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Contract-to-value Ratios

Andrew August 11, 2010, at 10:29 am 33 LTEs ,

Building on my research into JI

JIM THOME"S value from my CoC comment, I've calculated the value of each Twin relative to his salary.  Salary info is from BR.com's roster info and value is from Fangraph's value calculator.  Caveat: I'm not really very good at advanced metrics, so if there's a better way to show this using WAR or VORP or what-have-you, please share your findings.
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Take This For What You Will

Andrew August 19, 2009, at 6:05 am 6 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , ,

Last night, _elm_n hit his 7th homerun of the season, and his 5th of the month of August.  For starters, here is the game in which each home run was hit [number of games since previous games in brackets]

Game 4: April 12
Game 46: June 20
ame 51: July 3
Game 67 Auggust 9
Game 68 Augus 11
Game 72 August 16
Game 74 August 18
  • Game 4: April 12 [--]
  • Game 46: June 20 [42]
  • Game 51: July 3 [5]
  • Game 67: August 9 [16]
  • Game 68: August 11 [0]
  • Game 72: August 16 [4]
  • Game 74: August 18 [2]

As you can see, the home runs have come with more frequency as of late.  Here's his line since home run #4 on August 9th:

BA OBP SLG OPS
0.281 0.382 0.750 1.132

With 3 doubles, 4 home runs, and 10 RBI. 10 RBI is 27.7% of his total for the year (36), in just 10.8% of GP.

For comparison, his overall 2009 and overall career numbers, respectively:

2009

BA OBP SLG OPS
0.265 0.292 0.388 0.680

Career

BA OBP SLG OPS
0.288 0.321 0.409 0.730

I'll leave it to greater statistical minds than myself to delve further into the advanced numbers. But since August 9th, he's been hitting decently well it would seem. Hopefully this either:
a) Keeps up and he becomes a useful member of the offense, or
b) Keeps up long enough to increase his trade value a bit.

Base Paths Statistics

Andrew November 7, 2007, at 5:54 pm 17 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired)

I've always found statistics lacking when it comes to describing what is happening on the base paths. Consider a single with a man on first as compared to a single with the bases empty. After the hit, the batter gets a tiny bump in is batting average and +1 on his total bases in both cases, but it's obvious that the two singles are not equal. One single puts a man into scoring position while the other does not, but that very important distinction is lost when looking at statistics. I suppose you could go through a players split stats to find their batting averages by situation, but there are 8 different combinations of base runners. What I'm looking for here from my fellow Citizens is help in creating a statistic that will better help explain the differences between a single with no one on and a single that will put a main in scoring position. If there is a statistic already like this that I don't know about, then please post that as well. Otherwise, my preliminary ideas are after the jump.
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Anecdotal Evidence

ubelmann September 19, 2007, at 1:30 am 28 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired)

For some cheap thrills, I took a look at the players with the 20 worst Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) from 2006 (list here, and how they did in 2007.

- For starters, four of them have zero plate appearances in 2007: Antonio Perez, Vinny Castilla, Tomas Perez, and Travis Lee.

- In 2006, the group collectively averaged 5.3% of their teams' plate appearances. In 2007, the group collectively averaged 1.9% of their teams' plate appearances.

- Casey Kotchman had the largest increase in playing time--from 1.4% PA% to 8.2% PA%. This isn't altogether surprising, considering that Kotchman was widely regarded as a legit prospect and is still pretty young (just 24 this year.) Most of the statistical projection systems (PECOTA, ZiPS, etc.) were pretty down on him--perhaps more than I would have expected--but he turned in the sort of season the scouts said he could all along.

- The only other player whose playing time actually increased was Paul Bako, but it's only barely increased, and falls in line with the sort of playing time you'd expect a crappy backup catcher to soak up.

- In 2006, the 16 players who played in both 2006 and 2007 had an average -0.24 VORPr. In 2007, those 16 players have an average -0.23 VORPr.

- The player who improved his VORPr the most was the aforementioned Casey Kotchman. The next biggest improvement was out of Humberto Cota, a catcher for the Pirates. Since he's only had 18 PA so far this season, it's tough to call that a meaningful improvement.

- The next best improvement in VORPr was by Yadier Molina, who has had about as much playing time this season as he did last season, and managed to be about a league average hitter this year. I can see why you would want to keep him around, though--he's got a hand cannon behind the plate, to the point where teams hardly try stealing against him anymore, and is probably one of the most valuable defensive players in the game. I'm not sure exactly how much anyone expected him to hit, but he was only 24 going into this season.

- The group of 16 had an average VORP of -14.3 last season and an average VORP of -1.2 this season.

Conclusions:

From what I see here (which is obviously not some highly conclusive rigorous study):

- Players who are amongst the worst hitters in baseball tend to have their playing time cut significantly.

- Players who are amongst the worst hitters in baseball tend to perform similarly the next year, and those who improved their performance the most were young prospects. (This actually turned out differently than I expected. I thought regression to the mean would be stronger and that really miserable rate-wise performance would be more difficult to repeat from year-to-year.)

- As a group, the players' VORP "regressed" towards zero, but this was mainly due to a drastic decrease in playing time rather than a significant improvement in performance.

Just how inconsistent is your offense?

ubelmann September 5, 2007, at 3:00 pm 26 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired)

Since the very beginnings of baseball, fans have complained about their offense being too inconsistent. Well, I don't know that for certain, but at the end of the post, I'll give you an example of a team that I think will convince you.

If someone says an offense is good or bad, it's easy to point at how many runs they've scored as a measure of their quality. However, when someone claims an offense is inconsistent, there aren't any readily available stats to address that question.

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500 Home Run Club

Andrew August 6, 2007, at 10:16 pm 5 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired)

With Alex Rodriguez hitting his 500th home run over the weekend, he became the second new member of the 500 Club, joining Frank Thomas who hit number 500 at the Metrodome on June 28th. I wondered what year had the most new members of the club. It turns out that two people have hit their 500th home runs in the same season 4 times now.

1967 - Mickey Mantle, Eddie Mathews
1971 - Harmon Killebrew, Frank Robinson
2003 - Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa
2007 - Frank Thomas, Alex Rodriguez

With Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez sitting close to 500 and Gary Sheffield with an outside shot, I ran a simple projection to see if this will be the first year with 3 (or even more) new members into the 500 home run club (numbers checked and verified by ubelmann. Big ups for the help) Chart after the jump.


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Lies, Damned Lies, and ESPN

ubelmann June 11, 2007, at 4:05 pm 24 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired)

Wherein ubelmann feels the need to rant.


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