Me, Elsewhere: Translating Batting Lines into Pitching Lines

by Geoff Young on Mar 17, 2010 (0) Comments

My latest at Hardball Times dusts off an old Bill James toy that attempts to show what a hitter’s output might look like recast as a pitching line. For example, if we take Adrian Gonzalez’s 2009 season, we get the following pitching line (see the article for methodology):

   IP   H   R  ER  BB  SO  ERA SO/9
142.2 153 124 112 119 109 7.07 6.88

Then, because I’m not content to leave well enough alone, I found actual pitching comps for these lines, e.g.:

Player          Year    IP   H   R  ER  BB  SO  ERA SO/9
Adrian Gonzalez 2009 142.2 153 124 112 119 109 7.07 6.88
Jason Bere      1995 137.2 151 120 110 106 110 7.19 7.19

I ran some career numbers, too. Here’s what I got for Gonzalez:

Year     IP   H   R  ER  BB  SO  ERA SO/9 Comp
2004   10.2  10   5   5   2   6 4.22 5.06 Scott Sanderson 1993
2005   40.1  34  16  14  10  37 3.12 8.26 Mike Mussina 1997
2006  142.2 173  97  87  52 113 5.49 7.13 Tom Gordon 1996
2007  158.2 182 116 104  65 140 5.90 7.94 Dave Stewart 1994
2008  157.0 172 109  98  74 142 5.62 8.14 Juan Guzman 1994
2009  142.2 153 124 112 119 109 7.07 6.88 Jason Bere 1995
Total 652.0 724 467 420 322 547 5.80 7.55 Jeff Juden 1998

So what? I dunno, it’s just fun. Read the article…

Junior’s Revamped Swing and Other Tales of Derring-Do

by Geoff Young on Mar 15, 2010 (2) Comments

In which the author recounts the events of Sunday afternoon’s baseball game between the Cleveland Indians and the San Diego Padres using only his bare hands and a plethora of bullet points…

  • Chris Young looked like Chris Young. Fastball in the high-80s, everything up, lots of pitches. He needed 29 to make it through the first, and was pulled in the fourth after 69. Word is, he’s worked on shortening his delivery with runners on base. Whatever. The two runs he allowed came on a bases loaded HBP with an 0-2 count and a solo homer to Jhonny Peralta, one of the few projected Indians starters in the lineup.
  • Cory Luebke worked two scoreless innings, mainly against scrubs.
  • Nick Hundley drove in two runs with a triple to center in the third. He hit the ball well, but Cleveland center fielder Trevor Crowe really should have caught it.
  • Chase Headley looked comfortable at third base. He wasn’t challenged, but it’s good to see him get his reps.
  • Kyle Blanks and Jerry Hairston Jr. both hit the ball hard a couple of times.
  • Drew Cumberland came into the game late as a pinch runner and swiped second base while wearing one of those goofy giant helmets.

On another note (and one entirely too important for bullet points), Corey Brock tells us about Tony Gwynn Jr.’s revamped swing:

[Gwynn] has gone to a narrower base in his stance, as his feet aren’t nearly as spread apart as they were a year ago. Also, Gwynn has closed his front toe to help keep his front side closed. Finally, he’s holding his hands lower.

The new approach didn’t produce results on Sunday (a couple of lazy fly balls). Still, Gwynn looked like a big-league hitter in the box, which I couldn’t say when he used to set up with his weight on the front leg. It may or may not pay dividends (those minor-league numbers don’t lie), but I’m glad that Gwynn is trying to incorporate the lower half of his body into his swing. At the very least, he’s giving himself a chance.

I Think I’m In Love

by Geoff Young on Mar 14, 2010 (4) Comments

No, not the Eddie Money song. In fact, this costs no money.

Our friends at Seamheads mentioned something called the National Pastime Almanac the other day. According to the web site, “The National Pastime Almanac is a Baseball Encyclopedia with statistics, streaks, rankings, records, awards, etc. from 1876 through 2009, regular and post season.”

Uh, okay. I might be interested.

Also, it’s free. As in, completely. And addictive. As in, completely.

What can you do with this thing? I’m still working that out (which is half the fun), but mainly you can create all kinds of lists. Here are a few I’ve thrown together so far:

Players Who Hit 100 or More Home Runs in Their First Four Years with the Padres

  1. Adrian Gonzalez, 130
  2. Nate Colbert, 127
  3. Ken Caminiti, 121
  4. Phil Nevin, 108
  5. Ryan Klesko, 106

Padres Pitchers Who Won 20 Percent or More of Their Team’s Games

  1. Randy Jones 1976, 30.1%
  2. Randy Jones 1975, 28.2%
  3. Gaylord Perry 1978, 25.0%
  4. Clay Kirby 1971, 24.6%
  5. Andy Benes 1993, 24.6%
  6. Dave Roberts 1971, 23.0%
  7. Pat Dobson 1970, 22.2%
  8. Andy Hawkins 1985, 21.7%
  9. Jake Peavy 2007, 21.3%
  10. Clay Kirby 1972, 20.7%

Career Double Plays Turned per 162 Games by a Padres Shortstop (min. 500 games)

  1. Ozzie Smith, 102.7
  2. Khalil Greene, 95.5
  3. Chris Gomez, 94.7
  4. Enzo Hernandez, 90.6
  5. Garry Templeton, 87.1

National League West 2004-2009

  1. Dodgers: 513-459 (.528), .267/.337/.411, 3.98 ERA, att. 45,678/game
  2. Padres: 484-489 (.497), .256/.328/.401, 4.08 ERA, att. 32,277/game
  3. Giants: 473-498 (.487), .261/.326/.402, 4.23 ERA, att. 38,099/game
  4. Rockies: 467-506 (.480), .269/.342/.432, 4.77 ERA, att. 28,966/game
  5. Diamondbacks: 446-526 (.459), .255/.324/.414, 4.47 ERA, att. 28,113/game

Oldest Padres manager? Jack McKeon, 1990: age 59. Youngest? Jim Riggleman, 1992: age 39.

Padres who have hit 30 or more doubles, hit 30 or more homers, stolen 20 or more bases, and struck out fewer than 100 times in a season? Steve Finley (1996), Ryan Klesko (2001).

Which team has the longest streak of hitting 100 or more homers? The A’s: 41 years (1969-present). Hitting fewer than 100 homers? The Reds: 61 years (1876-1938).

I could go on, and I have. This is a beautiful thing. I’ll talk to you later; I’ve got stuff to do.

IVIE 2010: Last Call for Projections

by Geoff Young on Mar 14, 2010 (0) Comments

It’s time to start wrapping up our community projections. We’ve got about 20-25 guesses for most players so far. If you’ve contributed already, thanks. If you haven’t, head on over and do that thing:

I’ll leave these open till Friday, tally everything up over the weekend, and present the final results sometime after that. It’ll be awesome.

Me, Elsewhere: Padres Preview at BDD

by Geoff Young on Mar 13, 2010 (3) Comments

Our good friends at Baseball Daily Digest have allowed me to grace their virtual pages with this year’s preview of the Padres. Much of this is review material for regular Ducksnorts readers, but I like to think you’ll enjoy it anyway.

From the article:

This is going to be a learning season. The young players will learn more about themselves and what it means to be a big leaguer. The ownership group will learn more about its players (specifically, which ones will form the nucleus of the next contending Padres team) and its fans. The fans will learn that young players will drive you crazy and that no ownership group is perfect. With luck, they will learn a little patience as well, as these young players and this ownership group figure out how to make things work in San Diego.

Read the rest of the article at BDD.

Giles Retires

by Geoff Young on Mar 11, 2010 (10) Comments

Former Padres outfielder Brian Giles announced his retirement Thursday. I’ve had plenty to say about Giles over the years, most of it good.

I’ll defend the trade that brought him home to San Diego for as long as anyone will listen. And I’ll always appreciate him for carrying the club on his back in 2005, leading the Padres to their first post-season appearance in 7 years.

Here’s the nasty truth about getting old. Sometimes when skills disappear (health is a skill), they don’t return:

  • 2008: 653 PA, .306/.398/.456, 137 OPS+
  • 2009: 253 PA, .191/.277/.271, 55 OPS+

We never saw the prodigious power out here that Giles displayed in his prime, when he got to play in the smaller NL Central parks. What we did see were ridiculous plate discipline and a hard-nosed style of baseball that made him a pleasure to watch.

Three moments that exemplified the type of player Giles was will stick in my memory for a long time:

  • He once chased a fly ball into the right-field corner at Petco Park, grabbed the fence with his bare hand, and pulled himself up the wall, nearly making a spectacular backhanded grab of what turned out to be a home run. The only thing that kept him from catching the ball was a fan, who must have been shocked to see Giles’ glove up there, a good 12-15 feet off the ground.
  • Another time, he took out Houston’s catcher (I think it was against Houston; that’s not the part that sticks with me) on an attempted double play. It was a clean play that knocked the poor guy off his feet and sent his throw sailing down the right-field line, allowing Giles to score and prolonging the inning.
  • My favorite Giles moment, though, occurred when he nearly decapitated Kevin Kouzmanoff after Kouz delivered a game-winning single in his rookie campaign. This was during that horrendous slump at the beginning of Kouzmanoff’s Padres career. As soon as the winning run crossed home plate, the entire team went nuts. And whenever the team went nuts, you could always count on Giles to take things to an entirely different level. The memory that lingers is of Giles flying in from who-knows-where to knock Kouz on his noggin. I remember thinking, “Dude, he just got a hit. Go easy on the kid; you might need him tomorrow.” But going easy never seemed to be Giles’ way.

Thanks for everything. We had fun. From the looks of it, so did you.

The Game, It Was on the TV

by Geoff Young on Mar 10, 2010 (5) Comments

I watched a few innings of the Padres split-squad game against Cleveland on TV Wednesday night. It was 1-1 in the second when I turned it on, 10-2 in the sixth when I turned it off to pick up Mrs. Ducksnorts from the airport. Some observations:

  • For whatever reason, the Indians feed was being broadcast in San Diego. I hadn’t expected my first look at this year’s Padres to come accompanied by commentary from people I didn’t know, talking about players I probably wouldn’t see all year. The Cleveland announcers were fine, it’s just… well, I couldn’t figure out why they were there… on my screen. You know, where Padres broadcasters should be.
  • The broadcast had Aaron Poreda’s fastball at 85-89 mph. It also had his pitches all over the place. I’d hoped the latter was an optical illusion, like how TV adds 10 pounds, but the final line (0 IP, 3 H, 7 R, 6 ER, 3 BB, 0 SO) doesn’t lie. Steve Webber is the pitching coach at Portland. Dear Coach Webber: Please fix Poreda.
  • Matt Stairs isn’t in great shape, he’s in unrecognizable shape. I had no idea that’s who I was looking at when he batted. Congrats on passing the beach ball. Must’ve been painful.
  • Grady Sizemore hit a grand slam off Jackson Quezada. That’s a fair fight.
  • I see why folks like Simon Castro. He’s got long arms and legs, and his fastball ran 91-94 mph on Wednesday. He mixed in some breaking balls, but I’m not prepared to offer an opinion on those.
  • At some point, the broadcasters interviewed Indians pitching coach Tim Belcher, who touched on an aspect of statistical analysis that often gets overlooked. Belcher noted that something like only 7% of first-pitch strikes turn into hits. He credited “the guys on the fourth floor” for coming up with that number and said it helped him sell his pitchers on the merits of throwing first-pitch strikes. We hear about statistical analysis being applied to front-office decision-making processes and maybe to managerial strategy, but I like that at least one coach is using it to try and influence behavior. I’m sure there are others… as well there should be.

It wasn’t much, but it was a start. That’s better than nothing, and I’ll take it for now.

Me, Elsewhere: Second-Year Players

by Geoff Young on Mar 10, 2010 (2) Comments

My latest article at Hardball Times focuses on eight guys who made their big-league debuts in 2009 more or less as full-time players. Padres shortstop Everth Cabrera is among them.

We’ve compared Cabrera to Rafael Furcal before, as has everyone else. While digging, I found a few more names worth pondering:

Player          Year Pos  PA   BA  OBP  SLG OPS+ BB  K
Everth Cabrera  2009  SS 438 .255 .342 .361  98  46 88
Rafael Furcal   2000  SS 542 .295 .394 .382  97  73 80
Pete Rose       1963  2B 695 .273 .334 .371 101  55 72
Chuck Knoblauch 1991  2B 634 .281 .351 .350  91  59 40
Steve Sax       1982  2B 699 .282 .335 .359  97  49 53

This stuff is like reading tea leaves, but it’s fun.

Incidentally, I have another comp for Cabrera in mind, although it’s not flattering. As much as I love him, it’s important to present the negative as well as the positive; otherwise, we are operating on belief.

I’ll write something up as soon as my notes start to make sense. Until then, enjoy…

Friday Links (5 Mar 10)

by Geoff Young on Mar 05, 2010 (3) Comments

Friday. Links. Friday Links. Get it?

  • Three thoughts (Inside the Padres). Quoth Grady Fuson, as related by Tom Krasovic: “I told Will Venable: ‘You’re going to end up being a better big leaguer than you were a minor leaguer. I hardly every say that (about a player), but I believe it. I do.” Yeah, I’ve kind of reached the same conclusion.
  • 5 arms eye one slot in Padres’ rotation (U-T). Mat Latos, Wade LeBlanc, Cesar Ramos, Tim Stauffer, and Sean Gallagher are competing for that last spot. Latos has the highest upside, LeBlanc is ready now, Stauffer and Gallagher are out of options (Gallagher is also a bullpen candidate), and Ramos isn’t very good.
  • SABR Day in America – Recap (Padres Trail). Hey, look, a new Padres blog. Woo-hoo!
  • Interview With Madfriars.com Denis Savage and John Conniff: Part 1 (Friar Forecast). Good prospect talk. Be sure to catch Part 2 and Part 3 as well.
  • Padres’ Headley happy to be back at third (MLB.com). Quoth Chase Headley: “I feel like I’m at the point now where I have seen what’s out there, I have faced a good portion of the guys in the big leagues and I think the team is counting on me to step up and be a big producer in the lineup. I also think going back to the infield is going to be beneficial. You want to be where you’re going to be the best player.”
  • Improving pitcher projections (Hardball Times). Fascinating stuff from John R. Mayne. I need to read this more thoroughly.
  • Eck: He’s got it (U-T). I wish I’d seen Chris Jenkins’ article on David Eckstein before writing my own piece. Money quote from Eckstein: “You can’t be happy just to be here. Play mean. Don’t just be happy with your four at-bats. You’ve got a job to do. You show up, you play as hard as you can. Understand the game. Be at the right spot. If you’re not playing in the game, watch and learn from the game and try to get better in every facet of the game. Deserve to be out there.” Sing it to me, brother. [h/t Gaslamp Ball]
  • What Puts Fans In the Seats? (Baseball Analysts). Good stuff from Sky Andrecheck. Much of this is covered in Vince Gennaro’s excellent Diamond Dollar$. From the article: “Adding all of the expected attendance increases over 10 years shows that the new park boosts attendance by about 4.5 million visitors. No wonder Selig and company have been so obsessed about building new ballparks.”
  • Physicist writes a better formula to predict baseball success (Science Daily). Sure, why not. [h/t SABR-L]
  • MLB Gameday BIP Location (Katron.org). Coolest. Thing. Ever… This week. [h/t The Book]
  • THT’s Top 100 Prospects (Hardball Times). Matt Hagen delivers the goods. Donavan Tate at #9 overall seems a bit premature to me. Jaff Decker at #33 makes more sense. I hope Matt is right about Tate. The Padres could use a superstar right about now.
  • Quick FAN Standings (Fangraphs). David Appelman has the Padres winning 79 games this year, which sounds eminently plausible to me.
  • Forsythe buzz (Inside the Padres). Kras informs us that third base prospect “Logan Forsythe is getting a look at second base.” The Pades, it should be noted, don’t have a real good track record in that department; see, e.g., Sean Burroughs and Jake Gautreau (extenuating circumstances in the latter case, but still). Maybe Forsythe will be different. It can’t hurt to try. [h/t Gaslamp Ball]
  • Padres postscript: 3/4/10 (Who’s your Padre?). Hey, the Padres played a game. Corey tells us all about it.

LynchMob has been busy this week and so gets a special section:

  • Music connects Trucks family (MLB.com). Peter Gammons talks about former big-league pitcher Virgil Trucks and his nephew’s son, guitar virtuouso Derek Trucks (most famous for playing with the Allman Brothers, although I prefer some of his other stuff, e.g., “Greensleeves” with McCoy Tyner..
  • Bill James ranks Felix as top young talent in baseball (Mariners blog). This does not paint a flattering picture of the Padres. As LynchMob notes: “I’m interested to watch his list evolve as the Padres advance a rash of 19-year-olds from low-A ball this year to the Padres in 2013… with plenty of talent in between.”
  • Bullpen Gospels: Getting The Call (Baseball America). Friend of Ducksnorts Dirk Hayhurst reflects on his call-up to the big leagues: “I watched Portland pass from the back of a cab as I made my way to the airport. Yet it was not the trees or the buildings I beheld; rather, I was looking at my life, a film of memories projected on the world as it went by.”

Got links? Leave ‘em in the comments, email me (geoff@ducksnorts.com), or hit me up on Facebook or Twitter.

Need links? Check out Ducksnorts @ Delicious, updated daily.

IVIE 2010: Second Call for Projections

by Geoff Young on Mar 04, 2010 (1) Comments

Speaking of projections, we’re in the process of assembling the Ducksnorts community IVIE projections. If you’ve entered your guesses already, thanks; if not, go for it:

I’ve listed relievers first because they’re not getting much love (except from Fangraphs). Fix that for me, would you?