There's talk today that Indians manager Terry Francona wants to get Carlos Santana's bat into the DH-less lineup and so will play him in left field in Game 3 tonight.
Not!
It's not Santana's bat that gets into the game by virtue of his placement in left field. It's Mike Napoli's.
You see, Santana is no worse a first baseman than Napoli, which is damning with the faintest of praise. Neither of these guys is Keith Hernandez. But Santana's a better hitter, and so without a DH Napoli would have sat and Santana would have manned the cold corner.
But the pair crushed 68 home runs this season, something that might be useful on a windy night in the Friendly Confines.
So Santana and Napoli will certainly get six trips to the plate tonight, probably eight and maybe more.
In exchange, there might (or might not) be a ball or two that challenges Santana in left field, one that Brandon Guyer or Coco Crisp might have corralled, or cut off, or played better in some other way.
From Francona's standpoint, it's not much of a tradeoff. You put the bat in the game every time.
Showing posts with label Mike Napoli. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mike Napoli. Show all posts
28 October 2016
03 September 2016
Please God, Deliver Us From This
I know they're the worst team in Major League Baseball this year (the Twins' August swoon notwithstanding), but don't the Atlanta Braves owe their audience some professionalism off the field?
Look, I get it: the pre-game show is the sub-basement of sports announcing. And I get that doing 162 of them -- particularly for a franchise that mailed in 2016 before it started -- has got to wear on a guy.
And I understand that ignorant and uninformed are trendy these days. And since the subject of this diatribe is a vote, I see the parallel.
Your Atlanta Braves Radio Network
But that doesn't excuse the kind of stupid that I thought was cured by now. Announcers on the team's radio network, which spans the entire Southeast from Florida to Kentucky, should know more about baseball than a time traveler from 1933, don't you think?
So that brings us to Ben Ingram, Chris Dimino and Buck Belue, the Braves' pre-game announcers earlier this week. Why I was listening to this offering in the first place is another story that I'm not proud of. (I was washing dishes during a tropical storm that closed the library and precluded TV watching.)
To begin with, let's acknowledge that Buck Belue was a star quarterback at Georgia 1981-1983 and Chris Dimino is a New Joisey guy who got hired to sports talk radio in 1993 after calling repeatedly and arguing with the hosts. This isn't Baseball Mensa to begin with.
Veteran Leadership >> Hitting, Fielding, Baserunning
The trio was discussing the post-season awards with common dopiness -- Anthony Rizzo's RBIs (duh, he bats behind Kris Bryant), Jake Arrieta's pitching wins, teammates dividing votes, that sort of thing. I shook my head and listened, bemused.
In a discussion about the AL MVP, the name Mike Trout -- you know, the actual MVP -- never came up. The Mike who came up was Napoli, who after all, is providing 29 home runs and veteran leadership to the first place Indians. ("He really has them playing great," said Dimino.) That Napoli is a butcher in the field, runs like a Yugo, and sports a middling .345 OBP is apparently of little magnitude to the on-air trio; he's an MVP contender because he's a good coach.
Evidently first base coach Sandy Alomar doesn't slap tushies the right way. Hitting coach Ty Van Burkelo smokes cigarettes and snoozes during batting practice. Manager Terry Francona isn't doing his job. Without Mike Napoli's veteran leadership the team would be adrift.
Time To Move Beyond 1977
Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but no one is entitled to their own facts. Napoli is seventh on the Indians in Wins Against Replacement. With his one signature skill, he has four more homers than Trout. To get there, he's cost his team 47 more outs, stroked a dozen fewer doubles and triples, stolen 14 fewer net bases and cost his team 2.6 losses in the field relative to Trout. Trout's WAR, according to Baseball Reference, is 8.8; Napoli's is 1.0.
If the people talking about the games employed by a Major League team haven't a clue, how are the fans supposed to learn anything?
Thirty-nine years and counting...
Look, I get it: the pre-game show is the sub-basement of sports announcing. And I get that doing 162 of them -- particularly for a franchise that mailed in 2016 before it started -- has got to wear on a guy.
Your Atlanta Braves Radio Network
But that doesn't excuse the kind of stupid that I thought was cured by now. Announcers on the team's radio network, which spans the entire Southeast from Florida to Kentucky, should know more about baseball than a time traveler from 1933, don't you think?
So that brings us to Ben Ingram, Chris Dimino and Buck Belue, the Braves' pre-game announcers earlier this week. Why I was listening to this offering in the first place is another story that I'm not proud of. (I was washing dishes during a tropical storm that closed the library and precluded TV watching.)
To begin with, let's acknowledge that Buck Belue was a star quarterback at Georgia 1981-1983 and Chris Dimino is a New Joisey guy who got hired to sports talk radio in 1993 after calling repeatedly and arguing with the hosts. This isn't Baseball Mensa to begin with.
Veteran Leadership >> Hitting, Fielding, Baserunning
The trio was discussing the post-season awards with common dopiness -- Anthony Rizzo's RBIs (duh, he bats behind Kris Bryant), Jake Arrieta's pitching wins, teammates dividing votes, that sort of thing. I shook my head and listened, bemused.
In a discussion about the AL MVP, the name Mike Trout -- you know, the actual MVP -- never came up. The Mike who came up was Napoli, who after all, is providing 29 home runs and veteran leadership to the first place Indians. ("He really has them playing great," said Dimino.) That Napoli is a butcher in the field, runs like a Yugo, and sports a middling .345 OBP is apparently of little magnitude to the on-air trio; he's an MVP contender because he's a good coach.
Evidently first base coach Sandy Alomar doesn't slap tushies the right way. Hitting coach Ty Van Burkelo smokes cigarettes and snoozes during batting practice. Manager Terry Francona isn't doing his job. Without Mike Napoli's veteran leadership the team would be adrift.
Time To Move Beyond 1977
Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but no one is entitled to their own facts. Napoli is seventh on the Indians in Wins Against Replacement. With his one signature skill, he has four more homers than Trout. To get there, he's cost his team 47 more outs, stroked a dozen fewer doubles and triples, stolen 14 fewer net bases and cost his team 2.6 losses in the field relative to Trout. Trout's WAR, according to Baseball Reference, is 8.8; Napoli's is 1.0.
If the people talking about the games employed by a Major League team haven't a clue, how are the fans supposed to learn anything?
Thirty-nine years and counting...
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.
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.
04 December 2011
Hark, Ye Anaheim Angels Sing
In the epic movie, "It's A Wonderful Baseball Life," Clarence tells George Bailey that every time an American League team in Southern California signs a catcher who can hit, it means an Angel has just gotten his wings.
That would be new general manager Jerry DiPoto, who quickly went about undoing the single stroke by former GM Tony Reagins (or engineered by manager Mike Scioscia, it's not clear) that cost Anaheim the West in 2011.
Last winter, Reagins/Scioscia jettisoned catcher Mike Napoli, who had bashed .260/.350/.500 with awful backstop defense in his first five years. Scioscia, a former catcher himself, couldn't abide the tradeoff. So they traded Napoli off to Toronto with Juan Rivera for the stinking carcass of Vernon Wells' five-year, $105 million contract, a swap universally reviled as among the worst in history. Many pundits agreed with the pronouncement of this space that any team willing to accept Wells' albatross of a contract should have been receiving players as a price of their largesse, not relinquishing a receiver, and one of the league's best-hitting ones at that.
The Jays then flipped Napoli to Anaheim's main rival, Texas, for reliever Frank Francisco, allowing Scioscia to enjoy the other side of the Napoli relationship. And here's how it went: like watching your ex-girlfriend hook up immediately with the former star quarterback who now owns all the local car dealerships.
Napoli got busy tearing up AL pitching (.320/.414/.631) and banking five wins of value to the pennant-fated Rangers. His replacements in Anaheim -- whoops! we're supposed to have replacements? -- managed a putrid .192/.252/.302, costing the Angels a couple of losses. In short, that trade flipped the Rangers and Angels in the standings. For icing on the cake, Wells clogged up an outfield spot with his .218/.248/.412 and at $26+ million probably prevented the team from acquiring a Major League catcher.
Evidently, DiPoto, who was hired after Reagins abruptly quit following the season, was paying attention. Job one: landing Chris Ianetta, the Rockies' offense-first catcher. Ianetta (.235/.357/.439) is no Napoli behind or beside the plate, so maybe Scioscia will stomach him better. In any case, he's 230 points of OPS better than the sludge that oozed behind the plate for Anaheim after Napoli's departure.
The upgrade cost DiPoto a fungible arm -- rookie long reliever Tyler Chatwood. All of which means things are looking up for Orange County during that time of year when Angels are purported most often to sing.
b
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)