News and notes: Covering all the bases

November 29, 2007 in links, Padres notes, San Diego Padres with Comments Off

There seems to be a lot of speculation of late, and some interesting articles. This is like a combo of friday links and some notes, whatever the hell that makes. I’m going to get working on the prospect list and I’ll start that by next week at the latest, or possibly this weekend.

Padres Cautious Entering Winter Meetings – Corey Brock on the Padres off season plans. Here’s Towers:

“I would say outfield is probably No. 1 [priority], and we probably need two starting pitchers, a [backup] catcher and if the right seventh-inning arm is out there, we will look at that,” Towers said. “So in that order is what we’re looking at.”

It’s nice to hear right from KT what they are going after, although who knows when GM’s talk. That sounds about right, though. It looks to me like they’re going to go with Antonelli at second. This is a good team, but they have quite a few holes to fill, and second base just isn’t one of them — at least it’s not a priority. I wouldn’t waste much money there. To tell you the truth, with guys like Cort Morton sitting around, I’m not sure backup catcher is much of a priority either. When a guy like Kendall is getting 4.25m on this market, I’d stay away from free agency for a backup catcher. But maybe they’re looking at the trade route here.

Agent: Cameron wants multi year deal – No surprise here, really. If Cammy declines arbitration the Padres will pick up another sandwich round pick. They already have one after Doug Brocail signed with Houston. So, they are stacking up the draft picks again this year.

Padres, Towers talk contract – Dan Hayes from the NC Times on Towers’ contract situation. Alderson:

“He’s utilized all of the resources we have available in the front office,” Alderson said. “We have a traditional component and a more contemporary component of analysis, and Kevin’s been able to synthesize those two elements and make some good decisions.

“I like our decision-making process.”

Boy, you couldn’t say it much better than that, could ya? From an outsiders perspective, it’s tough to tell how much of the moves are Towers and how much involve Alderson, Depo, Chris Long, Fuson, Gayton, etc. Since I’ve been following the team, they’ve consistently made good moves, at least relative to the competition. Whether it’s Towers himself, or his staff (or Sandy), it seems to be working. I hope he sticks around as the leader of a diverse, intelligent staff.

The article also mentions Geoff Jenkins. Jenkins is a guy I really like, as he’s both good offensively and defensively. For his career, Jenkins has hit .288/.358/.525, so he’d make a nice compliment to Hairston in one of the corners (preferably, right). He looks like a guy who could get 7-8m over 2-3 years on the free agent market. If the Padres can bring him in for less than that, I think it’d be an ideal move.

Petco’s dimensions won’t get friendlier for hitters – I think this is always an interesting topic. Does an extreme ball park help the home team? The Padres have the advantage of being able to pick up guys with skill sets that fit Petco. They also will always have underrated hitters and overrated pitchers, at least to some degree. You can probably benefit with this on the free agent or trade market, if you know a guy is a product of the park. If you play in a neutral park, let’s say Atlanta, you’re pretty much just building a team without as much thoughts on park effects. Since Petco opened in 04, here are the Padres home and away records:

07
Home: 47-34
Road: 42-40

06
Home: 43-38
Road: 45-36

05
Home: 45-35
Road: 36-45

04
Home: 42-39
Road: 45-36

Overall
Home: 177-146 (.548)
Road: 168-157 (.517)

Historic trends indicate a +.082 winning percentage for home teams (over their road record), although the margin seems to be decreasing in recent times. Take another extreme park team like Colorado. Since 04, the Rockies have a ~.532 winning percentage at home and a ~.402 wp on the road. It seems like they’ve leveraged their home park much better than San Diego, but they have had far less success overall. I think an extreme park is beneficial in both on field play and in fooling the competition in player moves. If I were the Padres, I’d worry less about changing the park dimensions and more about how to find players who can leverage their skills in Petco.

At the same time, fans apparently like high scoring games, so that becomes yet another issue to consider.

******

Couple of other links:

Long-term forecasts – Tango and co. on long term pitching forecasts. My Peavy innings prediction (actually, PECOTA’s), may not be as off base as I originally thought. You can never underestimate the chances of injury for a pitcher in a given year.

Baseball and OBP (ht: BTF) – Interesting post about Eric Walker, Sandy Alderson, and the rise of on base percentage in baseball.

Player Value, Part 5: Pitchers – Justin continues his great player value series, this time looking at pitchers.

Cameron isn’t clutch

November 28, 2007 in clutchiness, player evaluation, San Diego Padres with 4 Comments

5 reasons to keep Mike Cameron; 5 reasons to let him go - Good piece by the folks over at the the UT assessing whether or not to keep Mike Cameron. It’s nice to see an approach that looks at both the negatives and the positives of a prospective move.

I’ll take issue with the second reason to keep him, though:

2. He’s clutch. Since 2005, no major league center fielder can match Cameron’s batting average (.302) or slugging percentage (.554) with runners in scoring position.

When talking about clutchness, you can’t just pick certain stats to make a case (at least, imo). They mention his good numbers with runners in scoring position, which is certainly, in general, “clutch.” However, how clutch is a double with men on second and third in a 10 run ball game?

If you look at Cameron’s numbers in, say, late and close situations, they are the total opposite:

2007: .226/.337/.398
2006: 176/.324/.275
2005: .249/.314/.391

Yea, not so clutch anymore.

The best way, at least that I know of, of measuring a players clutchness is to look at their “clucthiness” measure over at fangraphs. That’s the case because it looks at how many wins a player adds due to clutch or timely hits (by leverage index) over their normal batting line (in OPS wins). So if there’s a “clutch hit” to be had in the 5th inning, and Cameron picks it up, he’ll get credit for it. At the same time, if he gets a single in the 9th with bases loaded in a 8 run game, he’s not going to get a lot of credit, if any, in his clutch score (and in that situation, the UT article is essentially saying it’s a clutch hit). So here is his clutch score since 05:

07: +.06
06: -.77
05: .09

Since 2002, he’s actually -4.02 wins in the clutchiness measure. If anything, he’s not clutch! With knowledge in hand that clutch hitter’s don’t really exist, I’d definitely hesitate to use clutch performance at all in deciding whether or not to bring back Cameron. But I certainly wouldn’t use it as an argument in his favor.

A few Tuesday links

November 26, 2007 in blogging, links with 6 Comments

Still working on that project for school I mentioned .. I’ll have more time late this week. In the meantime, here are a few random links.

Brock’s Mailbag – Sounds like he thinks Headley may go to left if that situation presents itself.

Rethinking the MVP – Shameless self promotion here. Anyway, I think the writers are not so off base with the Rollins selection. Bloggers/statheads have to step back and look at things in a different perspective sometimes.

Jimmy Rollins – Tango’s thread that made me think a little more about the subject. For what it’s worth, I don’t really care about any of these awards anymore. Most bloggers I read seem to not really care either, but just use them to rip the writers. I’m not sure that’s an interesting (or even correct) approach anymore.

Conlin’s Losing Numbers – Just another case of bloggers vs. sportswriters here. Conlin made some ridiculous statements that are inexcusable … but linking to the fire joe morgan entry in the email probably was not necessary either. You’d certainly like to see a writer handle himself better and ignore the link as the rest of the email was not bad. At the same time, I don’t think bloggers can have it both ways … that is, they can’t criticise these guys in a somewhat childish, immature way (which I’m sure I’ve done before) and then get pissed when they give it right back. The fact that I’m not sure I disagree with the Rollins selection makes this one worse for bloggers. Then again, Conlin’s tone in the entire exchange was pretty unreasonable and out of line, as well …. nobody wins here, I guess.

Couple of long threads at BTF on the issue: one; two

Probably much ado about nothing, but if you’ve got some free time, it’s some interesting/entertaining stuff, I suppose.

Cameron’s 20 most costly outs

November 21, 2007 in blogging, clutchiness, San Diego Padres with 2 Comments

Courtesy of the fantastic Fan Graphs (by WPA).

  • grounded out to third (-.141)
  • struck out swinging (-.141)
  • grounded into dp (-.132)
  • grounded into dp (-.118)
  • flied out to center (-.110)
  • struck out (-.110)
  • flied out to center (-.110)
  • stuck out looking (-.110)
  • struck out looking (-.109)
  • caught stealing (-.096)
  • fouled out to first (-.093)
  • flied out to center (-.092)
  • flied out to center (-.092)
  • flied out to center (-.092)
  • flied out to first (-.091)
  • grounded into dp (-.084)
  • struck out swinging (-.082)
  • fouled out to first (-.081)
  • struck out swinging (-.078)
  • caught stealing (-.076)

Strike out variety: -.52
In play: -1.236
On the bases: -.172

Total (these 20 outs): -1.928
Remaining negative plays:  -10.192

This is more of Tim Wakefield fastball, get-me-over fastball type post (more on that later). I’m not sure there’s much here to work with, as it is more just for fun.  First off, you’re working with the WPA (and it’s assumptions), which uses historical averages, rather than the exact, specific situations (i.e., Livan Hernandez on the mound and Adrian Gonzalez at 3b). So, rather than actual win probability added (or subtracted in this case), it’s more like “generic” WPA, based on historical averages. On that note, a costly out may be followed by a home run, and for the most part, be erased. Finally, selecting the bottom 20 was just an arbitrary cutoff and holds no real significance whatsoever.

Anyway, the next time someone says, “those Cammy k’s were killer in the clutch,” you can come back with “those fly outs to center didn’t help either!”

******

Just a few random, blog related notes. I can’t use firefox at school, but I’m using it now. I notice some things that I don’t with IE, like the graphs extending into the sidebar. If you ever notice anything with any browser, please let me know and I’ll check it out.

Also, I don’t have a lot of time now, so I may not post much until later next week (I know, seriously, like maybe two people really care).  I’m home now for the week and then I have a huge project due thursday of next week. I’m interested in looking into Cameron’s k’s more in depth and of course my exclusive, cutting edge, critically reviewed top 30 prospect list is going to be making its annual appearance ; ) I may wait on running that until late next week to get a little more research in and not rush it. No need to really, with the whole winter in front of us. So expect posting to be a little lighter than usual over the next few days. Then again, unexpected time may present itself and I may make a flurry of posts … kind of reminds me of this:

Shoeless Joe Jackson: The first two were high and tight, so where do you think the next one’s gonna be?
Archie Graham: Well, either low and away, or in my ear.
Shoeless Joe Jackson: He’s not gonna wanna load the bases, so look low and away.
Archie Graham: Right.
Shoeless Joe Jackson: But watch out for in your ear.

More importantly, have a great Thanksgiving!

BA’s 1990 top 100

November 20, 2007 in prospects, scouting with 2 Comments

Maybe I was a bit harsh on the ole prospectors in my last post, so I thought I’d take a look at their performance. First stop: the 1990 top 100 from Baseball America. I used WARP from BP because it’s available and it should be a good proxy for value, not because I particularly like it (the fielding component and replacement level are severe questions, to say the least). But since this a just a garbage “study,” I’m not too worried about it. My goal here was just to show how tough it is to predict prospects. Now, of course, one list from 17 years ago may not exactly tell us much about BA right now, but I figured I’d start with a year where basically all players are finished with their careers. That’s one of the tough things about evaluating the evaluators — you have to wait 5-10 years before you can really do so. Anyway, I may look at other years or I may not (also, I’m sure others have done significant research in this area, but I haven’t really seen it). Here is the spreadsheet, though: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pzmpg_p_l26786clN1TBMSg

From left to right  you’ve got: WARP, their rank by BA, correlation between WARP and rank (r), Avg WARP, Avg WARP for the top 50, Avg WARP for the bottom 50, Median WARP top 50, Median WARP bottom 50.

The correlation coefficient (r), for example, is -.24 which pretty much means there isn’t much of a corrleation between the players rank and his WARP in this top 100 list. Of course, it’s only one year and I’m not certain of the idea of using correlation coefficient here, but I put it there anyway. It isn’t a total crapshoot, as they do much better with the top 50 than in the bottom 50. For the graphically inclined, here it is:

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This also ignores all other prospects, as you know. Should BA be given credit for selecting these 100? I don’t know. Heck, I don’t even know who they may have missed out of the top 100. It’s just a little data to chew on ….

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