What Is It With Braves' Backstops?

Before the 2015 season, catcher A.J. Pierzynski inked a cheap two-year deal with the rebuilding Atlanta Braves to provide some stability for the juvenile pitching staff and a veteran's perspective for the rest of the roster's youths.

At 38, little was expected of Pierzynski, whose sub-replacement level performance the previous season had yielded no other offers for work.

And then, Pierzynski proceeded to author the best age 38 season behind the plate in history.  Worth two-and-a half wins with the bat, it was the third best season in Pierzynski's 19-year career. 

Fast forward two years as the rebuild continues in Georgia. Braves brass signed Bartolo Colon, R.A. Dickey and paired journeyman catchers Tyler Flowers and Kurt Suzuki to shore up the roster until the cavalry comes -- or matures.

Prior to this season, the two backstops had produced one above average season with the bat in their combined 18 campaigns.

But the Atlanta traffic seems to have inspired Flowers and Suzuki. The former is producing 135 points of OPS above his career average and handling a pitching staff -- including knuckleballer Dickey -- with aplomb. The latter is slugging .500, far and away his career best.

Combined, the duo has smacked 22 home runs and knocked home 73 runners, earning four-and-a-half wins between them. The tandem ranks as the best in baseball.

Enjoy it while you can, Braves. The year after Pierzynski's record-setting season, he hit .219 with two homers and cost the team more than a win. Flowers and Suzuki are too young for that kind of crash, but don't be surprised if they return to normal.

Revisiting Jayson Stark and Captain Underpants

Back on the Ides of February I paid homage to the special talent of writer Jayson Stark, admired for excavating baseball's obscure and confounding in a whimsical way.

One tradition of his is to identify players who have surpassed previous season or career norms just days into the season. In my post, I went Jayson one better, predicting which players that might be in 2016.

I thought it'd be fun to take a spin through the picks and see how they turned out. (Spoiler alert: about what you'd expect.)

First the mundane: i predicted Tanner Roark would surpass four pitching wins -- his total output in a sorry 2015 -- in quick order. Despite a winless April, Roark earned his fifth victory on Memorial Day en route to a 16-10, 2.83 season that placed him 10th in Cy voting and increased his WAR eightfold to 5.5.

Likewise for Nick Markakis and Anthony Rendon in homers and RBI. Markakis endured a quirky power outage for the Braves in '15, recording just three homers, all in the second half. He mashed 13 in '16. Rendon, stubbed by injuries last year, rebounded from a 5 HR, 25 RBI season to 20 and 85 in 2016.

No insight was necessary to observe that Jake Arrieta would allow more runs in a couple of bad outings in 2016 than the seven he held opponents to in the last two months of 2015. Sure enough, in three starts covering the end of June and beginning of July, the Reds, Mets and Pirates touched him up for 15 runs over 16 innings. For the season, Arrieta crashed to earth from his 22-6, 1.77 Cy Young campaign to 18-8, 3.10 -- still good enough for ninth in the Cy voting.

Shelby Miller endured a brutal 2015 with Atlanta where he won just once after May despite pitching well. So predicting he'd earn more W's in Arizona was like shooting fish in a barrel. Ha! Fish one, shooter nothing! Miller pitched like snake poop in 2016 and his W-L record reflected it. He won exactly zero games in April, one game in May and one in June. Injury curtailed the 3-12, 6.15 torture that cost the D-backs their #1 pick and two pitching prospects.

Likewise, I thought Captain Underpants, the reliable Hunter Pence, would crush the nine homers and 30 runs scored he produced in the injury-sacked 2015 season. Alas, Pence missed 50 games in June and July of 2016 and authored just 13 homers and 58 runs scored, many of them in a red hot September. Put him on the 2017 list!

To cover just this kind of contingency, I included Corey Seager on the list. The 2016 Rookie of the Year enjoyed a productive cup of coffee with the Dodgers in 2015, tallying 17 times after his September 1 call-up. They don't call us smart asses for being dumb asses: Seager crossed the plate for his 18th run in early May of 2016 and continued crossing it, to the tune of .308/.367/512 and MVP votes. I bet you've forgotten Shelby Miller already.

The Cardinals all but forgot Jon Jay in their outfield last year, so his trade to San Diego and the starting centerfield job offered him the opportunity to top the six doubles and one stolen base he achieved in all of 2015. He did rip 26 doubles, but swiped just two bags all season -- surpassing both previous marks by May.

Dee Gordon and A.J. Pierzynski delighted their employers in 2015 with anomalous seasons they couldn't possibly duplicate in 2016, so I threw them on the prediction wagon. And they didn't -- not even close! Pierzynski's .300/.339/.430 was the best age-38 season for anyone spending most of their time behind the plate and one of the best of his 18-year career. I said he wouldn't even duplicate his 2015's April, when he socked three homers and knocked in 14 runs. And in a desultory .219/.243/.304 campaign that is likely his last, Pierzynski never made it to three home runs and pushed across just 23 runs the entire season.

Gordon led the league in batting average and hits in 2015, legging out 78 of them in April alone. Thanks to a doping suspension, he didn't produce his 78th safety until September and lost 65 points of batting average and 135 points of OPS.

Saving the best for last, there's former South Carolina star Jackie Bradley Jr. JBJ found his mojo toiling in the Minors in 2015 waiting to showcase his transformation in August and September. Consequently, it wasn't until the eighth month that he produced his sixth hit, first double, second homer, first stolen base, fourth run scored and fourth RBI of the season.

And this year? Jackie got his seventh hit on April 20th, and completed the entire Bingo card by May 7th. On that date, his batting line included 28 hits, six doubles, three homers, two steals, 15 runs scored and 14 RBI.

That's a pretty good batting average on the predictions, though, of course, they were all a bunch of hanging curves. Then again, I could never hit a curve, hanging or otherwise.

A. J. Pierzynski's Unprecedented Season

And so, as noted here, A. J. Pierzynski made history in 2015.

The 38-year-old Pierzynski outplayed the Braves' backstop of the future and produced an above-average hitting line despite squatting in 112 games.

The 18-year veteran of seven Major League clubs produced .300/.338/.422 slash stats, a .281 True Average and two-and-a-half wins above replacement for the Braves, 14% better than the average hitter, whatever his position. 

Two wins cost, on average, about $16 million in today's game. Pierzynski provided Atlanta with that, plus another half win, plus that highly-coveted veteran presence, at a cost of just $2 million. (Fat lot of good it did the team.)

But beyond being a bargain, Pierzynski was arguably -- and it's a pretty convincing argument -- the greatest hitting 38-year-old catcher of all time.

Here are the list of backstops, either now or soon to have their likenesses carved in bronze and displayed in a museum on the banks of Lake Otsego, who could not produce even average batting lines in their age 38 season:

• Johnny Bench
• Yogi Berra
• Carlton Fisk
• Ivan Rodriguez
• Mike Piazza
• Roy Campanella
• Bill Dickey
• Mickey Cochrane
• Gary Carter

The three catchers in all of baseball history who could still lay the lumber at that advanced age were HOFers Gabby Hartnett and Ernie Lombardi, and near-great Jorge Posada. But none of them caught even 85 games, compared to Pierzynski's 112. (He also DH'd once.)

Atlanta has Pierzynski signed for next season at $3 million. He could contract Diptheria before the season commences, return after the All-Star break for one game in which he succumbs to the Golden Sombrero, tear his sternocleidomastoid the next day, throw up into the stands on Fan Appreciation Day and spend the last game on the bench Tweeting a photo of Fredi Gonzalez performing fellatio on Freddie Freeman in the clubhouse -- and still have earned far more than his salary over the course of his deal.

And he probably won't. So hats off to A.J. Pierzynski.

History Right Under Our Noses

There's nothing special to report about well-traveled backstop A. J. Pierzynski, currently a body filling the lineup for the future-looking Atlanta Braves.

Pierzynski provides that "veteran presence," while hitting .271/.316/.416, a tick above average. He had been splitting duties with defensive specialist Christian Bethancourt, but has usurped the starting job as Bethancourt struggles to hit his weight. 

The Braves hope to develop Bethancourt's bat enough to keep his glove in the lineup for years to come as they focus their efforts on building a contender for the 2017 opening of SouthTrust Park in the Atlanta suburbs.

But look closely and you'll see something remarkable about Pierzynski. In his 18th year with his seventh team, the left-handed hitting Floridian is performing at a notable level for a 38-year-old who squats every day.

How unusual is it for a catcher that old to play regularly and flash a league-average stick? Two words: Pudge and Yogi.

That's the list of catchers in MLB history who have played that long, held down the starting job at age 38 and out-hit half the league. I'd just like to be in a room with Pudge and Yogi; A.J. Pierzynski is in the conversation with them. (That's Carlton Fisk, not ersatz-Pudge Ivan Rodriguez.)

There's a long way to go in the season and Pierzynski is bouncing back from a 2014 during which it appeared he was filling out his retirement papers at the expense of Boston and St. Louis. This year, so far, he's resurrected most of his 2012-13 seasons when he averaged in the .270s with 22 homers.

So keep an eye on him. If he remains in the lineup and represents himself well he will be making history. Right under our noses.

A Seamhead Predicts This Year's Surprise Performers

Spring Training is like a movie trailer. It's not the movie. It's often nothing like the movie. It's made up entirely of elements from the movie, but in a different context that can be very misleading. It has a different purpose than the movie. Don't judge a movie by its trailer, or a player by his Spring Training performance.

For one thing, its a ridiculously small sample size. (We're speaking of Spring Training now, but it also applies to the trailer.) For another, the competition is suspect. And many players use their time in Florida or Arizona to hone a particular skill.

And yet, sabermetric pioneer John Dewan, one of the founders of STATS, Inc. and the leading developer of fielding statistics, has determined that Spring Training does have predictive value in one narrow area.

Players whose slugging percentage spikes 200 points above their career norms experience breakout seasons 60% of the time. Think of Jose Bautista in 2010 and Jonathan Lucroy, AJ Pierzynski and Billy Butler last year. (A breakout season is generally considered a 20% increase in the relevant skill being measured, but that doesn't appear to be Dewan's yardstick. I'm not sure what standard he's using.)

With a modest .670 lifetime OPS his first two seasons, Lucroy busted loose for the Brewers last year, posting an .803 OPS in 2012, adding 35 points to his batting average, slugging 12 jacks in half a season's work and doubling his walk rate.

After 14 seasons behind the plate, Pierzynski had established himself as a solid (for a backstop) .740 OPS hitter, with slugging numbers in the low 400s and home runs in the low teens. Inexplicably last year, he slammed 27 long balls en route to a .501 SLG, an .827 OPS and the best effort with the stick of his career.

With an .820 lifetime OPS, Butler reached career highs with 29 homers, 107 RBI, an All-Star berth and an .882 OPS last year. Calling that a breakout is a bit of a reach, since "Country Breakfast" hit .300 and posted OPS of .850 twice before.

It's worth mentioning that none of the three -- there were plenty of others -- has maintained his great leap forward so far in 2013. That was to be expected of the 36-year-old Pierzynski. Because Lucroy is so young and Butler is every bit the star we saw in '12, the odds are on their side over the long haul.

All that said, here's Dewan's list of potential breakout candidates (minimum of 200 regular season at-bats and 40 spring training at-bats)

Hitter/Team, Spring Career Difference
Brandon Belt, Giants .906 .418 .488
Justin Smoak, Mariners .811 .377 .434
Howard Kendrick, Angels .833 .428 .405
Ryan Raburn, Indians .833 .430 .403
Nick Hundley, Padres .773 .390 .383
Rick Ankiel, Astros .780 .422 .358
Michael Morse, Mariners .824 .492 .332
Mike Moustakas, Royals .726 .395 .331
Brent Lillibridge, Cubs .675 .350 .325
Mark DeRosa, Blue Jays .725 .412 .313
Lonnie Chisenhall, Indians .725 .421 .304
Kevin Youkilis, Yankees .778 .482 .296
Domonic Brown, Phillies .675 .388 .287
Mitch Moreland, Rangers .727 .441 .286
Wilin Rosario, Rockies .805 .522 .283
Dexter Fowler, Rockies .705 .427 .278
Alex Gordon, Royals .714 .439 .275
Craig Gentry, Rangers .618 .355 .263
Gaby Sanchez, Pirates .683 .420 .263
Bryce Harper, Nationals .730 .477 .253
Juan Francisco, Braves .692 .440 .252
Elvis Andrus, Rangers .604 .353 .251
Brandon Crawford, Giants .577 .333 .244
Steve Clevenger, Cubs .523 .281 .242
Melky Cabrera, Blue Jays .655 .414 .241
Lucas Duda, Mets .660 .427 .233
Raul Ibanez, Mariners .700 .470 .230
Luis Cruz, Dodgers .600 .371 .229
Gerardo Parra, Diamondbacks .625 .400 .225
Freddie Freeman, Braves .671 .449 .222
Peter Bourjos, Angels .614 .402 .212
Ben Francisco, Yankees .636 .425 .211
Aaron Hill, Diamondbacks .636 .432 .204
Lorenzo Cain, Royals .615 .412 .203

I'll bet my favorite trumpet, Otis Mahorn, that Raul Ibanez doesn't out-perform his stellar career at age 57 (or whatever.) Conversely, it would be quite the upset if Bryce Harper failed to make a quantum leap following his Rookie of the Year season.

And finally, whatever magic beans Luis Cruz was planting in the Spring lost their powers once the season began. Even his weak lifetime .371 SLG is going to be a stretch after losing his infield job with the Dodgers because of 71 plate appearances with a hollow bat. A walk and six singles later (in 71 trips to the plate! That's .090/.114/.090 for you slash stat buffs) he's on the bench behind substitutes who couldn't make the Marlins' roster if you spotted them 10 home runs.

If Dewan's research is borne out over time, we'll have another weapon in our growing arsenal of analysis. We'll keep an eye on this group.

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.