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Falling Starlin

He could be playing (Saturday). I’m not sure yet. I want to see how it plays today, but I wanted to be upfront with him and just let him know it’s not just a day off.

— Joe Maddon

And with those words on Friday, August 7th, the Castro Regime fell in Chicago. Starlin Castro has earned the pine, posting an abysmal .268 on-base, around 50 points worse than the MLB average. Power has been even more of a problem; Castro’s ISO of .068 is sixth worst in MLB among qualifying hitters. It is also the worst of Castro’s professional career. Maybe he contributes with speed? Nope, not since 2012, when Castro stole 25 in 38 tries. He’s had only 23 ineffective attempts since then. His defense, long and loudly criticized, hasn’t been all bad; the metrics differ on him, but add them all up (metaphorically, anyway) and he seems to grade out about average.

Castro is striking out only a bit more this year than he has in his career (16.8% vs. 15.7%), but he’s making weaker contact. His infield fly percentage is at a career high of 12.9%, a full 5% higher than his career average. It was high last year, too, but he made up for it with a line-drive rate of over 22%. The line drives are gone this year, with Castro hitting a career low of 15.8%, which is, like his ISO, sixth worst among qualifiers.

Castro isn’t obviously being pitched differently this year. He’s seeing a few more strikes, but that’s probably an effect of his power outage rather than a cause. It doesn’t seem that pitchers have found some sort of secret recipe to deprive him of hits. Rather, it appears that fastballs are simply overwhelming him. According to his PITCHf/x data, Castro’s done pretty well against most offspeed pitches, but he has a league worst -2.70 runs above average/100 against four-seamers, and he’s 4th worst against two-seamers (-2.74). There are some decent hitters who have struggled with one of those pitches this year, but no one has been as bad as Castro at both.

Castro has been known to travel with a rough crowd, and more recently there’s been some ADD speculation. The Cubs organization is hinting that conditioning is a problem, which would explain the loss of power and his inability to hit the fastball. Perhaps, but Castro is 10th overall in total plate appearances since 2012. Whatever his problems may be, durability hasn’t been one of them.

And it’s worth remembering that Castro plays the most difficult position in what is arguably the most difficult team sport. He’s still only 25 years old, and by the standards of young shortstops, Castro has done quite well so far. He’s 29th in career bWAR (8.1) in the divisional era for shortstops through age 25. There are some great players in the top 50, and some not-great players, but there’s only one real disaster: Bobby Crosby at #40. (Ok, Rafael Ramirez at #39 was pretty bad too.) So Castro could have a Crosby-Ramirez future, in which he rapidly descends into mediocrity and irrelevance. But the vast majority of players with achievements similar to his at age 25 did not.

This suggests that either patience or a change of scenery could help Castro, as Grant Brisbee suggested in refuting the ADD speculation in the post linked above. Patience would not, however, seem to be the right move for the Cubs at the moment. Theo Epstein correctly eschewed the splashy megamove at the trade deadline: the wildcard game isn’t worth surrendering prospects. But it makes sense to to take less costly steps to improve this roster for the stretch run, and Castro is easily the biggest hole on the 25-man roster, with arguable exception of the 5th starter slot, now filled (for the moment, at least) by Dan Haren. The Cubs have been more than patient with Castro, and the performance hasn’t been there. Maybe they can give him more at-bats if they fall out of contention, but right now the team’s immediate future matters more than Castro’s.

That said, maybe the Cubs could spend a few minutes rethinking their approach to Castro. He’s has had three different managers in the last three years, each using a different approach with him. Dale Sveum’s tough love didn’t work, and Maddon’s zany zen isn’t working either. It was Rick Renteria’s more personal approach that seemed to get the most out of Castro. The karmic wheel spins in unpredictable ways, and Castro’s collapse may simply be the earthly price the Cubs are paying for Renteria’s defenestration, but it also suggests Castro can be reached, because someone was able to do it. Maddon is intelligent enough to realize this, and flexible enough to recognize that the shtick that works for most players doesn’t work for all. If Castro’s benching is coupled with some creative efforts to get him re-engaged, the Cubs may still be able to get value out of the player.

Diets, workouts, Ritalin, and perceptive coaching will be for naught if Castro is in fact the second coming of Rafael Ramirez. At some point his relatively reasonable contract will begin to look like an albatross, and the Cubs will cut him loose or trade him for minimal return. It would be helpful if players came equipped with little red crystals in their palms that glowed when the player reached his ceiling, but that won’t happen until at least the next renegotiation of the CBA.  So yes, it is possible that Castro has plateaued, and neither he nor the Cubs have figured that out yet.

But the Cubs have a little time. They can jury-rig their infield until they’re ready to press Javier Baez (or even Arismendy Alcantara) into service. They can see how the rest of the season develops, and how Castro progresses as they attempt to rebuild him in place, much like they’re doing with Wrigley Field.  As many have observed, his trade value can’t get much lower, so it doesn’t hurt the Cubs to take a little more time to see what they have. Burning a valuable roster spot on an unproductive player is dangerous, but the biggie-sized September roster is nigh.

If I had to bet, I’d bet that Castro will be moved in the offseason in exchange for someone else’s disappointment (Jed Gyorko, anyone?). But it’s not impossible that, in the top of the 12th inning of Game 7 of the 2015 World Series, Castro comes in from the end of the bench to hit the game-winning homer.  On what started as a day off.


Best and Worst of the Offseason Acquisitions Thus Far

As we hurtle toward the season’s midpoint, it may be worth pausing to assess how some of last winter’s player moves have turned out. Herewith, the five best and five worst players to date (by fWAR) who changed uniforms during the off season.

Top 5

Josh Donaldson (4.4)

When asked last October whether the A’s would trade Josh Donaldson, an unnamed A’s official said “That would be stupid!” (h/t MLB Trade Rumors). But then suddenly it wasn’t. Maybe Billy Boy really did trade Donaldson in a fit of pique, or maybe the trade was yet another example of the man’s Machiavellian genius. Either way, there’s no getting around the fact that Donaldson is tied for 4th in WAR in the charted universe as of this writing. Donaldson is a key contributor to an MLB-leading offense that has scored 70 more runs than its nearest competitor. Toronto’s mighty +94 run differential bestes even that of the mighty St. Louis “Marked” Cards (+91), and the Blue Jays’ Wins per FBI Interview stands at infinity, blowing away the Cardinals’ ratio. It’s possible that Beane doesn’t regret the Donaldson move; it’s certain that Alex Anthopolous doesn’t.

Max Scherzer (4.2)

Max Scherzer has 130 Ks this season, which would place him 71st on the all time Expos/Nats single season list. And the season, as discerning readers will have already realized, in only half over. The same readers will have divined that Scherzer is on a pace for 260 Ks, which would put him second on the all time list behind Pedro Martinez, who racked up 305 in 1997. Scherzer is absolutely blowing away every one of his career rate stats this season. Can he keep the regression demons at bay until he gets a World Series ring? The Nationals certainly hope so, as do these guys. More evidence for the theory that playing at the top of the free agent market can be costly, yet cost-effective.

Dee Gordon (3.0)

Dee Gordon’s OPS is 60 points above his career average. Dee Gordon’s BABIP is 70 points above his career average. Dee Gordon’s closest comp through age 26, according to Baseball Reference, is Chippy McGarr. So no, it isn’t going to last, but it’s been a fun ride. One can only wish that Gordon’s magical half-season had been in the service of a better cause than this one. To be fair, a variety of defensive metrics are in agreement that Gordon has become an asset at second, and of course he’s got those wheels, so he’ll still have value even when his Inner McGarr ultimately gets the better of him.

Russell Martin (2.9)

The second Blue Jay on this list – yes, this might finally be Anthopolous’ year. Martin’s contract will rapidly move from buzz to hangover, but right now the party is still hot. Only Buster Posey is putting up better numbers behind the plate, and unlike Martin, he’s not behind the plate all the time, instead getting a fair number of starts at first. Like the others mentioned above, Martin is having something of a career year, but his numbers this year aren’t wildly above his career stats (.363 wOBA this year vs. .336 for his career). His BABIP this year (.298) is just a little higher than his career mark (.289). So there’s reason to believe his success will continue as long as he avoids injury. And he’s Canadian.

A.J. Burnett (2.7)

Don’t tell him it’s a young man’s game. Burnett, at age 38, is the 4th oldest starter in the majors, behind Bartolo Colon (42), R.A. Dickey (40), and Tim Hudson (39). He has the highest K/9 among this group (7.7), and by far the lowest FIP (2.97). Burnett’s fastball velo is sitting at 91.1, off of his career mark of 93.5, but it’s not a yawning gap. Burnett is kind of the anti-Scherzer, a bargain free agent that Neal Huntington was able to sign for a 1-year, $8.5m deal. Like Dan Duquette, Huntington has done a good job shoring up his roster with effective store brands such as Jung-ho Kang, Francisco Cervelli, and Burnett. The Pirates have stars too, more than next year’s Orioles will, but they do a better a job than most in making sure that no roster slot gets left behind.

Bottom 5

Matt Kemp (-1.0)

Kemp is putting up the worst triple slash (.244/.279/.365) and ISO (.122) numbers of his career. His defense remains R-rated. The Dodgers are paying Kemp $32 million to play for division rival San Diego. So far, it’s been a stellar investment.

Melky Cabrera (-1.0)

Not all dumpsters have stuff worth diving for. Skim Melk has returned to his bad old (pre-PED?) powerless ways. His ISO is a microscopic .067, lowest of his career and 8th lowest in the Show. Most of the other 7 guys are middle infielders. Rick Hahn has made a valiant effort to paper over the White Sox’ roster holes with veterans until he can rebuild a desolate farm system, but with mixed results. Adam LaRoche and Geovany Soto have been pretty effective, but Cabrera and Emilio Bonifacio have generated outs at the same rate the Dan Ryan generates traffic jams.

Kyle Kendrick (-0.9)

Ok, raise your hand if you think putting a fly-ball, high-contact pitcher in Coors is a good idea.

Pablo Sandoval (-0.6)

In 2011 Panda put up a .315/.357/.552 line. In 2012 he lost 100 points of slugging. In 2013 he lost 30 more. In 2014 he lost 20 points of OBP.  This year, he’s lost 10 more, along with another 15 missing SLG. His UZR/150 is at -26.2, which approximates the performance of an actual panda. This long steady performance collapse looks like something that happens to players in their early to mid-30s, but Sandoval is only 28. As Dayn Perry has noted, “Sandoval’s relationship with basic conditioning is complicated,” and it’s not clear that a manager on the bubble like John Farrell will be able to convince Sandoval to put his shoulder to the workout wheel (uh … the UZR/150 of that metaphor is probably -26.2). Sandoval has through 2019 to find a Red Sox treadmill routine that works for him. Which I’m sure makes Sawx fans ecstatic.

Billy Butler (-0.4)

In 2014 Butler put up a wRC+ of 97, craptastic for a player who has no non-hitting skills of note. This year, his wRC has surged to … 97.  The good news is that he’s held his ground despite playing half his games in the Mausoleum. The bad news is that the ground he’s holding isn’t worth much. At 3 years/$30m, Butler’s contract is reasonable by today’s standards. But it appears that the other Billy may have made a basic roster management error here by signing a middling free agent for middling money. Until the Oakland A’s become the San Jose PayPals, this is the kind of mistake the franchise can ill afford.


The Brewers’ Lament

The Brewers recently fired manager Ron Roenicke, using the same logic that primitive villagers employed when tossing virgins into the maw of a nearby volcano: It probably won’t work, but why take chances? As Dave Cameron has pointed out, the Brewers have fallen and they are unlikely to get up any time soon, and as others have pointed out, little of this was Roenicke’s fault. Yes, the team is enjoying a keg of Regression Pilsner under new manager Craig Counsell, who is 6-5 at the helm of the S.S. Benny, winning just one game fewer than Roenicke did in 25 attempts. But the Brewers are not a .500 team, and indeed not very close to being one. They are 23rd in the majors in runs scored, and 29th in runs allowed. Their fielding isn’t very good either.

And help isn’t on the way from the farm, at least not right away. The Brewers began the year as the 21st rated system, according to Baseball America. While Kiley McDaniel liked their 2014 draft, he also still has them in the bottom third of the league. Top prospect Orlando Arcia has put together 142 insane plate appearances at AA, where he’s slashing .354/.404/.496 with a pint-sized 7% K rate. The other young Brewers are probably less talented and/or farther away. Some of them will succeed, but most will not.

The surveyor of this doomed path is, of course, general manager Doug Melvin. Like many valuable things in life, GM jobs are much easier to lose than keep, and the sands are now running out of Melvin’s hourglass. That said, he’s had a long run, having been hired in September, 2002. During his tenure, the Brewers have been mediocre, finishing 17th in runs scored and 21st in runs allowed from 2003-2015. The aggregate mediocrity hides some occasional success: Melvin’s Brewers went to the postseason twice, and in 2011 finished with the most wins (96) in Brewers’ history. But overall the team is 969-1010 over that stretch, and only twice finished within 7 games of first in the not-always-intimidating NL Central.

Suspicion for this generally uninspiring performance immediately falls on the Brewers’ drafts, but here Melvin can claim some success. From 2003-2015, players drafted by Melvin have accumulated more net bWAR than any other NL Central team can claim.

Team                        bWAR from draft

Brewers                            163.3

Cardinals                          156.6

Reds                                  122.0

Pirates                               111.4

Cubs                                  109.3

Note that the drafting team did not always benefit from the bWAR displayed above. The Cubs, for example, get about 24 of their bWAR from Tim Lincecum, who did not sign with them after being drafted in 2003. The Brewers and Reds both get credit for 7.4 bWAR from Jake Arrieta, who the Orioles finally successfully inked in 2007. But in any case, Melvin and his team can’t fairly be accused of simply missing talent.

Melvin had some holes in his draft swing, however. From 2003-2011 Melvin got almost nothing from his first-round pitchers. Of nine first-round pitchers, six have thus far failed to make it to the majors, by far the worst rate in the division. (I’m using the 2011 cutoff to acknowledge that most players drafted since then probably would not have not made it to the majors.)

Team               1st round pitchers drafted     failed to make majors

Brewers                             9                                              6

Cardinals                          10                                            4

Cubs                                   3                                              2

Reds                                   6                                              2

Pirates                               6                                               1

The Brewers first-round pitchers who have made it to the majors have achieved little.

Player                                   bWAR

Jake Odorizzi                    3.3

Mark Rogers                      1.1

Jeremy Jeffress                1.1

Yep, that’s it. And Odorizzi never threw a pitch in anger for the Crew, although he did help Melvin to pry Zack Greinke from the Royals for the Brewers’ playoff season in 2011.

This pitching void has sucked in money – lots of it that a small-market team can ill afford. Only four Brewers are making more than $10 million this year; two of them are Kyle Lohse and Matt Garza. At least Lohse’s contract ends this year. Garza’s goes on through 2017, and will be one of the many puzzles the next Brewers GM will need to solve.

The Brewers’ path to redemption will go through several painful stations. The rotation next year may not be good, but it will be much cheaper. Three of the five starters (Peralta, Nelson, and Fiers) are home grown. FIP and I have yet to catch Peralta Fever, but Nelson and Fiers have good swing ‘n’ miss stuff. Fiers’ upside is limited though; a late bloomer, he will be 30 in June. Aramis Ramirez, the highest paid Brewmaster at $14 million, comes off the books at the end of the season and plans to hang up his cleats. Another $13 million might depart with Adam Lind and Gerardo Parra.

Rather than sign aging free agents to replace the departing aging free agents, the Brewers would be better served to take the bulk of this freed-up cash and pour it into scouting, player development, and perhaps the international market. The Brewers could use a couple of 90-loss seasons to get the high draft picks that they could use to augment a farm that is already on its way to yielding at least a handful of good produce in the next 2-3 years. The economics of tanking are complex, however. The Brewers have a bad local television deal and a small metro area from which to draw fans. They are thus probably more dependent than average for revenue from the occasional fan who attends one or two games a year with the family, and who will find other things to do if the Brewers are putting a replacement-level team on the field. The two most eminently watchable Brewers, Carlos Gomez and Jonathan Lucroy, are also probably the Brewers’ best trade pieces, but trading them will almost certainly lead to lower attendance and an associated revenue loss that reduces the benefit of shedding their salaries.

Ryan Braun has an untradeable contract and a damaged brand. His performance has collapsed since the suspension; before it he had a career OPS of .938, since then it’s been .781. Braun is by default the player around which the Brewers will attempt to market their team during the plague years to come, but that effort will be much less successful than it would have been without the suspension. Mark Attanasio seems like an intelligent and patient owner. He can only hope his next GM is similarly blessed.


Gausmanian Distribution

At the end of spring training, Buck Showalter banished Kevin Gausman from the rotation in favor of Ubaldo Jimenez, a pitcher with a much higher salary and much less talent.  Many assumed that Jimenez’ salary largely dictated the move. Yes, he outpitched Gausman in spring training (4.44 ERA to 7.04), but it’s hard to believe that Showalter invests very much in spring training stats, and in any case if you put “4.44” into Google Translator, “success” is unlikely to be one of the resulting character strings.

One Orioles fan of my acquaintance heard that Showalter’s decision had more forethought: Buck’s intent may be to use Gausman much as the fireman reliever of old, and bring him in to critical situations in ballgames regardless of today’s ossified reliever usage patterns. Bill James long ago established that this is the most effective way to use a top-flight reliever, but it is less clear that this is the best way to use a potential #1 starter. Gausman is the only pitcher on the Orioles 25-man roster who has even  a prayer of turning into an ace, and it seems unlikely he’ll do it from the pen.

Gausman’s had a somewhat unusual start to his career. In his first two years as a major leaguer, he started 25 games and made 15 relief appearances. There are a total of 15 active pitchers who had at least 25 starts and 15 relief appearances in their first two years:

 

(Table courtesy of the invaluable Baseball Reference Play Index)

It’s certainly an eclectic mix. Only Buehrle established himself as an ace, though Arroyo has had a good career as a mid-rotation workhorse, and Masterson and (to a lesser extent) I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Fausto-Carmona have made useful contributions. For other starters on this list (Wood, Kelly) it’s too soon to tell. Affeldt and Stammen wisely gave up starting and have become bullpen mainstays. More sobering, many of the names on this list have had their careers derailed by injuries. It’s hard to know whether the mixed usage contributed to injury problems for guys like Ogando, Billingsley, and Holland; it is equally possible that conserving these young arms early may have averted even more serious or earlier arm trouble.

Gausman sits uneasily here; he is by far the highest drafted pitcher on this list (fourth overall in 2012). It is unsurprising to see a club experiment with a 38th-round pick who struggles to break a pane of glass, like Buehrle. Such tinkering is less common with a player drafted to be a rotation anchor. Indeed, there are only two other first-rounders on this list, Billingsley and Lynn.

In his first season (2006), Billingsley started 16 games and came in from the bullpen twice. He put up a respectable 3.80 ERA, but with atrocious peripherals (5.8 BB/9, 5,9 K/9). The Dodgers understandably exiled him to the bullpen to start the 2007 season, but Dresden-like pyrotechnics from Proven Veterans Mark Hendrickson, Brett Tomko, and Jason Schmidt forced the Dodgers to put Billingsley back in the rotation in June, and he acquitted himself reasonably the well the rest of the way. He would go on to have uneven success over the next four seasons until diagnosed with a torn UCL in September 2012. He has pitched in two major league games since.

Lance Lynn offers a happier comp for Gausman. He appeared largely in relief (2 starts in 18 games) in 2011. Despite Kyle McClellan’s runtastic performance as the Cardinals’ fifth starter, LaRussa elected not to insert Lynn into the rotation; the Cardinals instead traded for Edwin Jackson, who stabilized the fifth spot.  This seems similar to Showalter’s choice: go with the established if not necessarily dominant veteran in lieu of the risky young flamethrower. Lynn had put good numbers in 2011 at AAA, but not in 2010. The Cards’ reluctance to turn over a rotation spot to him in the midst of a playoff run was understandable. Lynn has been in the rotation since 2012, and has consistently produced very close to his career marks of 3.32 FIP and 2.71 K/BB, despite some jumpiness in his ERA.

Both these examples tend to suggest Showalter is making a mistake. The Dodgers finally ran out of Jason Schmidts, while the Cards went with the good-enough E-Jax (and, to  be fair, won the World Series). But in each case the young replacement would quickly prove himself superior to the older and supposedly safer option when finally given the chance. There are very few who would predict that, over the course of 30 starts, Jimenez will outperform Gausman in any significant statistical category.

But Showalter has other things on his mind. Specifically, this:

#27 Orioles


Name IP ERA FIP WAR
Chris Tillman 184.0 4.10 4.40 1.4
Wei-Yin Chen 169.0 4.04 4.17 1.5
Miguel Gonzalez 157.0 4.42 4.84 0.5
Bud Norris 154.0 4.15 4.30 1.1
Ubaldo Jimenez 146.0 4.28 4.38 0.9
Kevin Gausman 91.0 3.97 4.00 0.9
Dylan Bundy 18.0 4.40 4.56 0.1
Total 919.0 4.17 4.38 6.4

 

Yep, this is the FanGraphs Depth Chart projection for the Orioles starting rotation, with the O’s ranked 27th out of 30. Not a single starter checks in with a FIP under 4.00. This is a shaky rotation, and the Orioles have no quick way of making it better. Eventually, perhaps as early as next year Gausman, Bundy, and Hunter Harvey will form an enviable top 3, but there’s another problem on Buck’s plate. Next year, much of the current roster may be lost to free agency, including Chris Davis, Matt Wieters, Chen, and Norris. The Orioles are under enormous pressure to win now.

And Gausman can help! Because at this stage of his career, he is a much better reliever than starter. The big difference is in strikeouts:

AL average starter K/9: 7.1

AL average reliever K/9: 8.3

Gausman as starter K/9: 7.0

Gausman as reliever K/9: 11.7

That there is some major whiffage for a staff in dire need of it. Put Gausman together with Zach Britton, Darren O’Day, and Tommy “Big Game” Hunter, and the Orioles have a fully weaponized bullpen.  Buck’s plan is to hold on for the first five or six innings, and them shut down the opponent’s offense while the Orioles bats bludgeon their way to victory. And with Gausman acting as a mobile reserve, Showalter can shrink the innings for which the starters are responsible, but do so on a game-to-game basis. On those days when the starters happen to be effective they can go longer, and on those days (more often than not, one suspects) that they get into trouble, Showalter will be able to address some of that trouble with the best arm on the roster.

This isn’t the way I would ordinarily do it, but then again, this isn’t the roster I would have assembled. Showalter has repeatedly shown an ability to work with the tools he has rather than impose some prefabricated tactical rule set that disregards the strengths and weaknesses of his players. Baltimore’s road to the playoffs is neither straight nor sure, but at least it’s Showalter behind the wheel.


This Post is Not About Kris Bryant

No, really. It isn’t. More ink has been spilled on Bryant than on every other just-sent-to-AAA layer combined. So you won’t get any more of that here.

Ok, this is actually a little about Bryant, in the sense that he is a future Cubs third baseman, and this is about the recent Cubs’ third basemen that have gone before him. It is, by and large, an uninspiring lot, but the list reveals something about how the Cubs used to assemble rosters, and how that now appears to have changed.

Here’s a list of WAR that each major-league team has accumulated at third from the beginning of the division era (1969) to the present. If you scroll waaaay down to the bottom you see the Cubs, down there at 25 out of 30. The only teams worse are all expansion teams. Here’s the same list resorted by wRC+. The Cubs inch up to 24, and a couple of storied (or at least old) franchises now appear below them, but the message is essentially the same: a message of dismal underachievement. This message is not confined to third – those of you who are either Cubs haters or masochists can play with those tables and look at the other positions. It’s the same tale of woe except in the few cases where the Cubs have had Hall-of-Fame-caliber players at a position for some length of time (e.g., Sandberg and Sosa*).

What accounts for this prolonged failure? Could it be The Curse? FanGraphs Community sought comment from the Major League Baseball Ruminants Association, and here’s what their spokesgoat had to say: “The Chicago Cubs’ multiple decades of ineptitude have nothing to do with supernatural forces or the actions or inactions of our members. Rather, the Cubs’ continual suboptimal performance is due to that franchise’s historic inability to integrate such concepts as advanced statistics and an even rudimentary understanding of aging curves into their roster assembly thought processes.”

Pretty strong words there from the MLBRA; let’s see if evidence backs them up.  What follows is a review of the top 10 Cubs third basemen by WAR since 1969. I’m leaving out guys like Mark Bellhorn and Jose Hernandez who played quite a bit at third, but whose primary position was elsewhere. The fact that I even have to say “I’m leaving out guys like Mark Bellhorn and Jose Hernandez” should be sending visible shivers down your spine.

10. Kevin Orie  684 PA, 79 wRC+, 1.9 WAR, Age 24-29

The only player on this list to come up with the Cubs during the divisional era, Orie got off to a promising start in 1997, with a 101 wRC+ in 415 plate appearances, as well as superior defense. He plunged into the abyss in 1998, and after putting up a 39 wRC+ through July, the disgusted Cubs offloaded him to the Marlins for Felix Heredia, whose left-handed arsenal of kerosene would reward opposing hitters for years to come. If you think baseball players get paid too much, take a look at Kevin Orie’s transaction list on Baseball Reference.  This is what life is like for the vast majority of players who aren’t good enough to hold down a steady major-league job.

9. Vance Law  1075 PA, 103 wRC+, 2.3 WAR, Age 31-32

Signed as a free agent in 1988, Law had a BABIP-fueled year in which he also swatted 29 doubles and 11 homers. The alien inhabiting Vance Law’s body returned to its distant galactic home in 1989, and Law reverted to his good-glove, small-stick self. He did get to play in two postseason games in Wrigley, which is two more than the vast majority of living humans can claim.

8. Steve Buechele  1290 PA, 94 wRC+, 3.6 WAR, Age 30-33

Danny Jackson’s disastrous arson spree in Chicago ended in July 1992, when the Cubs traded him to Pittsburgh for Buechele. His main contribution came in 1993, when the BABIP alien returned to Chicago, jacking Buechele’s BABIP up from his career .275 mark up to .305. Buechele produced a respectable 108 wRC+ that year, together with good defense. The rest of his time in Chicago he was essentially a slightly better version of Vance Law.

7. Bill Mueller  670 PA, 112 wRC+, 4.0 WAR, Age 30-31

Acquired after the 2000 season from the Giants for an aging Tim Worrell, who would give them three excellent seasons in relief, Mueller represented a rare venture by the Cubs into the land of sabermetrics. His problem wasn’t sabermetrics; it was injuries. Mueller was an excellent two-way advanced stat contributor when healthy, but in an 11 year career, Mueller exceeded 500 plate appearances just four times, none of them with the Cubs.

6. Steve Ontiveros  1633 PA, 96 wRC+, 4.1 WAR, Age 25-28

The good news: the Cubs got him young. The bad news: they traded Bill Madlock to get him. Ok, the Cubs also got Bobby Murcer in that deal. Meh. Ontiveros had outstanding plate discipline (career K rate: 11.4%; career BB rate: 12.2%), but no power whatsoever (career ISO: .093). Released in 1980, he took his keen batting eye to Japan.

5. Ron Cey  2108 PA, 110 wRC+, 5.6 WAR, Age 35-38

The Penguin waddled into Chicago in 1983 on a salary-dump trade from the Dodgers. He put up good offense for the Cubbies, but by this point in his career had a range not far exceeding that of the third base bag itself. The Cubs probably figured that putting Cey next to an aging Larry Bowa would hide the problem, but Bowa’s range had eroded as well. In 1984, Cey became the first Cubs third baseman to reach the postseason since Stan Hack. I’m sure that’s something he brings up with the grandkids a lot.

4. Luis Valbuena  1241 PA, 100 wRC+, 6.1 WAR, Age 26-28

A waiver acquistion from the Blue Jays in April 2012, Valbuena initially looked like a glove-first utility guy, but his offense gradually improved, until breaking out last year with a 116 wRC+.  The BABIP alien is being sought for questioning: Valbuena’s was .294 last year, compared to a career rate of .269. Although he has a reputation as a platoon bat, his career splits are just about even, so he may have a future as a starter, but it won’t be with the Cubs. Kris Bryant’s long shadow led the Cubs to trade Valbuena to the Astros, where he should have an easier time fending off Matt Dominguez.

3. Bill Madlock  1632 PA, 137 wRC+, 11.1 WAR, Age 23-25

This is the kind of trade the Cubs have all too often failed to make: After a disappointing 1973 season, the Cubs correctly recognized that they needed to retool, and thus dealt Ferguson Jenkins to the Rangers for Bill Madlock.  In his three seasons in Chicago Madlock supplied excellent offense that outweighed his spotty defense. Then in February 1977 the Cubs sent Madlock to San Francisco in exchange for Ontiveros and an aging, declining Bobby Murcer. This is the kind of trade the Cubs have all to often made. Yes, Madlock had issues, but the Pirates would eventually find a way to make use of him after the Giants also gave up on him. If the Cubs had recognized the value of his talent, they might have tried harder to do the same.

2. Ron Santo, 3135 PA, 122 wRC+, 19.9 WAR, Age 29-33

We now know why Ronnie didn’t age particularly well, but he still put up two outstanding seasons (in 1969 and 1972) and three good ones in his remaining time with the Cubs. His later years seem disappointing only in comparison to his four-year reign of terror over NL pitchers from 1964-67 (with respective OPS of .962, .888., .950, and .906). His lowest ISO during that period was .212 in 1967.  The mounds may have been higher back then, but they were never high enough to silence his bat.

1. Aramis Ramirez, 4705 PA, 126 wRC+, 28.5 WAR, Age 25-33

In backhanded revenge for Bill Madlock, in July 2003 the Cubs obtained Ramirez from the Pirates along with Kenny Lofton in exchange for Jose Hernandez and a PTBNL, who turned out to be second round bust Bobby Hill.  A particularly fiery pit in GM Hell awaits Dave Littlefield for this awful deal, but one man’s Hell is another man’s Ramirez, and this trade enabled the Cubs to enjoy the only stability they’ve known at third since Santo’s retirement. Ramirez hit 34 homers for the Bucs in 2001, but in 2002 the homers turned into strikeouts. Ramirez made some progress in 2003, but not enough to kill Littlefeld’s sick fascination with Herrnandez, and so the deal was done. Ramirez immediately blossomed with the Cubs, raking at a .233 ISO rate for the remainder of that season, and continuing his excellent output for many years thereafter. He is the fourth best Cubs third baseman of all time, behind only Santo, Hack, and Heinie Zimmerman.

So yes, this list bears out the ruminant’s ruminations, at least to some extent. Ramirez is the only good third baseman since 1969 that the Cubs had control of during his mid-career years. The Cubs often resorted to trading for or signing aging third basemen with declining performance and expanding paychecks, because their farm system had failed to produce anything better. The few young players they did obtain they either failed to develop (Orie, Ontiveros) or gave up on too soon (Madlock). Valbuena is an exception here, but even he is likely to top out as a second division starter at best. And remember, these are the good guys.

So you can see why Cubs fans are so obsessed with Bryant. For many of the last 45 years, the hot corner in Wrigley has been ice cold.


Whiffs of Success? Theo Rolls the Dice

Jeff Sullivan recently sent up a warning flare regarding Kris Bryant’s potential swing and miss problems, and this post is essentially riffing off that one, so you’ll probably want to read that first if you haven’t already checked it out. I’m using strikeout rate rather than contact rate, but the message is similar.

Bryant isn’t alone among Cubs prospects with contact avoidance issues. Here’s what some of their bigger names did last year:

Player                                        Level            K%             wRC+

Javier Baez                             MLB            41.0                 51

Arismendy Alcantara        MLB            31.0                 70

Jorge Soler                             MLB            24.7               146

Kris Bryant                                 AAA            28.6               164

Three of those four (i.e., the non-Alcantaras) are thought to be integral parts of The Future for the Cubs. But those are strikeout rates that have not generally led to long-term career success.

Here are the top ten career K rates for hitters with over 5000 plate appearances:

Player                            K%           wRC+          WAR

Adam Dunn               28.6            123              22.7

Ryan Howard           28.1             126              19.9

Jose Hernandez      27.3              86              12.9

Carlos Pena               26.8             117              16.9

B.J. Upton                  26.4              99              21.7

Jim Thome                 24.7            145              67.7

Dave Kingman          24.4            113              20.4

Gorman Thomas      24.4            114              20.4

Dan Uggla                   24.2             110              22.8

Dean Palmer             24.2             104              11.0

So it’s not impossible to have a long and relatively successful career striking out more than a quarter of the time, but it hasn’t happened much – just five times using my admittedly somewhat arbitrary 5000 PA cutoff. With strikeout rates continuing to rise, a few more players will edge ahead of Dean Palmer in the coming years, but in all likelihood, many more will fall by the wayside long before reaching that somewhat less than august plateau. As Sullivan points out, players who whiff this often need to max out their other skills in order to be useful to a team, putting enormous pressure on those other skills to develop.

And there does seem to be a correlation between hitters’ strikeout rates and overall team success, as Joe Sheehan has noted elsewhere. Here are the teams with the five highest hitter K rates from last year:

Cubs               24.2          73-89

Astros            23.8          70-92

Marlins          22.9          77-85

Braves            22.6          79-83

Reinsdorfs     22.4          73-89

None of these teams came close to making the playoffs. You have to go all the way down to tenth on the list to find a playoff team (the Nats, at 21.0%).

And here are the five least K-lacious teams:

Royals             16.3        89-73

A’s                    17.7        88-74

Rays                 18.1        77-85

Tigers              18.3        90-72

Cards               18.6       90-72

Yankees           18.6       84-78

Numerate readers will have grasped that there are actually six teams on this list, since the Cards and Yankees tied at 18.6%.  Only the Rays and the Evil Empire failed to make the playoffs, and only the Rays failed to break .500.

Not all of the young Cubs  windmill at the plate: Addison Russell and Kyle Schwarber kept their K rates under 20% last year in the minors, as did Anthony Rizzo and Starlin Castro in the majors. And as Sullivan noted, players do develop – Bryant et. al. are not necessarily trapped for eternity in the seventh level of Strikeout Hell. But for now, a significant part Theo Epstein’s plan to bring glory to Wrigleyville depends on whether these players can either find a way to strike out less, or to succeed without doing so, something that few have managed thus far.


What Can We Learn from the 1959 Chicago White Sox?

The terms “scouting” and “player development” are so frequently seen together that they should probably just get a room. It is axiomatic in today’s game that S&PD is the best, and perhaps only sustainable, route to baseball success.  This seems particularly true for the so-called small-market teams who are far too cash-poor to fish in Lake Boras. Which makes the recent antics of A.J. Preller (and the slightly less recent antics of Alex Anthopolous – see #12 and 13) so surprising. These are teams that play in the shadow of giants – figuratively in the Blue Jays’ case and both figuratively and literally for the Pads. If any teams should be S&PD-ing, its these, yet sweeping trades indicate that the two franchises have been less than fully successful at filling their major league roster holes with home-grown talent.

However difficult it is to be a GM in today’s AL East or NL West, few GMs have labored in a more unforgiving environment than those damned souls condemned to compete in the AL in the late 50s and early 60s, during the last of the pre-division-era Yankees dynasties. From 1947 through 1964 the Evil Empire missed the World Series just three times: in 1948 (Indians), 1954 (Indians), and 1959 (White Sox). Of these three, the 1959 “Go-Go” Sox have always stood out as the least probable Yankee-killers.

In an era when offense and power were essentially considered synonyms, the 1959 White Sox hit just 97 homers, not just last in the AL, but last in the majors. It took just four Indians to reach that total in 1948 (Gordon, Keltner, Boudreau, and Eddie Robinson). Yes, the 1959 Sox had three Hall-of-Famers (Nellie Fox, Luis Aparicio, and Early Wynn), but only one (Fox) was arguably in his prime.

All this said, the 1959 White Sox did a lot of things well. They got on base at a .327 clip, 3rd best in the AL. They stole 113 bases, leading the league, and totaling almost as many as the next two teams combined. They led the league in ERA (3.29), though the advanced metrics were less impressed with this staff. And they defended. Oh, did they defend.  They led the majors in Total Zone, and only the Spiders were even close. The White Sox had four of the top ten players in the majors, as rated by FanGraphs’ Def stat. And they were the four guys in the middle of the diamond (catcher Sherm Lollar, Fox at second, Aparicio at short, and Jim Landis in center).

So far, so small market. But of the 15 players with a WAR of least 1.0, just three were home-grown (Aparicio, Landis, and backup catcher Johnny Romano). Aparicio would end up in the Hall, and both Landis and Romano would have respectable careers (just over 20 WAR each), though Romano would spend most of his career with the Indians. The rest of the 1+ WAR players on the 1959 team were acquired by trade, with the exception of three aging but effective relievers, two of whom were signed off of waivers and one of whom was purchased.

And these were no ordinary trades. Let’s look at a couple of the more significant ones (many of these were multi-player deals – I’m focusing on the most significant players going each way):

Sox acquire Nellie Fox from the Philadelphia A’s for C  Joe Tipton in 1949.

Fox was just 21 in 1949, and his 300 or so plate appearances to that point had produced nothing of note, except one interesting harbinger of things to come: 34 career walks against just nine strikeouts. Fox would finish with 719 walks  and just 216 Ks in a career spanning over 10,000 plate appearances. No player with that many PAs has struck out less often.

As for Joe Tipton, you can admit you’ve never heard of him – you’re among friends here. Tipton spent one miserable year with the White Sox as a punchless 27 year old backup catcher before being sent to the city where it’s always sunny. He would develop into a useful backup bat, and amass a career war of 5.4. Fox had a WAR of 6.0 in 1959 alone.

Sox acquire Sherm Lollar from the St. Louis Browns for OF Jungle Jim Rivera and assorted Cracker Jack prizes in 1951.

Lollar was a bit of a late bloomer, with both the Yankees and Browns giving up on him before he found a home on the South Side at age 27, where he would be named to the all-star team six times.  This was probably a little generous, but he was a durable contributor at a position not normally associated with “durable” or “offense.” Rivera, for his part, would go on to a modest career WAR of 6.9. Even better, the Browns traded him back to the South Side the following year, where he would remain for the rest of his career.

Sox acquire Early Wynn from the Cleveland Indians for LF Minnie Minoso in 1957.

An exchange of one Hall-of-Famer for anoth- oops! Sorry about that. At age 37, Wynn looked like he might be done, with his ERA jumping from 2.72 in 1956 to 4.31 in 1957.  He was still durable, though (263 IP), so the Sox decided to get him in exchange for their star left fielder whose power had seemingly collapsed (sliding from 24 homers to 12 in the same two years). This one didn’t work out quite as well for the Sox, who got 6.5 WAR from Wynn in 1958-59, while a resurgent Minoso clobbered the ball to the tune of a 10.5 WAR for the Spiders. Wynn was nevertheless the Sox clear ace in 1959, going 22-10 with a 3.17 ERA (3.66 FIP) and leading the league with 255 IP. Minoso would return to the Sox in 1960, and he still had a couple of good years left, but he would never get that World Series ring.

Sox acquire P Bob Shaw from the Detroit Tigers for OF Tito Francona in 1958.

Shaw was the Sox’s second-best pitcher in 1959, behind only Early Wynn. He was 18-6 with a 2.69 ERA (though his FIP, at 3.36, was less kind). His career looks a little like Ervin Santana’s – basically a slightly above average pitcher with wild year-to-year ERA swings. The Sox would deal him just three years later, and he would pitch for seven different teams in his 11-year career, but he came through for the Sox when it counted most. Tito (whose real name is John Patsy Francona) had a forgettable year in a part-time role in Detroit, but showed the on-base skill that would propel him to three superb years in Cleveland before lapsing back into a bench role, albeit a long and fairly productive one, for the remainder of his career.

There were several other trades that went into building the 1959 Sox, but you get the idea. And it wasn’t just this year – the wheeling and dealing continued from 1957 through 1965, during which time the Sox would finish worse than second just three times. It was the White Sox’s misfortune that their dominance of the AL West ended four years before the division was created.

While the White Sox weren’t especially adept at developing players, they were extremely adept at finding them, and this is where scouting comes in. The Sox appear to have been very good at scouting both other teams’ rosters and their own. The only whiff in the transactions above involved Minoso, a player who was not quite done tormenting baseballs, and even in that trade the Sox received a very effective starter. This is what scouting without player development looks like. And it’s not bad if, you know, you like that sort of thing.

There are obviously only so many lessons today’s front offices can learn from those of yesteryear. While the Sox’ strategy may bear some superficial similarity to A.J. Preller’s, the Sox were able to ruthlessly exploit the reserve clause to pay quality veterans vastly less than any reasonable conception of their market value. Trading for veterans was a lot less costly back then. And while Preller was perhaps unimpressed with prospects he traded away, it is safe to say that he benefited to some extent from the Padres’ previous player development machine, in the sense that other teams were impressed enough with the young Padres (what do you call Padres prospects? los hijos?) to take them off A.J.’s hands.

But the broader point, as suggested by a commenter on my previous post, is that not every successful team has achieved that success by following whatever the then-current orthodoxy prescribes. Small market teams may be better off thinking outside the box than getting spent to death in it.


Matter of Import: The Padres’ Strange Roster

It may have been John Steinbeck who said that everyone in California is from somewhere else. Or it may have been some other dude. In any case, the San Diego Padres’ roster exemplifies the melting pot that is the Golden State. Ten of their 14 core major leaguers (where I’m defining “core” to mean the 14 players that make up the starting lineup, starting rotation, and closer) are trade acquisitions:

C     Derek Norris

1B   Yonder Alonso

2B   Jedd Gyorko

3B   Will Middlebrooks

SS   Alexi Amarista

LF  Justin Upton

CF   Wil Myers

RF   Matt Kemp

S1   Andrew Cashner

S2   Ian Kennedy

S3   Tyson Ross

S4  Odrisamer Despaigne

S5   Brandon Morrow

CL   Joaquin Benoit

The Padres core is as heavily dependent on trade imports as any I’ve ever seen. And while this may be a recipe for cooking up a world championship, it hasn’t been, at least not recently. No world champ in the last ten years has had that many core players (including DHs for the AL teams) acquired by trades:

White Sox (2005)    7

Cardinals (2006)     5

Cardinals (2011)      5

Red Sox (2007)       4

Giants (2012)           3

Phillies (2008)         2

Yankees (2009)       2

Giants (2014)           2

Giants (2010)           1

Red Sox (2013)        1

It’s possible that a couple of home-grown Padres could replace two of their trade imports – Cory Spangenberg might effectively discard Middlebrooks (either by winning the hot corner himself or by pushing Gyorko to third). Free agent pickup Clint Barmes could displace Amarista, one of the few major league players whose job Clint Barmes genuinely threatens. But even if the Padres close the numerical gap, they are still pursuing what is at best an unusual route to victory.

The top four trade-dependent world series winners listed above had established superstars around which to build: Frank Thomas for the White Sox; Albert Pujols for the Cards; and Dustin Pedroia, David Ortiz and MannybeingManny for the Sawx. (In the White Sox’ case, all the activity indeed produced a championship for the prophetically-monickered Big Hurt, but too late. A foot injury sidelined him at the end of July, and he would never again take a swing in anger for the south-siders.) The Padres roster has no such anchor tenant – their only established home-grown regular is Jedd Gyorko, he of the 2.5 career WAR.

While new general manager A. J. Preller’s hyperactivity has generated much of the hot stove heat this winter (and the best hot stove headline thus far), the wheeling and dealing began before he took over. Alonso, Amarista, and the top three starters all arrived under the previous administration. So while Preller’s moves look like a radical restructuring of the roster, they can also be seen as simply finishing the grim task that his predecessor Josh Byrnes started.

Because this is what happens when prospects degenerate into suspects. (Younger or more sensitive readers may wish to avert their eyes now.) This list goes a long way toward explaining why Preller has been treating his roster like a cat treats a new sofa. Not one of the top ten players on it is with the Padres major league club today; indeed, only the not-yet-immortal Logan Forsythe is even in the majors. Donavan Tate’s tire fire has been well-chronicled – the reboot failed, and he did not play organized ball in 2014. Nor did Simon Castro or James Darnell. Wynn Pelzer pitched for the Camden Riversharks. Cory Luebke’s had two more Tommy John surgeries than you’ll ever have. The rest of that erstwhile top ten are tilling the soil of other teams’ farms, generally without significant yield. (Ok, younger and sensitive readers, you can open your eyes.)

None of this is Preller’s fault (or Byrnes’, for that matter – these were Kevin Towers picks), but this is the hole out of which Preller must dig, and they don’t make many shovels this large. Preller had essentially two choices on assuming the helm of the S.S. Friar: (a) put a motley cast of young low ceiling players and affordable, declining vets on the field and wait for the farm to resprout; or (b) make trades like Jim Bowden on Red Bull and hope to field a competitive team in a division with two perennial playoff contenders.

Preller chose the latter, ill-advisedly in my view, until I read a recent Joe Sheehan newsletter (yes, you should subscribe). Sheehan made a number of points about the Padres current situation; the one relevant here is that the Pads are stuck with a relatively bad TV deal, and thus are unusually dependent on attendance for revenue. Preller needs to get butts in the seats, and that won’t happen if he puts a AAA team on the field, even if he distracts the fans with dollar beer nights and kazoo-playing clowns shooting T-shirts into the sparsely populated upper deck. Sheehan believes that  in order to fund a sustainable scouting and development-based franchise, Preller paradoxically needs to increase the age and cost of the major league roster in the short term.

I don’t like Preller’s odds. Look at the Padres’ core again – there isn’t a single position player on it that doesn’t have either injury or on-base issues, except Upton. The rotation doesn’t have a #1 starter, although perhaps Ross can develop into one. On the other hand, he’s already 27. The Padres play in the same division as the Los Angeles Dodgers, who may bolster their farm system by purchasing Cuba once the messy embargo-lifting details are sorted out. The Giants don’t have the Dodgers’ financial resources, but they remain one of the consistently best run organizations in the game, with two franchise players (Posey and Bumgarner) who are still a long way from old.

But Preller presumably knew the job was dangerous when he took it, and at least he has attacked his task with vigor and focus. Sometimes guys don’t get hurt, and sometimes the batted balls find grass rather than gloves. That’s why they play the games, and San Diego’s 2015 campaign promises to be more interesting than most, whether it’s ultimately successful or not.


The Ballad of Brett Lawrie

He’s not a good enough 3B and he doesn’t hit well enough to play at any of the easier defensive spots.

1261 PA, .273/.348./450, 102 OPS+

“He” is Edwin Encarnacion, then of the Cincinnati Reds, and those are his stats through his age 24 season (2005-2007). Just three years into his major league career, Encarnacion had yet to attain 600 PA in any one season, and questions were already be raised about his viability as an every day player. The quote above comes from here, and, to be fair, it represented the judgment of only some E5 observers. But despite having the opportunity to act out one of the best baseball revenge fantasies ever, Encarnacion never fully put those doubts to rest while he was with Cincinnati. Following what seemed to be a possible breakout season at age 25 in 2008, E5’s power disappeared the following year, and the disgusted Reds shipped him midseason to America’s Hat in exchange for the Ghost of Rolen Past, who gave Cincinnati the final 3.5 seasons of his career, 1.5 of which were useful.

North of the border, Encarnacion’s power returned in 2010 even as his OBP continued to regress; his production overall rebounded to the level it had been in 2008 (109 OPS+ and wRC+). He continued to maneuver around third base as though it were a point singularity, however, so in 2011 the Blue Jays began transitioning him to a 1B/DH, giving him 92 starts in those slots as opposed to just 30 at third. The results at the plate were encouraging: his average and OBP made substantial gains without giving away too much power. Then, in 2012, Encarnacion finally went off, commencing a three year tear during which his OPS has never been below .900 and his worst HR total was 34. Today, Encarnacion can hit in the middle of any major league lineup. If Alex Anthopoulos is working for the MLB Network in 2016, it won’t be Encarnacion’s fault.

***

He started off cold as ice … before getting hurt sliding into second base.

1361 PA, .250/.331/.415, 97 OPS+

“He” is Alex Gordon, and those are his stats through his age 24 season (2007-2009). Just three years into his major league career, Gordon’s stellar offensive production in college already seemed a distant memory, and questions were being raised about his viability as an every day player. The quote above comes from here, and while that writer was ready to give up on Gordon, to be fair, many others were calling on the Royals to remain patient with the second overall pick in the 2005 draft. In 2009 Gordon’s power, never substantial in the majors to that point, really began circling the drain, and after getting off to an anemic .685 OPS start in April 2010, the disgusted Royals demoted Gordon and banished him to left. He would never appear at third base again.

He would, however, rediscover his stroke. Gordon hammered 16 homers in just 321 PAs at Omaha, good for a steak-sized 164 wRC+. He returned to The Show on July 23, and while the remainder of his 2010 season did little to quiet his critics (he finished with a wRC+ of 85, actually two points worse than the previous year), in 2011 he began a four year rampage, headlined by 96 doubles during 2011-2012, as well as ironman durability. Since opening day 2011, Gordon is third in the majors in plate appearances, behind only Ian Kinsler and Elvis Andrus. Gordon’s durability and on-base skills have made him a key offensive cog in the Royals somewhat surprising resurgence. He’ll never have to go to back to Omaha unless he has relatives there.

***

He’s been injured numerous times, suspended and has underperformed with the bat once pitchers began taking advantage of his lack of patience at the plate.

 1431 PA, .265/.323/.426, 104 OPS+

“He” is Brett Lawrie, and those are his stats through his age 24 season (2011-2014). Just four years into his career, his first 171 blistering plate appearances of his career have disappeared in the rearview, and questions are being raised about his viability as an everyday player. The quote above comes from here, and was written before Lawrie strained his oblique (once again) last year, ending his season and, as it turned out, his tenure with the Blue Jays.

Lawrie plays baseball as though he’s being chased by an enraged Sumatran tiger. In his first brief season in the bigs (when, incidentally, he replaced Encarnacion as the Jays’ starting third baseman) this paid off with a .293/.373/.580 slash line.  Since then, however, he has been unable to translate all that energy into baseball achievement. That kind of intensity can wear thin unless it’s backed by production, and Lawrie’s rate stats have gone generally backwards since 2011. He’s had a fractured finger, repeated oblique injuries, and a bad slide into second, among other injuries.  Lawrie blames the turf at Rogers Centre, but the turf lawyered up, and Lawrie’s case proved at best inconclusive.

As the career paths of Encarnacion and Gordon suggest,  one way to resuscitate Lawrie’s bat might be to move him to the left end of the defensive spectrum. That won’t happen in Oakland; after the Donaldson trade the A’s third base depth chart (Renato Nunez aside) looks like the Fallujah skyline. Billy Beane has little incentive to try Lawrie anywhere other than third. And maybe it will work. The hopeful comp here might be Gary Gaetti, whose stat line through age 24 (1981-1983) looks similar to the other guys in this post, viz:

1241 PA, .237/.293/.428, 94 OPS+

But Gaetti was already a superior defender, and became a durable, full time starter at age 23. His plate appearances are light because he only had a shotglass of coffee in 1981.

Gaetti was good. Real good: a 42 WAR career during which he amassed 2,280 hits and 360 homers while adding defensive value almost right up to the end. It’s certainly worth Beane’s time to see if he has that kind of player on his roster, especially since it appears that the A’s are going to be running a talent show rather than a pennant race next season. My guess is that if Lawrie develops at third, he’ll have slightly more bat and slightly less glove than Gaetti, though to be fair, both men had exactly the same career minor league OPS (.851).

It’s less clear whether participating in this particular rat race is the best outcome for Lawrie. Like E5 and Gordon, he might be better served by moving to a safer corner where he can concentrate on developing his offensive skills without placing his body’s soft tissue in excessive danger. I’m sure if you asked him he’d say he wants to stay at third. My guess is that Encarnacion and Gordon once thought that way too, and Lawrie’s career to this point looks more like theirs than Gaetti’s.

Brett Lawrie, like Repo Man, is always intense. I have a hard time not rooting for him; he attacks his job with an explosive, exuberant passion that would get me (and probably you) fired. I want him to succeed. I’m not at all sure he will.


Will Maddon Matter?

Click here. Ok, now, click here. Uncanny, isn’t it? What are the odds that two Cubs’ figures of historic significance would both be white-haired men who wear black-rimmed glasses? This is further proof, as if any were needed, that forces beyond human ken are shaping the Cubs’ destiny.

Unfortunately, assessing the impact of a manager on a team has also remained largely beyond human ken. There may come a time when we can define a replacement-level manager (like, say, #Yosted), and come up with an accompanying performance metric (Wins Above Yost, or WAY). But that time has not yet arrived, so we must make do with the primitive tools at hand.  These do indeed suggest that Maddon gets it, though, as is often true in using statistics to assess a manager’s performance, it can be hard to separate the manager’s performance from that of the players.

Maddon managed the Tampa Bay (Sometimes Devil) Rays from 2006-2014, so he has a relatively long record to examine.  During that time the Rays accumulated 55,830 plate appearances, 15th out of 30 MLB teams. But Maddon did not allow those PAs to be distributed randomly:

 

Situation                         Rank

L vs. L                                12

R vs. R                               22

L  vs. R                                8

R  vs. L                                8

Joe knows platoons; the Rays frequently obtained the platoon advantage during his tenure. Carl Crawford partly explains the relatively high L-L rank — Maddon did not platoon Crawford even though his splits would have warranted such treatment after 2007.

Maddon also aggressively used pinch-hitters, a rarity in an era when managers pinch-hit for anyone other than a pitcher with the enthusiasm of a cat taking a bath. During the Maddon Years, the Rays led the AL in pinch-hitting PAs, and it wasn’t even close:

Rays                  1249

Evil Empire       946

A’s                        934

Blue Jays            908

Red Sox               833

The least pinch-hitty team in the NL during this period, the Astros, had 2100 pinch hit PAs, so Maddon wasn’t behaving exactly like an NL manager, but he pushed that envelope farther than any of his DH-league brethren. (It’s also interesting to note that 4 of the top 5 pinch-hitting AL teams hailed from the AL East, though what use one might make of this interesting information is far from clear.) And while activity is often confused with achievement, Joe’s tinkering produced results: the Rays were 8th in wRC+ for pinch-hitters during his tenure.

Baserunning is another area where the manager can exert tangible influence, and this is another area where the Rays score high. From 2006-2014 the Rays were second in the majors, behind only the Mets, in BsR, a metric that expresses stolen bases, caught stealing, and other baserunning plays as runs above or below average.

Team            BsR 2006-2014

Mets                      74.2

Rays                      73.9

Rangers                71.3

Twins                    56.4

Angels                   55.4

As you might guess, Crawford drove a lot of this success. The Rays are just 8th in BsR in the Post Perfect Storm Era (2011-2014), good but no longer elite. And what of that Ebola of hitting, the sacrifice bunt? By and large, Joe let ’em swing — the Rays were 26th in sac hits during his reign.

So as far as the hitters are concerned, Maddon is the model of the modern majors manager. His pitching deployment, however, has a bit more of a retro feel:

Pitchers             MLB innings rank 2006-2014

All Rays                                  15

Starters                                    7

Relievers                                25

“Aha!” you say. “That’s because Rays relievers have needed pine tar to succeed.” Perhaps — from 2006-2014 Rays starters and relievers have amassed nearly the same FIP- (102 for the starters, 101 for the relievers). But on second glance that reliever FIP- does suggest that the Rays should have been purchasing pine tar at Big Lots — it is 5th from the bottom in the majors during this period, while the Rays rank 15th in starter FIP-. In addition, although the FIP- figure doesn’t necessarily demonstrate this, the Rays have obviously had some excellent starters, such as James Shields and David Price, capable of working deep into games.

Maddon’s pitchers have not performed well in high leverage situations, which generally include late, close games:

Leverage           MLB FIP rank

High                          21

Medium                    14

Low                            10

The list looks upside down; most managers would want their best pitching effort when it matters most. It doesn’t appear, based on this admittedly limited data, that Maddon has been able to be as creative with pitchers as he has with hitters, but some of this may simply be a reflection of the Rays’ spotty bullpen quality. On the clearly positive side, Maddon was able to stem the march of Intentional Walk Zombies, with the Rays ranking just 23rd in IBBs during his time in Tampa.

No evaluation of Joe Maddon would be complete without a discussion of defense. He embraced aggressive shifts earlier and oftener than most, with apparently impressive results. Tampa Bay was first in UZR/150 during Maddon’s tenure, and third in Def. The Rays fare less well in Defensive Runs Saved, but still rank 9th during the period. (If you’re curious about how these stats work, I urge you to click on the links — my grasp of defensive metrics is pretty feeble, and the approach I usually take is to use several different ones to answer a defensive question and see if they produce similar results, which in this case they generally do.)

So based on admittedly less than decisive evidence, and bearing in mind that much of any manager’s achievement or lack thereof is down to the players’ talent rather than the manager’s aptitude, it appears that Maddon makes decisions reasonably designed to help his team win games,  His task with the Cubs will differ in many ways from his experience in Tampa Bay. One of the most significant differences is that he’s likely to have a better bullpen, and likely to need it more. Even if the Cubs add two Big Name Horses, the rotation will still have question marks, and this will be true even if Jake Arrieta’s deal with the devil has another year to run. For somewhere around 15-20 home games, Wrigley Field will play like Ebbets Field, a challenge that Maddon didn’t have to deal with in the Logan’s Run-like controlled atmosphere in The Trop, and one that will put his bullpen management skills to their sternest test. He appears to be someone at least as eager to learn as to teach, and the prospect of being known as The Curseslayer will surely be motivation for him to continue evolving.

Maddon’s arrival on the shores of Lake Michigan was not without controversy. There’s little doubt that Rick Renteria got jobbed (or rather, de-jobbed), even though the two players whose regression got Dale Sveum fired (Castro and Rizzo) had excellent bounceback seasons under him. The Cubs’ rank opportunism in dumping Skipperfriend 2.0 for SF 3.0 is matched only by the Rays’ pathetic shakedown dressed up as a tampering charge. A managerial tenure that might end like the EA Sports commercial has begun with several reminders that humans are indeed a predatory species. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

In any case, flags fly forever, and few will have qualms about any of this moral relativism if indeed the Goat is consigned once and for all to Cthonian darkness. As far as Cubs fans are concerned, the message for now is: Glasses! Half full.