Corey Hart's knee and the NL Central

by Jason Wojciechowski

Buuuuuuuuuu
Photo by Adam Fagen

The N.L. Central seems like a weird place. The cities involved are a mix of rust belt, beer towns, and major metropolises, the teams a mishmash of ancient storied franchises and relative new kids on the block, the front offices running the gamut from extremely nerd-friendly (Chicago, Houston) to having a rep for being old-school (Walt Jocketty in Cincinnati, though this is neither a criticism nor a complete description -- he worked under Sandy Alderson in Oakland, after all, and, more importantly, he's amassed a record of success that makes the process-oriented questions moot).

Just this off-season, the division has been home to two major player defections (Albert Pujols to Anaheim and Prince Fielder to Detroit), two major front-office changes (Jeff Luhnow to Houston and Theo Epstein (and company) to Chicago), one major trade (Mat Latos to Cincinnati), and ... well, I'm trying to come up with something for the Pirates. I guess they acquired A.J. Burnett. Or they signed Andrew McCutchen to a long-term contract.¹ Or they took a flier on Erik Bedard. I don't know.

For all that, though, there's something deeply familiar about the way PECOTA sees the division shaking out this season, with three teams bunched together on top (St. Louis, of course, along with Cincinnati joining the big boys and Milwaukee maintaining its recent stature as a contender) and three also-rans, including one team that is the consensus worst squad in the league (Houston, of course, a team whose starting third baseman, Jimmy Paredes, is projected to be worth a full win below replacement level). Without looking too hard at recent years' final results, in part because those are affected by a whole variety of in-season events, luck, and so forth, this seems to nearly always be the case in this division. The Pirates are a constant at the bottom and the Cardinals have become something of a constant at the top, but the shifting fortunes of the four teams in the middle seems not to have resulted in a breakaway favorite with any frequency.

That bunching at the top, though, makes something like Corey Hart's knee surgery that much more important. In the aggregate, Milwaukee is a lot better situated to lose Hart than, say, Rickie Weeks (who is backed up by Cesar Izturis -- yowch), because they've got Nyjer Morgan waiting. The shape of Morgan's performance is different from Hart's, but they could well be equivalently valuable players: as PECOTA figures Hart to be worth something like an extra run every five or six games on offense,² while eye-balling their FRAA figures from the last few years, and considering that Morgan has amassed his above-average marks in center field, you might estimate that Morgan earns that entire difference back.³

You also might not think Morgan's defense makes up the entire gap, and in any case, when you're talking about Hart maybe missing a week or three games or being ready on Opening Day but not being 100%, you're at a level where, to paraphrase Joe Sheehan, variance uber alles. By which I/he just mean/s that anything can happen in a tiny sample. We can figure the expected runs the team loses with Corey Hart's injury, and we can convert that to an expected number of wins, but we'll be working with fractions, and baseball in the real world deals in whole numbers. Does Morgan face a hitter that Hart would have mashed? Does Morgan catch a ball in the gap that Hart would have let roll past for a double? Does Morgan steal a key base in the ninth inning?

The point being that I'm tempted to write "Hart's injury doesn't change Milwaukee's playoff aspirations," but I can't bring myself to do it. Even qualifiers don't work for me. Does the injury "likely" not change anything? Probably? If we get down into the murk of "probably" and "maybe," then the entire piece becomes even more superfluous than it already is. So fine. Let me sum it up this way: the Brewers are in a division and league situation with no margin for error, but, fortunately for them, they have an extremely capable backup to Hart for as long as he needs to return to full strength after knee surgery -- so capable, in fact, that there might be no drop in their odds of making the playoffs at all.

---

1. I don't want to minimize the importance of the McCutchen contract, which is very likely to look extremely team-friendly when we look back on it, but these deals have become old news, especially when the player is someone like McCutchen, with three years in the league already. Matt Moore or Salvador Perez signing deals with like ten major-league days under their belt? That's exciting. An arbitration buy-out that also eats up a few years of free agency? Eh, we've seen this film before.  ↩

2. Take Hart's .283 projected True Average, convert it to runs by subtracting .260 and dividing by 0.9 (per instructions of Colin Wyers), resulting in about .025 per plate appearance. Do the same for Nyjer Morgan's and you get about -.011. (These figures are compared to league average, so a negative isn't literally taking runs off the board.) So Hart creates about .036 more runs per plate appearance. Figure about five PAs per game to get .18 per game, and that's 5.6 games to get one run.  ↩

3. It's worth asking, as always, whether Milwaukee knows something we don't, especially as regards defense. As I ran through in the main text, the players look awfully similar in terms of overall value. (You could also just look at their WARP projections, which are very nearly equal in approximately equal projected playing time.) Hart, though, is seen as the every-day right-fielder, while Morgan is some sort of fourth outfielder or perhaps platoon center-fielder with Carlos Gomez. There are a million possibilities, both good (something about Nyjer Morgan means he'd be stretched as a regular; Morgan's defense is overrated by FRAA; Hart's is underrated) and bad (the team thinks Hart is better than he because his power-hitting is seductive; attitude issues). It's not really worth speculating about, but I think it is important to note the possibility that we're missing something significant.  ↩

What Do Minor League Walk and Strikeout Rates Tell Us About Prospects? Double-A Edition

By Chris St. John


Introduction
A few months ago, I created a database that includes all of the prospect rankings from Baseball America, Keith Law and Kevin Goldstein. I didn't have a direct purpose for it, I'm just the type of person who likes to accumulate as much data as possible. So it sat around on my computer until I found a good use for it. Well, thanks to fantasy baseball and Starling Marte's horrible 3.8% walk rate in AA last season, I have. Marte is a possible target in my dynasty minor league draft and I wanted to see what other prospects had poor walk rates and how successful they were in their careers.

Method
In interest of saving digital space (and your scrolling finger), I will only post the full method on the Rookie and Low-A edition of this series.

History
Rookie and Low-A
Single-A
Advanced-A

Double-A
434 of the 480 prospects in this dataset accumulated at least 150 plate appearances in Double-A. 20% were successful, 20% were average and 60% were busts. This is close to the overall 21/21/58 trend for all prospects.

Walks

What Were the Most Damaging Home Runs in 2011?

By Chris St. John


INTRODUCTION
You know what's awesome? Home runs. There is something incredibly satisfying about a player lining up a pitch perfectly and knocking it out of the park as hard as possible. Now, we could all sit back and enjoy this majestic marriage of coordination and power, refusing to dig any deeper than the absolutely beautiful surface, but...that's not me. I don't get the same feeling watching a pop-fly that has "just enough" as I do when a slugger almost certainly creates irreparable damage to a spherical object. I could mount up the subjective evidence and describe how one looks like a fly ball to right field while the other is a no-doubter off the bat, but I need to know exactly how much better. So I made up a way to do just that. Enter Home Run Damage:

MATH
If you're not interested in the math behind this, feel free to skip ahead.

The ESPN Home Run Tracker (nee Hit Tracker Online) is a beautiful thing. If you're not familiar with the site, it uses physics to figure out exactly how far a home run should have gone "if the home run flew uninterrupted all the way back to field level." I found the average and standard deviation of the true distance and speed off the bat for all home runs in 2011, excluding inside-the-parkers. Then, I found the z-score for each home run's true distance and speed. I added the two together to find the total amount of "Damage" caused by each home run. (Sorry, Jose Canseco, I didn't factor in the winning or losing team into this analysis.)


LEAST DAMAGING

Out-of-box Rookie of the Year candidates

by Jason Wojciechowski

Missed by two feet
Photo by John Telleria

Rookie of the Year guesses generally seem to focus on top-notch prospects expected to get a decent amount of playing time. The obvious choice this year in the American League will probably be someone like Matt Moore. Many years, that's justified: recent Rookies of the Year include Buster Posey, Evan Longoria, Ryan Braun, and Hanley Ramirez, all of whom were well-regarded going into their rookie seasons.

Plenty don't fit this mold, though. Craig Kimbrel was, per Baseball America, Atlanta's fifth-best prospect before 2011, Chris Coghlan rated 9th in Florida's system before 2009, Andrew Bailey was 23rd in Oakland the same year, and even Dustin Pedroia was just seventh in Boston in 2007.

With that in mind, here's one rookie from each team who isn't regarded as a top-notch prospect but who might, with the right breaks in playing time and performance, jump out to a surprise trophy at the end of the year.

Angels: Just two rookies appear on the Baseball Prospectus depth chart for Anaheim, and they're Mike Trout and Garrett Richards, both of whom have roadblocks (though Richards could easily surpass Jerome Williams in the rotation) and, more importantly, both of whom are considered top prospects, with Trout in particular being perhaps the best prospect in the game. I'll run with Alexi Amarista, then, despite not even being the first-string utility player, as he's not the player Maicer Izturis is. It would take him a lot to get the playing time necessary to make an impact, and arguably a lot more for him to perform up to snuff.

Fives Are Wild

By The Common Man

When Major League Baseball announced the new playoff format last Friday, and the addition of two clubs to the postseason, you probably already had your mind made up to love it or hate it. It was a polarizing decision, and was roundly mocked in some, less tolerant, circles.

That's fine. The Common Man gets that change is not always popular, and that this move does dumb down the postseason, making it far more likely that another mediocre team wins the World Series. Maybe that's a problem for you, but TCM doesn't really mind it. One of the many reasons The Common Man likes baseball because it's exciting and wonderful and full of surprise, and there's unexpected drama that can come out of any single pitch.

The Common Man doesn't begrudge you your opinion, so perhaps you would indulge him and approach the following point with an open mind: The new playoff system is going to make the end of the season more exciting. This is good for us as fans, and good for the game as a whole.

But TCM, you're saying, the end of last year would have sucked, given that all the Rays, Red Sox, Cardinals, and Braves wouldn't have had anything to play for. And you're right. Last year would have sucked. But last year was also just one season out of many. So The Common Man looked back at every season since 1995, when the first Wild Cards were awarded to the Rockies and Yankees, to see what the difference was between the Wild Card winner and the 5th place team in each league, and the 5th and 6th place team in each league.

Alternatives To An Extra Playoff Game

By: Cee Angi

It's been decided. There will be more playoffs teams, and you will like it.

It's something that everyone has been fretting over for quite some time. We knew it was coming, but we weren't sure when... but when Bud Selig has a good idea (this is not one of them, but play along) he's ready to implement it immediately.

So, there is one game. A single play-in game. And the team that wins this game advances to the playoffs, and the loser goes home. But, since the game is essentially a tie-breaker, here at the Platoon Advantage we're advocating that there not be a tie-breaker game, but a tie-breaker COMPETITION of sorts. Below is a list of alternatives that the MLB should consider to a traditional 9-inning baseball game.

Alternative # 1: The team with the largest market automatically advances to the Division Series. We'll call this one the MLB preferred method.

Alternative #2: The two teams gather at Miami's new ballpark for a Home Run Derby between the teams two worst sluggers. Each team will be required to have their ace throw for the Home Run Derby, but he has to throw gently from behind the net, ensuring that he is exhausted and unable to start in the Division Series, which because of scheduling could potentially be the next day. The benefit of Miami hosting? That monstrosity in the outfield.

Alternative #3: The two teams mascot's will have a fight to the death in a cage match. While this may be graphic for children, and might raise alert with PETOM (People for the Ethical Treatment of Mascots), it seems like the death of a furry may be the best way to settle this tie-breaker issue.

Alternative #4: The two team's heavy-weights face off in a Nathan's Famous hot dog eating competition. The heavy-weights will eat as many hot dogs as they can in ten minutes. Then they must put their forehead on a bat and spin in circles five times, then they must race to the finish line, which is five miles away. First player to arrive wins, and his team advances to the Division Series.

Alternative #5: MLB will create a committee to weigh the intangibles of each team's rosters. They'll measure the story lines of each player to see if they have any players that America is really rooting for. They'll also measure the stick-to-it-ness of all of these players. They will also measure their run-into-it-ness, in which video of the season will be reviewed to see if anyone on the roster has a propensity to run into things for no reason--be it dug outs, the stands, railing. Teams can gain bonus points throughout the season for making ordinary plays seem as though they require extraordinary effort, if they have a teammate that resembles Derek Jeter, or if they have ever completed a flip play.

Alternative #6:  Baseball fans are an intelligent bunch and we expect a great deal from our athletes. The two teams will submit a 10-man roster for the spelling competition. Each team may recruit one child from the Scripps National Spelling Bee as their ringer, however if the team's ringer wins the competition, they must also pitch the first three innings of the Division Series game.

Surely we can think of many more options to present to MLB. What ya got, readers?




(A very special thanks to @MattBerry05 for the brainstorming!) 

What Do Minor League Walk and Strikeout Rates Tell Us About Prospects? Advanced A Edition

By Chris St. John


Introduction
A few months ago, I created a database that includes all of the prospect rankings from Baseball America, Keith Law and Kevin Goldstein. I didn't have a direct purpose for it, I'm just the type of person who likes to accumulate as much data as possible. So it sat around on my computer until I found a good use for it. Well, thanks to fantasy baseball and Starling Marte's horrible 3.8% walk rate in AA last season, I have. Marte is a possible target in my dynasty minor league draft and I wanted to see what other prospects had poor walk rates and how successful they were in their careers.

Method
In interest of saving digital space (and your scrolling finger), I will only post the full method on the Rookie and Low-A edition of this series.

History
Rookie and Low-A
Single-A

Advanced-A
350 of the 480 prospects in this dataset accumulated at least 150 plate appearances in Single-A. 19% were successful, 20% were average and 61% were busts. This is close to the overall 21/21/58 trend for all prospects.

Walks