By request, Ryan Theriot still sucks

January 11, 2012 1 Comment

Depending on how interested you are in this year’s MLB Hot Stove, you might have seen this tweet from CBS Sports’ Jon Heyman, an otherwise respected baseball insider. I’ve grown to like Heyman, and would put him on par with the best around in terms of breaking stories on the MLB beat. However, after that doozy about Theriot, he of the TOOTBLAN, I had to step back and chuckle a bit.

Heyman might the only baseball writer that might describe Theriot’s bat as “excellent.” The Twitterverse rightly called out Heyman, and it inspired a Twittersation between a couple writers from Aerys Sports (@SarahSeesSports and @LorInBigD) and myself. I had suggested that if the contributions of the 2011 Cardinals were put into a pie chart, Theriot’s slice wouldn’t be more than a sliver. Thus, said request to create said pie chart was made, and the result is what you see below.

The en vogue catch-all stat for a player’s contribution to a team is WAR, or Wins Above Replacement. As far as I know there are two major authorities for finding a player’s WAR: FanGraphs and Baseball Reference. I don’t have the time to figure out which source might put out a “better” number, so I took an average of the two and stuck all the numbers on a pie chart.

                    I dunno about you, but that doesn’t look like more than a sliver to me

After the top 5, which yielded no real surprises, you have to go to the #22 man on the team to get to Theriot. Also detailed are alllllll the names that had a WAR better than Theriot. Those names include quite a few (Skip Schumaker, Nick Punto, Colby Rasmus) that made considerably less than Theriot did in 2011($3.3 million). Yes, the same Theriot “When I was playing shortstop we were in first place. I know that, [but] it is what it is.”

Unfortunately for all that good and holy in the baseball world, Theriot still gets a World Series ring.

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First update for the High Usage, High Efficiency List

January 5, 2012 Leave a comment

Awhile ago I suggested to myself of keeping track of NBA players who had a Usage Percentage (USG%) of 30 or more, Offensive Efficiency Rating (ORtg) for greater than 110, and Defensive Efficiency Rating (DRtg) of less than 105. If you recalled, this list would include players that were involved in a very high proportion of a teams plays, while also contributing at a high level (average NBA efficiency is around 105) both on offense and defense. Last year, that list included just four players:

Player USG% ▾ ORtg DRtg
Kobe Bryant 35.1 111 105
Derrick Rose 32.2 113 103
Dwyane Wade 31.6 114 102
LeBron James 31.5 116 102

Players just missing that cut: Carmelo Anthony (109 ORtg), Russell Westbrook (107 DRtg), Amare Soudemire (109 ORtg, 108 DRtg), Kevin Durant (115 ORtg, 107 DRtg), Dirk Nowitzki (28.2 USG%) and Dwight Howard (27.2 USG%)

Through almost 2 weeks of games, here’s the list of players that qualify:

Player USG% ▾ ORtg DRtg
LeBron James 31.7 127 95
Sean Williams 31.1 118 97

LeBron James comes as no surprise, but Sean Williams? This guy spent last season in the D-League. Even I had to look up his game logs. Sure enough, he’s put up highly efficient numbers in yep….only 5.7 minutes per game. We’re definitely in the case of small sample size, so I fully expect Williams to fall by the wayside, and the cream of the NBA crop (Rose, Durant, ‘Melo, Kobe, Howard, etc.) to rise to the top.

I’ll try to check back every couple of week with this list, something of what I did during the 2011 playoffs with Bill Simmons’s 42 Club

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John Danks for 5 and $65M? Meh…

December 21, 2011 Leave a comment

In a story reported earlier today by multiple outlets, the White Sox have signed pitcher John Danks to a 5-year, $65 million extension going through the 2016 season. This deal will put Danks at his age 31 season when the contract is up, where he might be up for another deal overpaying him.

This isn’t necessarily a knock on Danks, you can never really blame a guy in this situation (still a year left of salary arbitration before free agency), but a quick look shows this doesn’t make a whole lot of baseball sense. At least in this bloggers mind. Danks is now three years removed from his best season in 2008, where he posted career bests in K/9 (7.34),  HR/9 (.69), and FIP (3.44). He’s coming off a so-so year with a 1.34 WHIP and .754 OPS against, in which he pitched the fewest amount of innings since his rookie year (170 1/3).

Maybe it’s just my penchant for seeing a big number and immediately thinking someone got overpaid, but $13M per year for numbers that are just a bit above league average does raise a red flag just a smidge.

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A numbers perspective on Bulls signing of Rip Hamilton

December 14, 2011 1 Comment

Today it was confirmed that the Chicago Bulls signed 12-year NBA vet Richard Hamilton to a 2-year, $10 million contract. The contract also includes a team option for a third year for $5.15 million (and an unknown buyout according to the Chicago Tribune story).

My immediate reaction was that it was an upgrade to the paltry 2-guards that were on the roster last year. Then I took it upon myself to hit of Rip’s Basketball Reference page, and I quickly saw that Hamilton has been on a steady decline since 2007-08 (and from a defensive standpoint since 2004-05). But first let’s establish benchmarks for how this blog will measure performance.

The measure that some seem to use as a catch-all basketball statistic is John Hollinger’s Player Efficiency Rating (PER). However, just a peek at the stat on Wikipedia shows that there are quite a few flaws with it, the primary one being not properly capturing a player’s defensive contribution. Even the two defensive components it includes, steals and blocks, are poor defensive stats in a vacuum, but that’s another post for another day.

For all intents and purposes, we’ll look at 4 key advanced basketball metrics: Win Shares, Offensive Rating, Defensive Rating, and Usage Percentage. Here are their definitions according to Basketball Reference:

  • Win Shares: an estimate of the number of wins contributed by a player
  • Offensive Rating: an estimate of points produced per 100 possessions
  • Defensive Rating: an estimate of points allowed per 100 possessions
  • Usage Percentage: an estimate of the percentage of team plays used by a player while he was on the floor

The first three are pretty straight forward, but for the point I will make later, we’ll go a little more in depth on Usage Percentage (USG%). There’s only so many possessions to go around. However, it’s in a team’s best interest to get the best player involved more often than Joe Benchwarmer. Because of that, you can always measure USG% in relation to an even distribution of possessions, or 20% per player. The general trend is that when you increase usage percentage, efficiency (i.e.: Offensive Rating) suffers.

Getting back to Hamilton and the declining comment I made earlier, this is somewhat expected given his age, as he entering his age 33 season in 2011-12. However, the Pistons never really decreased Hamilton’s USG%, hovering between 24.5% and 27.9% over his career. Consequently, as skill declined, that USG% stayed pretty constant, and that’s why we saw a dip in offensive and defensive efficiency. Even in a basic stats sense, he didn’t see a drop in minutes from his low to mid 30s MPG career trend until 2010-11. Below are Hamilton’s career numbers, highlighting the different stats we have been talking about.

Season Age Tm MPG PER USG% ORtg DRtg WS WS/48
1999-00

21

 WAS

19.3

11.6

24.2

98

111

0.7

0.024
2000-01

22

 WAS

32.3

15.7

28.1

100

111

2.4

0.046
2001-02

23

 WAS

35.0

16.9

28.6

105

111

4

0.087
2002-03

24

 DET

32.2

18.7

31.3

104

103

7.3

0.132
2003-04

25

 DET

35.5

16.8

25.7

103

99

8.1

0.141
2004-05

26

 DET

38.5

16

25.1

106

105

7.4

0.121
2005-06

27

 DET

35.3

18.2

27.4

109

108

7.6

0.13
2006-07

28

 DET

36.8

18.1

25.9

112

108

8.1

0.141
2007-08

29

 DET

33.7

18.2

24.5

113

106

7.7

0.152
2008-09

30

 DET

34.0

16.9

27

108

112

4.5

0.095
2009-10

31

 DET

33.7

14.9

27.9

104

115

1.4

0.043
2010-11

32

 DET

27.2

15.8

26

106

115

1.8

0.059
Career    

32.9

16.8

26.9

106

108

61.1

0.106

Hamilton’s role on the Bulls won’t be NEARLY as large as it was with the Pistons. Given his advanced age, I think the optimum usage would be between 25 and 30 MPG, and somewhere between 21% and 23% in terms of usage. The Bulls fan in me thinks this should keep Hamilton a little more fresh during games, and we’ll see at least a stop in the the declining trend of his efficiency. With defensive specialist Ronnie Brewer (2010-11 DRtg of 98) to spell Hamilton, overall I foresee an uptick in the Bulls offensive efficiency, and less of a reliance on Derrick Rose in crunch time.

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Andrew Friedman doing Andrew Friedman things

December 10, 2011 Leave a comment

In typical Rays fashion, their front office followed their low budget plan to winning: sign their home-grown talent to a long-term contract that extends through one or all of their arbitration years, and in cases like this one, team options through a few years of free agency.

Wow that was a long sentence. The Rays signed 22-year-old Matt Moore to what I like to call the pitcher equivalent of the Evan Longoria contract. The deal guarantees Moore $14 million for the first five years, and 3 years of team option bringing the total value of the contract up to a possible 8 years, $39.75 million. I’ll mark this down as a contract that makes me seem like a complete underachiever, seeing that Moore is a year and half younger than I am.

Let’s take a look at Longoria and Moore, and their ages through their respective contracts. with guaranteed numbers in bold and team option in italics:

Year of Contract Longoria Year/Age Longoria Salary Moore Year/Age Moore Salary
1 2008/22

$0.50M

 2012/23

$0.8M
2 2009/23

$0.55M

 2013/24

$0.8M
3 2010/24

$0.95M

 2014/25

$0.8M
4 2011/25

$2.00M

 2015/26

$3.8M
5 2012/26

$4.50M

 2016/27

$6.8M
6 2013/27

$6.00M

 2017/28

$7.5M
7 2014/28

$7.50M

 2018/29

$8.5M
8 2015/29

$11.00M

 2019/30

$9.5M
9 2016/30

$11.50M

At the time of the post, I couldn’t find Moore’s year-by-year breakdown, so I estimated using the values of the contract as a whole.

Why employ this strategy? Because the Rays simply cant afford huge contract jumps when one of their players hits free agency and demands a skyrocketing salary. Moore entered 2011 as the #2 prospect in all of baseball behind Mr. Everything Bryce Harper. Moore dazzled in his brief stint in the majors, posting a FIP of 2.17 in 9 1/3 innings, including a  5 inning, 11 strikeout performance in a September call up. That alone earned a start in Game 1 of the ALDS.

So if the Rays are projecting Moore as a major league pitcher anyway, why not lock him up on the cheap. The team now holds the cards when they shouldn’t, as Moore two of his three arbitration years covered in guaranteed money, as well as  his last arbitration year and first two years of free agent eligibility covered with team options.

Given the Rays’ history of great scouting, I anticipate a high probability of this being a 9/$40M contract rather than the base 5/$14M.

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Yes, Carlos Pena was worth $10 million

December 8, 2011 Leave a comment

I read on Aerys Sports today a post in a series of articles explaining the advanced baseball metrics. One of the comments asked why Carlos Pena was offered and accepted a one-year $10 million deal from the Cubs last offseason. I took it upon myself to write up a response.

cubneil writes: “I’d like someone to figure out what part of the .190 Carlos Pena hit in 2010 qualified him for $10m in 2011, when he ballooned to .225.”

Yes, there was many a baseball folk that cried foul when the Cubs signed 1B Carlos Pena to a one-year, $10 million contract before the 2011 season. After all, when should a batting average under the Mendoza line be worth an eight-figure salary? As the title of Megan’s post goes, the devil is in the details. Here I plan to debunk the fact that the Cubs were blowing money away money when they signed Pena through two routes: (a) the Cubs weren’t paying for Pena’s meager batting average, and (b) 2010 was a very unlucky year for him.

First, if you recall an earlier post, we concluded that batting average was an outdated and inaccurate statistic for determining a player’s offensive production. Today I’ll tackle Pena’s other metrics to justify his contract.

If you include his entire 2010 slash line of BA/OBP/SLG, Pena hit .192/.325/.407, and we’ll look at the latter two first. Obviously the .192 BA wasn’t a good indicator of Pena’s run producing ability. The big difference between batting average and on-base percentage immediately tells me that Pena might be drawing a lot of walks. A quick check to my favorite baseball stats site (www.fangraphs.com, on Twitter at @Fangraphs) shows that Pena walked 87 times in 582 PA, for a BB% of 14.9%. In 2010, this would fall above the 90th percentile in all of baseball. When you’re better than more than 90% of your contemporaries, it’s not easily replaceable. Further, Pena’s OBP was above the 2010 AL average OBP (.322), giving us an OBP+ of 101 (this of course is a primitive measure as it’s not adjusted due to strength of schedule and park factors).

Next, we see Carlos Pena slugged at a .407 clip in 2010, implying an OPS of .732. The .407 was exactly in line with the league average for the AL in 2010, and his OPS was 2 points lower than league average (.734). However, Baseball Reference is kind enough to make OPS+ freely available, as well as the park factors that go into the calculation. Tropicana Field has historically been a pitcher’s park and 2010 especially so, with a Batting Park Factor of 92, meaning based on environment alone, the Trop produced about 92% of the offensive production compared to the MLB average. By comparison, historically hitter friendly Coors Field had a Batting Park Factor of 118. Getting back to Pena, after adjusting to park factors, Pena’s OPS+ for 2010 was 103. So by this metric, he had a slightly above average season.

Now we get to the real meat of the issue. Pena’s  BABIP in 2010 was a paltry .222, a career low. Keeping in mind that he was entering 2011 with a below average career BABIP (.279 in 4295 PAs from 2001-2010), the .222 indicates an extreme bit of bad luck. As a very crude form of regression, we will say that Pena’s BABIP is 75% explained by the league average (using Megan’s .300 from above) and 25% “BABIP skill.” That is, Pena has 25% percent control over this BABIP.

Using those averages, Pena’s 2010 mean BABIP should be .295; so if we were to simulate Pena’s 2010 season hundreds or thousands of time, under these assumptions we would expect him to average a BABIP of .295. The .222 figure that was actually recorded (.222) was just 75% of what we expected. Now I don’t have the time to calculate BABIP variance, but will say that Pena’s .222 was WAY less than expected, and we should expect a statistically significant change.

Lo and behold, Pena saw a bump in his 2011 BABIP (.267), and a subsequent bump in his slash line (.225/.357/.462), and a WAR, depending on where you go for it, of 2.6 (FanGraphs) or 2.2 (Baseball Reference), 3rd on the team behind Ramirez and Castro. So on a $10M salary, the Cubs were paying between $3.84M and $4.55M for each additional win that Pena brought to the team. Among the blogosphere the general rate is $4M to $4.5M per win above replacement, so you could argue that Pena was properly or even underpaid for his services in 2011.

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David DeJesus: I dig it

November 30, 2011 Leave a comment

As Ken Rosenthal and Jane Lee have already reported, the Cubs have signed former A’s outfielder David DeJesus to a 2-year contract. The first thing I noticed was that it included an team option for 2014. The Magic of Theo is already at work!

Team options, from what I’ve noticed, have been a common move among savvy GMs. In the most obvious example, when Evan Longoria signed a 6-year deal coming into the majors in 2008, it included not one, not two, but THREE years of club options, making the contract possibly 9 years and worth $47.5 million.

Getting back to DeJesus, the contract has him getting paid $4.5 million in each of 2012 and 2013, and if the $6.5 million option in 2014 is not picked up, there is a $1.5 million buyout. Looking at his 2011 slash line of .240/.323/.376, first indications would have you believe that after his age 31 season he is on the decline, but I call foul. Yes, a .240 batting average was the worst of his major league career. But a .274 BABIP was also the worst of his major league career. Any decent baseball guy or gal worth his or her weight in salt would know that a BABIP that low shows quite a bit of bad luck in 2011.

Despite the uninspiring 2011 batting numbers, DeJesus still managed to put up a 2.2 WAR. Ultimately I think it was a good signing. At least now we don’t have to rely on the Three Stooges platoon of Tyler Colvin, Lou Montenez and Reed Johnson.

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