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Ubelmann to Alan Schwartz: Be Still, My Beating Heart

brianS April 7, 2009, at 3:09 pm One LTE - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , ,

One game has little meaning. A thousand seasons can take a while. Thank goodness for quad-core processors. says Alan in a column sure to throw ubelmann in an ecstatic frenzy.

Can John Hollinger Rank the 2030 Free Agent Class Today?

ubelmann November 30, 2008, at 7:27 pm 4 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , ,

Not very well, I imagine, but data from this test may shed some light on the matter.

By the second paragraph, I had dismissed the idea of genetically testing toddlers to see what sports they may be best at. I'm a pretty strong believer that children's sports ought to be about maximizing the enjoyment of youth. The more that children enjoy exercising, the more likely they are to continue exercising and the less likely they are to lead generally unhealthy sedentary lifestyles. Obviously, my hypothetical children would never be given such a test.

Then by the end of the article, I got to thinking about the matter from a different angle. At some point when I was roughly 3 or 4, my parents had my IQ tested. I'm not sure whether this was standard for most kids, or whether my parents went out of their way to do it, or what their motivations might have been in having my IQ tested. In any case, they didn't tell me the result. Eventually, by the time I was maybe 14 or 15, they told me that had had my IQ tested, and hinted that it was a good score, but by that time it was pretty clear that I was already a pretty good student. Having survived middle school, I knew that the best way to get along with my peers was to diminish my academic achievements at every possible opportunity--for better or worse, I'd been browbeaten into humility. So perhaps you won't find it too surprising that I had absolutely no interest in what some decade-old test had to say about my intelligence. I couldn't think of a single positive thing that would come from knowing that number. It was bad enough being labeled by my GPA or, later, ACT and SAT scores.

But would I be pursuing a PhD in physics today if my parents didn't know the result of that test? I don't know. It's probably one of those questions whose answer is ultimately unknowable, but worth taking the time to consider. When I was in fourth grade and I told my parents that I was bored with math*, sick of reviewing topics we had covered in past years, they had an objective reason to believe that I really was bored and could be comfortably pushed harder. So they fought the teachers on my behalf, and they fought like hell. So our teacher gave us whatever test happened to be handiest at that point (I believe it was a pre-test for the division chapter in our textbook) and split four of us off into a separate group**, where we each worked through the book at our own independent pace. That group, plus a couple more students, stayed together through 7th grade, at which point they put us in the algebra sequence.

*This was certainly not always the case. I was not particularly fond of adding or subtracting, and my parents forced me to sit on my hands when I was doing flash cards at home. Then multiplication came around in the 3rd grade and my math teacher presented me with the tastiest-looking carrot I could possibly have imagined--our first multiplication time test was right before the Christmas break, and if I passed it in the alloted time with no mistakes, I wouldn't have to do any more multiplication time tests. Which, of course, meant no flash cards for the entire Christmas break. After that little victory, I've enjoyed math and been pretty good at it. But I wasn't always good at math.

**The other three people in that group are currently an MD, an actuary, and an aerospace engineer.

Soon enough I was bored again, and my parents had to convince a rather unwilling teacher to recommend me for taking math classes in an out-of-school setting for advanced math students. That particular teacher thought that the curriculum was too grueling and that I would get burned out. And hell, maybe she had a point. I was the only one of the 12+ people in my initial class to finish the whole 4-year sequence. But I did finish it, and completing that program helped me academically as much as anything else I've done.

Which is the long way of saying that at two points in my K-12 education, my parents had to fight hard to give me the opportunity to learn more math than I would have learned otherwise. Would they have done that if they didn't have an IQ score that suggested I should be a good student? I don't know, but it probably made that course of action a little easier to take, if nothing else. There were times when people accused my parents of pushing me too hard, when it was actually the other way around, but it wouldn't be hard for me to imagine overbearing parents pushing their children too hard with an IQ score in hand. Even knowing that it may have helped me get where I am today, I can't say that I would want to know my hypothetical children's IQ scores.

I've forced myself into the non-conclusion conclusion that genetically testing your children for their aptitude in sports is in itself neither good nor bad. It gives parents more information, and some parents could probably leverage that information to making their children happier and some parents could use that information to make their children rather miserable. Certainly even without genetic testing, some parents push their children extremely hard, so I don't really know whether the availability of this new information will be a net benefit or net loss, but the Information Revolution is upon us, and to succeed going forward, I suspect that we're going to have to learn to make decisions in the presence of information that would previously have been unimaginable. We've already seen this in professional sports, and it was probably inevitable that it would come to amateur sports eventually.

What Ubelmann is really doing instead of the WGOM

brianS August 25, 2008, at 2:52 pm Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired , , ,

Now the true story can be told.

Once Upon A Time

ubelmann August 23, 2008, at 6:22 am 17 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) ,

Aaron once kindly wrote about me:

Once upon a time Ubelmann was just another guy who hung out in the comments section here, but then he started to contribute to Stick and Ball Guy's site and quickly became one of my favorite Twins bloggers. If you're not yet familiar with the best Twins blogger who doesn't actually have his own blog, here's your chance.

Well, before I was just another guy who hung out in the comments section there, I was just another guy who hung out at TwinkieTown, until Jesse kindly gave me front page privileges over there. (And I can't thank him enough for that.) Before that, I was just another guy who hung out at the Twins Geek's now defunct community site (was it called Twins Territory? Man time flies.) Before that, I was just another guy who discovered baseball blogs through TG's fleeting presence with the Star Tribune.* Before that, I was just another guy who read a lot of Rob Neyer on espn.com. And way back in high school I was just another guy who decided to do his senior science fair project on the topic of which baseball statistics correlate most closely with winning.**

*It used to really irritate me when people would complain about his Timberwolves posts simply because they felt that "the Twins Geek" should write exclusively about the Twins. One of the best things about the WGOM is that I could always post something completely out of left field and no one will complain that I should be writing about something else. Or I could post something with statistics in it and no one would tell me that you can't learn anything about baseball from statistics. One thing is for sure--I would never leave here to write for a different Twins blog.

**Okay, maybe there weren't too many people who did that one. But I'll tell you this much--if you want to go places in science fair, do a project in the math category. In my experience, judges will give you the benefit of the doubt at every turn if you do a math project. I felt that was by far my worst science fair project (though looking around at some of the stuff that passed as "statistics" for other projects, I guess I can see why it looked good by comparison), but I made it as alternate to the international science fair that year. Of course, with my luck, ISEF happened to be in Detroit that year, but I guess you don't need an exotic locale to trash hotel rooms like rock stars and awkwardly flirt with science gurls like nerdy science fair dudes.

More recently, I have Terry Ryan and his acquisition of Tony Batista for introducing me to the WGOM. Over at TwinkieTown, I was claiming that Batista could be as good or a little better than Cuddyer at third base, because even if Batista was crap at the plate, Cuddyer was a below average defender and most statistics had Batista as a slightly above average third baseman before he left for Japan. Then SBG tried to correct my math in a post over here, and when I saw it, I had no choice but to show him how he managed to mangle the math. Of course, while I might have gotten the math right on that, we know that I got the baseball all wrong.*

*The only solace that I take from that episode is that, while I drastically misjudged Batista's glove during the offseason, Nick Punto basically showed that the team could do pretty well with a decent-glove, not-much-bat guy at the hot corner in order to move Cuddyer and his deaf ear into right field.

Eventually, I decided that SBG was a pretty good guy and that it was fun to discuss baseball over here with him and his ragtag crew. That '06 team was some kind of crazy drug for me--they got me high and I couldn't get enough. I commented like crazy and eventually started posting some on the front page. Then thanks to BabySBG, I started posting a lot more while SBG had more important things to tend to.

Sometime between now and then, things got a little carried away. In retrospect, I think that it was a bad idea for me to take so many of the game logs. I certainly enjoyed them at the time, but it was like starting a baseball conversation every day that I couldn't help but get sucked into. With unlimited time on my hands, I might still be going strong with them. But ultimately, I wound up sacrificing too much (mainly time I should have been spending doing research*) in order to post and participate in the gamelogs.

*Stupidly, I had a bit of a mini-revelation watching Scrubs with my roommates a few weeks ago. Dr. Cox was giving Elliot a hard time for selling out by switching to private practice. To him, private practice doctors were more interested in clocking out at 5pm than they were in healing their patients. I have no idea how much that actually applies to private practice doctors, but I did realize that when I started grad school, I was at school until the physics got done--whether that was 7pm or 7am the next morning. But lately, I was looking for any excuse I could find to get home by 4 or 5pm so that I could catch the Twins game live because (insert some minute detail here) was important for me to see for myself. And no matter what I told myself, I wouldn't be doing work after the game--I would wind up chatting about the game or writing another post.

Then it hit me that I don't really want things to be that way. It's clear right now that I don't want to do physics forever, but I owe my advisor a lot more effort than I've given him. I feel a bit like Justin Morneau hitting .237/.296/.461 going into Seattle in 2006. My team has expected more of me, and while I still show signs of productivity, I'm not putting in enough effort and I'm walking back to the dugout empty-handed way too often. Do I have an MVP season in me? Maybe in the sense that I wouldn't really deserve it like Morneau didn't really deserve that MVP and I would only be earning the accollades if people were willing to overlook significant flaws in my game. But I can do a hell of a lot better than I am right now, and I think it would make me happier just to know that at some point I buckled down and gave physics all I had.

Plus, I feel increasingly miscast as a "beat writer." The sorts of insights that I have aren't things that change on a daily basis. Eventually, I felt it was pretty predictable what I was going to write each day. Pitcher X has a low ERA, but don't let that fool you, he's much worse--see exhibit A, B, C. Pitchers Y and Z have very similar value but have different styles--see exhibit D, E, F.

SBG tried to talk me out of this by offering me a chance to write once a week or even on an irregular basis, but at this point, I even lack the motivation to do that. The Twins are locked in a pennant race and they ought to be an interesting team*, but they are coming to Seattle on Monday, and I haven't made any kind of effort to get tickets. In this last week, even though they're finally in my time zone, I haven't really even bothered to watch the games and I've barely been interested enough to check the scores at the end of the day. There are probably a number of reasons for this, but going into them might double the length of this already-mammoth post.

*I must say that I've been a bit disappointed by analysis--mine included--of this team. The Twins are something like 8 or 9 wins above where they should be given their hits, walks, pitching peripherals, strength of schedule, etc. So by that way of looking at things, they are about a .500 team, and before the season I expected them to be about a 73-win team. They've had good health overall, especially from Mauer and Morneau, so moving them from 73-74 wins to 81-82 wins isn't such a huge stretch. But even the traditional baseball guys (see here, for example) are having trouble figuring out how this team is managing to win games. Under Gardy, the Twins have seemingly outperformed their pythag a lot, but I'm hesitant to put the bulk of that on Gardy. He probably deserves some of the credit, but part of me wonders if we might be looking at a story similar to that of the Phillips Curve. In baseball, analysts looked at the statistics, found some correlations to winning, and some teams adjusted their statistics to fall in line more with those statistics. But the original statistics were based on the underlying assumption that teams were putting players on the field with scouting and traditional stats as their primary guides. But now that guy with a .380 OBP on the Blue Jays might be a little less likely to have the speed that a guy with a .380 OBP in the past might have had, so maybe he doesn't make it around the bases as often, and maybe he doesn't make as many plays in the field, so maybe it makes a little less sense today to take peripherals and translate them into wins the same way for a team like the Blue Jays and a team like the Twins. And if you look at the two AL teams who are most outperforming their third-order wins, you're looking at the Twins and the Angels--and you'd be hard-pressed to find two teams that rely more on old-school scouting methods when they evaluate their players. Which might make scouting the new Moneyball, or something like that.

Maybe this team's performance is more sustainable than I might otherwise suspect, but even at that, my hunch is a long way from really providing much evidence that that is the case. You might be able to get an idea by looking to see if there's any relationship between speed scores and teams overperforming their pythag record. Or finding some other way to categorize "old school" and "new school" teams, then see if pythag records apply equally well to both categories. At this point in the season, the best evidence is probably the observation that at about this point of the season, a team's actual record begins to be a better predictor of its future performance than its pythag record, but even that explanation is kind of unsatisfying in that it doesn't provide us with a good reason as to why the Twins are outperforming their pythag.

I think back at how I used to spend my baseball time, and I used to spend a lot more time thinking and crunching numbers and a lot less time shooting the shit. Certainly some of that number crunching, especially early on, was looking for patterns that I likely had too little data to justify. But I felt like I was learning. I don't feel like I'm learning as much these days, and I feel like I spend so much time writing that I don't have much time to seek out and read the state of the art in sabermetrics. I don't want to wake up one day and realize that I'm needlessly clinging to outdated stats, and that's kind of where I feel like I'm headed.*

*Don't get me wrong here--I don't mean to suggest that it's not worth following baseball if you don't keep up to date on the latest stats. With the all of the atrocious announcing that I've found in the Olympic coverage so far, I've been thinking a lot about sports announcing. Specifically, we don't need it. People loved sports before the three-man booth and now they love sports sometimes in spite of the three-man booth. Sometimes the way that sports are covered just seems completely insane. No one would voluntarily decide to watch The Dark Knight on first viewing with Ebert telling us scene-by-scene whether or not the director was doing a good job. And no one would want to watch a movie where a voiceover described to us each object that appeared on the camera--it would be extremely tedious. Yes, I can see the beautiful mountains in the mist, you don't need to tell me that the mountains are looking beautiful today, I CAN SEE THAT. Yet that's exactly what most sports broadcasting is right now. One guy can't help but narrate everything that the camera points to. "Hey look, it's an American flag on a pole, waving in the breeze." Then the other guy can't help but have an opinion or a story about it. "That reminds me, John, no one makes flags like Betsy Ross did. No, sir. Back in her day, she started the flag and she finished it. None of this using machines to speed up the process business. If we insisted that all flags be handmade, we would be much better off today than we are right now." I like an interesting observation as much as the next guy, but most of the things the play-by-play guy says are obvious, most of the things the analyst says he's repeated a thousand times before, and most of the questions the interviewer asks are statements.

Anyway, there's a lot about sports coverage that we get and that you don't need to be a perfectly happy fan. Personally, I'm interested in the stats because I'm a very quantitative person and I really want to know how far the numbers can go towards describing the players on the field so that I can know when I'm watching something special or when I should expect that a player has really outdone himself and when he has underperformed or how I should distribute credit for a team's success. So when I say that I don't want to use outdated stats, that's a personal stance, and not something I would expect to be universal. If you're having a good time as a fan, more power to you.

It's almost 4am, and I need to wrap this thing up. If the length of this post is any indication, I still have some blogging left in me. I don't know that I'm going to get back to the grind any time soon, but when I come back, wearin' the 45, I'll have some more life experiences under my belt, a better idea of how to pace myself, and the drive to finish some of the stats projects I've been meaning to get around to for two years or more.

I don't have a really good excuse like raising a child, but there are a number of things I'll be working on while I'm gone. In no particular order, I need to work on being a better son, a better friend, a better roommate, a better student, a better teacher, a better programmer, a more caring person, a more attractive person, a better cook, a better reader, a better writer, etc., etc., etc.

There are so many people to thank here that I'm not going to be able to name you all. If you're reading this, then I'm sure I'm indebted to you in one way or another. I thought about trying to list all of the things I've learned from being around here, but that post would take me many hours to write and would certainly be incomplete.

So thanks for having me, SBG, thanks for your many kinds words to everyone who commented on SBG's announcement of my hiatus, and thanks to everyone for putting up with me and teaching me a great many things. I hope to get things straightened out eventually, and if there's a next time, I hope you'll all still be around, and I know that the community here will thrive as long as there's baseball to be played, with or without me.

WGOM Radio #3

SBG August 20, 2008, at 12:00 pm 14 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) ,

Parting is such sweet sorrow. SBG reflects on ubelmann's contributions to the WGOM.

WGOM Radio #3

Not the Best News

SBG August 20, 2008, at 8:08 am 37 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) ,

This isn't terrible, awful news, but it's not good news, either, at least for this site. Our guy ubelmann has decided to put his WGOM writing career on hold for an indefinite period of time. I was in contact with him last week and he informed me that the priorities of life are such that he can't continue to do it anymore. I begged him to stick around, even as I knew that was probably not in the cards.

He's promised to post an article explaining his decision and I was going to wait to announce this, but I've decided to put it out there, because I'm trying to deal with the impact of losing the guy who's done so much for this site. I'm looking for people who want to step into the breach and help out around here, if you are so inclined. I'm going to take most of the game logs -- brianS has volunteered to take one day a week, starting today -- and I'm going to pick up the reins regarding general Twins commentary. That means that all of the other things I want to do with the site will take a back seat, at least until the end of this glorious season. If you are interested in taking a day of the week, let me know [sbg at stickandballguy dot com].

I've got an edition of WGOM Radio scheduled for noon where I express my feelings about what ubes has contributed to this site. You can listen to that then. Until then, please know this: I am very grateful for all he's done for this site, I wish him well, and the door is always open for whenever he wants to write.

2nd Annual SBG Convention in Pictures

Andrew June 24, 2008, at 8:28 am 22 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hey everyone. Here are some pictures from this weekend's convention. I posted these in kind of a rush. I haven't had a chance to tweak them in Photoshop yet, so some of the pictures are a little dark. I'll re-post them when I have a chance to clean them up. Also, I know I have pictures of New Guy and Greenmachine somewhere too, so I'll make sure they get up.


Our picnic spot SBG snagged for us. It wasn't his first choice, but it turned out to be an excellent spot.


Banjo on the grill. The brats were excellent.


Click here to continue reading 2nd Annual SBG Convention in Pictures...

Convention Round Up

SBG June 22, 2008, at 7:21 am 16 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , , , , , , , , ,

Well, the Second Annual SBG Convention is now history. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. We had a beautiful day in the park, a pretty good turnout and a nice Twins win.

I got to Minnehaha Falls Park early in the morning so that I could claim a spot. There were a couple of choice spots that were already taken, but I was able to snag a decent spot, albeit one that was a ways away from the parking lot. All that meant really, was that trips to the car to get stuff took a little longer.

Andrew and his friend Q were the first to arrive. Our guy Andrew ran a 5K Saturday morning, and they came over to the Park from there. Then, my right hand man on the Convention, Banjo showed up and we started cooking. Pretty soon, the other people showed up and we had a nice picnic. Folks were talking baseball, visiting in general and having a good time. BabySBG was there, and most folks got to "hear" what a fish said. Folks got a chance to meet the inimitable ubelmann. I didn't get a chance to talk to him as much as I would have liked, but that's okay. It was fun to actually met him and put a face to all the writings.

Will Young brought a delicious birthday cake in honor of Sheenie, his wife and SBG Nation citizen and Andrew, both of whom were celebrating birthdays that day. I was not celebrating my birthday, but I enjoyed the cake nonetheless.

It seemed like the day just flew by. I think we could have started the thing at 12 Noon and people would still have been reluctant to head out at 5 PM. But, we had to get to the game. So, off we went. The game itself was fast moving, with very little offense until the Twins exploded for six runs in the seventh inning. New Guy made a number of predictions, and I'm pretty sure all of them came true. Ha!

John Bonnes, AKA, "The Twins Geek" stopped by at the game and gave us all free copies of his wonderful "Game Day" program. Thanks, John.

All in all, it was a fun day. I got to spend some time talking with pretty much everyone, which was cool. Anytime you get to talk Twins with the likes of Aaron, Seth, Nick and all the rest of the guys is a good time. Thanks to everyone who came to the Convention and thanks to Banjo for all your help. It was a fun time. Hopefully, next year's convention will be even better.

Remind Me Again, Who Scored The Winning Run?

ubelmann May 28, 2008, at 2:23 am 10 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) ,

Oh yeah, that guy:

Joe Mauer, All-Star

Game 48: Twins at Tigers

SBG May 23, 2008, at 5:00 pm 174 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , ,

In case you hadn’t noticed, the last couple of introductions to the Game Logs have been, well, brief. ubelmann contacted me to let me know that he’d be on vacation for a while and so things have been quiet. I thought I’d, you know, actually pitch in and add some content to this site.

First of all, I’d have to speculate where someone like ubelmann goes for a vacation. Is he off killing polar bears with his bare hands? Is he swimming the Amazon River from mouth to source? Is he finally solving that pesky “Where is D.B. Cooper?” mystery? Perhaps ubelmann is designing a vehicle that runs on solar power. I’m sure it’s something fantastic.

Anywho, the Twins travel to Motown to face the underachieving Tigers this weekend. The Tigers are mired in last place, three games behind the Twins and another 3½ behind the Chisox. Of course, the Tigers made a huge splash in the off season by trading for Miguel Cabrera and handing the portly one a bazillion dollars. Unfortunately for the Motor City Kitties, the expected coronation that was supposed to be the 2008 season hasn’t materialized. The Tigers are 20-27 and have a RS/RA differential of 222/246. Yep, they’ve scored runs (third in the AL), but they’ve allowed runs like Montezuma’s Revenge (13th in the AL). Their Pythagenport record sits at 21.2-25.8, which suggests a little bad luck, perhaps, but generally, that suggests that they deserve the record that they have. Or, more accurately, that they’ll continue to play like they have. Dark days ahead in Detroit. Or, are they?

Baseball Prospectus, the stat-geekiest website around, doesn’t stop with a simple Pythagenport formula when analyzing team records. No, sir. They have also included a second order Pythagenport formula, which is calculated using Equivalent Runs Scored and Allowed and a third order Pythagenport formula, which is calculated using Equivalent Runs Scored and Allowed, adjusted for level of competition. The third order Pythagenport is the formula of choice, of course, and I am guessing that it has a better predictive value and better fit than the other two. That’s a guess.

Looking at the third order Pythagenport, the Tigers have an AEQR/AEQRA ration of 230/227. Their offense is still third best and their pitching is still crappy when viewed in these terms, (12th in the AL), but it’s not quite as crappy and the net effect is that Detroit models at about a .500 team (23.9-23.1). That’s still bad news for the Motowners, but not quite as bad as what their record says. In fact, they’ve underperformed their third order record more than any other team in the AL. In all likelihood, this is not going to be a great season for the Tigers, but some improvement should be expected.

Then, there are the Twins. I have felt that the Twins are about a 75 win team. They have no punch and a somewhat suspect pitching staff. At 23-24, they are slightly ahead of that pace. However, their AEQR/AEQRA ratio is 197/224 (their pitching is almost as bad as the Tigers!), which translates to a 20.7-26.3 record. In other words, they model out as a 71 win team. The Twins have been lucky (or maybe this shows the value of Joe Nathan, who knows) in that they have a 10-8 record in one run games and a 4-3 record in two run games for a 14-11 record in close games. Perhaps, they’ll continue to be lucky and have a record better than what would be expected. Considering the games already played and their third order winning percentage, they project to 76 wins, right about what I expected. The Tigers project out to 79 wins. Considering the preseason hopes and dreams of each team, man, do those 76 wins for the Twins look a lot better than the 79 wins for the Tigers.

Checking in with Johan Santana

ubelmann May 1, 2008, at 7:02 pm 22 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , ,

I hadn't checked up on Santana in a while, so when I heard about this, I figured I would take a peek at Santana's numbers.

Though I don't think that ERA accurately reflects how well a pitcher has pitched, it has been Santana's early-season ERA that spawned the belief that Santana is a slow starter. Let's take a look at his March/April ERA since he's been a starter full-time:

5.40 -- 2004
3.55 -- 2005
4.45 -- 2006
3.60 -- 2007
3.12 -- 2008

His career ERA as a starter is 3.11. There was a legitimate reason for his slow start in 2004--he had bone chips removed from his elbow in the offseason and there's normally an adjustment period after that procedure. So, other than that, 2006 stands out, and 2005/2007 are both worse than average...but I'm not seeing a very big effect here. Maybe Santana's something like a 3.50 pitcher in April, with one good outlier ('08) and one bad outlier ('06) and the surgery adjustment year.

Now for the good stuff:

9.6 K/G, 2.0 BB/G, 46.8 GB%, 3.14 xFIP -- Santana, 2008

Going by the numbers at fangraphs, I get Santana's career average to be 37.8% GB%. Santana was getting more ground balls in 2004-6 than he did last year, which I think was due in large part to his blister problems being worse than usual and preventing him from throwing his slider as often. Sure enough, he's back up to 14.7% sliders this year (15.0% career average) from 11.6% sliders last year. If his 3.14 xFIP (not adjusted for park or league, mind you) holds up, it would be his best xFIP as a starter.

As for info on other players mentioned in trade rumors (though not necessarily actual trade proposals), small sample size rules in full effect:

Phil Hughes -- As I alluded to at the top, he just went on the DL. Injury problems could help explain his rather wretched start to the season. Long-term, I still think he'll be a good pitcher, but I think the biggest knock on him in the off-season was the potential for injury, and this doesn't help.

Ian Kennedy -- 5.88 xFIP, more walks than strikeouts. Yikes. He was projected by PECOTA to have a ~4.30 ERA, and ZiPS had him at 4.38...something seems weird here. I'm willing to call this a small sample size mirage for now.

Jon Lester -- 5.11 xFIP, more walks than strikeouts. PECOTA had him projected for a ~5.30 ERA, ZiPS had him projected for a ~5.00 ERA. I still don't see what the big deal is. He's just slightly less overrated than Glen Perkins as far as I can tell.

Philip Humber -- 4.5 K/G, 3.8 BB/G, 0.7 HR/G for Rochester. Looks like he would be a total disaster in the majors right now with that line, since you'd figure the K/G to go down some, the BB/G to go up some, and the HR/G to go way up, since major league hitters have a lot more power than minor league hitters.

Kevin Mulvey -- 8.7 K/G, 3.2 BB/G, 0.3 HR/G for Rochester. (Roughly a 2.70 FIP.) Perhaps performing better than any non-Santana pitcher mentioned in Santana trade rumors, Mulvey has gotten off to a very good start in AAA. Projected to have a ~5.00 major league ERA this year by PECOTA, I wouldn't be surprised if Mulvey has just as good of a major league career as Jon Lester, if not better.

Justin Masterson -- 11.4 K/G, 3.3 BB/G, 0.0 HR/G for Pawtucket. Has been called up to the Red Sox and made one start. Masterson's right there with Mulvey--probably a little ahead of him--for early season performance. Long-term, I'd guess he has similar value to Mulvey and Lester.

Deolis Guerra -- Still pitching in High A. Still really young.

Melky Cabrera -- Hitting a robust .299/.370/.494, for an 8.7 VORP, which would be the best VORP on our offense.

Jacoby Ellsbury -- .280/.396/.440, for a 7.6 VORP, which would also be the best VORP on our offense.

Carlos Gomez -- .265/.279/.373, for a 1.9 VORP, which would also be the best VORP on our offense which is the 5th-best VORP on our offense. Okay, got a little carried away there. Now, VORP does take into account his stolen bases, so no giving him extra credit there, but he seems to be playing at least average defense in the field. If there was just one problem with the Twins in April (and I count more than one problem) Gomez was not that problem.

He's struck out 24% of the time he's stepped to the plate, which is a lot of strikeouts. But, for a little bit of context, he's not anywhere near the league lead in that category. Of 279 hitters with 50 or more PA, he ranks 27th in most strikeouts per PA. Of 234 hitters with 75 or more PA, he ranks 22nd in most strikeouts per PA. Some guys ahead of him on the list (and their K-rate):

34% -- Mark Reynolds
32% -- Ryan Howard
30% -- Jack Cust
29% -- Carlos Pena
27% -- Jack Hannahan
26% -- Jim Thome
25% -- Richie Sexson
25% -- Bill Hall
24% -- Jason Varitek

Meanwhile, Brendan Harris has been striking out at a nearly-as-awful 22% rate and no one seems to have noticed. It's clear that to succeed with a high strikeout rate, you've gotta have some power, and I think Gomez really might develop that power. His ISO is just as good as Cuddyer's so far this season, and the only regulars hitting for more power are Morneau and Kubel. (Certainly he's shown more power then Delmon Young.)

Anyway, I'm getting a bit off on a tangent. The trade really doesn't look any different today than it did when we made it. I still would have probably preferred Hughes/Cabrera/stuff (especially if 'stuff' was halfway decent), but I'm not really sure what was being offered, and what we wound up with probably won't turn out to be a lot worse than that, and could turn out to be better. There's a lot of risk involved with trying to predict the future.

Contracting First Basemen

brianS January 28, 2008, at 12:20 am 3 LTEs - (Sorry, but the time to add LTEs has expired) , , , , , ,

as a supplement to ubes' fine, current 3-part series on first basemen, I thought I'd contribute a little salary data (from Cot's). Entries are ordered as in ubelmann's 2006 table.


# NAME TEAM LG Experience* Years/Dollars Signed
1 Albert Pujols SLN NL 3 years 7/100M 2004
2 Ryan Howard PHI NL under 2 1/0.9M 2007
3 Lance Berkman HOU NL 5+ 6/85M 2005
4 Nick Johnson WAS NL 4+ 3/16.5M 2006
5 Justin Morneau MIN AL 3+ 6/80M 2008
6 Paul Konerko CHA AL 7+ 5/60M 2006
7 Mark Teixeira ATL NL 5 1/12.5M 2007
8 Lyle Overbay TOR AL 3+ 4/24M 2006
9 Todd Helton COL NL 3+ 9/141.5M 2001**
10 Adam LaRoche PIT NL 3+ 1/5M 2007
11 Adrian Gonzalez SDN NL 1+ 4/9.5M 2007
12 Nick Swisher CHA AL 2+ 5/26.75 2007
13 Carlos Delgado NYN NL 9+ 4/52M 2005
14 Nomar Garciaparra LAN NL 10 2/18.5M 2006
15 Scott Hatteberg CIN NL 11 1/1.85M 2008!
16 Kevin Youkilis BOS AL 2+ FA TBA
17 Kevin Millar BAL AL 9+ 1/2.75M 2008!!
18 Richie Sexson SEA AL 6+ 4/50M 2004
19 Prince Fielder MIL NL 2+ ?? 2008
20 Mike Lamb MIN AL 7+ 2/6.6M 2008
21 Conor Jackson ARI NL 2+ ?? 2008
22 Chris Shelton TEX AL 2+ Minors 2008
23 Doug Mientkiewicz ??? AL 8 FA TBA
24 Mike Jacobs FLO NL 2+ ?? 2008
25 Ty Wigginton TBA AL 4+ 1/4.35M 2008

*"Experience" is approx. service time at signing of current contract.
**Contract extension, runs 2003-2011 plus an option year
! club option exercised 10/31/2007
!! option guaranteed with 475 PA in 2007 (he had 562)

Comments:
1. Morneau got dollars comparable to what Poo-holes got back in 2004 with similar service time (but Poo-holian performance). If you assume about 10 percent per year salary inflation in the Majors, that Pujols contract today would have been more like 7/135M. And Berkman's 6/85M would be more like 6/103M.
2. I don't think I was entirely consistent with the "signing" dates. I was aiming to indicate the signing year, where the first year of the contract generally was the following year. But don't hold me too tightly to that.