23 November 2012

Shining the Projector on 2013

In his rookie year of 2010, Ike Davis burst into Metville with a solid full season of .264/.351/.440 and 19 home runs. With good defense, he produced three-and-a-half wins over a replacement-level first baseman. Not too shabby. Met fans had high hopes for the future.

Davis was hurt in 2011, but his 2012 confounded everyone by leaping in the power department while collapsing in the on-base arena. He smacked 32 homers but batted just .227 and got on base at a weak .308 clip. Despite the power surge, he was worth less than half as much at the plate.

So which Ike is the real Ike? What can we expect from 2013?

Statistical projection systems help make sense of these kinds of players by parsing the components of their results, comparing them to comparable players through history, and adjusting for ballpark, league, era, and age. In Davis's case, the essential components of his performance didn't change, but bad luck truncated his batting average on balls in play from a slightly above average .321 to a miserable .246, dragging down his batting average.

Assuming a regression to normal batting average on balls in play (BABIP), Bill James projects that Davis will rebound to a .266 batting average and a .354 on base percentage. Met fans will be delighted to know that there isn't any reason to expect his power to decline. James projects Davis will hit 31 bombs and slug .511. In other words, history says that Ike Davis is the guy who sprung from the gate in 2010, not the baffling slugger of 2012, and now that he's two years older, should be even better.

Projection systems aren't predictions; they are guesses educated by 130 years of baseball history, leavened by data that can illuminate why a hitter performed as he did. If Davis's strikeout rate had leaped, or he suddenly hit many more pop-ups, or the percentage of his fly balls leaving the park had skyrocketed, James would be considerably less sanguine about Ike's future.

In short, statistical projection systems have discovered some basic rules to suggest how players will perform going forward. Many players defy the historical standards and completely elude their projections, but these are generally good guides. Here are some basic rules governing the projections:
1. As batters age, particularly as they get near and then past 30, they tend to hit for lower average and more power, walk more, strikeout more, and steal less.
2. Young players with high on-base skills tend to decline faster because they can't add that skill as they age.
3. Perhaps counter-intuitively, fleet players have longer careers with flatter aging curves.
4. Batters who break out suddenly from established performance norms generally regress about halfway to their mean thereafter. A guy with a .250 batting average and 15 homers a year over six seasons who suddenly hits .300 with 35 homers can be expected to hit roughly .275 with 25 bombs the following campaign.
5. Low average sluggers with big bodies tend to fall of a cliff. When they lose a split second of timing the fat lady starts singing.
6. Component statistics can add a great deal of information to the above. For example, strikeout rates can indicate if a batter is losing bat speed or becoming more disciplined even if his results don't change. Another example: a big variation in BABIP generally means luck has infiltrated the results and likely won't stick around another year.

Knowing all this, let's see what James says about some interesting players:

Mike Trout
2012  .326/.399/.524, 30 homers, 49 steals
2013  .325/.402/.544, 30 homers, 53 steals

This boggles the mind. According to James, Trout will follow perhaps the greatest 20-year-old season in history with an almost identical 21-year-old season, even though Trout batted .383 on balls in play last year. That BABIP is sky high because Trout runs well and hits the ball hard.


Edwin Encarnacion
2011 .272/.334/.453, 17 homers, 8 steals
2012  .280/.384/.557, 42 homers, 17 steals
2013  .271/.359/.504, 31 homers, 9 steals

As you might imagine, James projects Encarnacion in 2013 to post on base and slugging percentages almost exactly halfway between his established norm and last year's breakout season. Because Encarnacion is turning 30, we might ordinarily expect an uptick in his home run numbers, which accounts for the high 2013 home run tally.

 
Dan Uggla
2011 .233/.311/.453, 36 homers, 62 walks
2012  .220/.348/.384, 19 homers, 94 walks
2013  .271/.341/.439, 28 homers, 84 walks

Uggla is an enigma wrapped in a fireplug. In 2010 he added another stellar year to his Marlin resume, batting .287 with 33 blasts from his second base position. In 2011 he couldn't buy a hit in the season's early months with the Braves and finished at .233, but with 36 dingers. Last season the batting average and power spasmed, but he led the league in walks. Without historical comparisons, projection systems spasm too.


A.J. Pierzynski
2011 .287/.323/.405, 8 homers
2012  .278/.306/.501, 27 homers
2013  .269/.310/.422, 17 homers

The White Sox catcher is a free agent and James's projection should serve as a caveat to any team thinking of signing him for an offensive injection. Pierzynski was the same hitter in '12 as in '11, except he suddenly made a habit of leaving the yard. The projection system is not particularly impressed, probably because at 36 he's reaching the cul de sac of his career.



Mike Napoli 
2010 .238/.316/.438, 26 homers
2011 .320/.414/.631, 30 homers
2012 .227/.343/.469, 24 homers 
2013 .240/.350/.498, 29 homers

So Mike Napoli is a slugging catcher who doesn't hit for average. Except BOOM! when he does. What do you do with this guy, particularly considering he spent 2010 playing home games in Anaheim, 2011 and 2012 in Arlington and will spend 2013 in, well, we'll get back to you on that?


Albert Pujols
2009
.327/.443/.658, 47 homers 104 BB/54 K
2010 .312/.414/.596, 42 homers  103 BB/76 K
2011 .299/.366/.541, 37 homers  61 BB/58 K
2012  .285/.343/.514, 30 homers  52 BB/76 K
2013  .305/.394/.564, 38 homers  84 BB/73 K

Albert Pujols is the fastest car at Indy, but for the last three laps it's been running out of fuel. His batting average, on-base, slugging, home runs and walk rate have all declined
for three consecutive years while his strikeout rate has creeped up. Yet James projects improvement in every aspect of Prince Albert's game at age 33. The projector is broken.

These kinds of projections are the result of the atomizing of offensive data. Because pitching and defense are more difficult to capture, the projections for pitchers are less useful, but we'll take a look down the road.

All of James's projections can be found by subscribing to Baseball Info Solutions.

22 November 2012

Thankful

On Thanksgiving, it is proper to take a moment to ruminate over our many blessings, such as that we're not a turkey, or a Royals fan. Anymore.

My gratitude to others:

I give thanks for the "traditionalists" who claim to hate baseball statistics and then misuse them to justify foolish positions. They make possible the endless arguments that bring joy to the interstitial spaces between pitches, at bats and innings.

I give thanks for the Luddites who refuse to learn anything new about baseball, as if willful ignorance is a life strategy. A weak beam like me positively shimmers in contrast to dull mattes like that.

I give thanks for the innumerate journalists who assume that if analysis is beyond their understanding it can't be valuable. They allow a third-rate amateur blogger to produce more insightful opinions in his spare time than they do vocationally.

I give thanks for the slow learners who aren't prepared to rush into the embrace of new statistics developed just 33 years earlier and tested rigorously since, the kind of examination that exposes the irrelevance of RBIs and pitcher wins. They allow a new breed of open-minded fans to converse at a higher plane than they can fathom.

I give thanks for the robotic seamheads who forget that real humans play the game. They give cover to lunkheads still dog-paddling in the shallow end of the knowledge pool and spur the debates that I so enjoy.

But mostly, I give thanks for being born rich and free in America where I have the luxury to waste time on frivolous pursuits like this with a full stomach and the security that it will all be there tomorrow.

19 November 2012

A Brief Interlude For the Upcoming Playoff

"You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need."  --The Rolling Stones

College football fans have forever bemoaned the lack of a playoff to determine a national champion. That they've had such a structure for a decade has either escaped their notice or rattled them into cognitive dissonance. A single-game showdown between the best two teams is a playoff.

Still, college football fandom demands a four-team or eight team tournament. This year, no thanks to the NCAA, a playoff structure has emerged that's three rounds deep with two games left in the season. The whining continues unabated as this inconvenient truth has yet to settle in. Let's take the ride together, shall we?

Notre Dame has a semi-final scrum this weekend against the team claiming to be Southern Cal. If Our Lady wins, they go to the championship. Lose and they're out. That's a playoff game.

Alabama and Georgia both have quarter-final walkovers this weekend against state rivals Auburn and Georgia Tech respectively. The former is a hoodoo and the latter is a fake, so the Crimson Tide and Dawgs should advance with little resistance. Lose, against all odds -- and in this case I'm looking only at you, Georgia, since an Auburn upset could be considered nothing less than an optical illusion -- and the league championship the following week would simply be a consolation game. Assuming the cosmos remains intact, Alabama and Georgia will square off in two weeks with the SEC crown and a slot in the national title game in the balance.

Oregon, now ranked fourth, visits Corvalis for the inaptly named Civil War (in Oregon?) this weekend. A Notre Dame defeat opens the door for their contest to serve as a semi-final as well, unless Stanford slips against UCLA, allowing Oregon into the Pac-12 championship game. That would, ironically, bump this week's contest back to a quarter-final with the league title game as a possible semi-final.

Florida plays Florida State this weekend in a matchup that had lost much of its luster in recent years, but could serve as a national semi-final now. A couple of well-placed results could land the victor in the national title tilt. You may be thinking that it's unlikely that Notre Dame and Oregon would both lose, (or that one would succumb while Georgia and Alabama both split) but then you would already be forgetting the events of the weekend past.

In none of these scenarios does an eligible undefeated team get left out, a two-loss team hop over one-loss contenders or a one-loss team out-flank any serious one-loss contenders, except perhaps Notre Dame, which has its future in its own hands. (Kansas State might squawk about that, but such is the penalty for losing to a Baylor squad that entered their game 1-5 in league play.) Even the lowest ranked team named here, the one-loss Seminoles, would have vanquished #9 Clemson and #5 Florida among its victories.

Thus, up to six formidable teams are still vying for the championship. They will play up to seven determinative football games these next two weeks, and in no case will a loser nonetheless slip into the championship picture. That, my friends, is a playoff. The only thing left to complain about is that there's no reasonable cause for complaint.

Unless you're an Ohio State fan.

18 November 2012

The Yankees' Fiscal Cliff

As we approach the end of the year, our national impolitic faces the specter of punitive cuts in everything from social services to defense about which economists aren't in unanimous agreement of jackknifing us back into recession only because some modeling suggests depression instead.

Faced with this, left-wing idealouges and right-wing stonewallers in Congress have reached consensus on the following: they are prepared to compromise as long as the other side agrees to their stipulations. The result is an economic ship in stormy seas with no one at the helm.

Could the Yankees be on the same collision course? The team has anchored itself to some long-term contracts that figure to get right ugly with the passage of time.

Coming off an MVP quality season in 2007, when he punished the American League with 54 homers, 24 steals and a .422 OBP, Alex Rodriguez tore up the most egregious contract in MLB history in search of even more. Having already taken $200 million of Tom Hicks' money, ARod coaxed the Yankees into committing $275 million of George Steinbrenner's over the following 10 years. 

Although it seemed unlikely that Rodriguez could find another partner willing to go steady for a decade at anywhere near that rate, or a franchise dumb enough to commit while being smart enough to contend, the Yankees eyed their below-replacement-level replacements at third base and blinked. If the Treasury was being raided while they danced, at least they got the prettiest girl at the party.

Except age was getting into Alex's system just as the muscle-building agents were cycling out. In '08 and '09, at age 31 and 32, ARod ceased to be ARodian, but simply great at the plate and missed 24 and 38 games for the first time in his career. In the three years since, he's averaged 119 games, a .350 OBP and declining range at third base, all for $92 million.

And it gets worse. ARod will make $114 million from now, age 37, until age 42, during which projections suggest he'll contribute around three wins above a replacement for New York. Those projections are based on him playing roughly full-time during that stint, which seems only slightly more likely than his joining the priesthood.

Particularly for a company awash in cash, that's a waste of money, not a fiscal cliff. But a declining Mark Teixeira presents the same dilemma. Coming off 54 magical games with Anaheim in '08, during which Tex hit.358/449/.632, Brian Cashman inked what appeared to be an eminently sensible eight-year, $180 million deal with the steady first baseman.

Since then, Teixeira has gone steadily downhill. Having never posted an OBP below .370 when he donned the pinstripes, he's declined every years since, down to .332 this past season. Teixeira enters his age 33 season with real question marks, but none of them are attached to a contract that obligates the Steinbrenners to pay him $90 million over the next four years. 

Pile on the $119 owed to CC Sabathia through 2017 and impending free agency for Curtis Granderson and most notably Robinson Cano and even the Yankees may be approaching their debt ceiling. Should a couple of these players hit the wall while under contract, the roster could get old, average and awfully expensive simultaneously.

Obviously Yankees, Inc. is better positioned to withstand such financial hardships better than are the Kansas City Royals, or the Republic of Congo, for that matter. But Hank and Hal have whinnied about sliding back under the $189 million luxury tax threshold, of which the five players above will siphon off more than $100 million regardless of whether they're roster-worthy. 

If you love baseball you'll be rooting for it all to come tumbling down simultaneously. My heart goes out to the metro area in the wake of Sandy (and so did some of my money), but a Yankee implosion is the kind of natural disaster that the rest of the country can enjoy and even benefit from. A few years of AL East dominance by Tampa Bay, Baltimore and Toronto would be a nice change of pace.

Kind of like a sensible compromise in Washington that reduces deficits without slowing economic growth. Don't hold your breath for that one.

16 November 2012

Flounder or Fly: The Marlins and Blue Jays

Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don't. Almond Joy has nuts; Mounds don't.


Marlins owner
Jeff Loria may not have nuts, but he's got balls, catapulting the Federal Reserve at high-profile free agents in order to get a stadium built on the public dime and then jettisoning his shiny new toys months later.


He isn't nuts though. Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle and Heath Bell, playing beside Hanley Ramirez, Josh Johnson and Giancarlo Stanton, delivered 93 losses last season. Plan B could hardly be worse.

If this is, in fact, Plan B. Miami backloaded the big money contracts with a dump truck, perhaps so future trade partners would endure the bulk of the burden. Buehrle signed for $6 million in '12 (a big pay cut) but $48 million over the next three years. Reyes gets $10 million each of his first two seasons (also a pay cut) and $22 million each of the last four. Bell also traded a small downgrade to $6 million in year one for $9 million in years two-through-four, a contract already $6 million too fat.

But that's a problem for another team. Bell is now the D-backs' albatross, with help from an $8 million Marlin subsidy. Meanwhile, Reyes and Buehrle, along with every Marlin asset not named Stanton, will henceforth toil in Ontario while Miami pursues its post-World Series formula of stocking up prospects and cashing in on the cheap.

Except that it doesn't appear Loria got much in the futures market from the Blue Jays, almost certainly because of the artificially high price of his asset bundle. Enjoy your gaudy new nuthouse, Miamiheads! No lines at the ticket windows!

The Blue Jays are a lot poorer right now, but they aren't nuts. GM Alex Anthopoulos, who managed last year to trade Vernon Wells's toxic contract and get a better player in return, is striking when the iron is hot. Yankee teeth are getting long, Boston is back-pedaling and Baltimore's fairy godmother is busy waving her wand at Notre Dame. The AL East is as ripe for the taking as it's ever been and Double-A is pouncing, cost-be-damned. He's getting help from the Loonie too: having once cowered in the greenback's shadow, the Canadian dollar now looks eye-to-eye at its devalued American cousin.

Even after shopping for stars at the Marlins Everything Must Go sale and inking the discount purchase of presumably unjuiced Melky Cabrera, the Jays have holes. Adding Johnson and Buehrle gives them just three good starters. An outfield of Jose Bautista, Colby Rasmus and Melky Cabrera could be sick, or if the latter two revert to previous form, could make Canadians sick. There are plenty of other issues, but plenty of time to purchase solutions.

We'll find out in 2013 whether the fishy Marlin strategy or the soaring Blue Jay formula pays dividends.

6,930,001


The post-MVP vote storm has subsided and few minds have been expanded. Miguel Cabrera, a better MVP candidate than everyone in the American League -- by Prince Fielder's waistline -- except for Mike Trout, won the award. 

There are two simple conclusions to draw: 
  1. The optimist's: a player with an MVP-quality season was so honored. The result was far from the travesty sometimes reported.
  2. And the pessimist's: the MVP didn't get the hardware. The fight for knowledge is incomplete.
The "traditionalists" who focused on the Triple Crown and a playoff berth, previously debunked here and so many elsewheres that a Google search of Mike Trout MVP yields 6,930,0000 returns, have attempted to demonstrate that 59 is more than 76. (Their respective offensive runs against replacement.) That dog won't hunt, but if you don't hunt, and you've never had a dog, it's hard to understand. To the rest of us, the argument is transparently false.

On the other hand, 59 is more than 53 and 49 and every other number in the league. So there's that.

Cry not for Mike Trout. He's 21. He'd be well-advised to lease a gigantic trophy case. 

As for the writers and their fellow travelers, hey, it's only been 33 years since Bill James's first Baseball Abstract. Give them time to adjust.

06 November 2012

Oh Yeah, It's a Baseball Blog


For the 35th straight year, I exercised my franchise today. On the national level it was a pretty desultory affair, like scoring a run in a consolation game. No matter the outcome I wouldn't feel like a winner.

On the local level, though, I had the thrilling opportunity to cast my ballot either for people running unopposed or not at all. Choice is over-rated.

I did vote for the incumbent Receiver of Taxes, despite the lack of alternative. When it comes to receiving my taxes, she receives them like nobody's business. I mean, she's the Yadier Molina of receiving taxes. Every time I've sent her my taxes, by golly, she's received them. I'm not aware of our tax backstop being charged with a single Passed Tax all year. I don't know anything about her offensive skills, nor even how that metaphor would work, but based on her receiving skills, vis-a-vis taxes, she earned my vote.

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I heard a rumor that the NHL has fiddled away its November schedule while Nome burns. (Nome is cold. I presume they like hockey.) Two more months to go. A 40-game schedule beginning in January to eliminate the frauds, posers and ne'er-do-wells before the real season begins sounds about right.

I also heard that Laker fans were apoplectic because their team hiccuped in its first two games. Of an 82-game season. Whose only purpose is to weed out the incorrigibles. So they can roll out the interminable playoff schedule. Before winnowing down to the only four teams that ever had a chance to win a championship. If you're not a fan of L.A., Miami, Chicago or Oklahoma City, might I suggest a good book?
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Right on schedule, the BCS doomsdayers are bellyaching about the calamity of shoehorning four undefeateds into a two-team championship format. Right on schedule they are ignoring all of history, which suggests that at least two of those teams will accommodate the BCS by succumbing along the way. But who needs facts when there's 24 hours-a-day of sports talk to fill?

(Addendum to this: The Notre Dame football program should be very proud of its accomplishments so far this season, but if it's one of the nation's top 10 teams, Snooki is our next president. Worried about whether Irish will be "shut out" of the title game? Don't forget to fret about the mighty undefeated Mountain Hawks of Lehigh.

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Oh yeah, it's a baseball blog. 

General managers seeking an opportunity to dispose of the GDP of Guinea Bissau for a Solyndra-type return need look no farther than Josh Hamilton and Kyle Lohse.

Hamilton is reportedly seeking seven years at $175 million. That's Lexus money for Lexus talent. Ah so, but Hamilton is a 31-year-old Lexus that breaks down like a Vega. Anyone who inks him to more than one presidential term will experience expensive buyer's remorse.

Since entering the majors in 2001, Kyle Lohse has solidified his fourth starter status with lines like 9-13, 5.34, 6-12, 4.58 and 14-11, 4.61, worth 11 wins above replacement over 11 seasons. With a .500 record on good teams, an ERA five percent higher than average and a WHIP of nearly one-and-a-half, Lohse has established his bona fides and they're more fide than bona. (Bona = good. Or the lead singer of a rock band. Fide = your dog. Unless he's Spot.)

To any GM dazzled by his anomalous age-34 season (16-3, 2.86): Call me. I have oceanfront property in Arizona to sell you. Lohse is, as popular parlance now prefers, what he is, not what he ain't, which is what he was this year. Fatten his bank account at your own considerable risk.