Sports Illustrated publishes weekly power rankings, and last week’s ratings featured a surprise—the Nats were ranked first in the National League and second in MLB. This was surprising because the previous week they’d been ranked sixth, and during the intervening week (May 14–20) they had gone 3–4 against the Padres, Pirates, and Orioles, giving no indication that they deserved to move up.
The reason, of course, was a change in methodology, specifically for the measurement of team defense. SI‘s explanation was that their power rankings were based on Fangraph’s WAR, but the WAR statistics for fielding, which are based on ultimate zone ratings (UZR) weren’t able to adequately adjust for team fielding. In particular, the UZR is based on standard assumptions about where fielders are positioned. With the growing use of defensive shifts, they found that some teams were successful getting defensive outs even though the team didn’t show up well according to UZR.
SI announced that they had replaced the defensive component of WAR with a measure based on “the rate at which teams turn balls in play into outs.” Those of us who are familiar with the old Bill James Baseball Abstracts recognize this statistic as the defensive efficiency rating” or DER.
I have to say that I too had been puzzled by the difference between defensive WAR (and the UZR on which it’s based) and DER. Their fielding WAR through May 26 is a below average –2.4, while their DER of .730 is much better than the major league average (.711) and ranks sixth among major league teams.
DER, of course, doesn’t measure everything on defense, and there is certainly a case that it leads to an overrating of the Nationals. For example, it omits errors (where the Nats have been about average, with a .985 fielding average) and double plays (where the Nats have been far below average, with only 73 double plays turned, though it’s unclear how much that late rate is due to their power pitching staff).
I guess what I take from this is that the measurement of fielding is still a bit fuzzy compared with what’s been accomplished with batting and pitching. In the not-too-distant future, I expect we’ll have measures that will decompose fielding into positioning and reaction to the batted ball. Then, maybe we’ll get fielding statistics that are reliable enough to be informative as the season goes along. For now, I think the operative warning for all fielding statistics continues to be caveat emptor.
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. As usual, “links to remember” are to articles and video clips that I consider especially memorable.
- The Nationals’ starting pitching has been one of the biggest stories of the season so far. Rob Neyer of Baseball Nation asks if the Nats’ pitching is believable.
- Tom Boswell of the Washington Post wrote a couple of nice articles on Bryce Harper‘s call-up—one on April 27, the day that his call-up was announced, and another on May 1 after his first couple of games.
- I have lots of video clips to link to. Let’s start with a great play by Ian Desmond against the Reds on April 13.
- On April 15, Ryan Zimmerman robbed Ryan Ludwick of extra bases.
- In his second major league game on April 29, Harper made the highlight reels with this leaping catch against the Dodgers.
- Speaking of Harper, I can’t omit his steal of home against Cole Hamels and the Phillies on May 6.
- I’ll end this with one of the funniest clips I’ve seen. The setting is the end of a brief rain delay against the Padres on May 15.
Bryce Harper has now passed 100 plate appearances, so we are starting to get a large enough sample to look at his approach at the plate. With 103 plate appearances in his first 24 games, he sports a batting line of .267/.350/.467, all of which are above the major league averages of .250/.317/.397. His walk rate (10.7%) and strikeout rate (17.5%) are also better than the major league averages (8.4 and 19.5). Although his strikeout rate is not really low, it’s actually the lowest of any of the Nats’ regulars, almost all of whom carry above-average strikeout rates.
When we look at his plate approach, however, his statistics start to stand out more. His plate approach has to be described as aggressive—he swings at 53% of the pitches he sees, ranking 20th among 241 major leaguers with at least 100 plate appearances. For pitches within the zone, he swings 76.5% of the time (ranking 10th) and for pitches outside the zone, he swings 37% of the time (ranking 27th).
In aggressiveness, his statistics are similar to the Nats’ strikeout kings, Rick Ankiel and Danny Espinosa. What makes the results different? When Harper swings at pitches outside the zone, he’s more likely to make contact. His contact rate for pitches outside the zone is 70.4%, better than the major league average of 67.1%. In contrast, Ankiel (58.6%) and Espinosa (55.9%) are well below average.
In terms of pitch types, Harper’s getting many fewer fastballs (44.7%) than the average major leaguer (57.4%). That appears to be a response to his success with hitting fastballs—a measure of his success against fastballs, linear weights, shows a rate of 2.31 per 100 pitches, which ranks 17th of 241 major leaguers. He’s also been successful against curve balls (2.80), but has struggled against sliders (–3.08). Not surprisingly, opposing teams have responded by pitching more sliders (18.1% compared to the average of 14.2) and changeups (14.4% versus 10.5).
While Harper has made a lot of contact, it hasn’t always been good contact. His line drive rate of 15.3% is below average (20.6%), and his infield fly rate of 16.7% is well above average (10.3). His HR/FB rate of 6.7% is also below average (10.6).
While it has to be emphasized that 103 plate appearances is a ridiculously small sample, I think some characteristics are becoming apparent. He’s an aggressive swinger, but he doesn’t look lost, as Espinosa and Ankiel sometime do. He’s a smart young hitter, so if he can learn to lay off of some of the pitches outside the zone, he may start making better contact and getting better results. He’s already a feared hitter, and the word is out there not to throw him fastballs in the zone. How well he adapts to a steady diet of sliders and changeups is going to determine how he’ll do as a major league hitter. But there’s a lot in these statistics that’s encouraging.
The Nats finished April with a 14–8 record, their best monthly winnng percentage since June 2005 when they went 20–6. But a closer look at the statistics reveals that this month’s performance may have been more impressive than 2005’s memorable run. That June run was partly fueled by luck—a 9–1 record in one-run games and a run differential that should have been consistent with a 15–11 record. In contrast, this April’s run was only boosted a little by Pythagorean luck, with the Nats going 6–5 in one-run games and finishing the month with a 13–9 Pythagorean record.
The 2012 season began auspiciously with a 4–2 road trip against the Cubs and the Mets. The Nats followed that up with an 8–2 home stand against Reds, Astros, and Marlins. They ended the month with a road trip to California, where they took the first two from the Padres before losing the Padres’ finale and all three games against the Dodgers.
Record:
14–8 (.636)
Pythagorean Record:
13–9 (3.36 R/G – 2.68 RA/G)
MVP for April:
Adam LaRoche (.329/.415/.549, 22 G, 94 PA, 4 HR, 9 R, 17 RBI, 1.2 fWAR, 1.43 WPA, 10.51 RE24) has carried the Nats’ offense so far.
Most valuable starting pitcher:
Stephen Strasburg (2–0, 1.13 R/9, 5 G, 32 IP, 9.6 K/9, 1.7 BB/9, 10.33 RE24) wins the honor, with honorable mention going to Jordan Zimmermann (1.67 R/9) and Gio Gonzalez (1.82 R/9).
Most valuable reliever:
Sean Burnett (0-0, 0.00 R/9, 5 G, 8-1/3 IP, 13.5 K/9, 2.7 BB/9, 0.0 HR/9, 3.11 RE24, 1 of 6 inherited runners scored, 3 shutdowns, 0 meltdown)
Best start this month:
Edwin Jackson (April 14, 4–1 win over the Reds at home, 9-inning complete game, 2 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 9 K, game score of 87) wins, while honorable mention goes to Gonzalez’s 7-shutout inning performance in the home opener two days earlier (game score of 80).
Worst start:
Gio Gonzalez (April 7, 7–4 win over the Cubs in Chicago, 3-2/3 IP, 7 H, 4 R, 3 BB, 6 K, game score of 34) got off to a rocky start, but the Nats came back to win and Gio’s been superb since.
Best shutdown:
Tom Gorzelanny (April 13, 2–1 win over the Reds at home) pitched two scoreless innings in the 11th and 12th with a 1–1 tie. He gave up a double and two walks, but didn’t allow any of them to score. (Win probability added .246)
Worst meltdown:
Henry Rodríguez (April 28, 4–3 loss to the Dodgers in Los Angeles) spoiled Bryce Harper‘s debut game by blowing the save. Entering in the top of the ninth with a 3–1 lead, Henry allowed two singles, a double, and threw three wild pitches, allowing two runs to score. He left the game with two outs, runners on first and third, and the game tied (WPA –.553). The next inning, Matt Kemp’s home run would seal the loss.
Clutch hit:
Chad Tracy (April 7, 7–4 win over the Cubs in Chicago) came in as a pinch hitter in the 8th with two outs, the bases loaded, and the Nats behind 4–3. He singled into right, scoring Ryan Zimmerman and LaRoche and giving the Nats a 5–4 lead. (WPA .456)
Choke:
Danny Espinosa (April 12, 3–2 win over the Reds at home) came up in the bottom of the ninth with one out, the bases loaded, and the score tied 2–2, and grounded into a double play that sent the game into extra innings (WPA –.327). The Nats went on to win in the 10th on a wild pitch that scored Zimmerman.
Bryce Harper is expected to make his MLB debut tonight in Los Angeles, where the Nats are facing the Dodgers. The news was a bit of a surprise, since Harper was hitting an unimpressive .250/.333/.375 in only twenty AAA games for Syracuse.
For Harper and his family, the timing of his debut (a Saturday evening) and its location (Dodgers Stadium, only a few hours drive from his hometown of Las Vegas) are especially fortuitous—I imagine he’ll have a significant crowd of family and friends attending.
How long Harper will stick depends, of course, on how well he plays. If he starts 1 for 40, for example, he would have a quick return trip to upstate New York. My guess, though, is that he’ll stick for a while. Although Ryan Zimmerman‘s trip to the DL is the proximate cause for his promotion, in order to stay he really only needs to play better than Xavier Nady and/or Mark DeRosa. The more interesting decision point is likely to come when Michael Morse returns, which could be a couple of months away.
A lot of the discussion about Harper’s promotion has been about its potential cost to the team in terms of its impact on his Super Two arbitration status. Although Super Two is potentially costly, I don’t think it should be decisive for a team with relatively deep pockets. His promotion could be a good business move for the Lerners, even if they risk paying more in arbitration. If he does well with the Nats, it might help push the Nats into post-season contention. If so, the team could easily recoup the cost in extra ticket sales and other revenue. If he doesn’t do well, he’ll return to the Chiefs for further development and lose his Super Two status.
Another factor that Mike Rizzo and the Lerners may be considering is that his early promotion may help build good will with the player and improve their chances of eventually signing him to an extension. Moderate-cost extensions of players who are eligible for arbitration or free agency have become the new market inefficiency—a way for teams to obtain talent at below-market rates and gain a competitive edge. These extensions aren’t always good deals for the teams, but some (such as Evan Longoria’s extension with the Rays) have been great for the teams.
Finally, I want to acknowledge the role of Davey Johnson, who has repeatedly lobbied for Harper’s promotion. Johnson obviously loves to work with young talent and much of his managerial success has been built with young, hungry players. I’m sure that Harper wouldn’t have been promoted without Johnson’s strong support. I look forward to seeing if Davey can work his magic again.
On Friday,MLB announced the addition of two more wild card teams, with the each league’s pair of wild cards facing off in a one-game contest. How does the new format affect the Nats’ post-season chances in 2012?
It’s obvious that the probability of the Nats (and of every other team in baseball) making the post-season goes up. But how much does it affect the Nats relative to other teams? And how does it affect their chances of winning the World Series?
First, a quick analysis of the main features:
- The probability of the divisional champions winning the World Series, to a first approximation, isn’t affected. For example, if all teams making it to the post-season were of equal quality (a convenient starting assumption), the probability of divisional champions winning would have been 1/8 under the old format and remains 1/8 under the new format. A second-order effect is that divisional champs will probably pick up a slight advantage by having a better opportunity to optimize their pitching rotations compared to the wild cards, who will need to use one of their best pitchers for the one-game playoff. So a small net advantage to the divisional champs.
- The probability that any wild card team wins the World Series would also remain at 1/4 (assuming equal quality), but since there are now twice as many wild card teams, the probability of a particular wild card team winning is now only half as big (1/16 instead of 1/8).
- Therefore, if a team is more likely to be the league’s first wild card, the new format substantially hurts its World Series chances, whereas if its more likely to be the second wild card, it boosts the team’s World Series chances.
The chances of being the league’s first or second wild card team depend on how good the team is and what division it’s in. A team is more likely to be the first wild card team if it’s playing in a division with an even stronger opponent, since the team playing in a weak division would simply win the division.
The CAIRO projections that are available from the Replacement Level Yankees Weblog show the Nats’ post-season probabilities under one set of assumptions. The good news is that RLYW sees the Nats as a pretty good team, projecting 86 wins, second in the NL East to the Phillies, who are projected at 92 wins.
The interesting thing about those projections is that they also include post-season probabilities based on computer simulations. According to CAIRO, the Nationals’ probability of making the post-season went up from 37% under the old format to 46% under the new format. The projections also show the Nats as much more likely to make the post-season as the first wild card team (18%) than as the second wild card team (9%). The have a 19% chance of winning the division outright.
The implication is that—under these assumptions—the Nats’ probability of winning the World Series is lower under the new format than it would have been under the old format. Because the Nats play in the division with the league’s strongest team (the Phillies) and there are many more teams competing for the second spot, their probability of being the first wild card team is much better than their probability of being the second wild card, meaning that their World Series probability is reduced.
Of course, these probabilities are heavily dependent on the projections being used. An alternative is Baseball Prospectus, which projects the Nats at 84 wins, but only fourth place in the NL East. A small difference in projected team quality will imply a fairly large difference in playoff probabilities.
The other comment I’ll make is that the Nat really should consider putting Strasburg on a once-a-week schedule to make him available for the post-season, especially the one-game playoff. I simply don’t buy the argument that pitching on six days rest would be more stressful than pitching the same number of starts on four days rest. Teams will quickly learn that the optimal strategy for a wild card team is to have their best pitcher available for the wild-card all-or-nothing game. While the post-season often has other all-or-nothing games (for example, game seven of a league championship series or a World Series), the wild-card series is unique in that it can be planned for.
Adam Kilgore of The Washington Post provides some additional thoughts on how the new format affects the Nationals.
First, congratulations to Mike Rizzo and Ryan Zimmerman for getting the extension done. I think that’s very good news for the future of the franchise.
With spring training getting underway, I thought I’d take a look back at the off-season. If I had to describe the Nationals’ offseason in one word, it would be “confusing.”
Going into the off-season, the Nats had a lot of young talent, but they still had holes. Stephen Strasburg would be back in 2012, but would face an innings limit. Bryce Harper might make his debut, but probably wouldn’t be ready to contribute. Anthony Rendon was at least a year away from the majors. With young players like Danny Espinosa, Wilson Ramos, and Jordan Zimmermann who were still improving, this year’s offseason seemed like an opportunity to fill some of the gaps and build toward championship runs in 2013–15.
Rizzo went into the off-season with two announced priorities—a center fielder (preferably one who could bat leadoff) and starting pitching. Without any good free agent center fielders available and unable to find a willing trading partner, Rizzo gave up on the center fielder and re-signed Rick Ankiel. He was more successful with the pitching, where he delivered the Nats’ two big deals of the off-season—trading with the Athletics for Gio Gonzalez and signing Edwin Jackson as a free agent.
The thing I find confusing about these deals is that both are “win now” deals—the Gonzalez trade because the prospects the Nats gave up are likely to provide more value after 2012 than Gonzalez, and the Jackson signing because it’s a one-year deal. For a team that is set to peak in 2013 and later, I find these deals confusing.
With respect to evaluating these deals, I agree with Dave Cameron of Fangraphs, who rated the Jackson acquisition as the fifth-best transaction of the off-season, but the Nats’ trade for Gonzalez as the fifth-worst. While there’s a chance that Gonzalez could become the dominating work horse that Rizzo envisions, that will depend on him turning around his walk rate. That’s possible, but it’s a gamble. If he doesn’t, the likely outcome is that the Nats just paid a boatload of talent and money for five seasons of league-average performance.
A perhaps more interesting question is what deals the Nats missed out on that they could have made. There weren’t many bargains in this year’s free agent market. It was mostly characterized by overpayments.*
*A fair deal requires a balance between the risk of a player’s performance falling below the the contracted level and the risk that they will surpass the contracted level. At a minimum, that means you have to be able to imagine the player surpassing the contracted performance. For example, consider the Pujols contract—10 years, $240 million—is essentially paying for 48 wins above replace (WAR) at $5 million per win. Is it possible that he could surpass that? Based on history, I’d have to say it’s very unlikely—according to Baseball-Reference.com, only four players since 1920 have recorded more than 48 WAR during their age 32 to 41 seasons. And two of those players (Babe Ruth and Willie Mays) were distinctly better than Pujols going into their age 32 seasons, while a third was Barry Bond (enough said). That leaves only Hank Aaron as a comparable player who surpassed 48 WAR (with 51 WAR). In contrast, many comparable players (e.g., Jimmie Foxx, Frank Robinson, etc.) fell well short.
So, looking over the list of high-profile free agent signings from the 2011/12 off-season, I see lots of deals that I’m glad the Nats didn’t make, including the two players most associated with the team in rumors floated in the press (Prince Fielder, 9 years and $214 million; Mark Buehrle, 4 years and $58 million). Despite the overpayments for Pujols, Fielder, Buehrle, Jonathan Papelbon, Aramis Ramirez, and Michael Cuddyer, there actually were a few prominent deals this off-season that weren’t obvious overpays. A couple of these deals could have made sense for the Nats.
Yu Darvish (6 years, $112 million including the $52 million posting fee) wasn’t a bargain, but his contract did seem like a fair price to me. There’s obviously some elevated risk for this pitcher because of his lack of major league experience, but it’s clear from observing his velocity, control, and mix of pitches that he has skills that can be effective at the major league level. He will need to average about 3.7 WAR per year over the next six years for the Rangers’ contract to pay for itself. The people who are most knowledgeable about Japanese statistics, however, think he can be even better than that. I was quite disappointed that the Nats didn’t even submit a bid. With a sealed bid auction, all they needed to do was pick a fair price and submit a bid without the risk of getting into the kind of bidding war that so often leads teams to overpay.
The next one really was a bargain. When I heard that the Marlins had signed José Reyes for six year, $106 million, I immediately wondered why the Nats hadn’t made a higher bid. I understand that his health is a question mark, but when he’s healthy he’s the second best shortstop in baseball. And it’s not as if the Nats couldn’t use a leadoff hitter and an upgrade at shortstop. Between Desmond and Lombardozzi, the Nats would have had a backup to cover the position when Reyes wasn’t available.
Trades are trickier to evaluate since we usually don’t know what other teams were willing to offer. This week, though, Tom Boswell of The Washington Post revealed a stunning deal that the Nats let get away from the mid-season of 2010. Apparently, at the time, the Rays were willing to trade Matt Moore (now considered the top pitching prospect in baseball) for Adam Dunn. Of course, it’s unfair to judge a trade a year and a half later based on what we know now, but this article by John Sickels of Minor League Ball provides a contemporary perspective on Moore’s prospects. Even without knowing what we’ve learned since, that one seems like too good a deal for the Nats to have passed up.
Looking over this year’s off-season, while I think the team is better than before (at least for this season), I still found it confusing. I don’t understand why Rizzo seems to be pursuing a win-now strategy when I think it clearly would make more sense to focus on the 2013–15 time frame. And I still don’t have a sense of how much the Lerners are willing to spend in pursuit of winning. The Nats are still spending like a small-market, budget conscious team, though Washington clearly has the potential to be a large market.
There’s a perception that in 2012 the Nats are finally going to field a competitive team and that if they can sign Prince Fielder, they’ll be real contenders. How do these perceptions square with the numbers?
Some interesting calculations are available from “SG” of Replacement Level Yankees Weblog. He runs a projection system called “CAIRO.” What I found particularly interesting is that he then takes the projections and runs them through a simulator, simulating something like 10,000 baseball seasons with each team’s projected lineups. This allows him to do calculations like the odds of each team making the playoffs.
As of January 4, SG projects 82 (actually 82.4) wins for the Nationals. This result roughly confirms what I’d already guessed my back-of-the-envelope intuition. Starting from the Nats’ 2011 Pythagorean record of 78 wins, I added a couple of wins for Stephen Strasburg increasing his workload from 24 innings to about 160 innings, 1.5 to 2.0 wins for adding Gio Gonzalez, and another 0.5 to 1.0 wins because I anticipate more incremental wins from the guys whose performance is likely to pick up next season (Jayson Werth, Ryan Zimmerman, Adam LaRoche) than losses from the guys whose performance is likely to drop off (Michael Morse, Tyler Clippard, John Lannan).
So where does that put the Nats relative to their playoff aspirations? Better than they’ve ever been at the start of a season in Washington, but still a ways to go before they can be considered likely to reach the playoffs. SG projects the Nats to finish third in the NL East, behind the Phillies with 93 wins and the Braves with 87. Furthermore, the Marlins are projected to be neck-and-neck with the Nats with 81.6 wins, and the Mets are not entirely out of it with a projected 76 wins. Assuming that MLB switches to a format of two wild-card teams, the Nats are projected to have a 25% probability of reaching the postseason. (If baseball retains the current format of a single wild card, the Nat’s postseason probability would drop to 17%.)
A 25% chance really isn’t that good—it places the Nats 8th in the NL, behind the Phillies, Cards, Giants, D-backs, Braves, Reds, and Brewers. But the Nats are at the bottom of the “sweet spot” that runs from about 82 to 92 wins, where each additional win would increase their odds of making the playoffs by roughly 5 percentage points. So if the Nats sign Prince Fielder and he adds 3.5 wins to their projected total, their postseason odds would go up to about 45%. (In contrast, the Phillies postseason odds are shown as 84%, but an incremental win wouldn’t raise their postseason probability as much.)
This helps explain one of the reasons that the Nats are considered favorites to land Fielder—his incremental value in terms of postseason probability is larger for the Nats than it is for the other teams that are mentioned as suitors, because the Nats are the only one with a projected number of wins in the range of 82 to 92. (The Rangers are projected at 94 wins, the Mariners at 77, the Cubs at 71, and the Orioles at 65.)
If the Nats don’t sign Fielder, I’ll consider this off-season to have been a disappointment. The only significant deal so far, the trade for Gonzalez, decimated the farm system and is really only explainable as a move to win now, rather than later. Yet a 25% chance to reach the postseason can’t be considered a win-now position.
If the Nats do sign Fielder, is there anything else they could still do that would also significantly boost their postseason chances? I’ll suggest one possibility—sign Roy Oswalt, who is said to be available for a one-year, $8 million asking price. He would probably push John Lannan out of the rotation, but Oswalt’s projection (3.47 ERA, 3.52 FIP, 171 IP according to Bill James) is substantially better than Lannan’s (4.40 ERA, 4.49 FIP, 180 IP). With only a one-year commitment and a reasonable asking price, this seems like one of the best ways to boost the Nats’ postseason prospects.
The Nats’ other need is for a center fielder, and unfortunately I don’t have a good suggestion there. While I think the Cuban defector Yoennis Cespedes could prove to be a good deal for the team that signs him, he’ll probably need a year to adjust to major league pitching, so I don’t see him as an option for immediately improving the team. With a scarcity of free agent or trade prospects, it looks like the Nats will be playing Werth in center field this season.
By the way, Harper of Nationals Baseball has a nice post on the frustrations facing teams that are in the same position as the Nats, where deals potentially can have a big impact on the playoff probabilities, but also could go massively wrong.
Another comment – the Yankees acquisition of Michael Pineda in exchange for Jesús Montero illustrates a point I made earlier—the Nats overpaid for Gonzalez. While none of the prospects that the Nats sent to the A’s individually were as valuable as Montero, collectively they represented a much more valuable bundle. Furthermore, Gonzalez isn’t the pitcher that Pineda is (Bill James projections of 3.07/3.19 for Pineda’s ERA/FIP, compared to 3.83/3.94 for Gonzalez). Finally, the Yankees will get five cost-controlled seasons from Pineda, compared to four for Gonzalez. In comparison to what the Yankees paid for Pineda, the Nats deal for Gonzalez was a massive overpay.
Nats Noodles 