Midseason thoughts

I published my First-half awards earlier today, but I wanted to throw around my other thoughts on the season so far, and what to expect in the second half. 

Other thoughts, related and unrelated:

-Remember pre-season 2011? Everyone picked the Red Sox to play the Phillies in the World Series? Well the Phillies ran into Chris Carpenter and Father Time, the Red Sox couldn't stay healthy, and now both are in last place. The Red Sox have an outside chance to sneak into the second wild card spot, but the Phillies are probably playing for next year. Their five-year playoff streak is, surprisingly, the longest current streak in baseball.   

-Albert Pujols:

    -Opening day through May 4: 27 games (0 team games missed), .194/.237/.269, zero home runs.

    -May 5: Given the day off

    -May 6 to present: 58 games (0 team games missed), .305/.378/.555, 14 home runs.

Moral of the story - Pujols is probably not the best hitter in baseball anymore, but he is certainly a long way from done. The Angels resurgence has corresponded perfectly with that of El Hombre, and I'm pretty sure you don't want your pitchers to be facing him with the game on the line in the playoffs, do you?

-Matt Moore, ranked on several prospect lists (Kevin Goldstein, Jonathan Mayo, Jim Callis) ahead of both Bryce Harper and Mike Trout, has an ERA+ of 83 for Tampa Bay. That doesn't mean he won't turn into a great pitcher, but didn't it seem funny that he was ranked ahead of someone in Harper who a) seemed like a historically great prospect, and b) is four years younger? Especially considering that hitters are easier to project than pitchers, it seems likely that Moore was placed first more to generate controversy than out of a considered belief that he would turn into a better player. 

-Player Development isn't always smooth, Exhibit A: Justin Upton is hitting "only" .273/.353/.401, to the frustration of Diamondbacks fans. If a 24-year old outfielder was called up from Triple-A, he'd get Rookie of the Year consideration in many years. Upton came up so young that it's easy to forget how young he still is.

-Player Development isn't always smooth, Exhibit B: Jason Heyward, 22, is hitting .272/.340/.497, his career best slugging percentage. His more aggressive approach is causing some consternation from some, though. He's walking in only 8.9% of plate appearances, while striking out in 22.6%. Compare that to his rookie season of 2010, with a 14.6% walk rate and 20.5% strikeout rate. The payoff, of course, is in extra home runs - he's hitting one every 21.0 at bats in 2012, from ever 28.9 in 2010. Some in the Braves organization thought Heyward was too passive in 2011, leading to his disappointing sophomore campaign. We'll see where this goes.

-Looking for good bets to have a big improvement in the second half? Jose Batista is your best choice. His .215 BABIP seems artificially low, considering he's leading the league in home runs and has a .270 career number. Even with the bad luck on balls in play, he's at .244/.360/.540 on the season. Giving him the extra 13 singles that would move that BABIP up to .270? .286/.394/.581, again putting him among the best hitters in the league. 

-Tim Lincecum. He's 3-10 with an MLB-worst 6.42 ERA. FIP and other advanced stats tell us he shouldn't be that bad, but really nobody should be this bad, much less somebody who was the best pitcher in the league three years ago. His walk rate has increased gradually since 2009 and now is at 4.7 per 9. Still, it's hard to imagine a pitcher who still strikes out nearly 10 batters per nine innings continuing to be this bad. Don't expect a return to his old form, but a return to respectability should be in order here.

 

-Example of why more wild card spots doesn't equal more excitement - Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta and New York are all within a game of each other. Does having four of them, rather than three, make things more exciting? It seems to do the opposite to me. The more wild card teams you add, the worse the teams that are competing at the end of the regular season are. That's progress?

-Finally, the All-Star game gets a lot of flak these days. You know what? I'm going to watch all nine innings of it, and I'll enjoy every second of it. Sure, that doesn't mean it will be great baseball and it doesn't make the "This Year It Counts" gimmick any less infuriating (though it's no less random than the alternating system that was used through 2002). Best of all, the game will be in Kansas City. Twenty years ago, Royal Stadium (since renamed Kaufman Stadium) was the best of the cookie cutter circular stadiums, of which there were far too many. Now, cast against the new retro stadiums, its un-pretentiousness, its lack of manufactured nooks and crannies, makes it one of baseball's most unique. I'm looking forward to watching some home runs into the water fountain.

Moving Jose Bautista to 3B Makes Sense

Let us start with the obvious. Jose Bautista is the best hitter on the Blue Jays. Is he really the best hitter in the American League, as he has been so far this year? That's open for debate - it was only a couple years ago that Bautista wasn't yet good, and Miguel Cabrera still exists. However, in 2011, Bautista leads the AL in walks and home runs, enabling an amazing .325/.468/.655 stat line. In exactly 999 plate appearances since the beginning of last year, his stat line of .280/.406/.628 places him among the elite players in the game. Over the same time frame, Josh Hamilton has a similar .343/.397/.604 stat line, in 250 fewer plate appearances.

While Bautista has spent the year coldly annihilating American League pitching, Toronto 3B have been completely anemic:

	PA	HR	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
Jayson Nix	137	4	0.179	0.255	0.333	0.589
Edwin Encarnacion	87	1	0.207	0.241	0.341	0.583
John McDonald	56	1	0.180	0.226	0.280	0.506
Mike McCoy	23	0	0.150	0.261	0.150	0.411
Chris Woodward	4	0	0.000	0.000	0.000	0.000
Team Total	307	6	0.183	0.243	0.308	0.552

None of the people who played 3B this year for Toronto have an OPS even as high as Bautista's slugging percentage. If it weren't for the Seattle Mariners, the Blue Jays would have the least production at the position in the league.

So let's answer some questions you might have:

Will moving Bautista hurt his offensive production?
That's hard to imagine - great hitters don't stop being great just because they play a different defensive position. Also, he's not moving to a more physically demanding position, like shortstop or catcher, just a harder one. Looking at his 2009 stats, he did hit for less power while playing 3B, so it is worth keeping an eye on. My worry, though, is that he's playing over his head. If Bautista hits something like .290/.415/.575 in the second half, it may be interpreted as a decline in production and met with calls to move him to his more "comfortable" position, rather being accepted as a more accurate representation of his actual skills.

Also, remember that 3B in general has fewer great hitters than right field - so even if his offense does regress a tad at the position, the difference between Bautista and the average-hitting 3B will be greater than between him and the average-hitting RF.

Isn't Bautista a pretty terrible defensive 3B?
It seems that way, yes - he was never good in Pittsburgh, and it's doubtful he's gotten better. Two things about that though. First, Bautista is a bad defensive right fielder. Second, while Nix and McDonald are acceptable (ok - McDonald is pretty good), Encarnacion is probably even worse than Bautista is. So let's get him out of the picture entirely. The question is really whether Bautista is so much worse defensively than Nix and McDonald that it would cancel out the amazing increase in production. Let's pretend that Nix and McDonald are at replacement level when we combine their offense and defense. Bautista's offense has been over 11 wins more than a replacement level right fielder since the start of 2010, a higher standard than a replacement level third baseman. Since that's about a year and a half, call it 7.5 per year. In the last four years, zero 3B have been more than 2 wins below replacement for the course of the season. Chipper Jones, a pretty notorious 3B, was -1.3 dWAR in his worst season. That means Bautista would have to be almost four times as bad at 3B than the next worst - even if that were possible, if he were anything close to that, they'd pull the plug on the experiment long before we got to that point. So even if he's the worst defensive 3B in baseball, his total production makes him a huge upgrade anyway.

Isn't moving Bautista just moving the problem around rather than fixing it?
The average 3B in the AL hits only .239/.310/.378 while the average RF hits .264/.340/.425. The reason for this is that there are more people out there who can play RF acceptably than can play 3B. The Jays think they have RF who are at least capable of outproducing they guys they've used at 3B, which means rather than moving the problem, they'd be creating an opportunity.

At first glance, it looks like they have more than enough talent on hand to meet that unambitious goal. The candidates:
-Juan Rivera is hitting .253/.317/.378 this year - slightly below his career numbers, particularly in the power department, but not far from what would be expected of a 32 year old given Rivera's production at his peak.
-Travis Snider, a constant source of frustration among Jay fans, hit a paltry .184/.276/.264 to start the year, earning him a trip to AAA Las Vegas. However, he is still only 23, and has a career .246/.313/.423 line in the majors, as well as .324/.396/.468 since returning to the minors. Even considering how good a place Vegas is to hit (no double meaning intended), it's hard to imagine that's a complete fluke. Snider would be a significant upgrade over Nix/McDonald/Encarnacion offensively.
-Adam Loewen - yes, the former pitching prospect for the Orioles what seems like forever ago. Loewen has hit .314/.376/.564 in AAA in his attempt to become the new Rick Ankiel. 43 extra base hits in 312 plate appearances can't be ignored, but the 78 strikeouts give pause.
-Eric Thames (no relation to Marcus) is hitting .352/.423/.610 in his first attempt at AAA, after an impressive .288/.370/.526 in the more pitcher-friendly New Hampshire ballpark last year. He's a little old for a prospect at 24, but the production seems real. In 52 PA, mostly coming while Adam Lind was on the DL, he went .298/.365/.426, and he was recalled again on Friday.
-David Cooper, Toronto's first round pick in the 2008 draft, had generally disappointed in the minors up until this year when he arrived in Las Vegas, where he has a line of .371/.435/.576. Accentuating his line is his league-leading 29 doubles. Cooper spent a couple weeks with the major league club earlier this year, hitting .121/.244/.242. The fact that this is the first year Cooper has really hit, and the fact that he didn't produce in a short big league trial, may be two strikes against him. However, Cooper's status as a #1 pick and his impressive 28/20 walk to strikeout ratio may push him to the front.

I wouldn't go out and proclaim any of these players a budding superstar, but I feel confident that each of them could produce above a .600 OPS with acceptable defense, with an upside quite a bit higher than that. With the Blue Jays fading out of the race in the American League, it seems sensible to see both whether Bautista can handle being an everyday 3B while remaining productive and, if so, who among the cast of potential right fielders will move himself to the top of the list.


Photo credit: Keith Allison http://www.flickr.com/photos/27003603@N00/5801269943

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Saturday Morning Musings

Some random thoughts around the baseball universe.

Top prospect Bryce Harper is heating up. Playing for the Single-A Hagerstown Suns, Harper last night went 3 for 3 with a double, homer, 6 RBI and two walks. That brings him to a .306/.414/.551 line for the season, against competition generally three to four years older than he. He's spent the past three days abusing the poor Hickory Crawdads, going 6 for 10 with two walks, two doubles, two homers, 7 runs scored and 7 RBI.

Jed Lowrie, through 630 career plate appearances, has a .267/.346/.447 slash line, with 44 2B, 16 homers and 93 RBI. In a league with a very weak pool of shortstops, the Red Sox will be thrilled to get that sort of production. In 2010, only three shortstops had an OPS over Lowrie's career .793 - Troy Tulowitzki, Hanley Ramirez and Stephen Drew. Marco Scutaro has been mentioned in trade rumors, but I expect him to remain on the roster all season, getting spots starts and acting as a serviceable injury replacement if any of the infielders go down.

Remember the rookie of the year race in 2007 between Ryan Braun and Troy Tulowitzki? Braun's slugging beat out Tulowitzki's balanced game in the eyes of the voters in an extremely close 128-126 vote. So far this year, they've been the two best players in the National League (with apologies to Matt Kemp). Braun has a .382/.494/.691 line, while Tulowitzki is not only hitting .329/.435/.729, but is also supplying what may be the majors' best defense.

It's nice to see that Alex Gordon may finally be having that breakout season that everyone hoped he would, but keep in mind that his BABIP right now is .439. Bring that down to a still-above-average .333, and his overall line drops from .361/.404/.542 down to .277/.326/.458 - much closer to his career .244/.328/.405 entering the season. In other words, if you have him on your fantasy team, ride the hot streak--but don't trade Carlos Quentin.

Jose Bautista has been doing everything in his power to prove that 2010 wasn't a fluke, leading the AL in OBP and ranking 3rd in SLG early on.

With the help of Petco Park, Aaron Harang has looked good early on. Harang was one of the most underrated players in the league from 2005-2007, actually leading the NL in both strikeouts and wins (though with only 16 in a kind of fluky year) in '06. Then, with some of the zip seemingly lost from his fastball, Harang went through three years marked by mediocrity and injury. There's no way of knowing how his arm will hold up, but the pitching quality seems to have returned - through 4 starts, he's thrown 24 innings with a 1.88 ERA, 21 strikeouts and only 5 walks. Again, it's very early, but it's a story to watch.