Teixeira’s Ability to Pick Up Slack: Re-Evaluating April 12, 2011
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Economics.Tags: Alex Rodriguez, binomial distribution, home runs, Mark Teixeira, Michael Kaye, Robinson Cano, Yankees
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In an earlier post, I discussed Yankees broadcaster Michael Kaye’s belief that Mark Teixeira and Robinson Cano were picking up slack during the time in which Alex Rodriguez was struggling to hit his 600th home run. I noticed that Teixeira had hit 18 home runs in 423 plate appearances during the first 93 games of the season for rates of .194 home runs per game and .0426 home runs per plate appearance. During the time between A-Rod’s #599 and #600, Teixeira’s performance was different in a statistically significant way: his production per game was up to .417 home runs per game and .0926 home runs per plate appearance.
Now, let’s take a look at the home stretch of the season. Teixeira played in 52 games, starting 51 of them, and hit 10 home runs in 230 plate appearances. That works out to .1923 home runs per game or .0435 per plate appearance. Those numbers are exceptionally similar to Teixeira’s production in the first stretch of the season, so it seems reasonable to say that those rates represent his standard rate of production.
This is prima facie evidence that Teixeira was working to hit more home runs, consciously or subconsciously, during the time that Rodriguez was struggling. The question then becomes, is there a reason to expect production to increase during the stretch between late July and early August? What if Mark was just operating better following the All-Star Break?
I chose a twelve-game stretch immediately following the All-Star Break to evaluate. This period overlaps with the drought between A-Rod’s 599th and 600th home runs, stretching from July 16 to July 28, so six games overlap and six do not. During that time, Teixeira hit 3 home runs in 56 plate appearances. His rate was therefore .0535 home runs per plate appearance.
If we assume that Teixeira’s true rate of production is about .043 home runs per plate appearance (his average over the season, excluding the drought), then the probability of his hitting exactly 3 home runs in a random 56-plate-appearance stretch is
He has a 43% chance of hitting 3 or more, compared with the complementary probability 57% probability of hitting fewer than 3. It’s well within the normal expected range. So, the All-Star Break effect is unlikely to explain Teixeira’s abnormal production last July.
15 Strikeouts Early In The Season April 11, 2011
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: 15 strikeouts, Curt Schilling, Fernando Rodney, first ten games, Hisanori Takahashi, Idle Cy Young speculation, Jered Weaver, Pedro Martinez, strikeouts
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Apparently, Jered Weaver wants to make a stronger case for the Cy Young this year.
Last night, the Los Angeles Angeles hosted the Toronto Blue Jays and won handily 3-1. Weaver was the starter and went an impressive 7 2/3 innings with 125 pitches before handing the ball to Hisanori Takahashi. Tak got one crucial out before Fernando Rodney came in for the save.
Most impressive, though, was Weaver’s strikeout total: 15. Ordinarily, pitchers don’t achieve such high strikeout totals this early in the season. As the Angels’ opening day starter, he was warmed up slightly more than most pitchers in early April – it was his third start in the ninth game of the season, rather than his second – but it still shows impressive control to notch so many Ks so early in the season.
In fact, only 11 pitchers have gotten 15 or more strikeouts within the first ten games of a season. (It’s conceivable that a team playing their tenth game tonight will render this entry obsolete tomorrow, but I’m willing to take that risk.) The highest total in the first 10 games was Curt Schilling in his complete game on April 7, 2002, pitching the Diamondbacks to a 2-0 victory over the Brewers. Interestingly, Schilling had four strikeouts after the first two outs of the seventh, meaning that Weaver’s K/9 is actually higher for the games in question.
Pedro Martinez, meanwhile, totaled 16 Ks on April 8, 2001, in 8 scoreless innings against the Devil Rays. Like Schilling, this was Pedro’s second start of the season.
Ask me again… Who’s next to 600 home runs? April 10, 2011
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: 600 home runs, Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez, oops, stupid predictions, Twins, unwarranted assumptions
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In an earlier post, I compared Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome and came to the conclusion that Thome would be the next player to hit 600 home runs.
Nonetheless, it seems that some of my assumptions were incorrect. The first was the assertion that Manny and Thome were the same age. Mea culpa – Thome is actually almost two full years older. That came from a relative-age comparison I had run a few posts prior and I just misremembered.
The second is that I used a downgraded rate of production for Thome. He had been hitting at a .053 home run per plate appearance clip over the previous season and a half. If, however, I use Thome’s 2010 numbers, he hit – for the same team he’s playing for now, in substantially the same position – 25 home runs in 340 plate appearances for a rate of .0735 home runs per plate appearance, or approximately one home run every 13 1/2 plate appearances.
Finally, I assumed that Thome wouldn’t be used very often. I assumed he’d make about 2.5 plate appearances per game. However, Thome has played in six of the eight games so far this season and made … 16 plate appearances. (Okay, so this wasn’t too bad.)
I’ll make the totally unwarranted assumption that Thome will play in 75% of games and average 2 plate appearances per game. He needs eleven home runs to hit 600. At his average rate, he’ll take (13.6)x(11) = 149.6, or about 150, plate appearances to do this. That’s about 75 games to play in, or about 100 real-time games, if he continues averaging 75% play time and 2 plate appearances per game. That takes us about 62% of the way through the season. The Twins played game #100 on July 26 last year.
I therefore predict that Jim Thome, barring injury, will hit his 600th home run in the month of July.
Spitballing: Blanton in the Phillies’ Rotation February 25, 2011
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Adam Eaton, Chan Ho Park, Clif Lee, Cole Hamels, Joe Blanton, Kyle Kendrick, Mets, Mike Pelfrey, Phillies, R.A. Dickey, Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt, Spitballing, Year of the Pitcher
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The Phillies have one of the best rotations, on paper, in baseball today. Although some people are measured in their optimism, including Jayson Stark, I think the important thing to remember is that we’re arguing over whether they’re “the best ever,” not if they’re going to be competitive. Rotations that bring this kind of excitement at the beginning of the year are few and far between. The Mets, for example, aren’t drawing this kind of expectation – guys like R.A. Dickey and Mike Pelfrey are solid, but they don’t have the deserved reputations of Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels, and Joe Blanton.
I’m hardly the first to say it, but Joe Blanton seems to be the odd man out. He’ll be making about $8.5 million next year. Blanton faced 765 batters last year, fourth behind Halladay, Hamels, and Kyle Kendrick. Immediately behind Blanton was Jamie Moyer with 460 batters faced. For the record, the fifth-most-active pitcher faced 362 batters in 2009 (Chan Ho Park) and 478 in 2008 (Adam Eaton). Let’s take that number and adjust it to about 550 batters faced, since Blanton will get more starts than most fifth starters and he’ll stay in longer since he’s a proven quantity. In a normal year, the Phils face about 6200 batters, so that means Blanton’s 550 will be about 9% of the team’s total. (That figure is robust even in last year’s Year of the Pitcher with depressed numbers of batters faced.)
According to J.C. Bradbury’s Hot Stove Economics, this yields an average marginal revenue product of 3.15 million. This figure is based on the average rate that pitchers prevent runs and the average revenue of an MLB team. Obviously, Blanton is a better than the average pitcher (ignoring his negative Wins Above Replacement last year) and the Phillies make more money than most teams, but this is a pretty damning figure.
The other thing to take into account is that Blanton’s marginal wins aren’t worth as much to the Phillies now that they have a four-ace rotation. He won’t get every start and he won’t be a 20-game winner. Even if he were, he’ll be providing insurance wins – he might have an extra ten wins over a AAA-level replacement, but chances are that those wins won’t make the difference between making the playoffs and missing them when you figure in the Phillies’ solid bullpen and run production.
Instead, let’s say Blanton goes to the White Sox, just to pick a team. Jake Peavy and Edwin Jackson combined for 765 batters faced, so plug Blanton in for Freddy Garcia with 671 batters faced – a worst-case scenario. That would be 10.85 % of the batters faced, bringing him up to about 3.8 million. In this case, though, you have a team who finished 6 games back and missed the playoffs. If you replace Garcia with Blanton, you stand a very good chance to make the playoffs. That’s another way of saying that the Phillies’ 6-game lead over Atlanta (the NL wild card team) was worth less than the Twins’ 6-game lead over the White Sox (when neither team had as many wins as the AL wild card).
Economists would refer to this as a diminishing marginal returns situation – when you have fewer wins, around the middle of the pack, each additional win is worth a little less. This captures the idea that taking a 110-win team and giving them 111 wins would cost a lot of money and not yield much extra benefit, but a 90-win team making 91 wins might let them overtake another team.
The upshot of all of this? Trade Blanton for prospects. Rely on the bullpen and develop a future starter. Roy Halladay won’t be competitive forever.
Why the difference in voting? January 5, 2011
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball, Economics.Tags: Cy Young, Felix Hernandez, Jered Weaver, marginal value
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As much as I love the Angels, I can’t take Jered’s side on this one.
Today, I was browsing the voting results from the various awards being voted on. Each league’s Cy Young award voting included the requisite two closers. No surprises there. There was also a beautiful case study of the AL Cy Young winner, Felix Hernandez, versus Jered Weaver. They had identical records (13-12) in an identical number of starts (34) and similar strikeouts (233 for Weaver versus 232 for Hernandez). What explains Hernandez’ winning total of 167 points contra Weaver’s fifth-place 24?
A few things come to mind:
- Hernandez went longer. In the same number of games, wins, and losses, King Felix pitched 249 2/3 innings, whereas Weaver pitched 224 1/3. Those extra 25 1/3 innings show not only that Hernandez was considered more reliable by his manager but that he was, in fact, more reliable (since the extra innings didn’t result in his stats taking a hit). Hernandez also pitched a formidable 6 complete games with one shutout, whereas Weaver had no pips in either category.
- Hernandez was more effective. Felix gave up fewer runs (80 versus 83) and had a much higher proportion of unearned runs – fully 21.25% of his runs were unearned, whereas Weaver had about 9.6% of runs unearned. That means that more of Hernandez’s runs are attributable to defensive mishaps than Weaver’s. That leads to Felix with a miniscule 2.27 ERA, much lower than Weaver’s respectable 3.01, and 6 wins above replacement compared with Weaver’s 5.4.
- Hernandez was marginally more effective. He had six Tough Losses and no Cheap Wins, while Weaver had five Tough Losses and one Cheap Win. Felix couldn’t rely on his team to supply him with significant run support, while Weaver got that support in his one cheap win.
- However, Hernandez’s control wasn’t as good. Felix walked 70 batters for a control ratio (Strikeouts over walks) of .30 and threw 14 wild pitches. Jered, on the other hand, walked only 54 batters, for a control ratio of .23, and only 7 wild pitches. Still, it seems reasonable to assume that control suffers exponentially as innings increase, so part of the apparent lack of control can be explained by Hernandez’s extra innings.
Overall, Felix’s marginal value over Weaver more than explains the difference in voting.
Utility Pitchers II: Alternate Definition January 3, 2011
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Brian Bruney, Bruce Chen, Carlos Zambrano, David Hernandez, Francsico Rodriguez, Hisanori Takahashi, Joe Girardi, Matt Garza, Matt Harrison, Mike Pelfrey, Neftali Feliz, Nelson Figueroa, quality starts, saves, Tom Gorzelanny
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In the previous post, I discussed utility pitchers, which I defined as players who primarily play a defensive position who are called on to pitch. It never occurred to me that Bleacher Report had previously defined it otherwise – as a pitcher who can perform well in any role.
How can I quantify that? Well, it seems to me that a sign of quality as a starter is the vaunted quality start (game score above 50, or six innings with three or fewer runs allowed, depending who you ask), and a sign of quality as a reliever is the save. Thus, a good utility pitcher is one who can muster at least one quality start and at least one save in a given season. It’s not perfect, since it relies on the manager being willing to insert a primary starter at the right point in a game to earn a save (or starting a primary reliever, as Joe Girardi did with Brian Bruney back in 2008). Nonetheless, eight pitchers managed that feat this year.
By far the most versatile was Hisanori Takahashi of the Mets. Tak managed six quality starts, a handful of appearances as a left-handed specialist, and eight saves when he stepped in as the Mets’ closer after Francisco Rodriguez became unavailable.
Mike Pelfrey also represented for the Mets, although he made only one relief appearance (in the crazy 20-inning game against the Cardinals).
Matt Garza of the Rays made some news this July when he showed his versatility by starting and saving games in the same series.
The other five pitchers were Bruce Chen, Nelson Figueroa, Tom Gorzelanny, Matt Harrison, and David Hernandez.
Shockingly, Carlos Zambrano wasn’t among the pitchers listed, even though he spent some time in the bullpen for the Cubs and some time as a starter. (Big Z was briefly the highest-paid setup man in the league.)
My guess for the 2011 season? Neftali Feliz of the Rangers was among the best closers this year but has the ability to start games as well. Most likely, though, it’ll be someone like Pelfrey, who was pressed into service in relief for an extra-inning game.
A Utility Pitcher Sidebar December 30, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Aaron Miles, Andy Marte, Bill Hall, Felipe Lopez, Joe Inglett, Joe Mather, Jonathan Van Every, Jose Canseco, Kevin Cash, position players pitching, Spectrum Club, Wade Boggs
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The joys of the position player pitching were well represented this year. A whopping eight players came in from the infield or outfield and stood on the mound, more often than not looking pretty comfortable. Two of them – Aaron Miles and Andy Marte – joined the Spectrum Club by pitching and being the designated hitter in the same season, as we discussed in a previous post. Miles’ achievement was even more unlikely because he played for a National League team, so he had to get lucky and DH an interleague game.
Let’s talk about the average utility pitcher, which is a phrase I just made up to avoid saying “position player called on to pitch” over and over again.
- He’s a journeyman. Felipe Lopez, who pitched for the Cardinals on April 17 in a 20-inning game against the Mets, has played for six teams since 2001. Joe Inglett played for three different teams since 2006, and he pitched for the Brewers in a loss on July 27. Backup catcher Kevin Cash has pitched for five teams since 2002, including Houston, where he pitched in a loss on May 28.
- He’s expendable.Jonathan Van Every, who pitched for Boston in a May 8 loss to the Yankees, has played 39 games over three seasons of bouncing between the minors and the majors. Bill Hall, his teammate, pitched on May 28 (in a different game than Cash did!) and played six utility positions for Boston during 2010 – second base, third base, shortstop, and all three outfield positions – in addition to pitching. Joe Mather, who pitched in the same game as Lopez and took the loss, played all three outfield positions and both infield corners. These are guys who are marginal enough that they have to learn a million positions just to be on the roster.
- He played for Boston at some point. Okay, okay, Inglett, Miles, Marte and Mather never did. Fine. But Van Every and Hall both pitched for Boston, Cash has done two unrelated stints with the Red Sox, and Lopez ended the season as Terry Francona’s utility man. That’s quite the coincidence, wouldn’t you agree?
Before anyone gripes, there’s one other type of utility pitcher, but he wasn’t represented this season. That, of course, is the star who gets his jollies pitching. This includes two prime varieties: the Wade Boggs, (wily vet who taught himself a knuckleball), and the Jose Canseco (idiot who hurts himself).
The Spectrum Club December 28, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Aaron Miles, Andy Marte, designated hitter, Felipe Lopez, Ike Davis, Jeff Kunkel, Joe Mather, Mark Loretta, Nick Swisher, position players pitching, Spectrum Club, Wade Boggs
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This year, I get to induct two more players into the prestigious* Spectrum Club.
*not a guarantee
The Spectrum Club is the elite group of players who play, in one season, at both ends of the Defensive Spectrum. At the end of a season, a player is inducted if he pitches in at least one game and appears as designated hitter in at least one game. As it stands, that leaves about ten pitchers who only served as placeholder DHs but never made a plate appearance on the rolls, but that’s okay.
Three players have joined the Spectrum Club twice – Jeff Kunkel in 1988 and 1989 for Texas, Mark Loretta in 2001 for the Brewers and 2009 for the Dodgers, and Wade Boggs in 1997 for the Yankees and 1999 for Tampa Bay. Baltimore leads the club in inductees with six.
This year’s first inductee is Aaron Miles of the Cardinals, who actually pitched twice (August 3 in a loss to Houston and September 28 in a loss to Pittsburgh). Making it more impressive, Miles DHed only once, in an interleague win over Kansas City on June 26. Miles is an experienced pitcher, having tossed twice in 2007 and once in 2008. Tony Larussa has quite the commodity there, and I bet he wishes he’d had Miles on hand for that crazy 20-inning game against the Mets on April 17.
The second player to join the club is Andy Marte of Cleveland. Marte DHed twice, once on July 10 in a loss to the Rays and once on September 7. His single inning pitched came as part of the Best Game Ever, a July 29 loss to the Yankees in which the Yankees lost their DH and Marte struck out Nick Swisher.
Who’s the smart money on for Spectrum Club inductions in 2011? Joe Mather and Felipe Lopez are both reasonable hitters and both pitched for Tony Larussa in the Mets-Cardinals game. If Lopez stays with the Red Sox, he might be called on to DH an odd late game, and Terry Francona has been known to use position players in emergencies. Ike Davis may well be asked to DH interleague games for the Mets, and he was a closer in college, so he’d be a solid emergency reliever. If I had to guess, though, I’d figure that the next Spectrum Club inductee will be Nick Swisher getting his second induction for the Yankees.
Hit Batsman Roundup, 2010 December 26, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: Brett Carroll, hit batsman, hit by pitch, Hunter Pence, Kevin Youkilis, Omar Infante, Raul Ibanez, regression, Rickie Weeks, Scott Podsednik, spurious correlation, Victor Martinez
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There’s very little more subtle and involved than the quiet elegance of a batter getting beaned. In fact, that particular strategy was invoked 1549 times in 2010, with 419 batters getting plunked at least one.
The absolute leader this season was not Kevin Youkilis or Brett Carroll but Rickie Weeks, who led with 25 HBP in 754 plate appearances. Put another way, Weeks got hit in 3.32% of his plate appearances. That’s almost once every 30 plate appearances, or nearly four times the MLB-wide rate of 0.83% of the time. (Incidentally, that’s total HBP divided by total plate appearances. The more skewed mean percentage is 0.58%.) What leads to such a high number of plunkings?
I would assume that a few things would go into the decision to hit a batter intentionally:
- Pitchers are less likely to be hit by other pitchers.
- If a hitter is likely to get on base anyway, he’s more likely to be hit – you don’t lose anything by putting him on base, and you control the damage by limiting him to one base.
- If a batter is likely to hit for extra bases, he’s more likely to be hit.
- If a batter is likely to steal a base, he’s less likely to be hit, but there is an offsetting effect for caught stealing.
- American League batters are more likely to be hit because of the moral hazard effect of pitchers not having to bat.
With that in mind, I set up a regression in R using every player who had at least one plate appearance in 2010. I added binary variables for Pitcher (1 if the player’s primary position is pitcher, 0 otherwise) and Lg (1 if the player played the entire season in the American League, 0 otherwise), then regressed HBP/PA on Pitcher, Lg, BB, HR, OBP, SLG, SB, and CS. The results were somewhat surprising:
Call: lm(formula = hbppa ~ Pitcher + Lg + BB + HR + OBP + SLG + SB + CS) Residuals: Min 1Q Median 3Q Max -0.0154027 -0.0059081 -0.0018096 0.0001845 0.1397065 Coefficients: Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|) (Intercept) 6.847e-03 9.815e-04 6.975 5.77e-12 *** Pitcher -5.399e-03 9.136e-04 -5.909 4.81e-09 *** Lg -1.614e-03 7.054e-04 -2.289 0.0223 * BB -1.412e-05 3.257e-05 -0.434 0.6647 HR 1.122e-04 7.956e-05 1.411 0.1587 OBP 8.570e-03 3.477e-03 2.465 0.0139 * SLG -3.451e-03 2.468e-03 -1.398 0.1624 SB -6.749e-05 8.693e-05 -0.776 0.4377 CS 1.770e-04 2.646e-04 0.669 0.5036 --- Signif. codes: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1 Residual standard error: 0.01042 on 935 degrees of freedom Multiple R-squared: 0.08839, Adjusted R-squared: 0.08059 F-statistic: 11.33 on 8 and 935 DF, p-value: 2.07e-15
Created by Pretty R at inside-R.org
That’s right – only Pitcher, Lg, HR, and SLG are even marginally significant (80% level). BB, SB, and CS aren’t even close. Why not?
Well, for one, the number of stolen bases and times caught stealing are relatively small no matter what. There probably isn’t enough data. For another, there simply probably isn’t as much intent to hit batters as we’d like to pretend.
Second, American Leaguers are less likely to be hit. This baffles me a little bit.
Also, keep in mind that this model shouldn’t be expected to, and cannot, explain all or even most of the variation in hit batsman. The R-squared is about .09, meaning that it explains about 9% of the variation. It ignores probably the most important factor, physics, entirely. (That is, the model doesn’t have any way to account for accidental plunkings.) As a side note, other regressions show there might be an effect for plate appearances, meaning you’re more likely to get hit by chance alone if you take enough pitches.
Finally, there are some guys who manage to do the opposite of Weeks’ feat. Houston outfielder Hunter Pence went 156 games and 658 plate appearances without getting plunked at all. Honorable mentions go to Raul Ibanez, Scott Podsednik, Victor Martinez, and Omar Infante, all of whom went over 500 plate appearances without a beaning. Now THAT’S plate discipline.
Weird Pitching Decisions Almanac in 2010 December 24, 2010
Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.Tags: baseball-reference.com, Carl Pavano, Cheap Wins, Clayton Kershaw, Colby Lewis, Cubs, Felix Hernandez, Francisco Rodriguez, Hiroki Kuroda, Jeremy Affeldt, John Lackey, Justin Verlander, Mariners, Phil Hughes, Red Sox, Rodrigo Lopez, Roy Oswalt, Royals, Tommy Hanson, Tough Losses, Tyler Clippard, vulture wins
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I’m a big fan of weird pitching decisions. A pitcher with a lot of tough losses pitches effectively but stands behind a team with crappy run support. A pitcher with a high proportion of cheap wins gets lucky more often than not. A reliever with a lot of vulture wins might as well be taking the loss.
In an earlier post, I defined a tough loss two ways. The official definition is a loss in which the starting pitcher made a quality start – that is, six or more innings with three or fewer runs. The Bill James definition is the same, except that James defines a quality start as having a game score of 50 or higher. In either case, tough losses result from solid pitching combined with anemic run support.
This year’s Tough Loss leaderboard had 457 games spread around 183 pitchers across both leagues. The Dodgers’ Hiroki Kuroda led the league with a whopping eight starts with game scores of 50 or more. He was followed by eight players with six tough losses, including Justin Verlander, Carl Pavano, Roy Oswalt, Rodrigo Lopez, Colby Lewis, Clayton Kershaw, Felix Hernandez, and Tommy Hanson. Kuroda’s Dodgers led the league with 23 tough losses, followed by the Mariners and the Cubs with 22 each.
There were fewer cheap wins, in which a pitcher does not make a quality start but does earn the win. The Cheap Win leaderboard had 248 games and 136 pitchers, led by John Lackey with six and Phil Hughes with 5. Hughes pitched to 18 wins, but Lackey’s six cheap wins were almost half of his 14-win total this year. That really shows what kind of run support he had. The Royals and the Red Sox were tied for first place with 15 team cheap wins each.
Finally, a vulture win is one for the relievers. I define a vulture win as a blown save and a win in the same game, so I searched Baseball Reference for players with blown saves and then looked for the largest number of wins. Tyler Clippard was the clear winner here. In six blown saves, he got 5 vulture wins. Francisco Rodriguez and Jeremy Affeldt each deserve credit, though – each had three blown saves and converted all three for vulture wins. (When I say “converted,” I mean “waited it out for their team to score more runs.”)
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