What do we know?

Welcome back! I apologize for the negligence in posting regularly - I just finished up my first year of graduate school, so posting here was lower on the priority list. It's disappointing though, because we had a pretty exciting first month of the baseball season. Bryce Harper and Mike Trout have been called up, probably for good. Jered Weaver has thrown a no-hitter, and Phil Humber a perfect game. The Rays and Rangers have emerged (unsurprisingly, especially in the Rangers' case) as teams that appear elite. Matt Kemp may now be the best player in baseball - a subject that deserves attention in more detail further down the road.

Today, I just want to go into some of the stuff we now know. It's easy to make overly rash judgments based on a month of games, but in truth, the first month usually IS a good indicator of things to come. Sure, people read too much into flukes and slumps, but there are some things that it's ok to read into. So, a month in to the 2012 season, here is some stuff I think I know.

Note: SOMETHING on this list will turn out laughably wrong, and will be saved on the internet forever. I have no idea what that is. If I did, I wouldn't write it. Just keep that in mind. 

1. If Stephen Strasburg is healthy, he is really, really good.
Strasburg has now thrown 124.0 innings as a major leaguer. He has a 2.18 ERA, 150 strikeouts, and 25 walks. He has now gone 64.1 innings since allowing his last home run. It's too early in the season for WAR to be truly meaningful, but his is 2.5 according to Baseball-Reference, best in all of baseball. If you've gotten the chance to watch him pitch, it's easy to see why - his fastball, overhand curve and changeup give him three pitches that are better than just about any other pitcher's best. He's a pitching freak, and for baseball's sake, I hope he stays healthy. If you believe in the whole "Inverted-W" mechanics being a major flaw, then you have reason to be worried. All the more reason to enjoy him now.

2. Mark Prior just signed a minor league contract with the Red Sox.
This, of course, is why we need to enjoy Strasburg now. Mark Prior, sadly, is now THE cautionary tale of phenom pitchers who broke down. The thing is, nobody can say for certain why Prior broke down - was it his mechanics, was it his overuse, was it just because some pitchers break? He will apparently pitch out of the bullpen in his attempt to work his way back up to the Sox.

3. Yu Darvish looks really quite good. 
One of the reasons the Rangers have emerged over the past three years as one of the best organizations in baseball is their pitching. With that in mind, this was the best possible place for Darvish to land. Through his first five starts, Darvish is 4-0 with a 2.18 ERA, with 33 strikeouts and 17 walks in 33.0 innings pitched. That walk total a little high for you? In his last two starts, against the Blue Jays and Yankees, he has pitched 15.1 innings, striking out 19 while walking 4, allowing just 1 run. Those two teams are third and fourth in the American League in walks, by the way, so it's not like he's pitching to a bunch of free swingers. He's settling in. Don't panic if there are adjustments to be made down the line, but Darvish looks, early on, like an ace.

4. The best place to find starting pitching may be your own bullpen. The Texas Rangers can be thanked for this.
It makes sense, doesn't it? Almost every successful major league pitcher comes up through the minors as a starter. There's an occasional college closer, sure, but usually players are put into relief because of a need. If this were 2007, Neftali Feliz, Daniel Bard, Chris Sale and Lance Lynn would likely all be in the bullpen (the first three, without question).  Lynn and Sale have been fantastic in the rotation, while Feliz and Bard have had more mixed reviews. The upside here clearly outmatches the downside, though. Suppose Feliz continues to walk a few too many people. The Rangers can send him back to the pen - they'll have a valuable reliever, and can take comfort in knowing they are getting the maximum value out of him. Compare that to  the Red Sox usage of Jonathan Papelbon, who likely would have turned into an excellent starter (and made himself twice as much money as a free agent), and relieved several of the depth issues the Sox had in their rotation between 2008 and 2011. So, while the infuriating closer usage patterns that developed in the late 1980's have not yet passed on, teams have finally re-identified the relative value of starting pitchers vs. relief pitchers.

This, which I will post in greater depth at a later date, is what Moneyball was supposed to be about. The point wasn't that college players and OBP were good - it was that they were undervalued. After the A's won in the early 00's, the market adjusted. Teams drafted smarter (a trend clearly visible if you look at the performance of first rounders in recent years compared to 15 years prior), and valued guys who didn't make outs. The Rangers are the team that exploited the next inefficiency, which was reliever usage. With C.J. Wilson, Alexi Ogando and now Neftali Feliz, they have found what had been an inefficiency, to free up the money to sign players like Darvish and Adrian Beltre. Keep an eye on relief phenom Robbie Ross, who could be in the Rangers 2013 rotation.

5. Free Alexi Ogando
An addendum to the previous paragraphs. After an solid year in the rotation last year, the Rangers have moved Ogando back to the bullpen. Not necessarily because they think he can't start, but because they think they have five better starters. They may be right about that. The Rangers sixth starter would be a top three starter on most teams, and the #1 on a couple. To his credit, instead of sulking in the pen, he has been marvelous. 12.2 innings pitched, 5 hits, 1 run allowed, no walks, 12 strikeouts. It would be possible to see him moved in a deal for a slugging first baseman if one were to become available, but there's no obvious counterpart out there.

6. Matt Wieters is breaking out
After enormous expectations on him as a rookie in 2009, his three year line of .265/.328/.415 with solid defense at catcher (8.3 WAR over the three years, according to B-Ref) was considered a disappointment. The expectations had become something of a curse, making it hard to enjoy the fact that Wieters had become one of the ten best catchers in the game. While 22 games isn't enough to say he's made the leap, it's impossible not to be impressed with a .303/.391/.618 line

7. No Pujols, No Carpenter, No Problem
I was among the many who thought the Cardinals would struggle this year, especially after hearing that Carpenter was having disc problems. Instead, they have baseball's best run differential, and the best record in the National League. Can they keep it up? Well, Lance Lynn and David Freese might be emerging stars, but I'm fairly confident that Kyle Lohse, Jake Westbrook and Jon Jay are playing way over thier heads. I'm also not confident in Carlos Beltran's ability to stay healthy. On the other hand, Lance Berkman has appeared in only 7 games, and Adam Wainwright has struggled after coming back from Tommy John surgery. If Wainwright puts it together (and his strikeout and walk numbers indicate that he will), and one of the Berkman/Beltran duo can stay healthy at a time (debatable), the Cardinals should, at worst, be competing with the Reds and potentially the Brewers.

8. Alex Rodriguez is no longer an elite player
Say it over and over. Repeat it every time you hear an announcer talk about how feared he is. Think about it especially hard when, for the next few spring trainings, we hear stories about how the guy is in "the best shape of his life." I hate to keep beating up on the guy (HA - don't believe that for a second, I enjoy it with every fiber of my being... ahem), but his OPS has crawled steadily downward for six years now. The fact that every home run he hits gets replayed on SportsCenter makes it seem like he has more than the 4 he does right now. Among 95 AL qualifiers, he is 48th in slugging, one point behind Alcides Escobar. I'm very skeptical at this point that he'll break Bonds' record of 762. Even if he stays healthy, a big if, I don't see him cracking 700 until mid 2014 at the earliest. Fortunately for the rest of baseball, he IS quite likely to get to 660, costing the Yankees a whole ton of money over the next six years.

Neftali Feliz or Daniel Bard?

Yesterday at Baseball Nation, Jeff Sullivan came out with a pretty good response to a kind of silly article by Jon Heyman regarding the "cheapness" of the Boston Red Sox this offseason. Of course as most people know, the Red Sox sudden thrift has been largely overstated. Read Sullivan's article for the entire explanation, but the gist is that a lot of the players on the 2012 roster are holdovers who are getting paid more than they were last year.

However, there was one line of Sullivan's article that struck me as off:

Daniel Bard is supposed to take one of the rotation slots, and it's hard to see how he's a worse bet than Neftali Feliz.

Is Daniel Bard really as good as Neftali Feliz? And if so, does that make him as likely to succeed as a starter? My gut told me no (on both counts), but I figured it would be worth looking into. So, for the record, this is a response to a response. Considering the line (CBS -- Baseball Nation -- Me) the law of diminishing returns applies here. I'm going to guess several thousand people read Heyman's article, several hundred read Sullivan's response, and... well, if you're reading this, that means somebody read my response to the response. It's all good.

Ok, let's dive in:

Year	Tm	W	L	ERA	G	SV	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	SO	ERA+	WHIP	HR/9	BB/9	SO/9	SO/BB
Feliz	Texas	7	6	2.55	154	74	162.2	98	49	46	11	56	164	178	0.947	0.6	3.1	9.1	2.93
Bard	Boston	5	13	2.88	192	5	197	132	71	63	16	76	213	154	1.056	0.7	3.5	9.7	2.8

Bard and Feliz were called up within a couple months of each other in 2009, so their careers are nicely comparable. I considered taking W/L record and saves out of the stat line, because they are essentially white noise - Bard wasn't a closer, so of course he isn't going to get the same number of saves. Going straight to the other stats, Feliz has slight advantages is HR/9, BB/9 and ERA. However, considering that Arlington is a tougher place to pitch than Boston, Feliz actually has a pretty notable advantage in ERA+. Not that Bard is a slouch in any of these categories. His walk rate is high, but not exceptionally so, and  makes up for it with an extremely impressive K rate. Feliz has the slightly better numbers, but Sullivan is right - based on their careers so far, it's hard to say that Feliz has been so much better that you'd risk your Nolan Ryan rookie card on the fact he'll continue to be better.

Still, what stat tends to change the most when a pitcher moves from the rotation to the bullpen (and back again)? It's the strikeout rate. Since a pitcher knows he's only throwing for an inning or two, he tends to throw harder and hold back less than one who might have to pitch multiple innings. This isn't just conjecture, it's statistically verifiable. In 2011, American League relievers struck out 7.7 per nine innings, while starters struck out 6.6. In 2010, it was 7.4-6.6. In 2009, 7.6-6.5. Way back in 1993, it was 6.4-5.5. The trend holds. If we can expect a starting pitcher to strike out 10% fewer batters, that hurts Bard more, because his strikeout advantage will be slightly blunted, make the fact that he's done everything else slightly worse than Feliz even more notably. 

Next, the age factor. While Bard and Feliz were called up around the same time, Bard was allegedly born June 25, 1985, while Felix was allegedly born May 2, 1988. So Feliz is younger by two years, 10 months and 8 days. Feliz's 178 ERA+ through age 23, or Bard's 154, in a similar inning count, through age 26? At the very least, that should say something about Feliz's "upside," shouldn't it?

Then, there's the fatigue factor. Much was made about Feliz's slow start last season. Could it be that the 77 appearances in 2010 has tired him out? Possibly. It's also possible that it was a sample size issue. In the first half, through 34 innings pitched, Feliz had a 3.18 ERA, and even more distressingly, only 23 strikeouts to 18 walks. While that's ugly, it's important to remember that it was in only 34 innings. That's about 6 starts. Six! One bad month. In the second half, though? 28.1 innings, 31 strikeouts, only 13 walks, and a 2.22. Again, a small sample, but considering the rest of his career line, the first half last season is a bit of an outlier.If the problem was fatigue, he overcame it.

On the other hand, Bard's splits were in the other direction. In 26 appearances from May 27th to July 31st, he gave up zero runs. Zip. Zilch. At the end of July, Bard had compiled 51 innings pitched, giving up 29 hits, only 10 earned runs (a 1.76 ERA), 13 walks, and 49 strikeouts. On August 1, it all fell apart, giving up 3 runs in the 8th inning in a loss to Cleveland. From then on, Bard pitched 22 innings, and gave up 17 earned runs (a 6.95 ERA), walking 11, and striking out 25. The strikeout rate remained high, but everything else went in the wrong direction.

Of course, that's also a small sample size issue. Still, we're talking about which of the two is more likely to make the transition to starting pitcher. With that in mind, wouldn't you bet on the guy who pitched less well at the beginning of the year, rather than the guy who imploded after 51 innings? Particularly since this was the second year in a row where Bard's walk rate increased significantly in the second half. On the other hand, Bard had several more appearances in 2011 of over 1 inning, and he was extremely effective in them. Feliz had only one save where he retired more than three batters. In-game, Bard did not show any signs of fatigue that would lead you to believe that he necessarily couldn't handle a longer role.

So, we've gone through past performance, age and fatigue, and find that Feliz looks better than Bard. All this without getting into the most important distinction - Feliz was made a reliever because the Rangers needed a reliever, while Bard was made a reliever because he was so bad as a starter in 2007 in Single-A that the Red Sox never used him to start another game.

I don't have the starter/reliever splits, but take a look at the minor league numbers of Feliz: he made 53 starts from the time he signed with the Braves in 2006 until he was converted to the bullpen in 2009 (plus one more start on rehab in 2011 where he pitched only the first inning). In 2008, as a 20-year old, Feliz pitched 127.1 innings, with a 2.69 ERA, 153 strikeouts, 51 walks, and only three home runs allowed. This made him Baseball America's #10 prospect in all of baseball going into the 2009 season. The pitchers ahead of him were David Price, Tommy Hanson, Brett Anderson and Madison Bumgarner. He followed that with another dominant season in 2009 between Triple-A and the majors (not quite exhausting rookie status), and Baseball America made him their #9 prospect. He then won the 2010 Rookie of the Year award, as a closer.

Now take a look at Bard's minor league numbers. After being taken 28th overall in the 2006 draft out of North Carolina (where he was the #2 starter behind future Red Sox teammate Andrew Miller), the Red Sox challenged him with an aggressive placement in High A. He made five very poor starts, and they moved him down to the South Atlantic League, where things continued to go badly. How badly? In 22 starts across the two levels, he managed only 75 innings. He walked 78 and struck out just 47. His ERA ended up at 7.08. Fearful they'd drafted a bust, the Red Sox moved him into the bullpen in 2008, with outstanding results, and he's been in the pen ever since.

I don't think 22 bad starts in 2007 mean Bard will fail as a starter. In fact, I think the opposite - he's been a very good pitcher in the bullpen, and very good pitchers in the bullpen tend to be able to convert to starters or at least an acceptable level. Not always, but usually. Plus, Bard wants to start - the worst case scenario here is that he ends up going back to the bullpen. After working out as a starter, that should at least work to counteract those possible fatigue issues.

But as for the assertion that Bard is as likely to succeed as Feliz? Feliz is three years younger, has been a slightly better reliever in the majors, and was an extremely successful starter in the minors, which Bard was definitely not. Which one would you rather bet on?

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