"Hindsight is like super clear."
-William "Bill" Shakepeare
When the Tampa Bay Rays traded for Ben Zobrist in the Aubrey Huff deal, the young shortstop was in the middle of an impressive season at Double-A, but many of us Rays fans figured Mitch Talbot was the biggest prize -- the 6'2" righty whose career has since spiraled back to the minors.
Zobrist, to us -- or at least myself -- was an infielder with good patience, not the doubles mashing, homer tatering, multiple position fielding, God-thanking Zorilla he is today. And when he did transform into that, it was only after two of the most miserable season in his career, a precipitating event that not only caused him to move away from shortstop, but also put our (read: my) Ben Zobrist expectations six feet deep.
After he shattered our early, gray and disappointed impressions, we began to look for reasons as to how and why. When my colleague and friend Tommy Rancel uncovered news that Ben Zobrist had used a newfangled hitting coach in the offseason between 2007 and 2008, I and many others began to think Zobrist embodied the model of the turnaround player -- the guy who truly incarnated the hope of being able to go from puke to hulk overnight (y'know, without the cream and such).
Somehow, through all of this, we were just not being terribly honest with Zobrist's numbers. The truth is: He was good all along.
Melvin "Bossman Junior" Upton was selected second in the 2002 MLB draft by the then Tampa Bay Devil Rays. It was a bit of a coup that he was available there as he was considered the top talent in the draft. In the wisdom that led to zero playoff appearances in his tenure, David Littlefield liked Bryan Bullington's ceiling as a "good number three pitcher" over the toolsy high school shortstop out of Norfolk, VA. After signing for the biggest bonus in the draft in September of that year, B.J. didn't see the field in a D-Rays uniform until the following season. Despite his lack of professional statistics, Baseball America ranked him as the 21st best prospect in their 2003 list speaking to his great tools and quiet confidence-he believed he could make it to the majors within 2 years.
Upton not only justified their ranking and faith by raking in A-ball and AA as an 18 year old shortstop (.297/.390/.431/.821 slash-line with 40 steals), but he also would end up justifying that quiet confidence Bill Ballew spoke to by appearing in his first big league game in 2004, his second season in the Devil Rays' organization. This quiet confidence-we'd surely call it "swag" now-along with his undeniable athleticism and lightening quick bat speed solidified him as my favorite young Devil Ray.
With Spring Training coming up and the opportunity to write about 2011's games shrinking, I figured it would be a good idea to churn out all the ideas I had for retrospective pieces. Here, we'll look back at the ten most detrimental plate appearances of the previous season, as determined by WPA (courtesy of Fangraphs).
For those of you unfamiliar with WPA, it's pretty much the best stat available for retrospective analysis of how much a plate appearance contributed to a team's chance of winning. It looks at the odds of a team winning before an at bat based on the run/base state, and then calculates it afterward, attributing the difference to the hitter and pitcher. For example, in a 1-0 game in the bottom of the 9th, nobody out, the winning team has a .813 chance of winning. If the leadoff hitter hits a home run, the team that was leading now has a .340 chance of winning. The hitter is credited with a WPA of +.473, while the pitcher receives a WPA of -.473.
WPA is not perfect. The Rays odds of winning are obviously very different even if the base runners and outs are the same if they're facing Scott Proctor in Yankee Stadium, or if they're facing Mariano Rivera in the Trop. Still, WPA is about as good as it gets. We'll look at the 5 worst offensive plays of last season after the jump. Conspicuously absent from the list (and the bottom 10 plays of the year) are Kelly Shoppach, Desmond Jennings, BJ Upton, Johnny Damon, Matt Joyce, and, surprisingly, Reid Brignac. Even if Brignac's bat gradually bled the Rays chance of winning dry game after game, at least he can say that he never ruined a game in one fell swoop.
When the 2010 season started there was little-to-no knowledge of David Price's curveball. Scouts raved about his slider and he used it more frequently than any other pitch outside of his 4-seam fastball. But in 2009 his slider was hit pretty hard, to the tune of -8.5 runs, and it lead to Price using his curveball more often than his change up the following season.
Price did not throw a single curveball in 2008 and only threw one 3.7% of the time in 2009. But in 2010 he threw his curveball 15.6% of the time and only threw his slider 4.9% of the time. His slider was worth +1.2 runs in limited duty and his curveball was worth +1.5 runs as his favorite off-speed pitch.
But in 2011 Price's curveball had the misfortune of running into too much hard contact and was worth -5.7 runs while his slider was worth +1.2 runs. His curveball had the highest line drive rate on balls in play of any of his pitches at 23.73% while his slider was by far the lowest at 9.76%.
He finished the 2011 season using his slider slightly more than his curveball but that wasn't the case until a change in approach after his August 7th start when his results based stats were at their highest since April.
It was a nice story last season when The Garfoose signed with the Rays and did well in Durham before getting injured. Even though his career is now taking him over to Italy this season, he still remains one of the more intriguing guys to follow on Twitter as he is quite a diverse personality and an engaging person.
When I was presented with an opportunity to receive a review copy of his latest book in December, I jumped on it even though the timing could not have been worse. At the time, I was elbow-deep into writing the Rays' chapter for the 2012 Baseball Prospectus while carrying my typical writing workload for the many sites in which I produce content for after hours from my day job which taxes me with both heavy workloads and heavy travel schedules. In short, this book quickly grabbed my attention span and kept me interested until its very end.
I don't know much about popular culture, so you'll have to tell me: is there a New Hot Thing out there at the moment? I know Jeremy Lin has quickly become the new Tim Tebow, but when it comes to anything outside sports, I'm at a loss. I'm actually somewhat proud of the fact that I know who Adele is, but that's around where my knowledge base evaporates.
I bring this up because in recent weeks, I've quickly become addicted to the New Hot Thing in the saber-sphere: the Brooks Baseball player cards. Brooks Baseball has always been a great tool for evaluating pitchers on a game-by-game basis, and we include their charts in our game recaps frequently. They've taken their site a step further, though, and their player pages are a treasure trove of Pitch F/x data.
In particular, I like to look at the stat Whiffs/Swing. In general, the more swings and misses a pitcher generates, the more strikeouts they should get. FanGraphs lists a pitcher's total Swinging Strike rate, but there aren't many places where you can find swings and misses broken down by pitch type. Brooks Baseball and the Joe Lefkowitz Pitch F/x Tool are the two places to find this data, but since Brooks has manually classified pitches, I feel more confident in their pitch classifications and results.
Why should we care about swings and misses? Whiffs are a good proxy for a pitch's "nastiness", and they can help us understand the strength of a pitcher's arsenal. Does Pitcher X only have one good out-pitch? Or is his entire repertoire above average? Is he using his pitches correctly? I may be a nerd, but I find this stuff fascinating.
Below the jump, you'll find the Whiff/Swing data from Brooks Baseball for the majority of the Rays' pitchers. But before you peek ahead, vote in the poll...who do you think has the single "nastiest" pitch on the Rays' pitching staff*? I'm curious to see how many people will be correct.
*At least, according to 2011 data.
In this two part series, I will look at various aspects of James Shield's 2011 performance and how if could affect his 2012 season. In the first part, historical comparisons to Shield's workload increase will be examined. In the second part, I will attempt to see if James Shield's success in 2011 is sustainable.
Sabermetrics (and reasoning) always teach us to regress to the mean. Did player X have the best year in his career? Expect regression. Did player Y play dismally compared to his career numbers? Expect regression. Our objectivity depends on it, because our emotions often want us to believe that James Shield's 249.1 innings in 2011 are far more important than the 977.2 other innings he has pitched in his MLB career. Don't worry, though,the topic of this post is not an extensive, monotonous, and repetitive discussion regarding regression analysis.
The real issue at hand is to determine whether Shield's 2011 numbers, a year in which he posted his highest WAR, lowest FIP, and best K%, must be heavily regressed. As will be seen, the answer to that question is no. Regression to the mean is to be expected. But the real question is the following: what is the mean (average) for James Shields?
Evan Longoria is not your typical young hitter, that goes with out much explaining. Playing through the 2011 season at the age of 25 he has already amassed 113 career homeruns and 147 career doubles. He is one of only 33 players to hit at least 110 homeruns and 145 doubles through their age 25 season.
In each of his first three seasons he amassed 60 extra-base hits or more. He had exactly 60 in 2008, 77 in 2009, and 73 in 2010. 2011 was the first season he fell below that mark with 58 extra-base hits.
We know that Longoria was a bit unlucky in 2011 by looking at the .239 BABIP he posted despite a career mark of .321 prior to the 2011 season. In 2011 his walk rate rose for the 4th consecutive season and his strikeout rate decreased for the 4th straight season. If a player can claim to have done both of those for four consecutive seasons it usually comes with a jump in his BABIP which in turn causes a jump in most, if not all, of his triple-slash categories.
Longoria, though, cannot make that claim. One would think that a player with a career high walk rate and career low strikeout rate wouldn't have posted career lows in batting average and slugging percentage but Longoria did thanks in large part to that horrid .239 BABIP led largely in part to an unsuccessful season of taking the ball to the opposite field.
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