The Arizona Diamondbacks have the third-worst record in baseball this season, which obviously isn’t a very good thing. But I feel that there are some positive signs for the Dbacks. Or a handful of them, anyway.

Before I begin saying good things about this Arizona team, a disclaimer:

I do recognize that the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants are still in the National League West as well, so it will take a good many things going the right way to make the Diamondbacks do as much as compete with their divisionmates. Even with that, I’m optimistic.

First and foremost: They still have Paul Goldschmidt, and he’s under team control through 2019. Since his first full season in 2012, Goldschmidt has been the second-best first baseman in the bigs. This year, Goldschmidt has been a top-25 player despite missing several games due to injury. Having an All-Star/MVP-caliber/middle-of-the-order-hitting first baseman is a good place to start for a team.

But one excellent player doesn’t make a great team. The old adage is “be strong up the middle,” after all. And Arizona kind of is, or could be.

Of course there is catcher Miguel Montero, who is locked up through 2017. We’ve almost certainly seen the best of Montero already, but he’s still a solid everyday player, at least defensively. And it seems like good defensive catchers pretty much keep being good defensive catchers.

Continuing up the middle, there’s Chris Owings at short. Owings is only 23 and debuted last season. He’s pretty good defensively, has a decent bat with some pop and, despite having only played 72 games this year, has been quite productive.

Again, he’s only played a little more than half a season. But he ranks 14th among all shortstops, and he’s been better than any other one who has played as few games as he has. If we take Owings’ WAR (1.8) for this season and prorate it for a full season (600 plate appearances), he becomes a four-win player. Only four shortstops totaled four wins above replacement last year: Troy Tulowitzki, Hanley Ramirez, Ian Desmond and Andrelton Simmons.

I’m not really trying to suggest that Owings will be as good as any of those four right now or next year or the year after that, but he’s been good so far. And at 23, he’s still got some time to grow.

Center field has been one of the good spots for Arizona. AJ Pollock has been quite good in his limited time, and Ender Inciarte has done well there, too. Inciarte is a defensive wizard, and Pollock was an outstanding hitter this season before going out with a hand injury. We probably shouldn’t expect Pollock to keep this level of offensive production up, but he’ll probably be pretty good. Even if he can’t hit, he put up good defensive numbers last season.

Pollock and Inciarte can play multiple outfield spots, so there’s not a logjam in center, and trading Gerardo Parra away at the trade deadline opened up a spot for the near future.

If Pollock and Inciarte are taking up two spots in the outfield, maybe David Peralta can take the other. Peralta started as a pitcher in St. Louis in 2006, staying in rookie ball for two seasons before eventually blowing out his arm in 2009. From there, Peralta played some independent ball when Arizona discovered him last year. Peralta just turned 27 in August, so he’s still a young guy. Even if he takes a step back in 2015 — and he very well might — he’ll be a piece to have.

A piece of what, I’m not sure. He and other outfielder Mark Trumbo have both probably hit their peaks, and the projections just do not care for either of them going forward. I don’t personally know who provides the Oliver projections, but I must presume Peralta and Trumbo have wronged that person/computer in some way.

Veteran Cliff Pennington has been a good at all over the infield this year, and has provided about as much value as Owings in 20 fewer games. He’s 30 now, so he still has some years left and can provide some good defense at a couple of infield spots, at least.

So it’s a good-looking seven players that will head into next year for Arizona. But the problem hasn’t been those pretty good players as much as it’s been the dead weight that Cody Ross, Jordan Pacheco, Trumbo and Aaron Hill have provided this year.

Odds are that we’ve seen the best of Ross and Hill. Both were good players in their primes, but those primes have passed. Ross is locked up through next season, and Hill will be there through 2016. But Trumbo and Pacheco could both be let go after this year.

Sure, there’s value to having Trumbo. He hasn’t hit for much power this year, but that’s been his calling card in the past. But the Dbacks can’t really put him at first because Goldschmidt is there. And if he plays left or right field, Trumbo is taking a spot away from one of those outfielders. Of course, Peralta could have a poor 2015, and Trumbo would fit in left if that’s the case.

I have no idea if that will happen, though. I can’t tell the future.

Trumbo might fit at third, but he hasn’t played there much. Fortunately for Arizona, third base prospect Jake Lamb has already debuted. While he hasn’t been very good at the big league level, he absolutely crushed pitching in Double-A. Lamb is only 23 and projects to be a plus hitter. He’s probably the future answer at the hot corner.

Now for the pitching.

It hasn’t been good. But there’s hope.

Today, we spell hope “A-R-C-H-I-E,” for Archie Bradley, or “B-R-A-D-E-N” for Braden Shipley, both of whom are top 100 prospects, with Bradley being No. 11 overall. Bradley had a little arm trouble this year, but was absolutely lights-out in Mobile last season. Shipley is completing his first full season of professional baseball, and hasn’t been bad at all. Both guys have fastballs in the mid-90s with other offerings that project to be really good.

Relying on prospects is what I meant when I said, “it will take a good many things going the right way” earlier. For the Diamondbacks to have real shots at success, they’ll probably need Bradley and Shipley to pan out. Bradley should be up sometime next year, and Shipley might come just after him.

As far as pitchers already in the rotation, it’s not ideal at the moment. Trevor Cahill has been a bit of a disappointment since coming to Arizona, but he’s only 26. Wade Miley has been pretty unlucky this year and should get a little better, according to his FIP and xFIP. Josh Collmenter pretty much is what he is, and he is a solid starting pitcher when healthy. Collmenter is 28 and Miley is 27, so there’s a chance that they’ll still get better, or at least stay basically where they are.

So that’s it. That’s my case for optimism for the Arizona Diamondbacks. It hinges very much on three good players (Goldschmidt, Montero, Owings) continuing to be really good and several other players (Trumbo, Pennington, Peralta, all the pitchers) just not being awful.

Perhaps I’m looking at the team with Diamondbacks-colored glasses, but I don’t think I am. Maybe I’m expecting too much from the younger guys in the near future.

Actually, that’s probably it. Still, I like their chances.

Phil Hughes of the Minnesota Twins and Hisashi Iwakuma of the Seattle Mariners both pitched over the Labor Day weekend and both picked up wins without issuing any walks. While not unusual as single game performances, consider that Hughes now has 15 wins for the season and has allowed only 15 walks while Iwakuma has 13 wins and 13 walks. They both have the opportunity to achieve the rarest of feats if they can finish the season with as many wins as walks. Granted pitcher wins are a poor measure of baseball excellence and are generally out of favor with most readers on this site, but the rarity of their accomplishments are quite astounding and worthy of attention.

How rare? It’s rarer than a perfect game, a 4-homer game, an unassisted triple play, and a batting triple crown. The last time a qualified starter had as many wins as walks was Carlos Silva of the Twins in 2005. Silva recorded only 9 wins in his best pro season by WAR, but he also walked only nine batters. And it wasn’t a small sample size situation either. The dude started 27 games and pitched 188 innings. Unfortunately his team didn’t reward him very often in the win column. Amazingly, 2 of his 9 walks were intentional.

Before that, Bret Saberhagen recorded 14 wins and allowed a mere 13 walks with the New York Mets in 1994. Interestingly, Saberhagen’s season included zero intentional walks while Iwakuma and Hughes have both issued one IBB so far, which leads one to wonder how many walks by these control artists were actually due to wildness (or a stingy strike zone) and how many were because they were merely pitching around a batter? There could literally be zero wild walks by these four, but it’s hard to even estimate without analyzing all the gifs and then guessing.

Also of note, Hughes has hit 3 batters so far this year, which has the same effect as a walk, while Iwakuma hit 2 all season. Both of Iwakuma’s HBPs actually happened in the same game, against Boston in his 24 August start, against back-to-back batters. Silva hit a surprisingly high 3 batters in his 2005 season and Saberhagen hit 4 in 1994. Again, it’s hard to say which of these HBPs were due to wildness and which were statements or retaliation although I personally watched Iwakuma’s two HBPs on MLB.TV and they were definitely not intentional.

Prior to Saberhagen? You have to go all the way back to Slim Sallee in 1919 to find someone with as many wins as walks. Remember him? Me neither. He had 21 wins and 20 walks that year for the Cincinnati Reds over 228 IPs. In baseball terms, 1919 was before Babe Ruth became a Yankee.  He was still pitching for the Red Sox and now he’s extremely dead.  So in the last 95 MLB seasons, among thousands of qualified starting pitchers, only four people have had as many wins as walks, and two of them are doing it this year! Here’s the all time leaderborad going back to 1900 sorted by wins minus walks.

Table 1: MLB Single Season Control by Qualified Starters Ranked by Wins-Walks, 1900-2014

Christy Mathewson is the clear stud in this statistical category with a +4 in 1913 (with zero hit batters) and +1 the following year. Look at all the hall of famers like Cy Young, Walter Johnson and Greg Maddux mixed in with guys that had great control but less than HOF careers like Bob Tewksbury, Babe Adams, Jon Lieber and La Marr Hoyt. Now look at and appreciate some of the innings pitched by these early control artists, led by Cy Young’s incredible 380 IPs in 1904 with only 29 walks.

This being a sabermetric site, the more generally accepted advanced baseball metric for pitcher control is probably BB/9 which takes the subjectivity of wins out of the equation. By that measure, here’s the all time leaderboard since 1900.

Table 2: MLB Single Season Control by Qualified Starters Ranked by Walks per 9 Innings, 1900-2014

Who would have ever guessed that the ALL TIME LEADER in single season BB/9 is Carlos Silva in 2005? By a significant margin! Notice also that even with the elimination of wins from the discussion, Hughes and Iwakuma are still having truly historic seasons, tied for eighth on the all time list. It’s time they start getting some recognition for their accomplishments. Miguel Cabrera won the Triple Crown in 2012 and rightfully received notoriety for achieving a traditional statistical feat. Hughes and Iwakuma are on the verge of doing something similarly extraordinary and deserve some credit as well. I for one am going to watch closely and root for them to continue their excellence and go into the record books with at least as many wins as walks.

* Intentional walks weren’t recorded as an official statistic until 1955

Jeff Samardzija will be a free agent this winter after turning down an offer from the Cubs in the range of 5 years/$85m, and being subsequently dealt to the Oakland A’s. One may reasonably assume he is looking for a payday more in the 7/100 range, and one may reasonably assume he’ll get pretty close to that. That’s ace money, but is he worth it?

To assess this question we need to have a good working definition of ace. My definition, unrigorously explored here, is that an ace is pitcher who has a reasonable chance of achieving an ace-caliber season. I didn’t define the latter in my previous post, but one way to look at it is to say that ace-caliber season is one in which the pitcher finishes in the top ten in pitcher WAR. Ten is a bit random — if most humans had six fingers and a thumb I’d probably be talking top 14 – but it at least roughly quantifies the point that ace seasons are something of a rarity.

Under the Baseball Reference  WAR system, a 5.0+ WAR season means an All-Star performance. Unsatisfied with this seemingly arbitrary number, I took the average WAR for the 10th-best pitcher in the majors over the last 10 complete seasons, and after the determined application of math and stuff, came up with … 5.0. So for the purposes of this post, that will be my definition of an ace-caliber season for a starter: a WAR of 5.0 or better.

Samardzija hasn’t come close to that in his career. This year will be his best — he’s at 2.7 right now and presumably will finish somewhere around 3.0. Indeed, Samardzija’s career WAR total is just 5.8. In contrast,  here are the number of 5+ seasons the Shark’s principal trade and/or free-agent competitors have amassed:

Jon Lester: 3

Cole Hamels: 2 (and on his way to a 3rd this year)

Max Scherzer: 2 (including this year)

But things get a bit more complicated when we remember that there is more than one type of WAR, and no, I’m not talking about wars of necessity vs. wars of choice. Rather, I’m referring to the differences between Baseball Reference’s WAR calculation and FanGraphs’, which has its own methodology for calculating WAR. This explains the differences between the two stats; my purpose here is not to laud or condemn either approach, but to use both to get a sense of how ace-like Samardzija might be. To do this, I compared Shark’s three seasons as a starter with the first three seasons of the guys mentioned above. I also devised a remarkably creative name for this stat: WAR(3).

Pitcher                            rWAR(3)            fWAR(3)

Shark                                   5.0                      8.1

Lester                                 14.8                    13.0

Hamels                              10.7                    10.4

Scherzer                              5.9                      9.4

Samardzija is the least impressive of the three, but he is not far off Max Scherzer’s numbers, regardless of which WAR you choose. (Note: I left out Scherzer’s first seven starts, which he made in Arizona in 2008 when he also served as a reliever.) While Shark and Scherzer are about the same age, Shark got his starting career under way three full years after Scherzer. The latter is has turned into an outstanding pitcher during the years you would expect a player to blossom (ages 27-29). The good news is that Shark has less mileage on his arm than Scherzer. The bad news is that Shark has already passed through the years when careers often take off. So this admittedly microscopic sample suggests that the Shark does have a platform, but a shaky one, from which he could launch an ace season or two.

Maybe there are other comps for Samardzija that could shed some light on this issue. A look at pitchers with high similarity scores to Samardzija through age 28 on Baseball Reference reveals a fairly grim list:

Juan Cruz
Calvin Schiraldi
Kevin Correia
Carlos Villanueva
Bill Swift
Dave Stewart
Mark Grant
Ron Schueler
Renie Martin
Willie Fraser

This group amassed a total of 100 pitching seasons, and managed just one ace-caliber season: Dave Stewart’s remarkable age-33 campaign with Oakland. If this list is predictive, it predicts that Shark will be hosting a regional cable network pre-game show within five years. But you may be saying to yourself, “Self, most of the people on that list don’t remind me of the Jeff Samardzija I’ve seen at all. And isn’t Renie Martin some kind of hard liquor?” All true. The majority of guys on this list lurked (or still do, in the case of Correia and Villanueva) at the edge of the rotation’s campfire, just beyond the flame’s light. Whatever one’s view of the Shark, no one would equate him with Calvin Schiraldi.

One problem with assessing Samardzija’s prospects is his highly unusual career trajectory. He bounced between starting and relieving in the minors, and early on in his major-league career was mostly a reliever. He didn’t become a full-time starter until 2012, at age 27. This partly accounts for his low career WAR, although he also put up 54 craptastic innings in 2009 and 2010 that might have killed a lesser man’s career. But that’s part of Shark’s story — so much physical talent that many in the Cubs’ organization were willing to put up with the setbacks, and keep tinkering with him until they found something that worked.

So it’s safe to say that Shark’s future is little harder to predict than most. His defenders may hope that, like Kevin Brown and Curt Shilling, he has a run of early-30s excellence in him, and he might. But Brown and Schilling were already good before age 30, and they had a lot more starts under their belts.  The one guy who does have a career trajectory somewhat similar to Shark’s is the one guy on the list above with an ace season: Dave Stewart.

Stewart walked a very hard road, overcoming a battalion of personal demons to become a rotation anchor in Oakland at age 30. (A good book could be written about the baseball souls Tony La Russa saved — Eck and Stewart would feature prominently, while McGwire would present a more complicated story.) Stewart’s career WAR to that point was an insignificant 6.1, slightly higher than Shark’s is today, but spread over more seasons. In the next four years Stewart would accumulate 17.8 WAR, including the dramatic 1990 World Series year, where he posted a career-best 2.56 ERA in 267 league-leading innings. Stewart would soldier on for four more years, losing effectiveness as the strike zone increasingly eluded him. But flags fly forever, and Stewart’s late-career surge may offer hope for Samardzija. Like Shark, Stewart threw hard and was very durable. Shark gets more strikeouts that Stewart did, but everyone is striking guys out in today’s modern game. It’s like, you know, a thing. Samardzija has not had anywhere near the off-field trouble that Stewart had early in his career, but both are similar in that chance and circumstances conspired to keep them out of the rotation until relatively late along the age curve.

Samardzija does have velo. He is seventh in 4-seam speed for starters, at 94.5 mph. But speed doesn’t guarantee dominance: only two of the top ten WAR pitchers this year are also in the top 10 in velocity (King Felix and Garrett Richards). Two more have very modest velocities in the 90 mph range (Adam Wainwright and Rick Porcello). I’d rather have velocity than not, but past radar gun performance is no guarantee of future ace success. It’s a close call, but I think Samardzija probably isn’t an ace, even though some team is going to pay him like one. You should probably hope it isn’t your team, although there are worse mistakes your team could, and probably will, make this winter.

And if your team does ink the Shark, remember to leave a light on for Dave Stewart.

The 2014 season has been weird for the San Francisco Giants. They began the year an MLB-best 42-21 (.667) and have gone 27-41 (.397) since. They led the N.L. West by 9.5 games on Jun. 8, but currently trail the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers by five games.

At 69-62 (.527), San Francisco leads the second wild card by one game over the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Marty Lurie, a host on the Giants’ flagship radio station, KNBR 680, says that a baseball season is like a mosaic: you can’t judge it by its individual parts, its moments, games, and plate appearances. Only when you step back and look at the big picture do things come into focus and make sense.

So, now that we’re about to enter the season’s final month (can you believe it’s September already?), it’s appropriate to look back on the season that has been and see how all the moments add up. That’s what baseball is all about.

It’s interesting (and fun) to look at a team’s overall numbers in some key areas, then find individual players whose career or single season statistics are comparable. Let’s get right to it:

2014 San Francisco Giants wRC+: 98

Notable hitters with a career 98 wRC+:

Rich Aurilia: .275/.328/.433, 7.2 BB%, 13.7 K%, .158 ISO, 23 SB, 6,278 PA

Delmon Young: .283/.317/.425, 4.2 BB%, 18.0 K%, .141 ISO, 35 SB, 4,143 PA

2014 San Francisco Giants starting pitcher FIP: 3.66

Notable starting pitcher(s) with a career 3.66 FIP:

Ben Sheets: 3.78 ERA, 7.47 K/9, 2.08 BB/9, 1.04 HR/9, .295 BABIP

Mike Krukow: 3.90 ERA, 6.07 K/9, 3.15 BB/9, 0.81 HR/9, .288 BABIP

Notable starting pitcher(s) with ~ 3.66 FIP in 2014:

Ryan Vogelsong: 3.68 FIP, 3.78 ERA 7.26 K/9, 2.58 BB/9, 0.78 HR/9, .299 BABIP

2014 San Francisco Giants relief pitcher FIP: 3.24

Notable relief pitcher(s) with a career 3.24 FIP:

John Smoltz: 7.99 K/9, 2.62 BB/9, 0.75 HR/9, .283 BABIP

2014 San Francisco Giants UZR/150: 0.0

Notable player(s) with ~ 0.0 UZR/150 in career:

Matt Holliday (0.0 UZR/150 spanning ~ 13K innings in LF)

Edgar Renteria: (0.2 UZR/150 spanning ~ 11K innings at SS)

As you can see, the Giants’ lineup this season (including the pitcher’s spot) has essentially been nine Rich Aurilias or Delmon Youngs, or any combination of the two. Having nine Delmon Youngs in your lineup (disregarding defense) is not the worst thing in the world, but it’s also far from the best. The potential for damage is there, but he’s going to let you down more often than not. If this sounds just about right for the Giants, that’s because the comps are accurate.

Next, the Giants’ starting rotation has been five Mike Krukows or Ben Sheets, or any combination of the two. Or it’s been five 2014 Ryan Vogelsongs. This means that Vogelsong is the typical Giants starter this year—he’s right in the middle of an up-and-down rotation.

The bullpen has been good. John Smoltz (in his career) is a pretty good comp to have for your bullpen as a whole in a season.

Lastly, the Giants defense as a whole in 2014 has been equivalent to how Matt Holliday plays left field or how Edgar Renteria plays shortstop. It’s possible to do worse, but it’s also possible to do a whole lot better.

Delving deeper into the Giants’ defensive issues, Michael Morse has an atrocious (and I mean atrocious) -24.6 UZR/150 in 577 innings in LF this season. His deplorable defense almost completely offsets his terrific 135 wRC+, as he’s been worth just 1.0 WAR this season.

Let’s take the comps a step further by looking at two elite teams in the N.L.:

The Dodgers’ 105 wRC+ this season means they’ve essentially had nine Ray Durhams in the lineup every night.

Durham’s career stats: 105 wRC+, .277/.352/.436, 9.7 BB%, 14.3 K%, .158 ISO, 273 SB, 8,423 PA

And the Dodgers’ 3.50 team FIP in 2014 means that their entire pitching staff has been Garrett Richards.

Richards’ career stats: 3.66 ERA, 3.50 FIP, 7.25 K/9, 3.07 BB/9, 0.63 HR/9, .288 BABIP

Even scarier, the Nationals’ 3.23 team FIP this season means they have been a staff of Curt Schillings.

Schilling’s career stats: 3.46 ERA, 3.23 FIP, 8.60 K/9, 1.96 BB/9, 0.96 HR/9, .293 BABIP

And Washington’s 1.5 UZR/150 team defense means they’ve collectively played as well as Justin Upton plays right field and Erick Aybar plays shortstop.

In summation, the Giants are a decent/pretty good MLB team, but they are clearly not as good as some other teams in the N.L. (and the A.L. for that matter) in some key categories.

On any given day, Ryan Vogelsong might pitch a shutout; Curt Schilling sometimes got rocked. Every now and then, Delmon Young goes 4 for 4 or hits a home run and a double; Ray Durham surely took his share of 0 for 5s. These things happen sometimes. That’s baseball.

But when you step back and look at the big picture, Schilling dealt, Durham outplayed Delmon, and Justin Upton made a fine running catch and throw while Matt Holliday just couldn’t quite get there in time.

Teams have both success and failure in quite a lot of ways, so I am playing with a way of showing what teams look the most alike.  To do this I have created a percent similar score as follows:

First I pulled team level WAR data split into what I am calling HWAR (position players/hitting) and PWAR (pitching) for all teams from 1947 to 2013.  I then converted each of those numbers into a percent above or below league average for that particular season.  For instance, the 2013 Rangers had 21.5 HWAR/19 HWAR league average minus one to convert to percentage, so they have an HWAR% of 13.1 or 13.1% better than average by cumulative war (actual HWARs above are not rounded in the data so it doesn’t round to 13.2% like it does in the example).  I did that for each team and also a PWAR% for each team in the same manner.

Next I compared each team to each other team with a giant 1610 by 1610 matrix, or a little over 2.5 million team pairs, to see how similar the teams were to each other.  The formula for this was 1/((1+ABS(HWAR%i – HWAR%j))*((1+ABS(PWAR%i-PWAR%j)), which gives a percent similarity based on nominal absolute deviation for each team from each other team multiplied together.  That way the deviations can’t cancel each other out and we are bounded between 0 and 1, and each team compared to itself will yield a similarity score of 100% as you would expect.

From this we can find some fun historic pairs, but also I will add 2014 YTD data and see who the best matches are for current teams and their results.  The two most similar teams out of the 2.5 million+ pairs were the 1999 Cardinals and the 2005 Nationals with a similarity score of 99.9%.  Both were slightly below-average teams.  The Cardinals were 15.5% below average by PWAR% and 9.6% below by HWAR%, and the Nats were 15.6 below and 9.5 below respectively.  That St. Louis team ended up going 75-86 on the season as we would expect from these numbers, but Washington managed to scrape by at an even .500 at 81-81.

On the other end of the spectrum, the least similar teams were the 1998 Braves and the 1979 Athletics.  That was a fantastic Braves team with PWAR 80.7% above league average and HWAR 97.5% above.  Meanwhile, the 1979 A’s were awful at 65% below average in PWAR and 151% below in HWAR, yes they had a negative HWAR as a team which is impressive if you like train wrecks.  These two teams had a similarity score of 11.7%, and their records show it.  That Braves team won 106 games and that A’s team lost 108 games, that is about as far apart as two teams can get.

There are some legitimately useful things I am planning on doing with these scores down the road, but for today I also thought it might be fun to see who is most like the 2014 contenders and how their respective seasons turned out.

The teams in the best probability for the playoffs have the best comps as you would expect with the exception of the Nationals who drew a very mediocre 83 – 79 team as most similar.  Baltimore had the only 100-game winner , but there are plenty of good teams in the mix like the Dodgers comp of a 95-win Expos team.  The different eras prevent us from seeing a ton of playoff outcomes, but none of the comparable teams made it to the World Series.  This year’s lack of any dominant teams might make that an expected outcome, even Buster Olney on the Baseball Tonight podcast today was discussing this very topic.  Of course everyone expected this year’s Detroit team to look like last year’s Royals.

Anyway, this could be a good way to create groups of historical comparisons for teams and the methodology could be broken out more if you want to separate defense, base running, bullpen vs. starters, which could all be done.  How you multiply them together to get appropriate weighting would be the sticky part with that.  It is a simple way to look at teams that had similar outcomes, and WAR allows us to control for ballpark factors and such.  I welcome any comments on other things you think could make it work better.

I started writing this post prior to the trade deadline; viewed through this lens, the Lester-and-Gomes-for-Cespedes trade makes even more sense for the A’s than it already did, especially considering their parallel acquisition of Sam Fuld from the Twins.

The A’s are ahead of the curve again.  This time it’s not just about better overall player evaluation (concentrating on certain metrics that other teams undervalue), but about building a roster that maximizes each player’s skill set to get the most out of the talent on your roster.  I wrote a while back that WAR is not the be-all, end-all of player evaluation, emphasizing that there is more to Wins than WAR.

WAR is great at certain things; it’s useful to remove factors that are outside a player’s immediate control: park factors, sequencing, etc.; it’s useful for comparing players across eras by controlling for run scoring environments and translating Runs to Wins; it’s also useful because it encompasses multiple aspects of a player’s skill set (hitting, defense, baserunning), and uses the same units (Runs and Wins) to combine these into a single number.  It’s a nice package.

But if I’m a GM, I don’t evaluate each player in a vacuum.  I want to know how he fits into my system, my lineup, my park, etc.  A given player will bring different value to different teams.  Some examples:

• Certain players might be more tailored to certain parks based on their offensive profile.  A contact hitter who hits a lot of infield singles and steals a lot of bases isn’t worth as much (compared to a team playing in league-average conditions) to a team filled with roided-up sluggers playing in pre-humidor Coors field – the value of those stolen bases and infield singles just isn’t as high.  WAR does normalize for park factors, but it assumes all players are affected by a given park equally, which on its face isn’t true.
• A player’s contribution varies based on how his team uses him.  If a team platoons a player so that he often has the advantage, his offensive contribution (per plate appearance) will be increased, whereas if he faces a more standard distribution of pitchers, his contribution would be lower.  Likewise if he plays a position he’s not as used to for the good of the team, his own contribution (as measured by WAR) will be less than if he plays his primary position.
• Likewise, defensive versatility has value to a team.  A player who can play multiple positions allows his team more flexibility in roster construction and in-game management; setting the daily lineup, platooning, and late-game substitutions (matchups when pinch-hitting, or defensive replacements – especially double-switches in the NL).

As a GM, you don’t just add up each player’s projected WAR (and add in the replacement-level constant) and say that’s how many you project to win that year.  There are all kinds of interrelated variables at play that will determine how your team performs.

The A’s are the epitome of this philosophy and appear to be better at this optimization of roster construction.  They’ve loaded up on defensively versatile players with outsized platoon splits and are the king of the platoon.  They’ve started doing this in the last few years, and this year even more so.  Take a look at MLB averages for platoon splits as compared to the A’s:

League:

A’s:

We notice two things: first, the A’s splits are a bit wider than the league splits: their righties hit better against lefties by about the same split as righties league-wide, but their lefties really hammer righties: a .171 OPS split for A’s lefties, as compared to a 0.068 split for lefties league-wide.  They’ve made a conscious effort to go after this style of player.  Second is the distribution of plate appearances: the average team gets 55% of its plate appearances with the platoon advantage.  The A’s get 70% of their plate appearances with the platoon advantage.  They’ve constructed their roster in such a way that they can alter their day-to-day lineup as much as possible to maximize the platoon advantage.

What allows the A’s to do this?  Defensive versatility (and the DH).  They’ve got guys like Brandon Moss playing LF/RF/1B/DH; Craig Gentry playing all OF spots; Stephen Vogt playing RF/C/1B; Alberto Callaspo, John Jaso, Josh Donaldson, and Bud Norris dividing time between DH/1B/3B/C; and so on.  All this versatility allows them to mix and match their lineup to get as many plate appearances with the platoon advantage as possible.  And, by not being pulled down by having any full-time DH, they get additional flexibility.

Cespedes didn’t really fit in with this philosophy.  Nearly all his appearances came in LF – 343 PAs, compared to 17 as a CF and 69 as a DH.  With the exception of Donaldson (423 PAs as 3B), he had the highest concentration of PAs at a single position.  The next-highest was Crisp, a switch-hitter, with 306 PAs as a CF.  Everyone else is playing all over the field.

Cespedes has a bit of a platoon split (0.844 OPS vs. 0.765), but not as much as other A’s like Reddick (0.843 vs. 0.398 this year), Donaldson (1.098 vs. 0.704), or Norris (1.031 vs. 0.771).  Gomes’ platoon split: 0.875 vs. 0.722.

So maybe the A’s think there isn’t that big a difference between Gomes and Cespedes, especially considering that Cespedes’ defense can be partially replaced by Fuld’s, his performance against lefties can be replaced by Gomes, and his performance against righties can be replaced by the left-handed Vogt, who stands to get more appearances in LF now.  If they play their cards right, Fuld/Gomes/Vogt is a better player than Cespedes.

The A’s appear to have a leg up on the competition.  Rather than evaluating players in a vacuum and estimating “How many wins we will get if we add player X and remove player Y?”, they’re looking at “What does our lineup look like with player X?”  “How will his presence affect the number of plate appearances players A, B, C, and D get (with platooning taken into account)?”  “How will our various defensive alignments look?”  “How does his presence affect the availability of late-game pinch-hit and defensive replacement options?”  And for each of those questions, they boil it down to the impact on expected runs, expected runs allowed, and expected wins.  They’re all-in for this year, and they’re pulling out all the stops to optimize their lineup.

Next up, I want to look at whether there are any signs of the A’s trying to get a similar edge based on:

• Park factors – targeting players who fit in with their park
• Clutch hitting ability; the A’s lead the league in the split between hitting with runners on base vs. with the bases empty; why?  Is it just luck, or have they found a way to get players who are better at hitting with runners on base?

During spring training I was watching the Mariners, harassing Jesus Montero falling down while fielding and in awe of Robinson Cano’s crazy cool nonchalance, when it occurred to me that most of these guys were maybe not great people. To which those watching with me said, in other words, duh. Baseball players were my childhood heroes, and while there are players like Sam Fuld respected for how they think about the game, I think most baseball fans, including myself, generally grow to favor a player for their athletic performance, or how they wear their hat.

The Mariners players are probably just fine human beings, don’t get me wrong, but are they kind of people that I could be friends with? How does Justin Smoak treat his wife? How does Dustin Ackley vote? What’s the deal with Cano’s child support issues? What do these guys, making at least the major league minimum half-million dollars, think about Seattle’s rise in minimum wage? Brandon Maurer looks like might be a fan of legalized marijuana…what does Jack Z’s drafted core of white dudes from Florida and the Carolinas think about gay marriage?

That said, it’s clearly unfair to judge baseball players on their beliefs. Carl Everett doesn’t believe in dinosaurs. So what?

The internet has been abuzz with the tragedy and ongoing protests in Ferguson for a while now, and this puts the St. Louis Cardinals in an tricky position. People have strong, vitriolic and polarized responses to the Ferguson protests, and the Cardinals clearly wanted to remain as neutral as possible without leaving the issue unaddressed. Here is the team’s official statement:

“Ladies and gentlemen, for over a century Cardinals baseball has been an integral part of the fabric of St. Louis — bringing us together as a community and enriching our lives in so many important ways. St. Louis is good community with good people who care about one another, our neighborhoods and our city. In recent days we have all been heartbroken by a series of violent events that do not reflect who we are as a people. We ask that you join us tonight in taking a stand against violence as we unite as one community.”

Here’s what Mike Matheny had to say:

“It’s a sad situation. It’s a tough situation for our city. Hopefully, all the voices that are trying to get this resolved get it resolved quick…This is a great city with a lot of great people and we’d just like to all see this get resolved.”

At face value these comments seem admirable, nonpolitical. That said both, Matheny and the Cardinals also seem to be wishing this all away. Perhaps when Matheny wants everything “resolved,” he is quietly suggesting police reforms. Perhaps when the Cardinals refer to “violence,” they refer to all of the original shooting, looting, and police response to protesting. But, as I read those statements, the team and Matheny just want things to get back to normal.

St. Louis prides itself on being the both the kind of city those statements describe, and a baseball town, averaging both the second-highest attendance and second-best TV ratings this year. Not only has the status quo has been great to the Cardinals organization and great for baseball fans, but also it would a big stretch to lay any blame on a baseball team for underlying racial issues in a given city.

But. That the Cards broke camp as one of three clubs with no African-American players is almost certainly not because of any malignant franchise philosophy rather than because MLB has seen a huge decline in African-American ballplayers. In the 1970s, baseball was 27% African-American, now it’s 8.5%. It should be noted that the Cardinals are known for drafting college players, and that may have an impact on the racial chemistry of their teams but the Cardinals draft the way they do for strategic reasons, and they’ve obviously been really successful.

What the Cardinals do demonstrate is the whiteness of baseball. Baseball has increasingly become a game of privilege. The decline in African-American players has in some part influenced by the expense of baseball equipment compared to other sports while income and wealth inequality has grown since the 1970s and the gap between African-Americans and Caucasians is wider than it’s ever been before. Many, including myself, treat baseball as an escape and an entertainment, and as an entertainment I don’t think baseball’s demographics demonstrates an issue itself so much as it demonstrates privilege, and white privilege, in general — it’s a privilege to be entertained.

Do our entertainers have to be good people? No. They have to be entertaining.

That said, many rappers have been vocal in their support of the Ferguson protesters (while others have not). That a rapper might be more articulate than a baseball player, or manager, shouldn’t be any surprise in that rappers make their living with language. I don’t expect Robinson Cano or Matt Adams to have a stance or statement about Ferguson, and it shouldn’t be expected of them.

The Cardinals, though, probably felt they had to make a statement, and they did. To attempt neutrality on a subject like Ferguson is tough, as it’s such a polarizing subject, and neutrality here is akin to apathy. What the Cardinals want is a move back to status quo, for financial reasons or otherwise, and as a baseball organization in a billion-dollar industry they shouldn’t be expected to want anything else.

Before Ferguson politicized the idea of St. Louis, the Cardinals were already busy making themselves look bad.

Mike Matheny, All-Star Game manager, started Adam Wainwright over Clayton Kershaw. He used two Cardinals relievers as well, so, in total, Cardinals pitchers had one-third of the innings in a loss that he probably thinks counts. Wainwright went on to admit to ‘grooving one’ to Derek Jeter and the Cardinals, in general, looked terrible.

After the All-Star Game, the Cardinals announcers played off Matheny’s move as rewarding his guys, and said it’s what All-Star managers usually do. In a more recent game they described Kolten Wong as the clear front-runner for NL Rookie of the Year, despite his having about one-third the WAR of Billy Hamilton at the time. Hamilton has a skillset easily appreciated by traditional measures, so while his UZR has certainly inflated his WAR, it’s also tough to look past a .270 batting average and 40+ stolen bases.

The Cardinals organization seems to like to toot their own horn. On the one hand, what team doesn’t? On the other hand, Matheny and the announcers both have demonstrated an inability to act with fairness and understanding when ‘their own guys’ are involved. So who are the Cardinals’ guys in Ferguson? They’d tell you it’s not any group or side, but the language of their statements suggests they’re certainly not with the protesters.

In 2001, in the midst of their 116-win season, the Mariners asked the city of Seattle to shut up the iconic trains whistles in broadcastable earshot of Safeco Field. Their reasoning, as offered to the city:

“[To] ensure that Seattle and Safeco Field are shown in the best possible light — something we are sure you will agree is important given the less than favorable opinion many people have of Seattle in the wake of the WTO and the Mardi Gras riots.”

The Mardi Gras riots mentioned were racially charged and resulted in 70 injuries and one death. Neither event is looked back on rosily. But in 2001 the Mariners, and in 2014 the Cardinals, missed the point.

Bill James defined sabermetrics “as the search for objective knowledge about baseball” and FanGraphs is an extension of that search. Matheny wanting Ferguson to be “resolved” is a little different than wanting a pitcher to resolve an issue in his mechanics. Objectively there is something wrong happening when people protest. Protesters feel there a problem or inequality, and whether they are justified may be subjective opinion but in this case someone died needlessly. Wanting that to go away isn’t going to fix anything. Objectively there are still a lot of things wrong with our country, and baseball isn’t one of them, but MLB shouldn’t position itself in the way of progress either. This is the sport that Jackie Robinson played, after all. Baseball can make a difference.

I’ll try to avoid covering too much of the same ground covered right here on Wednesday, but talk about why the Yoenis Cespedes trade will still probably help Oakland this season.  The A’s are generally considered a pretty smart front office, and I think they saw a problem that needed fixing.  I also think that their offense is worse without Cespedes, so we will have to get to that too.

The main source of confusion in this trade stemmed from the fact that the pitching staff seemed to be a strength.  So why would a team trade away one of their middle of the order bats to bolster an already solid part of their team?  The answer is that the team wants to win in the playoffs, and the horses of the rotation for the first half were not going to continue their success.

Jesse Chavez had posted a 3.14 ERA prior to the All-Star break, and since then it has been 4.37 with most of that has been from the bullpen.  Cracks in his performance were showing in June and he was failing to get deep into games, so there was no way they were going to count on him as an option in the postseason.

Drew Pomeranz was showing some signs of being an option before he got hurt, but the injury cut short his opportunity and made him too big of a question mark to count on.

The most important guy in the equation was Sonny Gray.  He has been very good so far this year, but he is heading into uncharted territory fast and it is starting to show.  Last year Gray threw 182.3 innings between triple-A and the majors.  He is now at 162.7 with more than a month before the playoffs even start.  He was still going strong in July, but his velocity had peaked in late May and early June and has slowly been coming down ever since.  They were right not to trust him if August is any indication.  Since the trade Gray has posted a 4.94 ERA, his K-rate is down, and players are hitting him harder.

That all leaves Scott Kazmir and two players that had already been acquired in Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel.  Hammel has been bad since the trade with only one start where he made it 6 innings.  Honestly Samardzija’s been pretty bad as well, but prior to the Cespedes trade he had put together a couple good and a couple mediocre starts.  If your only two guys you trust going into October are Samardzija and Kazmir, things are probably not feeling very good.

All of this lead to Jon Lester who so far has been everything they want him to be except that the team has struggled during the time since his arrival.  The hitting collapsed with Coco Crisp, Jed Lowrie, Brandon Moss, and Derek Norris being especially bad.  Steven Vogt also came back to Earth a bit, and the Jonny Gomes/Sam Fuld replacement for Cespedes has under-performed so far.

The solid 3-4-5 of Cespedes, Josh Donaldson, and Brandon Moss lost a piece, and they don’t really have a great option to plug into the 5 hole consistently.  Josh Reddick has come on recently to help in a somewhat depleted offense, but they are keeping him at the bottom of the order since he has been anything but trustworthy over the past couple seasons.

This has hurt the offense for sure and simple confidence intervals of before and after the trade show a significant drop in output.  At the same time I assume they saw this coming to some extent.  Guys like Norris and Vogt were playing way over their heads and were likely to regress some.  Only the weird collapse of half the offense at one time has made it look as bad as it is.  It is unlikely that this rough stretch will be sustained.  It also didn’t help that the Royals, Rays, Braves, and Mets were all on the schedule and are above-average run-prevention teams.

If I were the A’s I would still be happy about this trade.  Lester, Samardzija, and Kazmir is a much better way to head into the post season.  Catching the Angels just became more likely due to the unfortunate loss of Garrett Richards too.  Billy Beane has been to the playoffs, and almost certainly will be again this season.  He wants to win in the playoffs, and this pitching staff gives him a good opportunity to do so.

I recently set out on a quest to determine the best way to evaluate relief pitchers in order to find the most valuable relievers this season. That led down a number of different paths of research that all centered around two main ideas. The key to success in relief pitchers is their ability to pitch out of jams and to pitch in big situation, which in a sense go hand in hand. Since the introduction of the save as a stat teams have began using their best reliever only in the ninth inning when they have a lead of 3 runs or less.   However, this is not always the most important part of the game and often times the most important innings are the 7^th and 8^th.

So in order to truly determine the best reliever a good place to start is looking at the importance of the innings that each pitcher has thrown. This is where leverage index comes in. The higher the LI the more important the inning. This is a combination of score, situation, and place in the order.

The other key to relievers’ success is their ability to work out of jams. Often times a relief pitcher is brought in to the game with runners in scoring position. This is why ERA is not a good indicator of the success a reliever because it does not factor in the inherited runners that scored on that reliever. This is where RE24 can be of extreme help. RE24 is a counting statistic that uses a run expectancy table to show how many runs better than average a pitcher is based solely on game situation. This means than a pitcher will be penalized for allowing an inherited runner to score. However, since this is a counting statistic by dividing it by innings pitched it can be turned into a rate statistic, which allows more equal comparison between pitchers.

Since RE24 does not factor in the importance of the situation in the context of the game combining it with LI is a good determination of the value of the individual relievers. So in an attempt to determine this year’s best reliever I used this simple formula:

Reliever Rating (RR)=(RE24/IP)*LI

According to this stat the better the pitcher the higher the number and the worse the lower the number. A rating close to 0 indicates an average pitcher as a RE24 of 0 means the pitcher performed exactly as expected in the given situations. The worst ratings are the negative numbers meaning that pitcher was below average.

Here are the top 10 relievers according to RR thus far in 2014.

This list includes several big-name closers and several setup men. Looking at the value of these pitchers using this formula shows how not all inning pitched are equal. This is not a valuation of the true talent of the pitchers but what it does is create an even way of looking at the importance of each pitcher to their team. Not surprisingly, there are several closers among the leaders as due to the late game innings they pitch and the fact that they typically pitch in close games their leverage indexes are high. Yet for pitchers like Darren O’Day his high ranking is due to his very high RE24 total. This is due to O’Day’s ability to strand runners so far this season (96% LOB%). For a comparison, since 2000, the best single season total belongs to Jonathon Papelbon in 2006 with a RR of .95.

This can also be used to look at the worst relievers thus far this season.

Many of these names are not surprising as players like Nathan, Frieri, and Johnson failed miserably in their different stints as closers thus far this season. Many of these pitchers have very low RE24’s which supports their low ranking but pitchers like Steve Cishek (15^th worst) who have been slightly below average (-3.18 RE24) are punished for struggling in high-leverage situations (2.11 LI).

Just two starts into his Triple-A career, it’s clear why the Blue Jays gave Daniel Norris a $2M signing bonus when they drafted him in the second round of the 2011 draft out of Science Hill High School in Tennessee.

Further, Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos has hinted that Norris might be in the process of being prepared for a September call-up to join the bullpen, a strategy they recently employed with Aaron Sanchez, the club’s other top pitching prospect.

After struggling with command issues and forearm stiffness in 2013, Norris has worked with coaches in order to make tweaks in his motion to find more consistency with his mechanics and release point. Whereas the 6’2”, 180 pound lefty used to throw across his body, he now employs a high ¾’s release point, and the change has worked wonders.

At High-A Dunedin this season, Norris posted a 10.31 K/9 while limiting the number of free passes to just 2.44 per nine innings. In 66.1 innings, Norris didn’t allow a single home run while posting a FIP of 1.72.

In his eight starts with Double-A New Hampshire, Norris struggled a bit with his command, posting a 4.29 BB/9. But he did strike out more batters (12.36 K/9), and the Blue Jays decided he was ready for Triple-A.

Through two starts with the Buffalo Bisons, Norris has looked like a frontline starter. In 11.2 IP, he has struck out 23 batters while walking only one. He’s yielded just five hits and one run. His first Triple-A start was against a Durham lineup that featured Wil Myers, Nick Franklin, Wilson Betemit and Mike Fontenot. Norris had no problem, striking out 10 batters (including Myers) in 6 innings, walking just one while allowing two hits and zero runs.

Norris works with a full arsenal of pitches. His fastball sits at 93 mph and can touch 96 with good, late movement. His high release point allows him to pound the lower half of the strike zone, as his 43.3 career GB% indicates. He has enough velocity to pitch up in the zone when he wants to, and hitters at all levels of the minor leagues have consistently swung through the pitch.

He also works with a slider, which ranges from 83-87 mph while exhibiting sharp, late downward bite and sometimes some slurvy action. He uses the pitch as much against right-handed batters as he does against lefties, and hitters from both sides of the plate swing through it with frequency.

Norris’ biggest improvement this season has been the movement on his curve. While in the past the pitch showed a higher velocity and sweeping movement, he now throws it 72-81 mph with 11-7 break. He will often freeze hitters, especially lefties, when dropping the pitch into the strike zone with an effortless motion.

The changeup has also made improvements, although it still needs a little work if Norris is going to reach his potential as a No. 2 starter. He doesn’t throw it very often, and many times he misses too far down in the zone. When he throws it right, it exhibits late sinking movement, and hitters get out front and swing over the top.

Norris’ downfall could be his command, which sometimes disappears on him in the middle of starts. But he’s still just 21 and three years out of high school, and he’s made significant strides over the past year. As he climbs the ladder and eventually reaches the major leagues, where he will receive premium coaching, the likelihood of him finding consistent mechanics and maintaining them for seven innings at a time certainly increases.

I like Norris as a No. 2, mostly due to his impressive arsenal of average-to-above-average pitches and ability to retire both left- and right-handed batters consistently. Over 241.1 career innings in the minor leagues, Norris has posted a near identical FIP (3.04, 3.03) against lefties and righties, respectively. As long as he continues to control his mechanics and becomes more confident with the changeup, there’s no reason Norris can’t be a successful member of a fearsome Blue Jays rotation in 2015.