The Most Miserable Time of the Year

No, not the holidays. I’m down with the holidays.

I’m talking baseball. There aren’t any games, obviously. The biggest news is contract signings, which, because of the amount of money Jhonny Peralta, who was suspended for 50 games last season, is getting, has led to a new round of teeth-gnashing over PEDs. And the Hall of Fame ballot was released.

I don’t know what annoys me more, articles about PEDs or articles about the Hall of Fame. (Lately, there has been a convergence, amplifying the annoyance.) They have nothing to do with what goes on On The Field of Play. Worse, the Hall of Fame voting season allows sportswriters who don’t even write about baseball (really: you don't have to be currently following baseball to vote) to pontificate about a game that you and I know more about.

And the controversies…The cause célèbre in recent years is Jack Morris. Personally, I wouldn’t vote for him.* But if he gets in, as I expect he will, good for him. No hard feelings. It won’t ruin the Hall for me. But you can be sure that the pro- and anti-Morris prose will go over the top, what with this being his last year on the ballot.

I get more upset by deserving players who don’t get in. Ron Santo, probably one of the ten best third basemen of all time, didn’t get in until 28 years after he retired and two years after he died. That was classy. A Hall of Fame without Tim Raines, possibly the second best leadoff hitter of all time, doesn’t work for me. I get more upset by exclusion than inclusion.

But we are now in the midst of sportswriters and baseball fans and all sorts of baseball commentators talking about how nobody should get in who isn't of the same caliber as Willie Mays, or how nobody should get in at all because Barry Bonds took steroids (some writers returned blank ballots last year to "protest" PEDs that Raines and Craig Biggio, to name two, didn't take), mixed in with people complaining about how much money players make today.

When do pitchers and catchers report?

*Morris was a regular starter from 1979 to 1994. During that period, there were seven pitchers with over 2,800 innings pitched: Morris, Charlie Hough, Dennis Martinez, Bob Welch, Nolan Ryan, Frank Tanana, and Dave Stieb. Of them, Morris had the worst career ERA, even adjusted for playing in a hitter’s park at Tiger Stadium. His most-wins-in-the-1980s can be attributed to fantastic run support: 4.9 per game, 0.6 better than the league average. That's a lot. None of the others got more than 0.2 over average. So he had a high ERA (3.90--that'd the worst among pitchers in the Hall) and a won-lost record that as much a product of his teammates as his doing.

Ten Things You Didn't Know About Baseball Last Year

More time paging through the Bill James Handbook:

• Among players active in 2013, Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez are 1-2, in that order, in career games, plate appearances, at bats, and hits. Rodriguez and Jeter are 1-2, in that order, in career total bases and runs scored. They’re tied for 1-2 in seasons played.
• Jeter is also third in career strikeouts, third in being hit by pitches, and third in grounding into double plays.
• The Seattle Mariners ordered the most intentional walks in the AL, 48, in spite of the fact that their opponents scored one or more runs following the intentional walk 29 times, the most in the majors. No other AL team had more than 38 intentional walks. The Cincinnati Reds allowed 64 intentional walks and got out of the inning with no runs scored 46 times, both the most in the majors.
• You know how the knuckleball is hard to control? Toronto’s R.A Dickey was in the strike zone with 46.7% of his pitches, the fifth-most among major league starters. The Phillies’ Cliff Lee was the only pitcher with over half his pitches in the strike zone.
• Baserunners stole 36 bases when Boston’s John Lackey was on the mound. No other pitcher had more than 25 stolen bases allowed.
• The Angels’ Mike Trout’s average home run traveled 420 feet, the longest in the majors. He also went from first to third on singles 27 times, easily the most in the majors. I wonder if that’s ever happened before.
• You may have heard that the Cardinals led the majors in batting with runners in scoring position last year. They had five of the top six such batters in the NL last season: Allen Craig .454, Matt Holliday .390, Matt Carpenter .388, Carlos Beltran .374, Yadier Molina .373.
• Among American League batters, Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera swung at the first pitch the most (39.7% of plate appearances) and Minnesota’s Joe Mauer swung at the first pitch the least (6.8%). Given that they were 1-2 in batting average, I think we can conclude that swinging at the first pitch isn’t a particularly useful stat.
• There were 14 relief pitchers (minimum 50 innings pitched) with an ERA below 2.00 in 2013. That includes Luke Hochevar of the Royals (1.92), who nonetheless has a 5.10 career ERA over 190 games in seven seasons.
• The Phillies’ Kevin Frandsen led the majors in pinch hits, with 14 (in 56 at bats). Evan Gattis of Atlanta had four home runs, a double, and a single in ten pinch-hit at bats, giving him a .600/.692/1.900 slash line.

Twins Fans, Meet Phil Hughes

Another day, another signing by the pitching-poor Twins, with former Yankee free agent Phil Hughes signing a three-year, $24 million deal. Let's break it down.

What's Good About Him? Hughes strikes me as a good candidate for a bounceback season. In part, that's because of what financial analysts refer to as an "easy comp:" His 2013 was terrible, with a 4-14 won-lost and 5.19 ERA. But you know how when I wrote about Ricky Nolasco I said Nolasco's consistently high batting average on balls in play indicates that he gives up too many hits? Hughes' batting average on balls in play is a model of inconsistency: .275 in 2010 (19 points below the league average), .307 (14 points above) in 2011, .286 in 2012 (7 points below), .327 (29 points above) last year. His ERA followed suit: 4.19 in 2010, rising to 5.79 in 2011, falling to 4.23 in 2012, rising to 5.19 in 2013. The thing is: Hughes' pattern is actually more normal than Nolasco's. Pitchers are sometimes more successful at not allowing hits than at other times, and that success is, for most, pretty random. So Hughes is due to return to normal. 

What's Not So Good About Him? Well, he may due for a return to normal, but "normal" for Phil Hughes isn't all that fantastic. Let's compare the 2013 Twins to Nolasco and Hughes over the past three years:
   Strikeouts: Nolasco 17.1% of batters, Hughes 18.6%, 2013 Twins 15.7%
   Walks: Nolasco 5.4% of batters, Hughes 6.4%, 2013 Twins 7.3%
   Home Runs: Nolasco 2.2% of batters, Hughes 3.8%, 2013 Twins 2.7%

Nolasco is a big improvement in all three categories. Hughes gets more strikeouts but his control isn't much better than the average Twins pitcher and he gives up more homers. One of the reasons is that he's one of the more extreme fly ball pitchers in baseball, i.e., when hitters make contact with his pitches, they go in the air rather than on the ground. Last year, 30.5% of the batted balls he allowed were grounders. That's the lowest percentage among the 139 pitchers with 100 or more innings. The major league average was 43.3%. 

Ah, but that's another reason for cautious optimism: last year his home run percentage (percentage of plate appearances resulting in a homer) was 4.8% at home and 2.7% on the road. In 2012 it was 5.3% at home, 3.2% on the road. In 2011 it was 4.3% at home, 1.7% on the road. You get the pattern? He gave up a lot of his home runs at Yankee Stadium. Now he's moving to Target Field, where he's faced 83 batters and given up only one homer. (Of course, all 83 were Twins, making the job easier.) As the picture at right (from ESPN's Home Run Tracker) shows, all but one of the 24 home runs Hughes allowed in 2013 would probably be homers at Target Field. But that's just looking at the dimensions of the ballpark. Is there more of a wind blowing out at Yankee Stadium than at Target Field? Probably. According to the Bill James Handbook, Yankee Stadium had a park factor of 125 for home runs over the last three years, while Target Field's was 84. That means there were 25% more homers hit in Yankee games at home than away, and 16% fewer hit at Twins games at home than away. So a homer-prone flyball pitcher is moving from the second-best home run hitter's park in the league to the third-worst. That's encouraging.

And one more thing: Hughes is young. He made his major league debut at age 20, so he's become a free agent earlier than average. He won't be 28 until June. He should still have good years ahead of him.

So What Should Twins Fans Expect? Like Nolasco, Hughes isn't an elite pitcher. But he's probably better than what he was last year, and the move out of the Bronx should help him keep more balls in the park. By the end of the year, I wouldn't be surprised if his numbers were better than league average.

Twins Fans, Meet Ricky Nolasco

The Twins have signed Ricky Nolasco to a four-year, $49 million contract, the largest in team history. Twins fans may be unfamiliar with a pitcher who's toiled for fairly anonymous Marlins teams most of his career. Here's what you need to know.

What's Good About Him? A few things:

• He was pretty good last year: 13-11, 3.70 ERA split between the Marlins and the Dodgers.
• He's durable. Over the past six seasons, he's started 186 games, which ties him for 19th among all pitchers.
• By some key measures, he's been pretty effective. He's struck out 17.1% of the batters he's faced over the past three seasons, walked 5.4%, and allowed homers to 2.2%. Last year the Twins' ratios were 15.7%, 7.3%, and 2.7%. So he's likely to get more strikeouts and allow fewer walks and homers than the typical Twins pitcher last year (granted, a low bar).

What's Not So Good About Him? Over the past three seasons, there have been only eight pitchers with 475+ innings who walked fewer than 2.2 batters per nine innings, struck out 6.6 or more, and gave up fewer then 0.9 homers. Here they are:

Player	ERA	BB/9	SO/9	HR/9	BAbip	IP	GS	W	L	H	R	ER	BB	SO
Clayton Kershaw	2.21	2.18	9.15	0.54	.266	697.0	99	51	23	508	191	171	169	709
Jered Weaver	2.77	2.15	7.11	0.89	.253	578.2	87	49	21	468	186	178	138	457
Cliff Lee	2.80	1.38	9.01	0.89	.298	666.1	93	37	25	597	222	207	102	667
Jordan Zimmermann	3.12	1.80	6.91	0.77	.287	570.1	90	39	28	532	212	198	114	438
David Price	3.13	2.16	8.31	0.78	.289	622.0	92	42	26	543	234	216	149	574
Cole Hamels	3.15	2.02	8.46	0.88	.285	651.1	95	39	29	564	242	228	146	612
Doug Fister	3.30	1.81	6.78	0.61	.301	586.2	89	35	32	578	240	215	118	442
Ricky Nolasco	4.29	2.07	6.61	0.83	.321	596.1	97	35	36	653	307	284	137	438

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used

Generated 11/29/2013.

Do you see the problem? Those are six All-Stars, a solid if unheralded pitcher in Fister...plus Ricky Nolasco. His ERA is almost a full run higher than everybody else's. More than two runs higher than Kershaw's.

Note that I added a column, BAbip. That's batting average on balls in play: how he does on at-bats that don't end in a strikeout or homer. Nolasco's .321 is the worst on the list. It's also worse than the NL average of .297. So while Nolasco does a good job keeping the ball in the park and avoiding free passes, when batters make non-homer contact, they get hits off him. That's why he's had such a lackluster ERA.

So What Should Twins Fans Expect? Nolasco has given up too many hits (9.9 per nine innings over the past three years, 1.2 more than the NL average) and runs to be a top pitcher, negating his fine control and anti-homer skills. Having strong up-the-middle defense should help him some, though he doesn't get an above-average number of ground balls that the double play combo of Florimon and Dozier will turn into outs, nor fly balls that Aaron Hicks will chase down. I'd expect an average or slightly better-than-average ERA and 200 or so innings, but nothing spectacular.

For a more detailed analysis, check out Twins blogger Aaron Gleeman's take.

Coors Field: Easy on Hitters or Tough on Pitchers?

Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies, is the best hitters' park in the majors. The new Bill James Handbook gives it a Park Factor of 127 for run scoring, which means that 27% more runs were scored in Rockies games at Coors than elsewhere last year. And this isn't a surprise. Denver, as you may have heard, is a mile high. The higher the altitude, the thinner the air, and the better a baseball carries. This is Physics 101. Fly balls and line drives at Coors go farther, inflating offense.

I thought that was the whole story, but recently, while listening to MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM, one of the morning hosts, former major leaguer Todd Hollandsworth, said that pitchers are challenged additionally because their secondary pitches don't have as much movement. In other words, everything pitchers throw other than a fastball is straighter at Coors. That makes it more hittable, and forces pitchers to rely more on their fastball, which hitters can time better...all bad. 

I hadn't heard the pitch movement theory before, so I decided to test it. We can do that now. Every pitch in the majors is recorded: its speed, whether it's a strike or a ball, whether it's hit, and, relevant to this question, how much it moves.

Specifically, the system, called PITCHf/x, is a set of cameras installed at every stadium that measures, among other things, the horizontal and vertical movement of every pitch. I looked up the logs of every game pitched by the Rockies' principal starters and checked how much their non-fastball pitches moved, home and away. (The source for all data in this article is Brooks Baseball.) For example, the Rockies' No. 1 starter was Jhoulys Chacin (31 games started, 14-10, 3.47 ERA, 1.26 WHIP). His main secondary pitch is a sinking fastball. In 18 home starts, he threw 449 sinkers. In 13 road starts, he threw 388. At home, Chacin's sinker moved, on average, 0.94 fewer inches horizontally and dropped 1.31 fewer inches vertically. Here's the whole story on what Coors did to Chacin's secondary pitches:

Pitch Type   # Home/Away  Horizontal Impact   Vertical Impact
Sinker         449/388        -0.94              -1.31
Slider         420/289        -2.22              -0.45
Changeup       166/92         -1.15              -1.01
Curveball       37/70         -2.50              -2.02
The impact is the change in inches between Coors and road games. A negative number means less movement, a positive number means more. Looking at these numbers, the thin air appears to make it harder to get side-to-side movement and to make balls sink, at least for Chacin. Let's check the rest of the staff:

Juan Nicasio (31 GS, 9-9, 5.14 ERA, 1.47 WHIP)
Pitch Type   # Home/Away  Horizontal Impact   Vertical Impact
Slider         255/310        -0.84              -1.95
Sinker          37/170        -0.56              +0.50
Changeup        85/88         -0.36              -0.78

Jorge de la Rosa (30 GS, 16-6, 3.49 ERA, 1.38 WHIP)
Pitch Type   # Home/Away  Horizontal Impact   Vertical Impact
Splitter       400/380        -2.13              -0.42
Slider         190/206        +0.09              -0.83
Sinker          89/99         -2.89              -1.71
Curveball       65/118        -0.36              -2.10

Tyler Chatwood (20 GS, 8-5, 3.15 ERA, 1.43 WHIP)
Pitch Type   # Home/Away  Horizontal Impact   Vertical Impact
Sinker         420/314        -1.75              -1.14
Curveball      121/94         -1.38              -2.99
Slider         126/84         -0.97              -1.72
Changeup        32/34         -1.76              -0.68

Jon Garland (12 GS, 4-6, 5.82 ERA, 1.59 WHIP) 
Pitch Type   # Home/Away  Horizontal Impact   Vertical Impact
Sinker         145/161        -0.72              -1.51
Cut Fastball   116/66         +0.69              -1.52
Curveball       65/90         -3.33              -2.04
Changeup        49/47         -0.61              -1.71

Jeff Francis (12 GS, 3-5, 6.27 ERA, 1.61 WHIP)
Pitch Type   # Home/Away  Horizontal Impact   Vertical Impact
Sinker         283/219        -1.37              -0.95
Curveball      138/80         -1.09              -0.83
Changeup       121/64         -1.01              -0.78
Cut Fastball    62/24         -0.89              -0.39

What can we learn from this? I'd say four things:

1. There sure are a lot of negative numbers in the horizontal column! Coors does appear to impair side-to-side movement on pitches.
2. Same with the vertical column. Pitches thrown at Coors stay up in the strike zone more. That's not necessarily bad with some pitches, which are designed to stay high, like a fastball. But a curveball that doesn't drop is a slow pitch in the middle of the strike zone. 
3. The least affected is were Juan Nicasio and Jeff Francis, who lost an inch or less of movement on most pitches. They didn't have particularly dominant seasons, though. It's not like they cracked the code.
4. I'm definitely paying more attention to Todd Hollandsworth going forward, because he nailed this one. Coors definitely helps batted balls carry, but it also makes it harder for pitchers to get movement on the pitches, making the hitters' job easier still.

Sixty Years Ago

Some of you many know this, but until the 1950s, it was standard practice for fielders to leave their gloves on the field when they returned to the dugout to bat. This created the obvious problems of batted balls hitting gloves and fielders tripping over them. It's hard for me to envision the whole concept.

It seems that every innovation in baseball is met with resistance, whether it's the DH or instant replay. But wouldn't you think that something that makes sense, like not leaving gloves on the field, would be accepted by acclimation?

Think again. As this article from BaseballHistoryBlog.com explains, the requirement to remove gloves from the field was initially opposed. Several minor leagues said they wouldn't enforce it. The Commissioner and the president of the National Association (which governed the minor leagues; it's known as Minor League Baseball today) had to issue "sharp warnings" to address the "widespread dissatisfaction" over the change. 

The concern was that requiring players to take their gloves with them to the dugout would "delay games and encourage stalling." I am trying to figure out how that makes any sense at all. Still working on it.

Designated Hitter: Part-Time or Full-Time?

I listen the Baseball Prospectus "Effectively Wild" podcast during the week. The two hosts, Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller of BP, cover a couple topics each day in a short podcast that is perfect as a walking-the-dog accompaniment. I don't know about you, but I often wait to listen to podcasts untill I have a batch of them cued up, then I listen back-to-back. Effectively Wild's my exception to that rule. I usually listen to it the same day I download it. It's that good.

Anyway, Sam and Ben were recently talking about the DH. You know that David Ortiz was World Series MVP. You also know that when the Red Sox were in St. Louis, they had to bench Mike Napoli and move Ortiz to first. Sam and Ben wondered whether the advantage of a full-time DH is countered by a lack of roster flexibility. The Yankees, for example, had Travis Hafner as their DH for 72 games but otherwise used the position to rehab or rest convalescing players--16 games for Alex Rodriguez, 15 for Curtis Granderson, four for Derek Jeter, etc. The lack of a full-time DH allowed the Yankees to use the position as needed given what was going on with their roster, giving them more flexibility. Actually, the Yankees, whose DHs were last in batting (.189), on base percentage (.276), AND slugging (.307) are probably not the best example of this approach. To find out which strategy's better--full-time or part-time DH--I ranked every team's DH position by OPS and then checked out how many games their primary DH played. Here's the list:

Rk		BA	OBP	SLG	OPS ▾	Primary DH, Games
1	BOS	.310	.398	.560	.958	David Ortiz, 129
2	KCR	.290	.377	.412	.789	Billy Butler, 150
3	SEA	.265	.333	.448	.781	Kendrys Morales, 122
4	DET	.302	.354	.425	.779	Victor Martinez, 139
5	TOR	.253	.347	.425	.772	Adam Lind, 61
6	LAA	.264	.341	.414	.754	Albert Pujols, 65
7	CLE	.239	.340	.414	.753	Jason Giambi, 58
8	BAL	.234	.289	.415	.704	Danny Valencia, 42
9	OAK	.230	.309	.389	.698	Seth Smith, 55
10	TEX	.245	.313	.385	.698	Lance Berkman, 65
11	TBR	.214	.307	.373	.680	Luke Scott, 63
12	CHW	.219	.290	.384	.674	Adam Dunn, 74
13	MIN	.214	.294	.341	.634	Ryan Doumit, 49
14	HOU	.198	.276	.337	.613	Chris Carter, 47
15	NYY	.189	.276	.307	.583	Travis Hafner, 72

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Generated 11/18/2013.

Wow. That's pretty stark. Four teams had a DH that played regularly. Those four teams got the most out of the position. Simple as that.

Except it's not. I looked at the prior five seasons, 2008-2012, and calculated the correlation between games played by each AL team's primary DH and the team's DH OPS. It turns out that there is no correlation at all. None (correlation coefficient = -0.01). The most DH production during those five years was from the 2011 Red Sox, who had Ortiz for 135 games. But the leading team in 2012 was the Yankees, who got fewer games out of their primary DH than any team in that period:

Rk		G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
1	Melky Mesa	1	1	0	1	0	0	0	1	0	0	1.000	1.000	1.000	2.000
2	Andruw Jones	18	38	4	11	4	0	3	10	6	9	.289	.378	.632	1.009
3	Robinson Cano	9	32	6	9	1	0	3	5	4	6	.281	.378	.594	.972
4	Derek Jeter	25	103	18	40	5	0	3	12	10	18	.388	.439	.524	.963
5	Raul Ibanez	28	92	16	26	5	0	7	22	8	18	.283	.340	.565	.905
6	Nick Swisher	12	47	8	13	3	0	3	11	6	15	.277	.370	.532	.902
7	Eric Chavez	19	54	9	15	2	0	3	7	9	10	.278	.375	.481	.856
8	Alex Rodriguez	38	150	22	46	9	0	5	20	14	38	.307	.371	.467	.837
9	Russell Martin	4	11	2	3	1	0	0	2	2	4	.273	.385	.364	.748
10	Eduardo Nunez	5	13	2	4	1	0	0	3	0	1	.308	.286	.385	.670
11	Jayson Nix	3	6	1	1	1	0	0	3	1	1	.167	.286	.333	.619
12	Mark Teixeira	4	17	3	2	0	0	2	4	0	5	.118	.118	.471	.588
13	Curtis Granderson	1	3	1	0	0	0	0	0	1	2	.000	.250	.000	.250
14	Steve Pearce	2	5	1	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	.000	.167	.000	.167
15	Casey McGehee	2	7	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	.000	.000	.000	.000
16	Ichiro Suzuki	1	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	.000	.000	.000	.000
	Team Total	153	583	93	171	32	0	29	100	62	132	.293	.362	.497	.860

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Generated 11/18/2013.

In 2009, the Royals had a more or less full-time DH, Mike Jacobs, who was lousy: he hit .224/.296/.374 in 106 games, as Kansas City finished last with a .655 team OPS for DHs. But the next year, the Mariners mix-and-matched (nobody more than 52 games) to a last-place .194/.269/.340 line, which in turn wasn't as bad as this year's Yankees, who had no DH appear in over half their games. 

So what's the conclusion? There really isn't one, in terms of strategy. Teams with a full-time DH sometimes do great, and sometimes do poorly. Teams that use the position as a combination gym and respite site sometimes do great, sometimes do poorly. The lack of positional flexibility is outweighed by performance when you have a good full-time DH, but isn't when you don't. It all depends on the personnel.

I suppose the next step would be to see how AL teams with a full-time DH fare in the Series compared to AL teams that don't. Another day.