The Return of the Big Market Clubs

In 1977, Bill James released his Baseball Abstract, tearing down the house built on BA-HR-RBI and W-L records. He demonstrated empirically how inadequate those measures were in player evaluation, ushering in an era of discernible -- and exploitable -- market inefficiencies.

The exploding capabilities of the PC and the rise of the Internet multiplied the power of James's observations and allowed low-revenue baseball teams -- starting with the Oakland A's -- to compete with the big boys.

The Internet also paved the way for athletes to become famous wherever they played, allowing LeBron James in Cleveland, Stephen Curry in Oakland and Bryce Harper in Washington to emerge as global brands.

That significantly leveled the playing field and removed the nearly insurmountable advantage enjoyed in MLB by the Yankees, who had money, market and intangibles on their side in the 90s and 2000s. They won largely by throwing money at all the best players and managing them wisely.

Money Matters Again
That formula doesn't work anymore, but a new one does. The Yankees still have the largest market and the most money, as do the Dodgers and Cubs in the NL. Instead of investing in free agents, they have invested in the best baseball operations people, in player development and in the secret formula that small market teams were riding to success -- statistical analysis.

Forty years after Bill James threw a hand grenade into baseball's intelligentsia, his wisdom is finally received in total. The big market clubs are taking their reduced advantage in disposable income and leveraging it to raise the best young players. 

Investing in Management Rather Than Labor
Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez Greg Bird, Luis Severino and Aaron Hicks are not an accident or serendipity. They are products of  a well-capitalized player development plan. They teach Baby Bombers to play smart defense, become students of the game, learn patience at the plate, stay even-keeled when behind, and so on.

The fleecing of the White Sox to procure the services of Tommy Kahnle, David Robertson and Todd Frazier was not simply good fortune. Top dollar buys the best front office too. Brian Cashman has done this before in his career, such as when he stole Bobby Abreu from the Phillies for Cory Lidle in 2006. Abreu added 7 WAR to their playoff-run efforts in a little more than two seasons.

The Dodgers have used smart analytics and the power of the purse to build the deepest team in baseball, one that delivers quality well beyond the 25-man roster. So when L.A. suffered a string of injuries this season, a wily front office employed the disabled list to stash pitchers between starts to stretch the roster and then dipped into a pungent minor league system to promote MLB-ready replacements.

And so here we are, back to the 70s when NY and LA dominated the World Series. 

It's Could Be Horrible for the Game
It could be horrible for the game that a few big market clubs make regular playoff visits because it's could be horrible for fans in Cleveland and Milwaukee and Minneapolis and, well, almost everywhere else. It was boring, frankly, to see the same teams win every year, unless you were fans of those teams.

Watching the Yankees ascend within a game of the World Series and knowing that they will soon sign Bryce Harper and a host of other young free agents and dominate the American League again makes me miserable. It should make you miserable too unless you happen to be a Yankee fan. 

But it's the new reality. Now that the playing field has returned to level with respect to intelligence, money matters again.

Why Seamheads Keep Under-Rating the O's

In the last three seasons, the Baltimore Orioles have punished their AL East brethren, tallying 93, 85 and 96 wins, and snagging two division titles.

And so this year, once again, the stat-based projection systems are showing the franchise less respect than Aretha Franklin. PECOTA pegs the Birds at 78 wins and a basement finish for the fourth straight season. Not a finished basement, mind you.

The Birds have unintentionally uncovered one way in which projections systems and the seamheads who worship them are for the birds themselves. (But not for the Birds.) Because of pretzel logic baked into the projection system by stat guys who call everything they can't quantify "luck," PECOTA holds a deep and abiding hatred for everything Baltimore, including crabs, Terrapins, Edgar Alan Poe and being called "hun."

In this article for Baseball Prospectus, Zachary Levine explains what the Orioles did to PECOTA (pulled its hair and made it cry in fifth grade) to consistently earn a subterranean ranking. How does PECOTA suggest the Orioles will shed 18 wins from last season? Here's the critical segment of the explanation:

The first five wins are easy. That’s the luck that the Orioles had last year that you would expect to be close to independent year-to-year. A 96-66 team, they had a Pythagorean record based on runs scored and allowed of 94-68 and a third-order record based on the underlying stats that go into run scoring and prevention of 91-71. 

Translation: the O's presented a unique profile in 2014, in which the close matches tilted their way and the blowouts blew in the other direction. Generally, that's more likely luck than skill. Bill James discovered in a previous century that teams are much more like their run differential than they are like their won-loss records; the run differential is a better predictor of future record than past record.

The discrepancy between the won-loss record suggested by run differential (technically, the difference between the square of runs scored and the square of runs allowed, hence the notion of a Pythagorian record) and the actual won-loss record is commonly referred to by sabergeeks as "luck."

But sometimes what appears to be luck is skill lurking in the corner of the dugout. The Os under Showalter have vastly out-performed this measure, which suggests that they know something Bill James doesn't . (Is that possible?) In 2012, Baltimore posted an astonishing 29-9 record in one-run games and 16-2 record in extra-inning affairs, and they repeated the feat, albeit less dramatically, in 2014.

This could be a run of luck akin to flipping heads 17 of 19 times. Or it could be that the team knows something that gives them an edge in close contests. A sharp manager, a good bench and a deep but unheralded pitching staff, all of which Baltimore possesses, could convey that needed margin in close games without tilting the balance in less evenly contested skirmishes.

This is a bit like the "pitching to the score" argument people make for Jack Morris and his pedestrian 3.94 lifetime ERA, so we have to be careful. But PECOTA and its brethren have been wrong for three straight years. Maybe it's time to acknowledge that just because we don't know what it is doesn't necessarily make it luck.

Bet the over.

Another Spin In the Projection Machine

It might be interesting to consider what's in store for players who have changed teams while the hot stove burns. Here are Bill James's projections for the performances of a handful of key players. 

Remember that these projections were assembled prior to the signings and trades that have dotted the off-season, and that projections are not predictions. And that Bill James is not God. In fact, he finished fourth in the holy trinity.

Josh Hamilton
2012 .285/.354/.577 43 HR 148 games
2013 .289/.356/.540 35 HR 147 games

This is an exceedingly generous projection considering:
1. Hamilton has moved from Arlington to Anaheim, which should punish his stats a bit.
2. The number of games Hamilton has stayed healthy for in a season looks like this: 90, 156, 89, 133, 121, 148. The logical next number is not 147.

R.A. Dickey
2012   20-8, 2.73 in 234 innings, 54 BB, 230 K
2013   16-8, 3.58 in 226 innings, 56 BB, 152 K

Projections on pitchers are difficult enough, but with a unique subject like Dickey who really has no comparables, examining other players is not necessarily helpful. Given that, this projection seems eminently reasonable. This suggests he'll still pitch very well but won't dominate. Translated to Toronto, and the AL Beast, these numbers are likely to degrade further.

Kendrys Morales
2012  .273/.320/.467, 22 HR in 134 games
2013  .284/.332/.489, 23 HR in 137 games

Morales broke out in 2009, his first full season, hitting .306 and smacking 34 homers. Off to another estimable campaign in 2010, he broke his leg jumping on the plate during a walk-off celebration. James is suggesting that last year was Kendrys's new normal, which will be normalized lower playing in Seattle's dead-ball zone. Projections also suggest that he'll want to poke his eyeballs out with hot needles after watching the likes of Jason Bay and Raul Ibanez take their hacks. Speaking of which . . .

Jason Bay
2011  .245/.329/.374, 12 HR in 123 games
2012  .165/.237/.299, eight HR in 70 games
2013  .247/.343/.413, 17 HR in 133 games

So James suggests that Bay will deliver the greatest bounceback from irrelevance as a 35-year-old in MLB history. Of course, the projection system didn't know that Bay would become part of a platoon -- with 104-year-old Raul Ibanez, no less -- making 133 games played (and therefore 17 dingers) as likely as good parenting from the platoon of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.

Melky Cabrera
2011 with Royals - .305/.339/.470 in 155 games
2012 with Giants -- .346/.390/.516 in 113 games before his blood turned him in
2013 with Blue Jays -- .295/.348/.432 in 148 games

In other words, the projection system says that not only was 2012 a steroid-induced fluke, 2011 wasn't to be believed either. The 2013 projection isn't much better than Melky's lifetime averages, which, absent the two years in question, were below average. Good luck with that, Blue Jays.

Shane Victorino
2011 with Phils -- .279/.355/.491, 19 steals, 17 HR
2012 with Phils & Dodgers -- .255/.321/.383, 39 steals, 11 HR
2013 with Red Sox -- .269/.338/.418, 29 steals, 14 HR

Can you say, "split the difference?"

Nick Swisher
Lifetime     .256/.361/.467, 25 HR, 84 RBI, 86 R, 84 BB, 134 K
2013           .256/.362/.458, 25 HR, 86 RBI, 82 R, 86 BB, 143 K

Sheesh, I could have projected that. I guess the Indians know who they signed.

Doubtless, one of these players is headed surprisingly south with his performance (unless it's Bay, who already inhabits baseball's Antarctica, and could therefore neither go south nor disappoint) in a manner beyond the capability of the projection system to foresee. Hey, if the game were predictable, it wouldn't be fun.

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.

Inroads

This space has documented a lot of ignorance, particularly in sports media, of the updated methods, improved analysis and new stats that shine brighter illumination on the game, its teams and its players.

But the overall trend is excellent. Sports Illustrated turns over a full page to Baseball Prospectus writer Joe Sheehan for insight otherwise not found in mainstream media. They also reference the latest research in baseball articles, including a nifty piece on base running in the July edition.

ESPN employs Rob Neyer, a direct descendant -- sabermetrically -- of Bill James. Keith Law, another Jamesian scholar, former front office executive and current Scouts Inc. guy, makes regular appearances on ESPN radio. Others, Peter Gammons most notably, regularly mention players' OPS -- on base plus slugging percentage -- a vastly better measure than triple crown stats.

Last week I heard former Cincinnati Post and Sporting News baseball writer Jerry Crasnick mention the Verducci efect -- the negative effect on young pitchers, discovered by writer Tom Verducci, that an increase of 30% in innings pitched from one year to the next produces.

I was watching a game on TV at Citi Field and noticed that they post hitters' OBP. So when Pablo Sandoval and Bengie Molina bat for the Giants, you can see their impressive batting averages but also note their unimpressive on base percentages and realize that they're really not very productive hitters.

Of course, some broadcasters have been on board for years. Jon Sciambi is on the mountain top there and I've gleefully overheard complaints about Gary Cohen for referencing VORP and BABIP, simple concepts that measure (respectively) a player's value compared to replacement player at his position and his batting average on balls in play, which can suggest whether a hitter has been particularly lucky or unlucky over a short period.

It's good. We're moving in the right direction. Now I would like to see the beat writers, broadcasters, MVP voters and Hall of Fame voters understand and use these concepts. Once they do, they will be common currency among fans. Then, we'll all know the game better and I can shut up and close down this blog.

What could be better than that?
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Stirrings in the Cellar

The Pittsburgh Pirates failed to sign any significant free agents this off-season, nearly guaranteeing themselves yet a record 17th consecutive losing season.

Good for them. They're finally on the right track towards success. If anyone doubts this, may I present the Tampa Bay Rays.

Remember 2000, when the Devil Rays cashed in their draft chips for sluggers Jose Canseco, Fred McGriff and Vinny Castillo three years beyond their expiration dates? Calling that the "Hit Show" was a typo: they left out an "S." Remember 2003, when the same desperate outfit relinquished a useful cog in their youth movement -- Randy Winn -- for a manager? A manager! Billy Beane must have peed his pants over that one.

The erstwhile Devil, now Rays, learned their lessons the hard way and turned a six-pack of first picks into the talented core that skipped to the World Series last season. And that is what you call a blueprint.

It's a blueprint that president Frank Coonelly and GM Neil Huntington have demonstrated they will follow carefully in the Steel City. The trades during the 2008 campaign of Xavier Nady's career year, Damaso Marte and Jason Bay for a boatload of youngsters is the right idea not withstanding questions about the quality of the haul. During the offseason they dangled aging shortstop Jack Wilson to the rest of MLB, recognizing that his halcyon days, such as they were, will not coincide with the franchise's. When no one appeared desperate enough to offer attractive prospects for him, the Pirates put him back in their pocket for in-season discussions with a contender that loses its shortstop and is willing to pony up what Pittsburgh needs.

The team now has an intriguing roster of young (and inexpensive) pitchers -- Snell, Duke, Gorzellany, Maholm -- and players -- Ryan Doumit, the LaRoches, Freddy Sanchez and Jose Tabata that is at least two years and two sluggers away from contention, a country mile closer than they've been all century.

Peter Angelos, of all people, is learning this lesson as well. After dabbling in the decrepit sluggers market (Miguel Tejada, Javy Lopez, Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa) with disastrous results three years ago, the Orioles reversed field last year and dropped the Human Insurance Premium Inflator, Erik Bedard, on Seattle for mega-prospect Adam (not Pac Man) Jones and a package of minor league hurlers.

The Orioles' pitch for Mark Teixeira last week was based on the presumption that he'll be productive long after Jones, Ryan Freel and some minor league call-ups ripen. Baltimore is at once farther along and farther from contention than Pittsburgh because they play in the AL Beast. They will need to cultivate the farm and enter the Big Boy auction each year, making sure to get the right parts -- as Teixeira would have been -- in tandem with the development of their prospects. More than anything, the O's need pitching, pitching and more pitching.

Why are teams suddenly figuring it out? One part of the answer is obvious: there are no longer any Major League franchises operating on the outmoded principles of the 1970s. Every club has a stable of analysts crunching the numbers like Bill James in Boston, Keith Woolner in Cleveland and Oakland's Billy Beane. While baseball reporters still hang their hats on misleading stats like RBIs and pitching wins, every team in baseball understands the superiority of VORP (value over replacement player) EQA (a hitter's value expressed in a single number that looks like a batting average, but taking into account his on-base ability, base runing and power) and other more subtle and revealing measurements. The inefficiencies in the baseball marketplace that Oakland cherry-picked for a decade are now smaller and more difficult to exploit, because everyone is doing the same thing, at least to some degree.

GMs don't have the luxury that columnists and broadcasters have to be 30 years behind the state of the art, because the results of their stupidity are published in the sports section daily. The columnist versions of Dave Littlefield -- he of no clue -- are voting members of the BBWAA enjoying job security and devoted followings.

A Phyrric Victory?

I've seen enough baseball to be very worried about Jon Lester in the wake of his no-hitter. I can hardly count the number of times I've seen a pitcher stay longer than he should in a game in order to achieve a milestone only to crack thereafter.

The poster child for that is Kerry Wood's 20-strikeout game in May of '98. Wood, a rookie, threw 122 pitches that game and 166 innings that year before his arm fell off, an injury from which he has really never fully recovered.

Lester, whose injury and illness history is inspiring and well-documented, threw 120 pitches in his no-hit start, a workload not usually allowed by the Red Sox brass. It's hard to imagine that he would have finished that game had he been pitching a three-hitter.

Owner John Henry, GM Theo Epstein and consultant Bill James have forgotten more baseball data than you and I and 27 of our friends have ever seen (and I've read James's books), so maybe they know something about Lester that we don't. I understand that they have arranged the rotation so that Lester gets an extra day's rest.

But history is littered with pitchers whose crowning achievement cost them a labrum, ulnar nerve or patellar tendon, and was the last good game they threw. I hope Jon Lester isn't on that list.