While I’ve agreed with his rankings thus far — not that my assessment means much to anyone other than me — I must at least challenge Mr. Cameron on his omission of the mighty Bruce.

To be fair, Cameron spent just a couple of sentences on the Cincinnati slugger in his Just Missed the Cut post, so a detailed reasoning wasn’t available. Regardless, I spent some time looking through Bruce’s numbers in an attempt to craft a credible, albeit tentative argument against his exclusion.

Here’s what I found:

Truth be told, the Reds outfielder has not done a whole lot to help his cause recently. While his power numbers remain streakily Brucian, they do not make up for his sliding peripherals: His strikeouts are way up. His walks are way down. His good-not-great batting average is buoyed by a career-high and likely unsustainable BABIP, and his defense has gone from Gold-Glove caliber to doesn’t hurt to have him out there.

So, what reasoning could I possibly have to combat that mountain of evidence? Well, let me channel my inner Hawk Harrelson and talk about Bruce and The Will to Win … Don’t stop reading! I was just kidding!

Bruce’s value truly begins with his durability. From 2010 to the 2013 break, he has played in more than 95 percent of Cincinnati’s scheduled games, almost 10 percent more than Cameron’s No. 50 — I told you this was tentative — Austin Jackson and +10 percent more than No. 43 Jason Heyward

I know 10 percent doesn’t seem like a whole lot, but when the Tigers and Braves have to plug in replacement level players like Andy Dirks and Reed Johnson for a month, the loss stings.

Complementing Bruce’s durability is his age. Despite six seasons in the bigs, he turned 26 years old a few months ago, and it can be argued he has yet to enter his peak years.

I’m not trying spin any yarns about the mythical breakout of players turning 27, but I am saying Baseball-Reference lists Reggie Jackson as Bruce’s No 1. comparable player through their age-25 seasons. A quick look back at the HOF’s numbers tells us it took him quite a few years to get those strikeouts under control.

Maybe Bruce never will, and maybe he, as many predict, becomes Adam Dunn (No. 7 on the same list), but let’s not be so quick to dub him Big Donkey Part Deux just yet. He still has plenty of time to right the ship and develop into a more well-rounded player.

Finally, Bruce’s contract is relatively team-friendly, considering the two-time All-Star has been in the majors in this his sixth season. This year, he’s a bargain at $7.5 million, and while his contract jumps to an average of about $12 million per season for the next three — and a team-controlled fourth — years, that’s not out of line for what sluggers of his caliber are paid.

Consider No. 45 on Cameron’s list, Edwin Encarnacion (breakout age, 29, by the way), whose track record is essentially 2012, is making about $10 million the next three seasons.

So, are these factors and his strong counting numbers evidence enough for Bruce’s inclusion on Cameron’s list? Maybe. However, more convincing arguments admittedly could be made for Max Scherzer and Jordan Zimmerman.

But without a doubt, Bruce is a fringe top-50 trade value player; his durability, youth and contract certainly warrant the debate, if not a spot on Cameron’s list.

On Monday night, Yoenis Cespedes became the 26th player to win Major League Baseball’s Home Run Derby, joining the ranks of such elite power hitters as Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Ken Griffey Jr. and … Wally Joyner.

Cespedes edged Bryce Harper in the finals and put on one of the most impressive performances the Derby has seen, starting off by hitting 17 home runs in one round and hitting 32 overall, both feats which tie for third-best in the Derby’s history.

This year’s lineup featured, as it always does, some of the game’s premier power hitters, including robot humanoid Chris Davis and two-time Derby champ Prince Fielder.

Behold, a fully functional (however unsortable, to the great dismay of the author) table of this year’s Home Run Derby participants and some relevant first-half batting/power statistics:

American League captain Robinson Cano was given the liberty of choosing three men to represent his team in the world’s annual derby of batsmanship, and he chose Cespedes. An interesting choice, as Cespedes has not been even a league-average hitter this season according to wRC+, but probably not one unwarranted through the eyes of Bud Selig as Cespedes taps into the Cuban market and is still one of the game’s more exciting young players.

And so, in the true nature of sport, Cespedes – the most unlikely of victors given his struggles this season – went out and won the whole damn thing.

Upon Cespedes’ win, I naturally went to his FanGraphs page and noticed his wRC+ was under 100, provoking me to silently think to myself: “I wonder if any other Home Run Derby champion failed to be even a league-average hitter at the time of his crowning?”

Behold, a fully functional and regrettably still unsortable table, this time of past Home Run Derby winners and their relevant first-half batting/power statistics:

The answer is no, and it really isn’t even close.

Since the Derby changed to its current format in 1990, no winner has been within 20% of being “just” league average, and a full 57 points of wOBA separates Cespedes from Miguel Tejada’s 2004 first-half campaign.

In fact, Cespedes is only the fourth player to have entered the Home Run Derby as a below-league-average hitter. That’s right, even in the years that Hee-Seop Choi and Damion Easley competed, they had been at least league-average.

In 2005, Ivan Rodriguez had a wRC+ of 97, Rafael Palmeiro came in at 96 in 2004 and you have to go all the way back to 1994 for Ruben Sierra to “top” Cespedes with a first-half wRC+ of 92.

Interestingly enough, they all performed fairly well in the Derby, despite walking away as losers – or, not winners. Each advanced past the first round, with Pudge finishing runner-up to Bobby Abreu’s monster performance. Palmeiro and Sierra each took third.

Similar to how people say the Derby can throw locked-in power hitters into second-half slumps, maybe it can also get struggling power hitters into a groove again. Probably not, but it was an intriguing observation nonetheless.

Robinson Cano had to choose three men to represent his team of lumber swingers to hit dingers, and he threw caution to the wind by choosing Yoenis Cespedes, who had a worse first half at the plate than Cano’s teammate Lyle Overbay. But this wasn’t a first-half regular season baseball game and Yoenis Cespedes doesn’t play first base for the New York Yankees (and now apparently sometimes right field, too). It was the Home Run Derby, and Yoenis Cespedes reaffirmed Robinson Cano’s bold choice by making history.

I have a bone to pick with Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal, and it’s not about the bow ties. I respect a man who can rock a bow tie, especially when he’s doing it for some great causes.

I do, however, have a problem with his column encouraging the White Sox to deal Chris Sale.

It’s not that the idea is without merit; he provides some solid reasoning, but when you consider all of the factors at play, moving the youthful all-star doesn’t make enough sense.

Sale, 24, has less than 500 innings on his resume, a career K/9 rate near 10 and an ERA sitting at 2.89 to boot. Even if the return has the seductive appeal Rosenthal calls for in a proposed swap, the possibility of whiffing is too high for the Sox.

Pitching – young pitching – is the lifeblood of a successful franchise. Ask the low-budget Rays and Athletics how they stay competitive with baseball’s Big Boys. Or if hardware is more your thing, take a look at San Francisco and St. Louis.

For clubs, like the Rays with limited capital, sustained success starts with two integral aspects: assembling a farm system with a deep stable of arms to develop (David Price, Matt Moore, Alex Cobb) or deal (James Shields) and identifying your studs from your duds and controlling their futures into their free agent years (Evan Longoria). The better teams are at accomplishing those goals, the sooner they’ll be annually competitive.

Now the White Sox, not exactly an organization needing to pinch pennies, but certainly tightening the purse strings with an average home attendance of 14,000 fans fewer than in 2005 (as per Rosenthal’s column), have sort of skipped the stockpiling arms part, but with Sale, have correctly located a stud. The southpaw is in the first year of team-friendly 5-year $32.5 million contract, including two club options that would keep him in a White Sox uniform until he’s 30.

That gives the Sox – if they start right now – 6-1/2 years to rebuild around their ace. Plenty of time. The Giants were a last place, 71-win team in 2007. In 2010, behind former farmhands, Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain and Madison Bumgarner, they won their first of two championships. I understand the Giants already had those guys in their system, so it might take the Sox longer, but again, many teams have reversed their fortunes in fewer than 6-1/2 years.

But if you’re not convinced, I understand. I’m hoping this next section might do the trick. Let’s take a look at the specifics involved in the risk Rosenthal suggests the Sox take.

In 2011, Royalsreview.com writer Scott McKinney provided some wonderful insight into the success rate (using WAR) of baseball’s top prospects. Here’s the link to the article, but I’ll do my darndest to summarize it justly.

McKinney – piggybacking some work done by Victor Wang in 2007 – studied the production of Baseball America’s top 100 prospects from 1990 to 2003, giving each prospect a seven-year span to produce.

Here’s what he found: Right off the top, 70 percent of top prospects are destined for failure – qualified by an average per-season WAR below 1.5.

But we already know there is risk in dealing proven stars for prospects, even premium guys. That’s an inherent part of the game. It happens every season, and it always will.

Sure, but let’s look at the success rate of top 100 pitching prospects, which is what the White Sox should demand — even though GM Rick Hahn disagrees — to restock Baseball America’s 29th-ranked cupboard, which is practically barren of difference-making hurlers.

According to McKinney’s study, pitching prospects have a much smaller chance at success that position players. In fact, a pitcher ranked from 21-100 on Baseball America’s list fails at least 70 percent of the time with odds of failure increasing as the list moves toward #100.

In other words, the White Sox would have to land a Dylan Bundy- or Gerrit Cole-type pitcher (Baseball America’s preseason #2 and #7 prospects) in the deal to give themselves a better than 30-percent chance of succeeding at the major league level. Why would the Sox roll the dice on an arm like that when they have Sale’s locked up, if they choose, for the next 6-1/2 years?

In short, they shouldn’t. His contract is extraordinarily reasonable, and the frontline prospect(s) they’d receive in return would likely only be a couple years younger than Sale with no guarantee they’ll produce or sign a team-friendly contract.

OK. Now let me address the glaring hole in this argument: The Sox would surely receive more than one elite prospect in such a deal.

And many would justly argue that the best way for organizations to produce a high quantity of talent is to load as many proverbial bullets into the chamber as possible, hoping one or two’s projectile is a major league rotation/starting lineup.

I understand that mentality. In fact, normally, I agree with it, but that 70 percent failure rate for top prospects looms large, especially when trading the caliber of pitcher Sale is.

Let’s look at Baseball America’s top 10 prospects from 2006 (giving them seven years to produce, just like the study): No. 1 Delmon Young; No. 2 Justin Upton; No. 3 Brandon Wood; No. 4 Jeremy Hermida; No. 5. Stephen Drew; No. 6 Francisco Liriano; No. 7 Chad Billingsley; No. 8 Justin Verlander; No. 9 Lastings Milledge No. 10 Matt Cain.

I see this list and think: There was a time when the consensus was that Chad Billingsley was a better pitcher than Justin Verlander; that Brandon Wood was more a highly regarded shortstop than No. 25 Troy Tulowitzki; and that Lastings Milledge wasn’t playing in Japan.

In all seriousness, what this says is that dealing with prospects, all prospects, is a crapshoot. And it’s a crapshoot not worth playing for the Sox who already have their silver bullet.

Rosenthal suggests in order for the Sox to pull the trigger on such a deal, they would have to hold out for the kind of haul Texas Rangers brought in when, in 2007, they traded Mark Teixeira for Atlanta’s farm system. In the trade, widely considered a coup for Texas, the Rangers received Baseball America’s preseason No. 36 prospect Jarrod Saltalamacchia, No. 65 Elvis Andrus, No. 90 Matt Harrison, unranked Neftali Feliz, who was 17 at the time, and unranked  Beau Jones.

Since the trade, the highest-rated prospect of the bunch, Saltalamacchia, has accumulated a career (Baseball-Reference) WAR of 4.2. Andrus, despite two All-Star appearances, has never produced at an All-Star level with just one season with a WAR above 4. The lefty Harrison has produced a 9.2 WAR in his career; not bad, but not Sale. And finally there’s Feliz, whose impact was felt in 2010 and 2011 but whose value — WAR has never eclipsed 2.5 — was limited in a relief role. Add it all up, and Salty, Andrus, Harrison and Feliz have combined for 34.4 Wins Above Replacement in a combined 20.5  major league seasons (2008-today), giving the foursome a 1.67 WAR per season average, just barely avoiding failure by McKinney’s standards. Not exactly the steal it appeared to be a few years ago.

Sure, the players acquired in the trade did help the Rangers reach back-to-back two World Series, but what was the thing the Rangers were desperately chasing in 2010? An ace, and they unloaded their farm system to acquire one, getting Cliff Lee from the Mariners for Justin Smoak, Blake Beavan, Matthew Lawson and Josh Lueke.

Sorry for the reminder, Seattle fans, but the White Sox should see how this deal worked out for the Mariners and stash Sale with Eric Snowden.

The Sox should sell whatever they can to begin the rebuilding process. Sell Jake Peavy. Sell Jesse Crain. Sell Alex Rios. But hold onto Chris Sale, the most effective and polished pitcher in the American League under 25 (1.01 WHIP, 1st; 9.8 K/9, 1st; 4.85 K/BB, 1st; Opponents OPS .597, 1st) who will lead their pitching staff for years to come.

The lefty has already produced a 14 WAR in 3-1/2 major league seasons — one abbreviated and one as a reliever. For comparison, Cy Young-winner Clayton Kershaw produced 18.1 WAR in his first four seasons, but pitched 716.1 innings, 300 plus more than Sale thus far.

And let me address what I’ll call a minor consideration Rosenthal makes as an argument for why the Sox should trade Sale. The sidewinder has an awfully violent motion and a rather slight frame; what if he breaks down?

My answer: It doesn’t matter. The risk involved in the trade remains far greater.

Even if the worst happens, and Sale tears his UCL and needs the king of all pitching surgeries, the Tommy John, there is a very good chance he comes back from it and pitches like he did pre-surgery. I’d cite such successful examples such as Stephen Strasburg and Adam Wainwright, but I know there are examples to the contrary.

So, I’ll call upon an expert witness: Dr. Christopher Ahmad, an associate professor of orthopedic surgery at Columbia University and head team physician for the New York Yankees.

Last year, he told FoxNews.com, “… the success rate of having Tommy John surgery is between 70 and 80 percent to full level of throwing.”

That’s not perfect. There are no guarantees. This is still a major injury and surgery is required, but it is still superior to the 30 percent success rate for prospects we looked at earlier. I understand what Rosenthal was getting at. Why let a stud toil on a middling team? Look at Felix Hernandez. Weren’t all those years in Seattle wasted? Yes. I can’t argue against it. And that might happen to Sale if the White Sox keep him around and don’t embark on a successful rebuilding mission. But what the Mariners knew and White Sox should know is rebuilding shouldn’t come at the cost of a Cy Young caliber 24-year-old. He’s the ground floor. He’s the building block. He’s where you start.

If you watched the Home Run Derby on ESPN, you saw Yoenis Cespedes and his raw, yet explosive swing, hit 17 home runs in the first round of the derby. You also saw Chris Davis staying true to his swing and swinging at any pitch that he thought he could handle, hitting the ball where it’s pitched, and even swinging at some pitches that were borderline balls. If there was anyone to be concerned about changing his swing to fit the Derby, it was Davis–the guy who has so much strength that all he needs to do is stay within himself and swing easy to hit a homer. One might worry that Davis would swing too hard or try to pull everything, thus regressing into the “quadruple-A” player as he was once labeled, swinging and missing at a such a rate that he became a liability.

Anyone who has played baseball at a high level knows that a successfully executed sacrifice bunt, or grounder to the right side of the field with a man on second and nobody out, is frequently celebrated as much as a hit. Quality “team baseball” seems to be more effective than a mere amalgamation of flashy superstars that doesn’t mesh (I’m looking at you, 2012 Red Sox or 2013 Blue Jays). The Home Run Derby is kind of counter-intuitive to many MLB managers. Old-schoolers like Mike Scioscia would rather his players did not participate, saying, “I haven’t seen somebody come away from that derby and be a better player for it.”¹ The Home Run Derby turns the team game into an individual competition. Players exhaust themselves and risk tweaking their swings, but has the derby really affected the second-half performance of its participants?

To answer this question I looked at what goes into a player’s stats. There is a lot of luck involved in baseball, so I took a look at the differences in the way players hit the ball before the derby compared to after the derby. Looking at the past five derbies, I calculated the average batted-ball flight for players that were healthy for both halves of the season (38 players, excluding only Rickie Weeks in 2011 and Jose Bautista in 2012).

The consistency in the way players hit the ball is incredible. Derby participants hit the ball almost the same before and after the derby as a group. The HR to FB ratio drops considerably, and could explain a decrease in batting average and slugging percentage, as well as on-base percentage. It seems that players hit the ball the same way, just with slightly less power. Here are some of their standard stats from the second half:

Isolated Power (ISO) measures a hitter’s power in extra bases per at-bat (2B+3Bx2+HRx3)/AB. The large drop is ISO shows that indeed power does decrease for derby participants in the second half, and the overall line shows that players do perform worse. It’s not merely a function of hitting the ball to the wrong place, as the .oo6 drop in Bating Average of Balls in Play (BABIP) is not really significant. Players strike out a little bit more, but the notion that players change their swings and have trouble hitting the ball the same way after participating in the derby seems misguided when considering the small change in K% along with the consistent batted-ball percentages outlined in the first table.

Data suggests that players do perform worse in the second half of the season after participating in the HR derby, but that their performance isn’t due to a change in their swings. There have, however, been some significant changes in performance for some individuals. Taking a closer look at some of them, the poor performances can be explained without blaming the Home Run Derby.

Uggla has a reputation as a streaky player, but he went from an MVP candidate in the first half to a guy who didn’t belong in the starting lineup after the derby. Taking a closer look, however, Uggla began slowing down in late June, and suffered a leg injury that kept him out nearly two weeks just prior to the All-Star Game. He only lasted one round, anyways, so it’s hard to blame the derby for his drop off, although it was certainly a big one.

By 2008 Berkman had been a good hitter for many years. His second half was hurt by the amount of pop-ups he hit. a 10.4% increase in infield fly balls mean close to a 10% increase in outs, and his average decrease supports that notion. His increase in pop-ups could have been a result of an uppercut swing that developed in the derby, but his average had dropped 20 points in 16 games prior to the derby, and his career IFFB% is 11.5%, not too far off from his second half percentage. Perhaps the derby hurt Berkman’s swing, but more likely  he was finally coming back down to earth after his torrid start.

Brandon Inge? Yeah, Brandon Inge was in a Home Run Derby. He only has a career HR/FB ratio of .10, and a career batting average of .233, so his second half was closer to what Inge’s career looked like. Plus Inge didn’t even hit one out of the park, so could ten swings really ruin his season?

Wait a second…? Was Ryan Howard better after participating in the derby? Yes! After the slugger hit 15 big flies in the derby, he went on to hit more homers in less at-bats afterward. With zero infield flies in the second half of the season, his swing was just fine.

After a hot start in April and May, Bautista had his worst month of the season in June, before the HR Derby. While Bautista was better overall before the derby, he was better in the two months following the derby than he was before it.

Prince puts a lot of power into his swings, and when he hits 28 balls out of the park, he exerts a lot of energy. Prince won the derby in 2012, and continued winning games for the Tigers after the All Star Break. Hitting for a better average, and with an improved HR to FB ratio, Prince shows that the derby can kick start a player’s second half.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Conclusion: The notion that participating in the Home Run Derby leads to a drop off in performance is a myth. Although data suggests that Home Run Derby participants do indeed regress in the second half of the season, the derby is not to blame. As baseball is a game of superstitions, players are aware that the derby can have harmful effects if they aren’t careful. Even Chris Davis was wary, saying, ”I wanted to be conscious of not changing my swing at all… I tried to stay up the middle and let the ball travel and not try to get pull heavy. But it looks a lot easier on TV than it really is. Once you get out there and start swinging and your adrenaline wears off, you realize how tough the Derby really is. It’s exhausting.”² While the derby curse isn’t real, it’s hard to continue chasing a 60-home-run season with a popped blister. Get some treatment on that hand, Chris.

1 http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-angels-relieved-mike-trout-not-in-home-run-derby-20130709,0,7051643.story

2 http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20130715&content_id=53853822&vkey=news_bal&c_id=bal&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

All data from Fangraphs.com

Yasiel Puig has been in the news a lot lately. He’s had phenomenal start to his career, well aside from the Diamondbacks’ catcher Miguel Montero hating him. He’s also had most of his success without drawing many walks, which inevitably has sent him sliding down a mountain into inevitable comparison to known hacker Jeff Francouer. Francouer never tore up the minors the way Puig did, but it’s somewhat of a fair comparison due to how much fanfare Frenchy had after such a quick start to an otherwise poor career. As Jeff Sullivan from FanGraphs noted, the league is beginning to adjust to Puig, now he has prove he can counter those adjustments.

Fangraphs lists the BB% of 7% to be below average, 5.5% is poor, and 4% and lower is awful. Puig’s current BB% in the majors after 36 games is 4.5%. He did post a 9% walk rate in AA this year before his call up, so there’s a little reason to believe he is capable of being more patient than he is right now. I’ll take a look at some guys who had solid careers while also sustaining low walk rates. I took the leader-board at FanGraphs, sorted for year 2000-2013, removed everyone with a walk rate north of 8%, and removed everyone with an ISO (isolated power) below .175. The following players have compiled 15 fWAR since 2000 (players in bold are still active).

That isn’t very many names. Of the 202 position players that accumulated 15 fWAR from 2000-2013 only 58 or 28.7% had walk rates less than or equal to 8%. Adam Jones fell slightly below on a few parameters, but for comparison’s sake he felt pretty accurate. Here is Yasiel Puig at the moment. I included his AA stats and his projections for the rest of the season.

We’ve noticed you can be successful without walks, but it isn’t easy. All of the players from the first table were all good to phenomenal players in their own right. It’s unfair to say Yasiel Puig has to turn out to be as good of a hitter as Carlos Gonzalez or Adrian Beltre to be successful, but he’ll have to follow their lead if he can’t learn to draw walks as he gets experience. Personally I see Puig as a .270/30 homer/15+ steal guy in the future. If he can manage that he should be fine, but I’m sure he’ll never meet the expectations some people have for him at this point. Any player on that list would be a win (maybe aside from Vernon Wells because…ugh). Anything on top of the production these guys have managed is just gravy.

Visualizing Pitcher Consistency

When evaluating starting pitcher performance, fantasy owners and fans alike lament the relative inconsistency of certain pitchers deemed especially volatile (Francisco Liriano will break your heart), while others like Mark Buehrle are workhorses often viewed as among the most steady arms available.  A.J. Mass of ESPN has written about the value of calculating “Mulligan ERAs,” in which a pitcher’s three worst outings are subtracted from his overall ERA. His colleague Tristan Cockroft routinely publishes Consistency Ratings to let readers know which pitchers have remained relatively high on ESPN’s player rater from week to week.

While these methods focus on pitcher performance from start to start, it may be useful to evaluate pitcher performance against individual batters. If Tommy Milone gets rocked pitching on the road in Texas, we may be less concerned than if he is routinely unable to get out low quality hitters. To this end, we can examine how pitchers perform against different levels of batters. How well does a given pitcher avoid putting low OBP batters on base? How does this compare to his rate of putting a high OBP batter on base? We would expect to see a linear relationship—the Emilio Bonifacios of the world should be easier to get out than the Joey Vottos.

Methods

We begin by examining the 31 pitchers with the most innings pitched for the 2012-2013 seasons. After obtaining batter vs. pitcher data for each of these pitchers during the last season and a half, we can calculate the OBP allowed by each pitcher to any batter with at least 5 plate appearances during this time period (arbitrary cutoff alert!). We can now see how Buster Posey fares against the likes of Clayton Kershaw, Ian Kennedy, and any other NL pitcher in which he has accrued at least 5 PA. It turns out Posey did pretty well for himself.

In order to obtain the OBP of batters in general, not in relation to particular pitchers, we can examine the leaderboards for players with at least 450 PA in 2012-2013. Based on the work of Russell Carleton, we have confidence that after ~450 PA, a batter’s OBP tends to stabilize and represents their long-term OBP skill level.

Batters were then placed in five buckets, lowest, low, medium, high, and highest OBP levels.

Each batter, assigned a score of lowest to highest, was then matched with the batter vs. pitcher dataset, allowing for us to calculate the mean OBP allowed by individual pitchers to hitters in each of the categories. So, although someone like Zack Cozart sports a .283 OBP in 2012-2013, earning a spot in the lowest category, he does own a .329 OBP against Yovani Gallardo. Maybe this is all the evidence Reds Coach Dusty Baker needs to keep batting Cozart second in the lineup.

Results

If we examine the performance of pitchers across five categories of OBP skill, we can calculate the correlation coefficient of these five points. R² in this case is a measure of how well the data fits a straight line—if a pitcher allows a low OBP to low OBP hitters, and a correspondingly higher OBP to high OBP hitters, the data points should increase linearly and the value of R² should approach 1. Conversely, pitchers that are inconsistent in their ability to get hitters of a certain skill level out would have a R² much closer to 0.00.

There is a wide range of R² values among this list of starting pitchers. Adam Wainwright takes the grand prize for consistency. He is far more prone to putting elite OBP hitters on base than lowly hitters. Madison Bumgarner, on the other hand, strangely performs worse against low OBP than high OBP hitters, and has the lowest R².  And R.A. Dickey, as you might expect, is sort of all over the place.

Below is a visual representation of the OBP against pitchers with high and low R² values. We can see that the pitchers with the highest correlation coefficient have a much more linear relationship overall with OBP allowed than pitchers with low values.

Additional analyses showed that there was no relationship between a starter’s FIP and their correlation coefficient. A quick glance at the names in the two graphs above confirms this. Jason Vargas, with a R² of .793 is a worse pitcher, in pretty much all respects, than Felix Hernandez at .076. Interestingly, Jason Vargas has one of the league’s highest HR/9 at 1.28 during 2012-2013, while King Felix sports one of the lowest ratios at .62.

What, then, does pitcher consistency tell us? While it may not tell us much about the overall skill of a pitcher by itself, we can discern from the data which pitchers are doing a good job getting out poor hitters. Pitchers like Adam Wainwright and Max Scherzer are doing extremely well, and their R² values indicate that they are pitching steady—they are less likely to blow up against poor hitters. Of course, pitcher performance can differ greatly from start to start, but one can have confidence that Ricky Nolasco will probably dominate his former Marlins teammates (30^th in team OBP), because he consistently allows a low OBP to low OBP hitters. Conversely, perhaps it’s a good thing Jason Vargas does not have to pitch against his Angels teammates, who collectively have the 4^th highest team OBP in the majors.

Oddly enough, Justin Masterson’s OBP allowed has a small range, from .299 in the middle OBP tier to .371 against the highest tier, indicating that when he’s brought his good stuff, he mostly dominates all batters regardless of their level of skill. We can have less confidence that Justin Masterson will dominate a middling OBP team like Kansas City (6.39 ERA this year), ranked 20^th overall in the majors, while he has repeatedly humiliated the Blue Jays, who just beat out the Royals at 17^th overall.

Despite the comically bad timing of his recent piece on batting Raul Ibanez against CC Sabathia, David Cameron was right to point out the relative worthlessness of individual batter vs. pitcher matchups and the danger of drawing conclusions from such small sample sizes. However, we can use aggregated batter vs. pitcher data to learn more about what kinds of players pitchers are more likely to strike out, or serve up the long ball, or a base on balls. While it’s easy to assume that pitcher X will be less likely to strike out Norichika Aoki than Ike Davis, by studying consistency we may be able to see who deviates from this linear pattern. Are some average strike out pitchers more likely to strike out low strikeout hitters? We can already see from the data above that R.A. Dickey is as likely to put a low OBP hitter on base as a high OBP hitter. While this fact seems to make little sense, these results indicate that the knuckleball can baffle expert hitters as much as less skilled batsmen. It may be worthwhile to use consistency ratings such as these to determine what kinds of pitchers deviate from the expected patterns.

All data courtesy of Fangraphs and Baseball Reference.

Because I’m a big believer in open data, here is a link to the R code used to find Batter vs. Pitcher OBP percentages by quintile.

I apologize up front for beating a dead horse with a stick, but Mike Trout is incredible.

As of July 11, he’s sporting the following line:

• 320/399/560 164 wRC+, with 21 SB (87.5% success) for good measure

Last year, Mike Trout’s amazingness was well documented, especially on this site. His 2012 (should be MVP) season line:

• 326/399/564 166wRC+, with 49 SB (89.1% success)

Notice anything about those two lines? They’re basically identical.

At first glance, that’s not particularly interesting. He’s really really good, as we all knew. But what makes it interesting is that he’s actually shown significant signs of improvement in seemingly getting to the same place as last year. He’s walking slightly more (11.1% rate vs. 10.5%), but more importantly, he’s cut down on his K% by over 5%, from a slightly worse than league average 21.8% to a better than average 16.7%. Hence, despite his BABIP dropping by a meaningful 26 points from .383 to .357, he has maintained the exact same AVG and OBP.

Basically, he’s replaced some BABIP luck from last year with actual improvement. His BABIP is still well above league average (currently ranking #15 among qualified), but given his unique combination of speed, power and nearly 23% line drive rate (league average 20.9%), I’m inclined to believe a .350 BABIP is a reasonable true talent level.

I’ve focused on his BABIP and K%, so let’s dig a little deeper into those two rates. In terms of BABIP, his LD/FB/GB rates are essentially the same as last year. Directionally, he’s also hitting about the same percentage of balls in play towards the left, center and right as last year. This could serve as evidence that the decline in BABIP has been nothing more than luck, and that there is no change in the controllable inputs. In terms of his improved K%, what jumps out is that his zone contact rate has improved by 5% so far this year from last year, contributing to a 2% improvement in overall contact rate. He’s seeing 4% fewer fastballs and 1-2% increases in offspeed stuff (sliders, curveballs and changeups). Additionally, he has seen 3% fewer pitches in the zone but been swinging overall at an identical rate. That data can probably be taken multiple ways, but I’d read it that he’s making better contact, despite swinging the same amount at an overall blend of seemingly tougher pitches to hit.

It seems clear that he’s showing improvement, which is to be expected for a 21 year old in his second full major league season. And simple aging curves foretell that there’s much more improvement to come. Using Tango aging curves (1919-1999 data) to get a sense of what Trout’s profile might look like at his peak, the signs are again very encouraging. I’ll use age 27 for a peak year (arbitrarily):

Where a 1.00 is peak for the category

• Age 21: BB: 0.66, K: 1.32, HR: 0.68 and SB: 0.87

• Age 27: BB: 0.88, K: 1.01, HR: 0.95 and SB: 0.88

I won’t actually project his numbers forward using these rates, as this is meant to be purely representative and I don’t care to get into debates about calculating correctly, but basically:

• His walk rate should improve
• His K rate should decline
• His HR rate / power should increase
• And his SB rate / speed should still be more or less the same

Mike Trout is already incredible, so maybe it’s not fair to compare him to the average player’s aging profile. And maybe it’s just not in our best interests to – I’m not sure my mind can handle the concept of a player as amazing as Trout getting that much better.

The arbitrary cut-off I use for what is to be considered a great season is a minimum of 6 WAR.  Or 6 wins.  This is the cut-off for many.  Some others will count a say, 5.8, as a 6.  But I don’t.  I use a strict baseline.  It benefits some, hurts others.  But in reality does nothing, since I have no vote for any award that Major League Baseball currently has.

Since I wrote about Tom Glavine not quite being great enough to receive my hypothetical Hall of Fame vote,  I received a bunch of feedback.  Readers of the piece said I shouldn’t use FIP, that it is not as relevant over the course of a long career.  A point well-received.  A point that certainly has some validity behind it.

Many chose to use bWAR in Glavine’s defense instead since it takes into account runs allowed, rather than just the three true outcomes a pitcher encounters.

Here are Glavine’s numbers:

Glavine’s pitcher bWAR: 74.  two seasons of 6 or more WAR.

Glavine’s pitcher fWAR: 63.9. no seasons of 6+ WAR.

But according to Baseball Reference, Glavine added 7.5 wins at the plate.  Yes, his career .454 OPS actually added value.  Adjusted, that is an OPS+ of 22.

At Fangraphs, he added 5.7 wins with his bat, while having his career .214 wOBA.

But the question here  is, should we include Glavine’s offensive game?  We are comparing one player to another in cases like these and not every pitcher has the chance to hit in his career.  Or at least a consistent chance to hit and accumulate value by hitting.

It’s not like a general manager would try to sign a free agent pitcher that could hit and use lingo like, “You know, you have a pretty good stick for a pitcher.  If you sign with us in the NL, that will probably increase your total WAR when the statistic is invented in the future, and give you a better Hall of Fame case.”

Of course, the general manager probably would use the fact that he could hit as a “selling point.”  But obviously not the way I described the scenario above.

So if you add in Tom Glavine’s hitting, he all of a sudden has four seasons of 6+ bWAR and two seasons of 6+fWAR.

Neither are particularly dominating, or truly great, but they definitely help his case a little.

But let’s take a pitcher such as  Mike Mussina, who seems to be a good comp in people’s eyes to that of Glavine.

Mussina pitched in the American League his entire career.  He accrued -0.1 wins as a hitter.  He didn’t hit.  He pitched.

He totaled 82 fWAR with three seasons of 6+ wins.

And totaled 82 bWAR with four seasons of 6+ wins.

He has a better case for the Hall of Fame with or without Glavine’s bat.  But that is kind of aside from the point.

So I ask the question: should a pitcher, who hits terribly, but based on opportunity and even more terrible hitting by other pitchers, get credit for it in terms of value?  In particular, in terms of Hall of Fame voting?

It’s a legitimate argument.  But it seems to be unfair to American League pitching.  And when we compare Hall of Fame pitchers to one another, we compare them from both leagues.

Glavine still isn’t a sure-fire Hall of Famer, no matter which way you look at it.  He was never nearly as dominant as a Maddux or Randy Johnson.

But then again, he didn’t have to be.  He just had to be good enough to make a strong enough impression on the voters.

The following is, more or less, useless. It’s meant to be NotGraphsian more than FanGraphsian. It’s meant to be fun, if your definition of fun involves parodying something that’s already incredibly niche (NERD). It’s like if you time travelled to ancient Phoenicia and saw a minstrel play acting as a Hittite. That might not make sense. You will find that COOL does not make much sense in general. Just enough to make you wonder.

COOL scores are to the uninitiated baseball fan as NERD scores are to the statistically-minded baseball fan. They serve a purpose at opposite tails of a made-up bell curve, one with COOL at the tail representing the least baseballsy people and NERD at the other tail for wannabe sabermetricians. NERD is meant for the aspiring baseball savant and COOL is meant for the unaware baseball ignoramus. Someone who’d rather be playing Call of Duty, doing their nails, or eating at Sbarro than watching baseball.

But why have COOL scores at all? What use are they? Well, as baseball zealots it’s our job to brazenly preach our zeal to the unenlightened. Our joy cannot be contained, our cup overfloweth, our fountain runneth over, we are rivers of joy, etc. But our wives, girlfriends, loser younger brothers, and hip co-workers don’t listen to us. Instead they maim our reputations with insults like “nerd”, “loser”, and “wastrel.” Which is why we must resort to craftiness. We must become the Jamie Moyers of proselytism, precisely throwing junk on the corners of life’s strike zone, hoping our feeble heaters and lazy curves are received and not pummeled. All we want is for people to see beauty in the competitive handling of balls on a field (ahem). So as crafty lefties or crafty righties (some of us may be Moyer, others Livan Hernandez), we can use all the tools we can get. COOL is one such tool. It can work like this:

Nerdlet van Nerdinger: Salutations, Cooldred Coolson!

Cooldred Coolson: Hey, nerd.

NvN: Would you love to join me for a baseball viewing?

CC: No.

NvN: But I have a pseudo-scientific way of determining that it might be fun!

CC: Did you say science? I totes trust that shit.

NvN: Great!

CC: Zowie! I can’t wait for homerz, hottiez, and giant racing weinerz!

NvN: And I can’t wait to foster companionship/copulate with you!

There ya go. Sorkin-esque dialogue. Not that we, the baseball loving community, are friendless poon-hounds. I’m just talking about tools, here. Tools at our disposal, like Custom Leaderboards, a wrench, or a Desert Eagle .50.

La-dee-da. COOL stands for the Coefficient Of On-field Lustre. Or how likely it is for a non-fan to think, more or less, “Ooo! Shiny!” when watching the game. The fact that this number isn’t technically a coefficient is not a thing I want to address or think about.  These are the components of COOL, and how they are determined:

TV Announcer Charisma

The Cooldred Coolsons of the world never listen to the radio. Otherwise Bob Uecker alone could swell the baseball fanbase to billions in seconds (seconds!). Alas, holding the attention of a baseball mongrel requires Visual Stimuli, accompanied by Aural Pleasantries. This is why TV Announcer Charisma is included in COOL. To determine this variable, I took Charisma scores from the Broadcast Rankings, and finagled the z-score of each team’s home announcer. I multiplied this factor by 1.5 because: Science.

Variable: zCHAR*1.5

Lineup Attractiveness and/or Virility and/or Youth and/or Sexiness

There is something unbelievably compelling about watching a fine human being being fine, and human. I’m not even talking about sex, though sometimes that’s compelling, too. Watching beautiful people being beautiful is mesmerizing. Unfortunately there’s no easy way to rate the attractiveness of whole teams. One method I considered was using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to crowdsource ratings of individual players’ headshots. People (Turks, perhaps) would simply rate the face as “attractive” or “not attractive,” and after a few thousand responses we’d have a good idea if a player was good looking. Alas, this was too much work and required money. Instead I took a massive shortcut and figured that, in general, youth=attractiveness, sorted all teams by age, rewarded young teams, and penalized old teams. I divided it in half because my methodology is shitty.

Variable: zSEX/2

Uniform Appeal

What people are wearing while they play sports appears to be very important to my mother. She frequently comments on the “get up” of athletes, while I frequently comment on the “get out” of a fly ball, while you are probably contemplating a “get the f— out” at this stupid article. The outward aesthetics of baseball are hugely important to the uninitiated. As nice as it is look upon a beautiful human in the buff, even a properly adorned Tom Gorzelanny can hold the eye and make it tremble (with desire, not nystagmus). So to determine the Objective Beauty of a team’s uniform, I took nine 2013 uniform rankings that I found online (science!) created by people of varying bias and credential (Jim Caple, myself, user pittsburghsport16 on sportslogos.net, etc.), averaged the rankings, assumed a normal distribution and pooped out z-scores for each team’s uniform appeal. Simple, easy, and deeply flawed. I multiplied uniform appeal by 2 because my mother holds great sway in the way I form opinions/conduct science.

Variable: zUNI*2

Home Runs

Home runs are the most easily understood event in baseball. Anyone can understand a home run and appreciate it. Home runs are great. They are saffron. They are sex. They are Super Saiyan. I used team HR% for this one. It’s not park adjusted because I am simple, and don’t know how to do that. It’s also accounted for in PARK, which is next. I briefly wondered if I should have used team HR/FB, but I’m betting it would give me a similar result. I also briefly considered halving the zHR% value because while HRs are great, they’re not altogether that common, and hinging your crude buddy’s enjoyment on the doorframe of dingerdom… well that’d be foolish. Better to hinge it on something more reliable, like what people are wearing. Science. But that made the end values less pretty so it remains whole.

Variable: zHR%

Ballpark Appeal

Where a team plays matters. To us it matters because where a park is and how it’s arranged can greatly affect the way baseball happens. To them it matters because they might see people running at full speed dressed as giant pierogies. Baseball is wonderful. I took the average Yelp ratings of each ballpark from Nate Silver’s 2011 article on ballparks, then upgraded the Marlins (based on my own subjective approval of the home run monstrosity in their new park), scaled the scores from 0-2, and then multiplied them by average %attendance to reward well-attended parks, and by each park’s 2013 HR park factor because: I’ve already covered this. Fun!

Variable: PARK

The Invisible, the Intangible, the Unknown, the Ghost in the Fandom Machine

Sometimes something unknowable seems to drive the affection of the masses. Often it’s success, or tragedy, or beauty, or infamy. Sometimes people just love things. Like screaming goats. I wanted to isolate the je ne sais quoi of team appeal, and decided a team’s road attendance best approximated their enigmatic allure. And apparently the Giants are just dripping with Mystery Honey, drawing fans like bees to their away games across the country. Is it because they play in a well-attended division? Because they won the World Series? Because they score runs? Because people still think Barry Bonds is around to boo? Possibly. But I’m not one to dig too hard for the truth. After all, I created COOL scores. This variable is merely, mightily, the z-score of %attendance at road games.

Variable: z???

This is the final formula:

(zSEX/2) + (zCHAR*1.5) + (zUNI*2) + zHR% + PARK + z???+Constant

The constant ensures an average score of 5. I refused to floor/ceiling the scores at 0 and 10 because I’m not entirely a plagiarist of NERD, and feel like this can be one, small, passive-aggressive way I can assert myself. Also laziness.

The COOL Leaderboard

It’s the Los Angeles Yasiel Puigs at the top! Page views! Interestingly, the Rays are beloved by NERD (a 10!) but hated by COOL with a .054. That seems true to life. And everyone hates the Marlins (0 NERD, -1.17 COOL). So: this measure passes my smell test. But I have a terrible sense of smell due to allergies. So use your own noses.

Of course COOL is in its infancy. It’s zygotic, even. If my “research” is accepted, there will be time for revisions. I also have a Pitcher COOL score in the works, and there will be an umpire strike call flamboyance factor that can help us calculate games scores.

Despite numerous flaws, I still get the sense that COOL is telling us something. Even if that something is completely useless. Which was the point of this whole exercise from the beginning: To create a watchability measure for the people least likely to ever visit Fangraphs. Useless.

Finally, COOL is entirely inspired by Carson Cistulli’s work on NERD, obviously, without which I am a lost, vagrant, nothing–a malodorous abyss, obviously.

That’s it. Go resume Life.

Normally, I wouldn’t even address a pitcher’s won/loss record.  They aren’t useless, they aren’t irrelevant, but they are something that should be overlooked when evaluating a player’s performance.  Front offices don’t look at a pitcher’s wins and losses, so why should we?  Exactly.  They should be nothing more than a fun little stat to add to all the other fun little stats that have use, but are closer to useless than practical.

But 305 wins for a pitcher, well that’s extraordinary.  But an extraordinary number doesn’t necessarily translate into extraordinary performance.

The 305 wins (and 203 losses) HAS to be looked at, and addressed.  Because in 2014 when Tom Glavine is considered for induction into baseball’s most prestigious sanctuary, those 305 wins are going to be discussed, frequently.  Very frequently.  Nearly every old-school writer, former player and most fans of Glavine’s era, are going to be backing him up, using that number: The number 305.

Just to delve into wins and losses for a second if you happen to have come across this article in an old-school mindset:

A pitcher controls less than half of the outcome of a baseball game.  The offense controls 50 percent.  The fielders control some.  And we can add in that a manager affects some of the game too, we just don’t know how much.  So we will just use a manager’s impact, whatever it may be, and include that in the production of the offense, pitching and defense.

So you can see there why wins and losses should not be looked at when determining the quality of a pitcher.

So what is it that makes a Hall of Famer?  Greatness.  Yes, simply put, greatness makes a Hall of Fame player.  They do great things on a baseball field, for a long enough period of time, to allow us as critics to say, “Wow, that guy was a great player.”  A player can actually go through his career without being exceptional at any one aspect of his game, yet still be an exceptional player, a Hall of Fame player, a great player.

Yet, when it comes to pitchers, the guy kinda has to be great at pitching.  Because pitcher fielding is nearly useless.  And a pitcher’s bat is normally about the equivalent of Jeff Francouer’s swings against sliders out of the strike zone.

Bad.

Tom Glavine was a very good pitcher.  He accumulated 63 fWAR in his career, 74 bWAR, 118 ERA+, 3.54 base ERA.  Very, very good pitcher.  His WAR totals are right in that threshold where Hall of Famers “on the brink” usually sit.  Players that could be looking in, or looking out, based on a little subjectivity and bias from the writers who induct these guys.

But Tom Glavine had a 3.95 FIP.  And if you believe in FIP; that’s not great.  He pitched in the National League, so that FIP includes the pitchers he faced — which are easier to strike out, less likely to walk, and extremely unlikely to go deep.

Two times in Glavine’s career, he struck out more than seven batters per nine innings.  He kept his walks under control, walking 3 per nine throughout his career.  But that’s not “exceptional.”  Neither that nor his strikeouts per nine innings are.

Glavine won two Cy Youngs, and finished in the top-five in voting six! times.  Remarkable, yet equated to the subjective.  I’m not saying he didn’t deserve those awards, I’m just saying that a lot of noise goes into the process of who receives the award.

Dwight Evans was a very good baseball player.  One of the better defenders at the corner and well above average offensively.

Orel Hershiser racked up 204 wins in his career and once went 59 consecutive innings without allowing a run.

As for Tom Glavine, he pitched very well, for a long, long time, on one of the greatest runs by an organization that any sport has ever seen.  He made it to the postseason several times because of the talent of he and his supporting cast.  And during his time in October, he performed incredibly well.  To the tune of a 3.30 ERA in 218 innings.  And that probably meant his opponents were better than average offenses than he faced in the regular season, given that they were good enough to qualify for postseason play.

But listen to some of the deserving  names for the potential 2014 Hall of Fame ballot:

Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, Tim Raines, Curt Schilling, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Edgar Martinez, Alan Trammell, McGwire, Frank Thomas, Mike Mussina and Jeff Kent.

Then you have a few outsiders that aren’t quite in the same caliber: Sammy Sosa, Jack Morris, Rafael Palmeiro, etc.

There are so many more deserving players than Glavine in next year’s class.  But there are clouds overhead with many of them.  And Glavine doesn’t have a cloud following him around wherever he goes.

I expect Glavine to get voted in:  305 wins.  No storm-cloud.  Played for a great, winning organization.  Seemed to be well-liked by anyone that came across him.  Or at least I know of no incidents surrounding him.

This will be why Tom Glavine gets into the Hall of Fame.  Because of very good pitching, along with very well-known variables by anyone that knows anything about Tom Glavine.

But I don’t think he should be inducted.  He was never an exceptional pitcher.  It wouldn’t be an egregious decision by any means.  And he wouldn’t be the worst player in the Hall of Fame

But the most exceptional thing about Tom Glavine’s career was that he, or anyone for that matter, could pitch that well, for that long.