	5.69	6.08
Value	18.5	14.2	12.1	9.7	7.3	61.8 million
Avg. Salary	13	13	13	13	13	65 million

The hit from moving him to right field tacks on another .5 fWAR of decline to Bautista’s outlook for 2012 and drags him down far enough to cost him 2.3 fWAR over the last four seasons. It also drops his expected value down to 61.8 million dollars. That takes the net gain from him playing at third, 9.7 million, down to a net loss of 3.2 million. It could turn out to be more than that if he winds up with any significant time at DH.

The Blue Jays could move Lawrie to right field, either right now or next season, but moving around your top hitting prospect to try and hold up the value for an investment you didn’t have to make isn’t the most ideal way of doing things. Especially when you consider moving Lawrie to right field could inhibit his potential future value. He, the twenty-one year old with whom the team has control over for the next six or seven years, the first three of which he’ll practically being playing for free.

The Jays should be more concerned with giving Lawrie every chance to succeed at third base, not Bautista. If it comes to be that Lawrie can’t hack it defensively at third and he has to move to outfield, then fine, but no one knows at this moment if that’s the case or not and he shouldn’t be moved until he’s given the chance to succeed or fail at the hot corner.

This ties in with what Dustin Parkes, from Drunk Jays Fans, said on twitter last night when he stated the bottom line of this deal is that the Jays could have had Bautista’s best year of the five(in 2011) for 7.6 or 10.5 million dollars. He’s absolutely right, the Jays would’ve stood to have gained 8 to 10.9 million dollars of surplus value from Bautista in 2011. That would’ve bought them a full year to see how Lawrie developed at third and explored any number of other options for redistributing the Wells money.

Anthopoulos has pulled off some nice trades since taking over, he could’ve gone into the trade deadline with a host of trade assets and a substantial amount of money as well. Could he have pulled something off better then? He still could of course, after all he wound up getting Yunel Escobar last year at the expense of Alex Gonzalez. But money, especially substantial amounts of money, can help get a lot of things done too.

Then there’s also the issue of what the Jays could have considered in next year’s free agent outfield market. There doesn’t appear to be any blockbuster names ticketed for free agency, amongst outfielders, but two guys in particular, David DeJesus and Josh Willingham, would have been interesting options to consider. Neither is clearly better than Bautista, both project to be worth about 2.5 fWAR this season. Willingham’s bat is more comparable to Bautista’s, while DeJesus is the best fielding of the three by a safe margin.

It’s easy to think that if Bautista projects to be better than Willingham and DeJesus this season and beyond, then what’s wrong with keeping Bautista around? Nothing, except that the Jays could’ve waited another year before deciding which one of the three is the best bet for the future and then played the market accordingly. Instead, they’re indirectly assuming right now that they’d rather have Bautista over Willingham and DeJesus(and a host of other outfielders for that matter as well) in right field for 2012 and beyond. Making a decision is one thing, making it eight months before you have to is another issue all together.

One other thing, it came up during the Jose Bautista Twitter Barrage of 2010 last night, that this shows the Jays owners are committed to spending money on the team when they need to. That’s a nice theory but there’s two problems with it. The obvious one is that they showed faith in what the last GM said they needed to spend money on when they ponied up for the Wells deal, Alex Rios’ 64 million dollar deal, and that lovely 36 million dollar contract for BJ Ryan.

The second problem is that the teams owners probably remember those deals and how lucky they were to get off the hook for two of them. If the first time Anthopoulos pushes for a big deal and it blows up in his face, who’s to say the team will give him the cash the next time he asks for it?

There’s reasons to think this deal will be a winner and reasons to think just the opposite. It is a better outlay of money than keeping Wells around. It’s tough to shake the notion though that this isn’t the best way to spend 65 million dollars for this team right now. How many future options in terms of player personal moves this takes off the table is impossible to know, but surely it’ll inhibit a number of options over the life of the deal.

This isn’t a case of spending money for the sake of spending money, let’s not go that far. Anthopoulos has approached everything so far in a calculated manner, and there’s no reason to think that he didn’t do his homework with this deal. The only question is whether or not more time could’ve made his homework a lot easier to figure out.

 

]]> http://bluejaysanalysis.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/optimism-for-encarnacion/ Fri, 11 Feb 2011 18:15:29 +0000 Thomas Pinzone http://bluejaysanalysis.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/optimism-for-encarnacion/ One of the more talked about Blue Jays topics this off-season has been Edwin Encarnacion. Despite less than stellar offensive production from him since joining the team there’s a good deal of optimism about his hitting across most of the Jays blogs, both by the writers and in the comments section. The split between his fielding ability however is much more divided.

Some believe that Encarnacion made real progress in the field last season after working with Jays coach Brian Butterfield. The defensive metrics support that theory but Encarnacion only played third for 841 innings. Small sample sizes are harder to trust when it comes to fielding metrics as opposed to hitting and there’s 5300 or so innings that say Encarnacion is worth -11.5 runs per 150 defensive games played. His UZR/150 was -2.3 in 2010 and defensive runs saved actually gave him a +3 for the season.

His 2010 defensive numbers were easily the best of his career but just because they’re the most recent sample doesn’t make them the best sample. When his defensive value was estimated the other day, he was pegged for  -8 runs over 150 games. Even that has a fair bit of optimism, but in the spirit of the season let’s go ahead and buy Encarnacion putting up a -2 UZR/150 next season.

That six run adjustment alone jumps his projected fWAR from 2.1 to 2.7. Yesterday’s projection however is much more reasonable, and this is not meant to replace that. But the real sticking point that makes Encarnacion intriguing for the coming season is his bat bouncing back to where it was with Cincinnati from 2006-2008.

It’s rarely a good idea to look three to five full seaons back into a player’s past and think they rekindle that level of production. That’s exactly why the projection system’s out there don’t do it. Below is a table with Encarnacion’s average production from 2006-2008, his average in his last two seasons, mostly with Toronto, and both his Bill James and Marcels projections for 2011.

Encarnacion	BA	BB%	ISO	wOBA
2006-08	.272	8.8	.187	.352
2009-10	.243	7.8	.226	.335
Marcels ’11	.244	9.4	.201	.334
James ’11	.258	9.3	.219	.350

Before we breakdown the table, the reason for going so far back into Edwin’s past is that he’s still just 27 years-old, about to enter into his most likely two or three seasons of peak production. This isn’t hoping a thirty-something, over the hill, vet can rekindle his glory days. For all anyone knows we have yet to see Encarnacion’s glory days. That’s the spark for the optimism.

The table shows very clearly why the Jays dealt for him in the first place, a twenty-five year old with a three year average wOBA of .352 is a desirable type of talent to target. His power has increased since 2008 but his walk rate has actually dropped and his average has plummeted. That actually can’t be attributed to the change in parks, Cincinnati’s home park is a slightly better place for a right handed batter to hit than Rogers Center, according to StatCorner.

The extra power hasn’t saved Encarnacion’s overall production with a wOBA of only .335 the last two seasons. Without being completely sure how either system works it is obvious that James’ projection takes more of his early numbers into account or it’s just very optimistic in general(which isn’t a stretch, just look at Jose Bautista’s projections).

Marcels oddly enough is pretty close to his actual production from 2009-’10 with regards to his batting average, isolated power and wOBA but decidedly optimistic with his walk rate. The walk rate is almost exactly the same in both projections. That’s easy to explain because he’s had a walk rate above 10 percent in two of the last three seasons, one gets grouped with ’06-’08 and the other with ’09-’10.

They both expect him to keep his ISO over .200 but James’ oddly enough expects more power like recent times than Marcels. That’s the complete opposite of how the two systems treat his batting average, Marcels’ is right in line with his .243 average the last two years while James’ .258 average basically splits the difference between his early .272 and more recent .243 batting averages.

To sum up all the confusion on how these two systems work, Marcels is more pessimistic and James is pretty close to expecting a return to Encarnacion’s .352 wOBA from 2006-2008. If we substitute the Marcels projections used yesterday for James’ outlook and take a glass is three quarters full when it only appears to be half full look to Encarnacion’s defense we see his value at third jump from 2.1 to 3.5.

That’s a good size jump, 3.5 fWAR at third base in 2010 would’ve put him in the upper half of all of baseball’s third baseman. This isn’t to say that should be expected of Encarnacion this season but probably represents the ceiling of his potential performance. In a pure DH role replacing his Marcels projection with James’ boosts his value there as well, from .9 to 1.7 fWAR. Faith in the boost to his value as DH requires less optimism naturally, because the question of his fielding ability is removed.

Both, all of them really, of the projection systems used get some guys right on the money every year and they get some guys very, very wrong, positively or negatively, as well. It’s not easy to figure out how they work, but it isn’t tough to tell which one the Blue Jays are hoping turns out to be right.

 

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