Padres' Towers Making the Right Moves

As reported on their website, the Padres agreed to a new contract today with RH pitcher Chris Young. According to the site, Young will receive a $500k signing bonus along with $750k this season, $2.5MM in ’08, $4.5MM in ’09, $6.25MM in ’10, and an option for $8.5MM (although it could be as much as $11MM pending performance) in ’11. If his back holds up, this is an excellent signing.

Due to his 6’ 10” stature, Young’s fastball reaches the plate quicker than radar guns would suggest. His K/9 IP rate has been going in the right direction, as it reached over 8 per 9 innings in 2006.

What was surprising, however, was that upon leaving Texas, his HR/9 IP actually increased. In 2005, Young gave up 1.04 HR/9 in Texas, but upped this to 1.41 HR/9 after his move to pitcher-friendly PETCO (he actually gave up 18 at home vs. 10 on the road). His .49 GB/FB rate is telling and although he has always been a fly ball pitcher, this was about a 28% drop from his 2005 campaign. It stands to reason, though, that this could very possibly be due to his injured back. I honestly don’t recall watching any of his starts last season, but it seems that if his back was giving him problems, he could have issues with his follow through (it wouldn't take much, due to his height and already elevated release point) which would result in him leaving pitches up. But, as I said, if back problems are behind him and he can learn to keep the ball lower in the zone, this is a very good signing.

Even better, Young’s signing comes on the heels of the Adrian Gonzalez extension earlier in the month. With those two signed through 2011 (if options are exercised), Peavy inked through ’08 (option), Brian Giles under control with an option through ’09 (his power is gone, but at least he gets on), and an above average bullpen, the Padres are in good shape. I really like the way that GM Kevin Towers is building this club and, if they can find a little power, San Diego should be in contention in the coming years with Arizona for the NL West title.

Other things from Tuesday…

• The Nationals are just as bad as advertised, if not worse. It’s like watching a AA team with dropped throws, misjudged flies, and no approach at the plate. You have to feel bad for manager Manny Acta , managing the worst team in baseball, he looked completely defeated (and a lot like Kevin Malone from “The Office) in the dugout:

• Hudson looked very good against the Nats, but since he was throwing against…well, the Nats, I was looking at the way he pitched over his line (both were good). Keeping the ball down all night, Hudson showed good action on his fastball and worked well on both sides of the plate. It’s only been two starts, but from a scouting standpoint, you have to be pleased with what Hudson’s shown this year.
  
  


• Francoeur had a horrible AB in the first, swinging at the first pitch he saw with one out and grounding into a double play with the bases loaded after Andruw Jones had just walked on four straight pitches. In the 5th, however, Francoeur worked a 5 pitch AB and eventually took a breaking ball over the outer half of the plate into right center. He is a maddening player. Even his homerun in the 8th was on the first pitch after a walk. Good result, but look at the process…I’m not a fan of that AB.
  
  


• Alex Gordon hit the first bomb of his career. KC fans need to be patient with him…he’s going to be worth the wait.
  
  


• Alex Rodriguez hit a homerun in his 4th consecutive game and added two walks to tonight’s line. However, he’s going 4 ½ ABs between homeruns this year, and as any New Yorker will tell you, that’s just unacceptable.
  
  


• Mariners and Cubs fans have to be pretty worried after the debuts of Jeff Weaver and Jason Marquis…pretty terrible. You think every player becoming a free agent after this season is just praying that Bill Bavasi and Jim Hendry can hold their jobs through next offseason?

Lidgeastrophe

What in the world got into Brad Lidge? It seems that after the Pujols home run in the 2005 playoffs he was never able to regain the dominance that he showed the majority of 2003, 2004, and 2005. I believe that after that home run, he lost confidence in his stuff and therefore confidence in his delivery so now he has trouble duplicating his delivery.

The problem was compounded in 2006 when Lidge changed his delivery several times. Formerly a starter, Lidge always employed a wind up with the bases empty like a starter would(most relievers pitch from the stretch regardless). Last year he went to starting from the stretch, then went back to a wind up, made some other changes, and pretty soon he had lost any reference point to his delivery. There were also grumblings around the league of Lidge tipping his pitches.

After Lidge's disastrous appearance Sunday, Astros manager Phil Garner has decided to go with Dan Wheeler as the closer at least until Lidge can right the ship. On Sunday in 2/3 of an inning, Lidge walked 2, gave up 3 hits of which two were for extra bases and 2 earned runs. This on the heels of giving up a game tying homer to Xavier Nady in the season opener.

What is frustrating is that Lidge still has good stuff. A good fastball, and his hard, biting slider. In the last 3 seasons Lidge's number are as follows:

As you can see, even last year he still maintained fantastic strike out rates which means he still has his good stuff. Two alarming stats however. The first one is that he is walking more batters dropping nearly two strikeouts per walk in 2006 than the 4.48 he averaged in 2005. Second, he doubled his home runs allowed which is problematic for a closer. 5 of 10 homers came with 2 outs already in the inning. What that says is that it seems as though Lidge gets lazy when he thinks the game is in the bag and leaves a pitch over the plate for a guy to mash. The walks point to his lack of a consistent delivery which is not allowing him to throw his slider as much because his slider isn't designed to get called strikes. It is a pitch designed for the swing and miss. And with his inability to put his fastball where he wants it, the batter can now sit on pitches a great deal easier. Because he is always behind in the count he isn't throwing his slider as much which makes him less effective because his slider was one of the best in the game. Last year was the first year that batters got on base at a +.300 clip and slugged at a +.400 clip. Time will tell if we have seen the last of Brad Lidge.

Now, the question is, is Dan Wheeler the guy to replace Lidge? Well, the last two seasons, Wheels has averaged over 8K/9 innings and only gave up 7 and 5 homers, respectively. Combine that with low walk totals and Wheeler looks to be an effective replacement for Lidge. The last three seasons, Wheels has only allowed the league to hit .238/.294/.384 off of him. The only cause for concern is that in the last three seasons lefties have hit .285/.350/.469 off of him. He also has a GB/FB ratio of .79 the last two seasons which is less than desirable.

The Astros have had success promoting closers from their bullpen. After Billy Wagner left, Octavio Dotel became the closer, and then after Dotel, Lidge became the closer. The Astros are hoping that Wheeler can do the job if Lidge is in fact done as a closer, at least in Houston.

The Win/Loss Fallacy

I briefly mentioned the error of using Win/Loss (W-L) records to judge a pitcher in an early post by referencing Horacio Ramirez’s 2003 campaign (to recap, he went 12-4 with over 9 runs of support per win). I thought that it may be of use to look at the significance of these records over a larger sample size and not just one player in one season, since we are constantly bombarded (by announcers, writers, co-workers, roommates, etc.) with how much a pitcher won in order to determine his worth.

Before looking at it mathematically, the reasons for a W-L record being irrelevant really should be fairly obvious. No matter how well a pitcher throws, he is completely reliant upon his offense for help in getting the win. Even in the case of a shutout, the pitcher requires at least one run for the W (that is, of course, assuming that this isn’t taking place in the NL and the pitcher could potentially hit a homerun to provide his own offense as well).

To test the validity of the W-L records, I ran regressions of several pitching metrics against Winning Percentage (W%) to try and gauge the affect that pitchers have directly on their own records. A few notes on the model:

• The pitching metrics used in the models are Stikeouts per 9 innings pitched (K/9), Homeruns allowed per 9 innings pitched (HR/9), Walks per 9 innings pitched (BB/9), and Earned Run Average (ERA).
  
• The ERA metric is used as more of an “anti-metric” to the first three, as it is not near as good of an indicator of actual pitcher performance. Explaining/proving this would make this way too long, so I would suggest reading JC Bradbury’s paper “Does the Baseball Labor Market Properly Value Pitchers?”, as it does a great job of breaking down the deceptions of ERAs.
  
• I used the performance records of every pitcher that has thrown over 160 innings in each of the past 7 years (yielding 628 samples). I omitted relievers because the rules for getting a win are ridiculous enough as they are, without taking into account that relievers can actually give up the lead and still obtain the win under the right conditions.
  
• I ran regressions of these metrics against Winning Percentage instead of number of wins to account for the bias that would occur among pitchers with a different number of innings pitched. If two pitchers of the same caliber (and with the same teams and luck) pitch different amounts of innings (assuming that this is due to one having more starts), then the pitcher with more innings has the likelihood of having more wins.
  
  

After attempting several different models, the one that most explained Winning Percentage with pitcher-controlled performances was:

W% = βº + β¹(HR/9) + β²(K/9) + β³(BB/9) + ε

(I know that these should be subscript by the Betas, but I can’t figure out how to do that in Word, so I’m using superscript instead)

Per the t-stats, all of these variables are significant given a 5% significance level and the degrees of freedom for this model. Additionally, the signs of the coefficients are as predicted; HR/9 and BB/9 have a negative affect on W%, while K/9 has a positive affect. Having said that, the model doesn’t explain all that much.

The R² of .2289 shows that only ~23% of the variance in W% is explained by outcomes that pitchers directly have control over. Individually, K/9 has the closest correlation with W% (.346). Coincidentally, this is probably the best single stat to measure a pitcher by, as it reflects an ability to get batters out, and is the least volatile (from year to year) of the metrics. BB/9 has the smallest correlation (negative, of course), at -.174…maybe this is why Russ Ortiz still has a job.

With coefficients in place, this is how the model looks:

W% = .587 - .104(HR/9) + .023(K/9) – .028(BB/9) + ε

Again, the low correlation and R² results illustrate just how little the pitcher-only influenced metrics have to do with W-L records. This is not an argument against these metrics, but rather against the notion of judging a player by W%.

To contrast, we can run regressions to determine how much of W% is explained by a pitchers ERA. Referring back to JC Bradbury’s paper, remember that ERA his highly based on luck and the quality of defense behind you. At any rate, the model (much like the first) looks like this:

W% = β¹ + β²(ERA) + ε

(In fairness, it should be noted that I didn’t adjust for park factor or league in this model. I’m assuming that it would make a negligible difference.)

As expected, since ERA takes some luck and defense into account as well, it provides more explanation for the variance of W%. The t-stat is significant under the same conditions as above (save for a slight change in degrees of freedom), the sign of the coefficient is as expected (negative), and the R² of .351 explains ~35% of the variance in W%. While this is an improvement, it still does not serve as a particularly accurate model. However, it does prove a point further: even when taking some luck and team defensive skill into account with ERA, ~65% of the variance in W% is left unexplained.

The model with coefficients:

W% = .915 - .089(ERA)

(Note that this is saying that even if a pitcher never gives up an earned run, he will still lose ~8% of the time. This could be explained by errors and unearned runs…those are flawed for different reasons, though.)

Summing up, pitchers actually have a small part in influencing their W-L record. Defense, offensive run support, and dumb, blind luck play a much larger role in deciding what record is fixed to their name than they actually can. As simplistic as it may sound, the best thing a pitcher can do is to strike an opposing hitter out. Not only does this project out well from year to year, but if a pitcher strikes out enough hitters consistently; eventually the Yankees will sign him, and he’ll have all the run support he needs.

Kind of interesting from the models run using the data over the past 7 seasons:

• Zach Greinke had the most unlucky year of all in 2005. In that season, he had metrics of 5.61 K/9, 1.13 HR/9, and a walk rate of 2.61 BB/9. Not great, but certainly warranting more than the 5-17 record he was saddled with.
  
• On the opposite end of the spectrum, Paul Abbott enjoyed the luckiest year out of everyone in 2001. Abbott posted rates of 6.5 K/9, 1.16 HR/9, and 4.80 BB/9. Except for the walk rates (which were actually almost twice a bad), these aren't all that different from Greinke, and Abbott was rewarded with a 17-4 record.

Random Musings

1. Why is Billy Butler of the Kansas City Royals starting the season in AAA? What does he have to prove? Last year in AA he hit .331/.388/.499. Granted, Butler is horrendous in the field but he can rake, and is only 20. He could be the DH in place of Mike Sweeney who if he can stay healthy (60 games in 2006) can play 1B instead of Ross Gload. I mean come on, Ross Gload? Butler is a player for the future, and that future is bright, so why not bring him up and let him play. The Royals aren't going to contend any time soon, so why waste time with people like Ross Gload? Give Butler a shot because his upside is that much higher and he can take his lumps this season and improve for next year rather than crush people at AAA.

2. Matt Garza did not start the year up with the Twins but down at AAA as well. This move is understandable if Garza was going to be the 5th starter instead of Carlos Silva but the Twins wanted him to get consistent work at AAA because their 5th starter is going to be skipped the first month, which is what usually happens on most clubs. So they let Silva stay up, because he won't pitch much anyways. However, Garza isn't just better than Silva, he is also better than the Twins 4th starter, Sidney Ponson as well. What from the .316/.371/.466 the last three seasons against, do teams see as a good thing? Ponson is terrible. If Dave Duncan couldn't help him out, then no one can. Last year, in stops in A, AA, and AAA Garza struck out 154 in 135 innings pitched, only gave up 6 homers, and only walked 32. If they are worried about his innings, they can still limit his workload early in the season so he doesn't overwork his arm. Either way, the Fresno State product needs to be up pitching on the big club instead of Silva, Ponson, or Ramon Ortiz for that matter.

3. Against the Astros last night, righthander Ian Snell of the Pittsburgh Pirates pretty much had his way with Houston. In 6 innings of work, Snell recorded 11 strikeouts, allowed one walk and one home run to RF Jason Lane in the 5th inning on the first pitch of the at bat. Other than that blip, Snell controlled the game. His fastball was showing good life hitting 95 several times with movement. He had both his slider and his curve ball working for strikes keeping batters off balance. Don't let the 11 K's fool you either as Snell struck out 8.18/9 last season in 186 innings. He also gave up 29 long balls with 9 coming on the first pitch of the at bat showing that Snell wants to challenge hitters early and try and get ahead in the count. That is not surprising considering his youth and inexperience. So if Snell can keep the ball in the yard and improve against lefties (.305/.380/.526 in 2006) the Pirates have something to build on this season.

Opening Day

A lot of baseball yesterday/last night. I took in the entire Braves/Phillies game as well as parts of a few others and had some thoughts...

• Kelly Johnson’s opening day wasn’t as bad as it looked. The Braves leadoff hitter did strike out twice, but hit the ball hard in the top of the 8th and managed to see 24 pitches in his 5 plate appearances (4.8 pitches/PA). In the field, he showed good range by chasing down a ball in shallow right and handling a slow grounder. The dropped ball in short center clearly should have been an error but, as I’m sure you all know, errors mean little if anything. A side note: Keith Law does a good job of mentioning these botched error calls in his blog (which is consistently outstanding) and lobbying for the abolition of this stat.

• By contrast, Jeff Francoeur’s first game of '07 was just as bad – if not worse – than it looked. The Braves RF swung at 11 of the 16 pitches that were offered to him, and was a good foot away from making contact with a Tom Gordon curve in the 9th.

• Speaking of Gordon, both he and Braves LH reliever Mike Gonzalez illustrated just how valuable it is to be able to come out of the bullpen and get a strike out. Gordon fanned PH Brayan Pena to get out of a bases loaded jam in the ninth, while Gonzalez sat down both Shane Victorino and Ryan Howard on strikes with runners on second and third and no outs in the top of the 7th.

• Phillies starter Brett Meyers threw very well, but did have some issues. His 9 strikeouts (and only 2 walks) in 7 2/3 innings was very encouraging, but he couldn’t reign in his curveball most of the day. There was good break on the pitch, but he kept it up in the zone, as is evidenced by his 9 flyball outs (to 5 groundouts) and 2 HR allowed. Attribute this to opening day, since he is usually has groundball tendencies (although his GB/FB has declined somewhat the past few seasons).

• Ryan Howard had a good game as well, going 2 for 4 with a walk. Nothing spectacular yesterday, I just wanted to say a quick word about his power. His stats obviously tell the story, but it is something totally different to see him live. While living in Richmond, VA in 2005, I got the chance to see him come through and play the Braves AAA team on quite a few occasions, and it was incredible. The power that he has to the opposite field is absolutely unreal. If you haven’t seen him live, I would highly recommend it.

Elsewhere in the majors...

• Despite not throwing particularly well, and looking like he went on the Odalis Perez workout program of eating hotdogs and taking naps, Angels starter John Lackey was able to hold the Rangers to 1 run (unearned) over 5 innings. It’s probably good that he only went 5, though, since it gave manager Mike Scioscia plenty of time to start breaking down Scot Shields. Shields has thrown either the most or second most innings of any AL reliever in the past three seasons…check out his ERA splits by month to see the effects.

• It was good to see Yankee fans boo Alex Rodriguez for a bad first inning of 2007. In the 7th, A-rod singled, stole second, and scored what would prove to be the game winning run (not to mention adding a two run shot in the 8th)…there’s no way he can win.

• I haven’t seen Astros closer Brad Lidge throw yet this year, but reports are that his mechanics are out of whack and he’s having trouble locating. I’m hoping he can recover, because that fastball/slider combo of his circa 2005 is too good to be wasted.