Beyond the Box Score: FanPosts

Darvish, Moore, and the Elements of Control

2013-05-11T03:04:07Z

Heading into the 2012 season, many people were anxious to see how talented rookies Yu Darvish and Matt Moore would perform. Darvish was advertised as the best Asian pitching import this side of Hideo Nomo, dominating the Japan Pacific League for over five years with statistics that looked like typos: a 1.72 ERA, 0.89 WHIP, and strikeout-to-walk ratio of 5.0.

Moore was recognized as one of the top overall prospects in the minors, punching out 12.7 batters per nine innings, and did not disappoint in a strongly brewed cup of coffee in 2011. With the Rays needing every single win to complete their now legendary comeback over the Red Sox, Moore struck out 11 Yankees in his first major league start. He then spun seven shutout against the Rangers in the playoffs, allowing just four baserunners.

The stage was set for an epic Rookie of the Year race (a certain Steelhead notwithstanding).

But while there were flashes of brilliance, it became clear as early as April that there were going to be growing pains. For the pessimists, it was evident from the first batter Darvish faced, walking the mighty Chone Figgins on four pitches to begin his MLB career. Both would labor through their early starts, with Yu issuing 14 free passes in his first three appearances, while Moore walked nine in his first two. Unfortunately, the struggles were not just due to possible early season jitters, as they'd both go on to be among the league's worst in walk rate:

	BB%
Edinson Volquez	13.1%
Ricky Romero	12.7%
Ubaldo Jimenez	11.8%
Yu Darvish	10.9%
Tim Lincecum	10.9%
Aaron Harang	10.8%
Matt Moore	10.7%

Quite simply, that is not good company. Having watched Darvish in particular a good amount, this was not just a product of nibbling or a Trevor Bauer-like mentality to always go for the punch out at any cost. There were times he just could not throw a strike even if he so desparately wanted to. He commonly walked bad hitters, on four or five pitches, often times not coming close to the target or plate.

Bottom 4th: Seattle

- J. Jaso walked

- M. Carp walked, J. Jaso to second

- J. Jaso to third, M. Carp to second on passed ball

- B. Ryan walked

- D. Ackley singled to shallow right, J. Jaso scored, M. Carp to third, B. Ryan to second

With apologies to Jaso, who is not a bad hitter, maddening sequences like those were not all that infrequent.

Still, thanks largely to a sparkling September, Darvish finished the season with a 3.29 FIP, and Moore posted a 3.01 ERA after the All-Star Break. For the season, their swing and contact rates were remarkably similar:

	O-Swing%	Z-Swing%	Swing%	O-Contact%	Z-Contact%	Contact%	Zone%	F-Strike%	SwStr%	K%
Yu Darvish	30.8%	63.4%	45.1%	57.0%	82.6%	72.8%	44.0%	58.5%	11.8%	27.1%
Matt Moore	28.2%	67.0%	47.0%	59.7%	81.2%	74.6%	48.4%	60.1%	11.8%	23.1%

Yu's 72.8% contact rate was the lowest among qualified starters, and they both missed bats with the best of them, either in or out of the strike zone. No one could doubt the quality of their stuff. It was a matter of whether they could harness it.

And in their sophomore seasons, they've gone in polar opposite directions.

Darvish is breaking projection systems with a 40% strikeout rate (72 in 45 2/3 innings), inciting chats and comment sections across the worldwide web on whether Yu can become the first to 300 Ks since Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling in 2002. For all the discussion in Washington about creating jobs, we need more people making Yu Darvish GIFs.

He faces the Astros again tomorrow. Pray for them.

But while these current rates are simply mind-blowing (and unsustainable), we've known Yu could rack up the Ks. What has been even more heart-warming is that he has trimmed his walk rate all the way down to 8.4%, and 2.96 per nine. Making him the best pitcher in baseball right now.

---

Matt Moore, on the other hand, has not only not improved, he's taken steps back. After issuing just one free pass in his first start of the season, Moore has walked eight in his last ten innings, and now owns the league's worst walk rate at 13.2%. Despite his shiny 2.14 ERA, his FIP is 4.42, with a BABIP of .196. Yes yes we know about the Rays' magical abilities to prevent runs, but I doubt any of their coaches are celebrating Moore's start in earnest.

So how do these two phenoms, who looked so similarly a year ago, look so differently in 2013? Let's start with Moore:

	O-Swing%	Z-Swing%	Swing%	O-Contact%	Z-Contact%	Contact%	Zone%	F-Strike%	SwStr%
2012	28.2%	67.0%	47.0%	59.7%	81.2%	74.6%	48.4%	60.1%	11.8%
2013	24.1%	58.5%	39.8%	61.1%	87.6%	78.8%	45.6%	47.4%	8.2%

The number that immediately jumps out is the First Strike %. We know how strongly correlated that is with walk rate, and yes, Moore's 47.4% is the lowest in the league. And it's wreaking havoc on the rest of his profile.

Hitters are swinging less overall (third lowest in league) because they know he struggles to find the plate, and are chasing less because they don't have two strikes. But are making more contact when they do get a pitch in the zone, because they are likely ahead in the count and expecting the fastball.

That cover it?

Obviously it's not that simple. But you can see the trend- he needs to get strike one early. With league-wide scouting as advanced as it is, that means it needs to be in the zone more often than not, as hitters are not going to help him out by fishing at first-pitch balls.

---

For Darvish, the rates paint a pretty interesting picture:

	O-Swing%	Z-Swing%	Swing%	O-Contact%	Z-Contact%	Contact%	Zone%	F-Strike%	SwStr%
2012	30.8%	63.4%	45.1%	57.0%	82.6%	72.8%	44.0%	58.5%	11.8%
2013	31.7%	61.1%	44.6%	40.6%	75.3%	61.3%	43.6%	59.0%	16.7%

This will be very surprising to you, I know, but all of his contact rates are the lowest in baseball, and his SwStr% the highest (side note: Ryan Dempster has been extraordinarily good). But his Zone% is essentially the same, as is his F-Strike%. He's not throwing any more strikes in terms of location than he did last year, nor are hitters swinging more overall- they're just missing when they do.

And that speaks to the excellence of his slider. He's more than doubled his usage of his best secondary pitch, up to 31.5% from 14.3% last year, particularly at the expense of his four-seamer (down to 34% from 47%). For heaven's sake, I hope his elbow stays intact, because the effectiveness is startling:

1. Hitters are making contact at the same rate on Darvish's pitches in the strike zone, as all of Felix Hernandez's pitches.

2. Hitters are making contact at the same rate on all of Darvish's pitches, as Clayton Kershaw's pitches out of the zone.

3. Darvish's 75.3% Z-Contact% (contact rate on pitches in the zone) would be the lowest since Johan Santana's 74.6% in 2004. He was pretty good that year.

There is nothing wrong with Matt Moore's Contact % of 78.8%. But it's not good enough to make up for his mediocre control.

Yu Darvish also has mediocre control. But hitters don't foul off his pitches- they miss. Meaning a lower strike percentage for Darvish is not equivalent to those of other pitchers, when a good amount of those "strikes" are boosting the ratio, but not putting away anyone. If a hitter is fooled just once by a darting pitch out of the zone, with Yu's 40.6% O-Contact rate, he's toast.

Darvish has fixed his walk rate, his one Achilles' heel, but not in the conventional way of being around the plate more.

He's fixed it by being practically untouchable.

All statistics courtesy of FanGraphs, Baseball-Reference, and that ugly play-by-play box from Yahoo!.

Andrew is a fan contributor to Beyond the Box Score and Fake Teams. He graduated from Stanford in 2009 with a degree in Communication, and currently works at a financial services firm in San Francisco. But he'd like to be a sports writer some day. Any feedback is much appreciated.

The stage was set for an epic Rookie of the Year race (a certain Steelhead notwithstanding).

	BB%
Edinson Volquez	13.1%
Ricky Romero	12.7%
Ubaldo Jimenez	11.8%
Yu Darvish	10.9%
Tim Lincecum	10.9%
Aaron Harang	10.8%
Matt Moore	10.7%

Bottom 4th: Seattle

- J. Jaso walked

- M. Carp walked, J. Jaso to second

- J. Jaso to third, M. Carp to second on passed ball

- B. Ryan walked

- D. Ackley singled to shallow right, J. Jaso scored, M. Carp to third, B. Ryan to second

With apologies to Jaso, who is not a bad hitter, maddening sequences like those were not all that infrequent.

	O-Swing%	Z-Swing%	Swing%	O-Contact%	Z-Contact%	Contact%	Zone%	F-Strike%	SwStr%	K%
Yu Darvish	30.8%	63.4%	45.1%	57.0%	82.6%	72.8%	44.0%	58.5%	11.8%	27.1%
Matt Moore	28.2%	67.0%	47.0%	59.7%	81.2%	74.6%	48.4%	60.1%	11.8%	23.1%

And in their sophomore seasons, they've gone in polar opposite directions.

He faces the Astros again tomorrow. Pray for them.

---

So how do these two phenoms, who looked so similarly a year ago, look so differently in 2013? Let's start with Moore:

	O-Swing%	Z-Swing%	Swing%	O-Contact%	Z-Contact%	Contact%	Zone%	F-Strike%	SwStr%
2012	28.2%	67.0%	47.0%	59.7%	81.2%	74.6%	48.4%	60.1%	11.8%
2013	24.1%	58.5%	39.8%	61.1%	87.6%	78.8%	45.6%	47.4%	8.2%

That cover it?

---

For Darvish, the rates paint a pretty interesting picture:

	O-Swing%	Z-Swing%	Swing%	O-Contact%	Z-Contact%	Contact%	Zone%	F-Strike%	SwStr%
2012	30.8%	63.4%	45.1%	57.0%	82.6%	72.8%	44.0%	58.5%	11.8%
2013	31.7%	61.1%	44.6%	40.6%	75.3%	61.3%	43.6%	59.0%	16.7%

1. Hitters are making contact at the same rate on Darvish's pitches in the strike zone, as all of Felix Hernandez's pitches.

2. Hitters are making contact at the same rate on all of Darvish's pitches, as Clayton Kershaw's pitches out of the zone.

3. Darvish's 75.3% Z-Contact% (contact rate on pitches in the zone) would be the lowest since Johan Santana's 74.6% in 2004. He was pretty good that year.

There is nothing wrong with Matt Moore's Contact % of 78.8%. But it's not good enough to make up for his mediocre control.

Darvish has fixed his walk rate, his one Achilles' heel, but not in the conventional way of being around the plate more.

He's fixed it by being practically untouchable.

All statistics courtesy of FanGraphs, Baseball-Reference, and that ugly play-by-play box from Yahoo!.

Poll

Walks per 9 for Darvish, rest of season: O/U 3.3

Lucas Duda, Small Donkey

2013-05-09T17:29:37Z

Lucas Duda looks like a power hitter. He attempts to smile for his ESPN photo, but halfway through realizes how disingenuous it feels, and settles on an awkward smirk that more closely resembles a grimace than a friendly greeting. His beard is unkempt and unpretentious, different from many of the perfectly groomed and calculated ones around the league, as if to say, "what am I supposed to do…it grows." He is tired of abiding by bad Big Lebowski puns, and enjoys taking his frustration out on incoming baseballs. With his 6’4," 254 pound frame, the large lefty steps aggressively close to home plate, daring you to beat him inside while positioning himself perfectly for mistakes on the outer half. Mistakes like last night’s straight 91 mph fastball away at the letters from Jake Peavy. Which was gently deposited into Citi Field's second deck.

Of course, that is a romanticized notion of what Lucas Duda, power hitter, should be. To say that he has performed like one throughout his entire baseball career would be an overstatement. But so far in 2013, he is looking like a reasonable facsimile of another scruffy bearded, lefty slugger: Big Donkey Adam Dunn.

Duda’s 2013 slash line: .239 - .391 - .522; .391 wOBA

Dunn over his age 27-28 seasons: .248 - .375 - .521; .380 wOBA

Dunn’s career line: .238 - .368 - .496; .370 wOBA

High BABIPs are often the poster child stat for unsustainable starts, but is not a factor here considering Duda’s .239 batting average (.283 BABIP, as it turns out). Still, we’re still dealing with a miniscule 115 PA sample. His 18.3% walk rate is good for fourth in the league, in line with far more established hitters Joey Votto, Lance Berkman, David Wright, and Prince Fielder. For his minor league career, he never had a walk rate above 14.6% in a single season, and his career major league rate (including 2013) sits at 11.0%. Extremely good, but regression from Votto-like levels is unavoidable.

Imposing physical presence aside, Lucas’ current .283 ISO is the clear outlier compared to .185 for his minor league career, and .165 in the majors before 2013. It’s May 9th- we have a long way to go before those rates stabilize.

But there are reasons to believe the improvements are at least partially real.

For all that’s been written about Dunn’s new detrimentally aggressive approach, Duda has decided he doesn’t particularly like to swing anymore. His overall Swing % is second lowest in the league at 33.5%, barely above the notoriously passive A.J. Ellis at 33.3%. And this has been a trend in the works for Duda over the past few years:

	Swing %	O-Swing %
2011	44.0%	29.8%
2012	39.3%	25.3%
2013	33.5%	18.4%

His 18.4% O-Swing ranks as fifth best among qualified hitters. Even with a 25.3% O-Swing in 2012 (very good, but not elite), Duda still posted a strong 11.1% walk rate. And that was while he was barely a threat at the plate, "slugging" like a middle infielder at .389. Now that he's raised his selectivity to Heltonian levels and hitting the ball hard, it's not a complete shock that the walk rate is off the charts.

The more dubious aspect here is clearly the power output. But with his new batted ball profile, he’s on the right path.

	Fly Ball %
2011	43.4%
2012	42.3%
2013	51.7%

Power hitters obviously are at their best when getting lift on the ball, and Duda is doing so in spades, at fourth among qualified batters at 51.7%. Thus, his 22.6% HR/FB rate is high, but not exceptionally so. Dunn’s career rate is 22.0%; Fielder’s is 20.1 %; Josh Willingham greeted Target Field last year with a 21.2% rate. Fellow Met Ike Davis was just below at 21.1 %.

So a 20-22% mark for a single season is not out of question… with the obvious caveat being those men listed above are some of the strongest hitters in baseball.

It remains to be seen if Duda’s flash of power is a real skill improvement, or just a temporary hot streak. Lucas is also striking out at a career high pace at 27.8%, taking a page out of Big Donkey’s three true outcomes book. But if he is striking out more as a direct result of swinger harder and attempting to pull more balls (five of his seven home runs are to right field), that’s a welcome tradeoff.

And it seems as though he's already starting to command that respect from pitchers. He's seeing pitches in the zone at just a 40.0% rate, good for fourth lowest in the league, just higher than known hacker Carlos Gonzalez. Of the 30 batters seeing the lowest Zone %, only Duda and Berkman have O-Swing %’s under 20%, with Votto, Willingham, and Nick Swisher being just above. Generally, the list of full of aggressive but dangerous hitters, with Pablo Sandoval at the top.

The question will be what he does with those pitches in the zone. He's shown enough at the major league level to indicate that he has more power than a Justin Smoak, and better bat speed than a Kila Ka'aihue. Whether he can match the productivity of a Dunn or Willingham over an extended period of time remains to be seen. But I don't think asking that question is absurd, and that’s a far cry from last year. If Lucas can come anything close to a (young) Big Donkey at the plate, Mets fans and pitchers can accept his atrocious range in left with a little more understanding.

Statistics courtesy of FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference.

This is my first post on Beyond the Box Score, after my first overall post on Fake Teams yesterday. Any feedback is much appreciated. My angle is definitely more on fantasy baseball and specific players than saber overall, but I am interested in Duda as a Mets fan. Provided these are seen as half-decent, I will try to keep the articles flowing (as long as I can keep avoiding doing my assigned work at my day job).

Twitter: @AndrewShen_SF

Duda’s 2013 slash line: .239 - .391 - .522; .391 wOBA

Dunn over his age 27-28 seasons: .248 - .375 - .521; .380 wOBA

Dunn’s career line: .238 - .368 - .496; .370 wOBA

But there are reasons to believe the improvements are at least partially real.

	Swing %	O-Swing %
2011	44.0%	29.8%
2012	39.3%	25.3%
2013	33.5%	18.4%

The more dubious aspect here is clearly the power output. But with his new batted ball profile, he’s on the right path.

	Fly Ball %
2011	43.4%
2012	42.3%
2013	51.7%

So a 20-22% mark for a single season is not out of question… with the obvious caveat being those men listed above are some of the strongest hitters in baseball.

Statistics courtesy of FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference.

Twitter: @AndrewShen_SF

Poll

How do you see Duda faring as a hitter during his prime?

Adam Jones and Hitter Maturation

2013-05-03T14:42:11Z

Ever since the Baltimore Orioles acquired Adam Jones as the centerpiece in that ill-fated trade involving Erik Bedard and the Seattle Mariners back in 2008, Orioles fans have dreamed about what Jones could become. He was that rare type of outfield talent, blessed with speed, potential for power, and a rangy athletic ability. That Jones has now begun to fulfill his youthful promise partially obscures the fact that he was, by no means, a sure thing.

For three seasons, from 2009-2011, Jones batted a solid but unspectacular .281/.326/.455 for the Orioles. Granted he was just 25 years old in 2011, but his 108 OPS+ and average of 2.2 fWAR during that stretch didn't necessarily indicate he would become the franchise-type player Baltimore was hoping for. Moreover, the fact Jones walked only 23 times and struck out on 119 occasions in 2011 didn't calm any worries over his future prospects.

But after a 2012 in which he posted a 125 OPS+ and compiled 4.4 fWAR (along with his .331/.352/.521 start to 2013), Jones has become the type of high-impact player that his precocious talent foretold. And although Jones still walks infrequently and strikes out a fair amount (24 walks versus 126 strikeouts in 2012), his approach at the plate has matured in recent seasons.

In many ways, Jones is exemplary of the study done by Jeff Zimmerman and Bill Petti at FanGraphs in 2012, which shows that plate discipline generally improves among major-league hitters as they age into their late twenties. While Jones' walk rate has not significantly increased in recent years, his overall swing habits demonstrate that he is a hitter who has learned to pair patience with his aggressive approach.

The centerfielder's O-Swing%, for example, has dropped in three straight seasons, from a high of 40.4 percent in 2011 to a 38.3 rate in 2013, according to Pitch F/X data from FanGraphs. Similarly, Jones' Z-Swing% and overall Swing% have experienced noticeable dips over the past few years. This slightly more patient approach has coincided with a significant rise in the 27-year-old's line-drive rate, which reached a career-high in 2012 at 21.5 percent and has only continued to rise, currently sitting at 24.2 percent through 29 games in 2013. Such batted-ball data shows that Jones has begun to make more quality contact, likely arising from the fact he is laying off more pitches outside the strike zone, and therefore, getting better pitches to hit.

Hit charts from Baseball Prospectus and Brooks Baseball also show this trend visually. In 2011, Jones offered at far more pitches outside the zone, as indicated by all the red in his hit chart.

But in 2013, Jones' hit chart shows he has been more patient and instead really gone after pitches inside the strike zone.

As his batted-ball data shows, this more patient approach has enabled Jones to make better contact and greatly improve as a hitter the past couple seasons. An individual player's plate discipline doesn't always improve in a linear direction like Zimmerman and Petti's study suggests, but Jones' approach has certainly matured as he has grown into his late twenties. He has become a dangerous hitter who simply hits the ball hard, and since the beginning of last season, possesses a .294/.337/.507 line for Baltimore in 822 plate appearances. Combine Jones with Matt Wieters, the red-hot Chris Davis, and 20-year-old wunderkind Manny Machado, and the Orioles have their most formidable lineup in years.

All stats, including WAR figures, courtesy of FanGraphs.com unless otherwise noted. Hit charts courtesy of Brooks Baseball and Baseball Prospectus.

Alex Skillin is the proprietor of www.ballgamebanter.com, a blog on the AL East.

Hit charts from Baseball Prospectus and Brooks Baseball also show this trend visually. In 2011, Jones offered at far more pitches outside the zone, as indicated by all the red in his hit chart.

But in 2013, Jones' hit chart shows he has been more patient and instead really gone after pitches inside the strike zone.

All stats, including WAR figures, courtesy of FanGraphs.com unless otherwise noted. Hit charts courtesy of Brooks Baseball and Baseball Prospectus.

Alex Skillin is the proprietor of www.ballgamebanter.com, a blog on the AL East.

How Good is Chris Davis?

2013-05-02T23:47:40Z

*Looking for any feedback you guys can give me on this piece, as so I can enhance my writing/analysis skills. Thanks!

Amongst the biggest surprises from the first month of the 2013 season was Chris Davis’s absolute domination over opposing pitchers. Through May 1st, Davis is hitting .348/.442/.728 with a league leading 9 home runs and a 1.7 WAR. Obviously, Davis has been phenomenal, and there is no telling when he will slow down, but is this the real Chris Davis or is his performance a byproduct of a small sample size? And if the latter, exactly how good of a player is he?

To answer, the 2nd question, we’ll start by taking a look at how Davis was viewed as a prospect. Coming up through the Texas Rangers’ system, Davis was largely viewed as a potential middle of the order corner infielder. The power had always been there, and it was difficult for scouts not to be impressed by it. The defense (and strikeouts) was his main concern, as Davis was bound to end up at first base, despite a plus arm. Texas would try him at third and later in right field, but it proved to be too rigorous for the behemoth sized masher. Following 2007, a year in which he hit 36 home runs combined at High-A Bakersfield and Double-A Frisco, Baseball America rated Davis as the 2nd best prospect in the Rangers system (behind Elvis Andrus) and had this to say concerning his strengths and weaknesses:

Strengths: Not only does Davis have well-above-average power, but he knows how to use it, thanks to a balanced approach and willingness to use the whole field. He has improved against lefthanders, shortened up his swing somewhat and showed an ability to make adjustments against more advanced pitching as he has moved through the minors.

Weaknesses: Despite a plus arm, Davis is a below-average defender at third base, with poor footwork and actions. He played right field in his pro debut but is a below-average runner who likely will be limited to first base down the road. Though he has a good feel for hitting, he swings and misses a lot. He tends to start his hands high then drop them down before the pitch, making him vulnerable against pitches above the belt.

As evidenced by the above quote, Davis was viewed as a player who someday could potentially slug 30+ home runs, but with a tendency to strike out quite a bit.

So far, that has all held true in the majors. Since reaching the big leagues with the Rangers in 2008, Davis has slugged .481 and averaged 31 home runs per 162 games. However, he has also struck out a whopping 30.5% of the time, while walking in just 7% of his plate appearances. For a player who strikes out as much as Davis does, he needs to be able supplement some of those K’s with walks.

Take Adam Dunn as an example. Dunn, like Davis, strikes out in nearly 30% of his at bats (28.2%), but he also walks at a rate of 16.1%, over 9% greater than Davis. The walks mitigate some of the strikeouts, making him at least an above average regular. And that was Davis’s problem for the first 5 years of his career, but fortunately, he has changed that so far this season.

This year, Davis is striking out in “just” 23% of his at bats, while walking in over 14%, or double his career average. Both his strikeout and walk rates appear to be somewhat of a mirage due to the curse that is small sample sizes, but it does give a glimpse into a possible lasting trend.

So, now the question is, is it sustainable?

At first glance, Davis’s .383 BABIP seems quite high, but it actually isn’t too extreme as Davis has a .338 BABIP for his career, and ZIPS projected him to post a .345 mark this season. His BABIP will likely fall, but it most likely won’t be enough to put a significant dent in his production.

Once eyeing Davis’s plate discipline metrics, one gets a better understanding of why his production has spiked. His O-Swing%, which accounts for the percentage of balls outside of the strike zone in which a hitter swings at, is nearly 9% lower than his career average, meaning he has been more patient at the plate. His swing rate has also dropped by 6%, while his overall contact rate has actually been 7.5% higher than his career norm. The main change in his contact rate has to do with Davis’s increased ability to make contact with balls within the strike zone. For his career, Davis has made contact with 78.8% of pitches in the strike zone, but this season, his Z-Contact% has risen to 90.8%

Looking at his batted ball rates, you start to see some discrepancies that may hinder Davis’s output. His line drive rate has actually dropped by nearly 5%, which is contradictory to what it should be based on his results, a sign of a potential step back to reality. Perhaps the biggest change in his results has been the fact that his home run per fly ball ratio has gone from 20% for his career to 30% this season, which likely will not last.

From the data above, one can conclude that Davis’s performance this season has a lot to do with various factors that most likely won’t be sustainable. However, that doesn’t mean he’s not a good player. In 2012, Davis hit 33 home runs and accrued a 2.0 WAR. Taking into account Davis’s strong start to the season, I personally believe he will settle in somewhere in the middle production wise between the two samples. That could mean 35+ home runs, with a OBP in the ~.340 range and a 3-4 WAR. Many teams would covet that type of talent.

*Looking for any feedback you guys can give me on this piece, as so I can enhance my writing/analysis skills. Thanks!

Strengths: Not only does Davis have well-above-average power, but he knows how to use it, thanks to a balanced approach and willingness to use the whole field. He has improved against lefthanders, shortened up his swing somewhat and showed an ability to make adjustments against more advanced pitching as he has moved through the minors.

Weaknesses: Despite a plus arm, Davis is a below-average defender at third base, with poor footwork and actions. He played right field in his pro debut but is a below-average runner who likely will be limited to first base down the road. Though he has a good feel for hitting, he swings and misses a lot. He tends to start his hands high then drop them down before the pitch, making him vulnerable against pitches above the belt.

As evidenced by the above quote, Davis was viewed as a player who someday could potentially slug 30+ home runs, but with a tendency to strike out quite a bit.

So, now the question is, is it sustainable?

The Shep Diagram and Data in the Digital Age

2013-05-02T12:20:51Z

One of the cooler things that has emerged this season is the "Shep Diagram," a series of animated images/video layered into one. It began about a week ago when a reddit user named DShep created the image below. The image was picked up by Deadspin and FanGraphs and a bunch of other places because its incredible, but also because it shows how incredible Yu Darvish is due in part to his consistent release point.

(If that doesn't animate, click here.)

Just a day or two ago, MLB Network created their own Shep Diagram for Justin Verlander -- watch it here -- showing how four of his pitches can look the same coming out of his hand. This method of displaying information is relatively new, but it is taking off fast, in large part because it feels useful nearly immediately.

We haven't seen data displayed like this much in the past. Sure, we have heat maps and PitchFX data etc., but it's rare that we're using actual game footage in this manner. Take, for example, this 2010 New York Times Interactive piece on Mariano Rivera's effectiveness. They show us a computer-generated representation of over 2000 pitches, and at the time (and now), it's an incredible way to look at the game. As the Shep Diagram demonstrates, though, it's just the tip of the iceberg.

Fifteen years ago, we were just at the beginning of the era where digital publishing tools and broadband access were enabling the growth of user-generated content. The skill set of the people who were able to gain access to those tools included literacy and a basic understanding of math, and because of that, we have a wealth of ways to explore baseball via words, spreadsheets, and formulas. As tools and skill sets involving digital video editing become better and more mainstream, hopefully we'll see more things like the Shep Diagram above. A picture is worth 1,000 words; these things are worth ten times that.

(If that doesn't animate, click here.)

An alternative approach to ranking teams

2013-04-29T02:47:25Z

I posted this over on Purple Row, but I think it fits here as well.

I've been working on a different method for ranking teams. The idea is basically that you can't tell how good a team is just by their wins and losses. You need to account for their opponents as well as the margins of victory or defeat. Of course, to know how good the opponents are, you need to know about their opponents. In other words, you have to solve for the strengths of all the teams at the same time.

The method I've come up with does this. It calculates the probability that a team will win against an average (.500) opponent. One advantage is that it will work with unbalanced schedules. For example, if you have one division with a bunch of really good teams, they're going to beat up on each other and it will appear that they are all close to .500. Even Pythagorean standings won't be able to tell that the teams are better than average. There are strength of schedule calculations out there, but I don't think they are adequate.

Anyway, if you're interested I wrote up a description of my method here. I'm interested in any feedback people might have.

I posted this over on Purple Row, but I think it fits here as well.

Anyway, if you're interested I wrote up a description of my method here. I'm interested in any feedback people might have.

The Unsustainable Hisashi Iwakuma

2013-04-19T15:11:15Z

Seattle Mariners' starting pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma has some pretty interesting figures through his first 26.2 innings pitched. As interesting as they may be they are also completely unsustainable.

As of Friday, Iwakuma has left 100 percent of batters on base through four starts in 2013. That mark seems pretty impressive until you realize that all of his earned runs have come as the result of home runs. Right now Iwakuma has an ERA of 1.69 and has struck out almost twenty percent of batters faced while walking just over two percent-he's doing well fooling hitters with his breaking pitches.

Even lower is Iwakuma's BABIP of .119 which further demonstrates the burn of the aforementioned home runs. Iwakuma had a below average BABIP last year though we don't have enough historical (MLB) data on him to determine if we can expect more of the same.

Whats concerning right now is over forty-two percent of his hits are fly balls and over thirteen percent of those have ended up home runs. Three of the four have come on the road and you'd have to assume that if most of Iwakuma's starts are at Safeco that--even with the fences moved it--his HR/FB rate will have to come down.

Iwakuma has been more of a ground ball-type pitcher through his career (in both the US and Japan), relying on breaking pitches to get those results. Right now, his ground ball rate is just above twenty-seven percent. That's actually pretty good for a 'normal' pitcher, but slightly worrisome for a ground ball pitcher. That could mean that he's leaving too many breaking pitches up in the zone which can be incredibly dangerous. He's throwing a sinker on just over twenty-three percent of his pitches and its being put in play 32.9 percent of the time-the only other pitch that comes close to that rate is his split finger at 19.6 percent contact.

That being said, his fastball is thrown the most and has also gotten him in the most amount of trouble. A pitcher like Iwakuma should use that pitch as a 'throw-off' pitch but instead it has become a meatball. Right now, if you look at his fastball runs above average (wFB), it sits at a 3.8 which is not bad but much higher than his other pitches. Also, his fastball velocity is down slightly from 90.3 to 89.7. Not a major shift but slow enough for fastball hitters to get a strong swing on.

As you can see, most of his fastballs are falling dead middle in the strike zone:

via pitchfx.texasleaguers.com

Since his nastier pitches--the breaking balls--are his bread and butter, all a power hitter needs to do is wait for his fastball and swing away. Right now, less than 10 percent of his fastballs swings have been whiffs.

If Iwakuma can get back on track and reverse his fly ball and ground ball numbers, the home runs he's giving up can continue to be relatively harmless in spite of the luck he's having on the contrary. If he can generate better break and keep hitters off-balance with his fastball, he's in for a good season. However, it could end up being only be a matter of time before the unsustainable turns into the unimaginable for Iwakuma.

Seattle Mariners' starting pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma has some pretty interesting figures through his first 26.2 innings pitched. As interesting as they may be they are also completely unsustainable.

As you can see, most of his fastballs are falling dead middle in the strike zone:

via pitchfx.texasleaguers.com

Will Atlanta Braves' Justin Upton Become Elite in 2013?

2013-04-19T02:15:01Z

If Justin Upton can keep up the pace he's on--even at a lower production rate--the Atlanta Braves may have pulled off the trade of the season. Upton is playing like a (way) early MVP candidate--his .508 wOBA is tied with Baltimore Orioles' Chris Davis and slightly ahead of the Colorado Rockies' Carlos Gonzalez for league best. Including his eight home runs in 54 at-bats, over half of his hits are for extra bases (.518 ISO).

Quick inspection of the offensive leader boards three weeks into the season and it would appear that Upton is the sole reason why the Braves are (currently) the best team in Major League Baseball. Additionally, taking a look at his WPA outputs shows he's had his hand in several Atlanta victories--the most impact has come against the Chicago Cubs on 6 April (.51) and on the 12 April against the Washington Nationals (.37).

Upton is simply a production machine--putting himself on base to score runs and knocking runners in. Has he simply been opportunistic? Somewhat, but his BABIP is within his career norm and has not strayed far from the league average. His contact rate isn't any higher than it normally has been in his four year career so its hard to find any flags that would indicate hes soon headed for regression.

What does is his power numbers--obviously Upton will never be able to maintain his ISO and he's on pace to hit 40 doubles. He hit 39 in 2011 which is the same year he hit his career high 31 home runs. Upton also could be what I like to refer to as a roller-coaster hitter--a guy who goes up one season, down the next then up the following season. Upton is poised for his 'up' year in 2013.

Another interesting feature of Upton's hitting thus far is his elevated fly ball rate which is the result of over half of the pitches he makes contact with. Normally if a hitter is popping the ball up at that high a rate, he's making a lot of outs--unless 40% of their fly balls end up over the fence like Upton's are. Neither of those rates are going to be maintainable and as a hitter, your going to want to replace some of those fly balls with line drives.

The high fly ball rate for Upton could be attributed to the two pitches he's having the most success with--breaking pitches like the sinker and the curve. He's been the best at landing the curve for hits as displayed by the spray chart below:

(via pitchfx.texasleaguers.com)

And his total spray chart for the season:

(via pitchfx.texasleaguers.com)

The pitches he's hitting for home runs vary but he's been very consistent on the curve.

I think at this point its a given that Upton is going to be a reliable hitter for the Braves, just as he was for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Regardless if Upton makes his way up the MVP voting polls, I think this might be the year Upton will establish himself among baseball's elite.

And his total spray chart for the season:

(via pitchfx.texasleaguers.com)

The pitches he's hitting for home runs vary but he's been very consistent on the curve.

What's Up With St. Louis Cardinals' Trevor Rosenthal?

2013-04-18T15:30:36Z

The St. Louis Cardinals are having major bullpen issues in the wake of Jason Motte's potential season-ending elbow injury. Mitchell Boggs seems to be a headcase in the ninth inning with his horrendous ERA and a nearly one-to-one BB/K rate. One-time closer Fernando Salas and Mark Rzepczynski are having a tough time as well and don't seem suited for the late innings.

The man who might be best suited for the job out of the remaining 'contenders' is fireballer Trevor Rosenthal. Yet how can Mike Matheny and co. feel comfortable running out a young man who has already blown two saves in eight games through nine innings pitched?

Well, for one, its a really small sample size—albeit a very disconcerting one. Rosenthal currently has a .400 BABIP and is leaving just over 60% of runners on base.

This could be the result of some shoddy defense—which the Cardinals are not above from time to time. His FIP is over three runs lower than his ERA and he has a stunning 11-to-1 K/BB rate. Rosenthal looks to be holding his end of the bargain up as a pitcher, right?

Maybe not.

Rosenthal's line drive and ground ball rate are well above the Major League Baseball average at 25 and 50 percent respectively. For a guy with a lights-out fastball that tops out at nearly 100 MPH, this is pretty odd—especially with a 14% swinging strike rate.

That being said, the problem I'm seeing with Rosenthal is he's not varying up his pitches. Right now he's throwing his fastball on over 80% of his pitches. The rest—a slider, curve and change—are all being thrown less than 7% of the time. So it's no surprise what hitters are expecting when they come to the plate. That also explains his high HR/FB rate of 16.7% (25% FB rate).

I would be very surprised if Rosenthal maintains that high BABIP—and HR/FB rate—for an extended period of time. I'll be even more surprised if Rosenthal doesn't start mixing his pitches better. He could simply be having a bout of bad luck but I seriously doubt that. If you know four out of every five pitches is going to be a fastball, how hard will it be—for even the most average hitter—to time it and drive it?

The curve ball is going to be key for Rosenthal to succeed in the ninth. He simply cannot live and die on his fastball without having a secondary pitch he throws more than 7% of the time. Even his fellow division flame-thrower Aroldis Chapman mixes in his slider on about 11% of his pitches.

Well, for one, its a really small sample size—albeit a very disconcerting one. Rosenthal currently has a .400 BABIP and is leaving just over 60% of runners on base.

Maybe not.

Baseball SQL Group

2013-04-10T17:31:39Z

I have started a Baseball SQL Google group for those of us in the Sabermetric community who are interested in or are already using SQL to look at pitch f/x and play by play data. We already have a pretty good group going, so please join in if you think you would fit!

Quantifying Player Development

2013-03-23T04:02:33Z

Kyle Lohse is a type-A free agent. While he has yet to sign, odds are he's going to get a pretty reasonably high pay day for a 34-year-old pitcher with a career ERA of 4.45.

Throughout the off-season, I have often wondered to myself how the hell Kyle Lohse is a type-A free agent. Lohse was consistently a mediocre pitcher in his professional career, from his first pitch in the minors with the Cubs, all throughout his career with the Twins, Reds and Phillies. He always had an around league-average fastball, (in terms of velocity. It was way below average, if you go by pitch value) and a standard four-pitch mix that was about as exciting as watching paint dry. And then, something magical happened to Kyle Lohse.

He joined the Cardinals.

Joining the Cardinals seems to be some kind of magical antidote to the disease of mediocrity. St. Louis is a place where the Kyle Lohses and the Jake Westbrooks and the Joel Pineiros of the world go to put up numbers like frontline starters, and then, when they hit free agency, get their pay day.

Of course, the magic of the St. Louis Cardinals is not just limited to mediocre right handers. This is the organization that brought us Albert Pujols. This is the organization that pumps out useful players like Allen Craig and spots guys like David Freese that often go overlooked. In many respects, the Cardinals are an archetype of how a baseball team should be run. They are consistently contenders and often boast a large number of home-grown players, and never seem to have a bloated payroll. They turn average into good, and good into great. They have one of the best player development systems in the game.

This is the conventional wisdom, and it's probably correct, but it's largely based on anecdotal evidence. Are the Cardinals really better at developing pitchers than, say, the White Sox? How about the Giants? Player development is one of the most important aspects of the game, and yet the efficacy of teams' player development systems seems to often go unevaluated numerically, at least in fan circles.

Much in the vain of Pinstriped Bible, with their analysis of the Yankees' ability to develop pitchers, I am embarking on a research project with my partner, Casey Gowrie, to quantify player development. Can we rank the organizations? Can we rate executives? Which teams are best at developing what tools and skills? And, most importantly, how do they do it?

The purpose of this post is to enlist the community of Beyond the Box Score to help me as I start my first project of this scale. To make an accurate assessment, I am going to need pre- and post-draft scouting reports of players, preferably with 20-80 rankings of their tools and skills. What executives/coaches were working for which organizations during which seasons, Pitch F/X release point and movement data, pitcher and batter heat maps, GM Trade/signing histories, previous studies of a similar nature, and all kinds of other information, as well as ideas on how to approach this massive undertaking would all also be greatly appreciated.

I hope you are all as intrigued and excited about this as I am. Anyone interested please comment below, or email me at matthew.yaspan@tufts.edu

Kyle Lohse is a type-A free agent. While he has yet to sign, odds are he's going to get a pretty reasonably high pay day for a 34-year-old pitcher with a career ERA of 4.45.

He joined the Cardinals.

I hope you are all as intrigued and excited about this as I am. Anyone interested please comment below, or email me at matthew.yaspan@tufts.edu

Was the Dominican Republic deserving of the World Baseball Classic title?

2013-03-20T22:23:10Z

I completed some research a few months back regarding a statistical way to compare baseball teams across eras and developed a concept called the Greatness Number. Studying dozens of baseball metrics, I found OPS, Run Differential and WHIP to have the strongest correlation to winning. You can read the details of my research here and here.

The sample size is small, but I used the Greatness Number to analyze the various clubs in the World Baseball Classic and found Cuba, not the Dominican Republic, to be the best team in the tournament. The Dominican club ranked second, in front of Japan and the United States, while Puerto Rico ranked sixth.

Full rankings from the 2013 World Baseball Classic are below.

The Greatness Number formula: (0.503+(OPS*0.097)+(RD*0.006)+(WHIP*-0.053)).

Using the same formula, I reviewed the statistics from the two previous tournaments and found the 2006 Japan team to have been the best in World Baseball Classic history.

Delving deeper, I averaged the Greatness Number's of every team over the past three tournaments and found the figure for 2013 was the closest to .500, meaning disparity between clubs has lessened since 2006.

2013 Average: .491 | 2009 Average: .487 | 2006 Average: .489

For those wondering, the 2013 United States club ranked behind the 2006 team but ahead of the 2009 team.

From a global perspective, China has yet to advance past the first-round of pool play, yet their club has improved significantly each year, from .232 in 2006 to .381 in 2013.

- Patrick Gordon is managing editor of the Philadelphia Baseball Review. Follow him on Twitter @PhilaBaseball.

Full rankings from the 2013 World Baseball Classic are below.

The Greatness Number formula: (0.503+(OPS*0.097)+(RD*0.006)+(WHIP*-0.053)).

Using the same formula, I reviewed the statistics from the two previous tournaments and found the 2006 Japan team to have been the best in World Baseball Classic history.

2013 Average: .491 | 2009 Average: .487 | 2006 Average: .489

For those wondering, the 2013 United States club ranked behind the 2006 team but ahead of the 2009 team.

From a global perspective, China has yet to advance past the first-round of pool play, yet their club has improved significantly each year, from .232 in 2006 to .381 in 2013.

- Patrick Gordon is managing editor of the Philadelphia Baseball Review. Follow him on Twitter @PhilaBaseball.

Thinking about a fifth starter platoon in Detroit

2013-03-19T01:02:10Z

Part of the exhilaration of managing a strat-o-matic baseball team comes from the freedom to make decisions that are unburdened by the constraints of tradition. Does your win expectancy increase by replacing Mike Piazza with a better throwing catcher in the ninth once the potential tying run reaches first base? Then send out a new catcher in the middle of the inning. Want to use your closer to escape a crisis in the seventh? Just do it. No idea is too crazy. Put a team together, implement your strategies, run everything through a 162-game season, and see what happens. Did you finish 101-61? Then you're a genius. Or was it 71-91? Then come up with something new and try again. It's a wonderful laboratory for experimentation.

As you attempt to construct an optimized pitching staff you might be tempted to ask all kinds of outside-the-box questions. What might happen, for example, if you keep a right-handed and left-handed 5th starter option and carefully choose one or the other depending on the day’s matchup? In the strat-o-matic world, you don't have to worry about keeping guys sharp and stretched out. Concerns about the happiness of the cardboard rectangles that represent the two hurlers will never enter your mind. But there’s still the question of whether the approach is worth a roster spot and, if so, how you go about choosing who makes the start on a given day.

To make the discussion more concrete, let's assume that the right-hander and left-hander under consideration are Rick Porcello and Drew Smyly. We'll further assume that their 2012 statistics are representative of their current talent level. Both pitchers had traditional splits in 2012. Porcello was better against right-handed batters with a .317 wOBA allowed compared to Smyly's .327. But Drew was much better versus lefties with a .293 opponent wOBA compared to Rick's elevated .380 which tied for worst among AL pitchers who faced at least 300 lefty batters. Using this data, Smyly should fare better against a lineup of all lefties while Porcello should do better against a lineup of all righties.

Of course, you'll never see a ML manager turn in a lineup of nine right-handed batters against a right-handed pitcher or nine lefties against a portsider. Look at the numbers and you'll see quite the opposite. The Angels had 1648 plate appearances last year against left-handed pitching and exactly 8 of those PAs were by batters hitting from the left side. The Athletics, under the guidance of platoon wizard Bob Melvin, sent up 61 percent left-handed batters against right-handed pitching and 73 percent right-handed batters against left-handed pitching. Overall, major league batters enjoyed the platoon advantage 55 percent of the time in 2012.

Trying to select the best starter against an opposing team involves trying to predict the lineups they’ll use against your candidate pitchers as well as predicting the distribution of outcomes for each batter/pitcher matchup. This can be done, but to keep things simple we’ll try a more global approach and see where it leads us. First, we’ll propose a way to divide the American League into Porcello teams (P-teams) and Smyly teams (S-teams) using 2012 numbers. Then we’ll see how things would have gone if each guy only pitched against the teams in his group. A more detailed game-by-game analysis would likely perform better, but this global method should allow us to assess if a 5th starter platoon concept has merit.

A club is a good candidate for classification as a P-team if it used a small fraction of left-handed batters against right-handed pitching in 2012. Let L represent this fraction for each team. Similarly, a team would make a good S-team if it used a small fraction of right-handed batters against left-handed pitching. Denote this fraction as R. We can now use the difference, D = L – R, as a simple measure of whether we should start a lefty or righty against a team just based on how often they achieved the platoon advantage against each kind of pitching. Using this approach, teams with the smallest values of D are the best choices as P-teams and teams with the largest values of D are the best choices as S-teams. If we rank American League teams using D we find that the Indians with their heavily left-handed lineup were the most obvious S-team in 2012 and the Angels with their heavily right-handed lineup were the most obvious P-team.

As a small-sample sanity check, let’s consider teams in the AL Central. Cleveland, Minnesota, and Kansas City had the 1st, 3rd, and 5th largest D values respectively in the AL and therefore are definite S-teams. Last year Mr. Smyly faced 151 batters on these three division foes and allowed an excellent .241/.300/.336 batting line while posting a 2.45 ERA. In his outings against these S-teams, Rick Porcello allowed a horrific .342/.389/.498 batting line to his 244 batters while posting a 4.73 ERA.

The other AL Central team, Chicago, ranked 10th of the 13 non-Detroit AL teams according to the D measure which renders the White Sox as a clear P-team. So how did our pitchers fare? Porcello faced 105 White Sox batters and held them to a miniscule .190/.229/.350 batting line while posting a 1.98 ERA. Smyly, on the other hand, faced 47 White Sox batters and was knocked around to the tune of a .286/.326/.500 line while posting a 5.56 ERA. So far, so good.

Now let’s extend the analysis to the entire American League. A threshold on D is required to define the partition, but for simplicity we’ll divide the league into seven P-teams and six S-teams with Rick getting an extra team due to his seniority. If you like details, Seattle, New York, and Oakland round out the S-team set beyond the previously mentioned AL Central entries. Against American League S-teams, Smyly allowed an outstanding .213/.281/.315 batting line over 197 batter’s faced with a 2.59 ERA. On the other hand, Porcello allowed a much worse .329/.374/.498 line over his 350 batters faced while posting a 4.76 ERA. Conclusion: Start Smyly against S-teams.

For the American League P-teams, Porcello allowed a respectable .274/.318/.398 line (356 PAs) with a 4.30 ERA while Smyly was somewhat worse, especially in the power department, with a .267/.320/.491 line allowed over 182 PAs with a 4.81 ERA. Conclusion: Start Porcello against P-teams.

So what might we expect from a two-headed monster in the 5th rotation spot if the 2012 numbers carry forward? If we average the batting lines that we get from letting Porcello pitch to AL P-teams and letting Smyly pitch to AL S-teams then we get .244/.300/.357. An appropriately weighted average would probably look even better since three of the six S-teams are located in the AL Central and Drew was better against S-teams than Rick was against P-teams. But let’s see what we can say about the simple average. Felix Hernandez recently signed a deal worth 175 million dollars after allowing .241/.296/.333 last year with a .249/.312/.374 split away from pitcher-friendly Safeco. Thus the Porcello/Smyly combination lands neatly between the King and the King without his court. That's royalty in the fifth starter spot, you could say, for much less than a King’s ransom.

20 Team H2H Saber Points league seeks replacement GM

2013-03-13T17:08:13Z

Major League Fantasy Baseball is in its 3rd year. We are looking for 1 replacement GM for the team currently called Naval Aviation.

The league is h2h, mixed, 20 teams, 25-man MLB rosters, and 15-man milb rosters so this is a VERY deep league.

The points system is the original ottoneu FIP-based points

Link to ESPN league homepage:

http://games.espn.go.com/flb/leagueoffice?leagueId=79196&seasonId=2013

Link to Proboards homepage for milb rosters/draft info:

http://mlfbfantasybaseball.proboards.com/index.cgi

If you are interested please post contact info in the league cbox at either the ESPN or Proboards page (same cbox) or e-mail me at scott.clarkson@gmail.com

Major League Fantasy Baseball is in its 3rd year. We are looking for 1 replacement GM for the team currently called Naval Aviation.

The league is h2h, mixed, 20 teams, 25-man MLB rosters, and 15-man milb rosters so this is a VERY deep league.

The points system is the original ottoneu FIP-based points

Link to ESPN league homepage:

http://games.espn.go.com/flb/leagueoffice?leagueId=79196&seasonId=2013

Link to Proboards homepage for milb rosters/draft info:

http://mlfbfantasybaseball.proboards.com/index.cgi

If you are interested please post contact info in the league cbox at either the ESPN or Proboards page (same cbox) or e-mail me at scott.clarkson@gmail.com

The Unfortunate Lefty: Are some players getting unfairly shafted from Hall of Fame recognition?

2013-03-07T07:55:56Z

Quick, without cheating, who was the last left-handed thrower to play at least five games in a season at 2nd base, 3rd base or shortstop?

If you answered the White Sox' Mike Squires in 1984, shame on you, you filthy, cheating hobo. Squires, as you now already know, who played ten replacement-level seasons mostly as a first baseman and outfielder, filled in 13 games for regular 3B Vance Law that year.

OK, how about before that? If you answered Cincinnati's Hal Chase, who in 1916 appeared 16 times as a second baseman, stop it. Not cool.

How about the last left-handed shortstop to appear as many as five times in a season at that position? Would you believe it hasn't happened since 1899, when somebody named Billy Hulen played 19 games at shortstop for the Washington Senators? Of course you would, you're probably already reading the part on his Wikipedia page where he ditched his family to play amateur baseball under an assumed name in Medicine Hat.

I guess what the take-home message of this section of the article is, is that left-handed throwers simply don't play those positions. Ever. No lefty since the McKinley administration has played so much as 20 games in a season at any of those positions, and no one has come anywhere near a full season. I've never been fully convinced that it couldn't happen, but for whatever reason, it just doesn't.

So, what happens to those unfortunate lefties who have a great infield glove? If they can run, by tee-ball they're usually encouraged to play outfield. If they can throw hard, they usually pitch. If they can do neither, they invariably get stashed at first base. Which, to be honest, is probably a complete waste of their glove. Generally speaking, first base is so easy to play that there isn't much difference between a competent first baseman and a great one.

This isn't necessarily a problem, however, if he's a great hitter. By all accounts, Lou Gehrig had a slick glove. Fellow career .340 hitters, Hall of Famers and left-handed throwers George Sisler and Bill Terry were also known for their tight defense at first base.

But what if you're a different kind of hitter? What about guys like, say, Mark Grace or Keith Hernandez? Both provided excellent defense at first base, both were very good hitters, but unfortunately neither really hit for power. And when it comes time for Hall of Fame voting, if you're a post-deadball first baseman who can't hit home runs, you are going to get completely ignored.

Is this fair? Should we really be comparing slick-fielding, line-drive hitting first basemen like Grace and Mex to your typical lardass or leadglove first baseman, like Prince Fielder or Adam Dunn, who just get stashed there as a place to hide their terrible glove? Let's be honest: if it weren't for this (arguably) silly tradition preventing lefties from playing other infield positions, Keith Hernandez would have been a shortstop. With his glove and bat, a Hall of Fame shortstop. Probably first ballot. But because of this practice, he got just 5.1% in his first season of eligibility, languished in the mid-to-high single digits for a few years, then fell off the ballot and into the dustbin of history. All because he was being unfairly compared to a completely different type of player.

It might be time to start identifying players in the Grace/Hernandez mold who are doubles-hitting, defense-first lefties who play first base only because it is their only option, and considering them separately from the power-hitting, leadglove archetype who tend to get all the recognition.

So, who are the first basemen who likely would have played another infield position if they had the opportunity, and thus had a better shot at the HOF? To try and identify who these lost souls might be, I decided on the following inclusion criteria:

• Retired, but not in the Hall of Fame

• Threw left-handed

• Played at least half of his career games at 1B

• Played his entire career after 1900 (19th century stats? No thanks!)

• Had at least 1400 career hits (every Hall of Fame 2B, 3B and SS had at least that many)

• Had at least 20 career rWAR

• Had an rFielding of at least 0

Figuring this would provide us with a solid starting point, I fired up the ole Baseball-Reference.com Play Index, yielding the following 15 players:

Player	WAR	H	HR	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
Rafael Palmeiro	66.1	3020	569	.288	.371	.515	.885
Keith Hernandez	57.1	2182	162	.296	.384	.436	.821
John Olerud	53.7	2239	255	.295	.398	.465	.863
Will Clark	53.2	2176	284	.303	.384	.497	.880
Norm Cash	48.2	1820	377	.271	.374	.488	.862
Mark Grace	43.0	2445	173	.303	.383	.442	.825
Joe Judge	42.2	2352	71	.298	.378	.420	.798
Dolph Camilli	40.2	1482	239	.277	.388	.492	.880
Don Mattingly	39.8	2153	222	.307	.358	.471	.830
Jake Daubert	36.8	2326	56	.303	.360	.401	.760
Bill White	35.3	1706	202	.286	.351	.455	.806
Lu Blue	33.0	1696	44	.287	.402	.401	.803
Cecil Cooper	32.6	2192	241	.298	.337	.466	.803
Wally Joyner	32.2	2060	204	.289	.362	.440	.802
Wally Pipp	27.8	1941	90	.281	.341	.408	.749

No real obvious HOFers on there, aside from Raffy (let's forget about him since he is a different case altogether). Right? A few borderliners who quickly fell off the ballot with minimal public outrage, maybe a couple guys you’ve never heard of, maybe some beloved 80s guys with fun nicknames whose baseball cards you had as a kid, but overall, no real glaring omissions?

Well, what if these guys…threw with their right hands and not their left? Being a right-handed thrower with at least middling infield skills, it’s pretty easy to imagine most of these guys spending time at other infield positions in their careers, had they not been banished to the doldrums of first base since dad-pitch. What positions might they have played, and how would that have affected their Hall of Fame chances?

To figure this out, I first re-calculated what each of their career WARs would have been had they played each of 2nd base, 3rd base and Shortstop. On Baseball-Reference.com, WAR is calculated with the below formula:

(rBatting + rBaserunning + rDP + rFielding + rReplacement + rPosition)/(RAR per win constant, usually around 10)

To convert their WAR to each position, I did this by simply replacing their rPositions (positional adjustment based on offensive scarcity) with that of what they would have had if they had spent their entire career at the other position. Using the yearly rPositional table on BBRef, I took all the positional adjustments over the course of their career and then multiplied that by the ratio of the games they actually played divided by the number of possible games they could have played given their first and last seasons. For example, if a player played ten seasons from 1991 thru 2000, and the positional adjustment for each of those ten seasons at 2B was 5, I would figure he got +50 rPosition; I then prorated that by the number of games he played over that period. Of a possible [(162*10)-66 for the 1994-95 strike] = 1554 games during the span of his career of which he played 1400, (1400/1554) * 50 = 45 runs.

Player	WAR	Rbat	Rbaser	Rdp	Rfield	Rrep	Rpos	Rpos(2B)	Rpos(3B)	Rpos(SS)
Keith Hernandez	57.1	283	-3	6	117	259	-122	52	24	114
John Olerud	53.7	332	-25	-15	102	288	-136	43	22	114
Will Clark	53.2	352	7	15	0	253	-119	41	16	105
Norm Cash	48.2	336	-15	7	39	230	-109	54	38	117
Mark Grace	43.0	223	0	6	76	258	-131	44	20	116
Joe Judge	42.2	189	0	0	35	293	-91	53	63	141
Dolph Camilli	40.2	260	-1	0	24	190	-69	57	16	97
Don Mattingly	39.8	227	5	3	34	245	-114	41	12	96
Jake Daubert	36.8	178	-12	0	23	246	-75	22	65	131
Bill White	35.3	136	-2	18	57	227	-91	46	28	95
Lu Blue	33.0	138	6	0	36	226	-72	51	46	105
Cecil Cooper	32.6	171	3	9	18	248	-130	48	26	105
Wally Joyner	32.2	150	1	-8	54	249	-118	42	17	108
Wally Pipp	27.8	25	-7	0	80	250	-75	34	60	122

I would then re-calculate his WAR by simply replacing his positional adjustment as a first baseman with this estimated rPosition for each of 2B, 3B and shortstop, adding up the components to get a new RAR, dividing that by the same ratio yielded by (Actual RAR/Actual WAR), and then getting hypothetical WARS for each of the other three infield positions. That yielded the below table (sorted by descending rFielding):

Player	WAR	Rfield	WAR(2B)	WAR(3B)	WAR(SS)
Keith Hernandez	57.1	117	75.5	72.5	82.1
John Olerud	53.7	102	71.3	69.2	78.3
Wally Pipp	27.8	80	38.9	41.5	47.8
Mark Grace	43	76	60.5	58.1	67.6
-	-	-	-	-	-
Bill White	35.3	57	49.3	47.5	54.3
Wally Joyner	32.2	54	47.9	45.4	54.4
Norm Cash	48.2	39	64.3	62.7	70.5
Lu Blue	33	36	45.1	44.7	50.5
Joe Judge	42.2	35	56.5	57.5	65.2
Don Mattingly	39.8	34	55.2	52.4	60.7
-	-	-	-	-	-
Dolph Camilli	40.2	24	52.8	48.6	56.7
Jake Daubert	36.8	23	46.7	51.2	57.8
Cecil Cooper	32.6	18	50.8	48.5	56.6
Will Clark	53.2	0	70.0	67.3	76.7

I then had to decide which position each player would have played had he been a righty. I looked at existing clusters, and decided to split rFielding roughly in thirds, using +30 rFielding and +60 rFielding as the cutoffs – players with 0-30 rFielding became 3rd basemen, 31-60 became 2nd basemen, and over 60 became shortstops. I figured that if a player were a slightly above average first baseman, a manager could justify trying him out at 3rd base. It is a harder position to play, but he probably wouldn’t embarrass himself. The most elite-fielding 1st basemen would likely have been shortstops had they been allowed, and those in the middle I figure would have probably played 2nd base.

Let’s take a look at each player’s new positions, new WAR, and see who would have gotten in to the Hall of Fame:

3rd base: Will Clark – 67.3 WAR. Closest matches: Brooks Robinson or Ron Santo.

Verdict: The Thrill, having played his career as a third baseman, would likely have been inducted within his first five tries.

Thanks for playing: Daubert, Cooper, Camilli; all in the 48-51 range and similar to Robin Ventura, Stan Hack, Ron Cey and Toby Harrah.

2nd base: Norm Cash – 64.3 WAR. Closest matches: Ryne Sandberg or Roberto Alomar.

Verdict: Stormin' Norman is now a very strong candidate. He probably would have languished in the 40% range for about a decade before getting a Blylevenesqaue push toward the end and making it in his last try.

Judge and Mattingly, now in the mid-50s and among Joe Gordon, Jackie Robinson and Chase Utley, probably make it in the Veteran's Committee voting as old men.

So close: Blue, Joyner and White, in the mid-40s are among lower-end Hall of Famers such as Nellie Fox, Tony Lazzeri and Johnny Evers, but none of them would get elected.

Shortstop: Keith Hernandez - 82.1 WAR; John Olerud - 78.3 WAR. Closest matches: Cal Ripken, Ozzie Smith, Robin Yount.

Verdict: Both Hernandez and Olerud are slam dunk, first ballot Hall of Fame shortstops.

Mark Grace - 67.6 WAR. Closest Match: Barry Larkin

Verdict: Grace has to wait a couple years, but gets in on his second or third try.

Sorry, dude: Wally Pipp in the mid-to-high 40s is in Bert Campaneris territory.

So, this prejudice against lefties has probably cost us about five Hall of Famers: Will Clark, Norm Cash, Keith Hernandez, John Olerud and Mark Grace.

Will they ever get their due?

Deej Simons