Monday, April 30, 2007
WEEKEND DELIGHT
So, no complaints about the weekend series in Chicago. Well, Ervin Santana did pitch horribly Friday night -- he couldn't locate, couldn't throw strikes, and when he did throw strikes, the ball was getting hammered. He must have gotten about four outs on scorched liners in that game. The numbers may not make it seem that bad, but it was an awful start, and he easily could have given up more runs.(In 28 innings this year, Ervin has K'd 20 batters, which is fine, but has walked 15, which is trouble. He needs to regain the consistency of command we've seen him have the last two years, and at home thus far in 2007.)
The offense played horribly in that game, as well, squandering opportunity after opportunity. That's a game we probably should have lost 12-10 or something.
But everything got better the next two days. Jered Weaver pitched pretty well Saturday. His command and location probably 100% where he'd want it to be, and his awesome strike-to-ball ratio was somewhat inflated by the White Sox fouling off pitch after pitch, but you can't complain about the results. A few line drives for hits, sure, but also some bloopers, and not once did he allow anything worse than a single. Kelvim had a similarly strong start yesterday, allowing only a home run to The Punter, which, though an embarrassment, only brought home two runs.
Legs Figgins returns to the lineup tonight. Pending Maicer Izturis' hamstring, this may send Erick Aybar back to the bench. Izturis and Aybar have produced nearly identically with the bat so far; Ztu doesn't have much power, but what power he does have balances out the on-base advantage Aybar has thus far. I am a confirmed skeptic regarding Aybar's readiness to produce offensively at the major league level, but his performance since stepping into the lineup for Howie Kendrick (282/317/308 in 39 AB) hasn't really done anything to prove me right or wrong.
The problem with Aybar's offense is that it's completely dependent on his batting average. He doesn't draw walks, he doesn't steal bases, and he doesn't have power. Kendrick may not draw walks either, but he's got some pop and steals bases with some efficiency. It would behoove Aybar to step up some other part of his game -- refining his basestealing skills, working counts -- to accompany his strong defense.
At any rate, a healthy Figgins should be good for this lineup right now. I don't know that he would produce a lot more than Izturis in the long term, but I think his baserunning and glove are definitely better than Ztu's at this point. But Maicer is holding down the fort, and despite some inconsistency with the bat has not dragged the team down.
Figgins' return also means that Brandon Wood has been returned to Salt Lake. He wasn't ready, of course, and only got a couple of games as a sampler of the future. He's going to need to recognize breaking pitches better, and know which ones to spit on and which ones he can drive. He'll need time in AAA to develop his talents, but he is only 22, so he has plenty of time to do so.
Finally, long-time readers may recall that I would occasionally post updates on some of our more prominent minor league players. I should have the first edition for this season up tomorrow at the latest.
Labels: Brandon Wood, Erick Aybar, Ervin Santana, Jered Weaver, Kelvim Escobar, Legs Figgins, Maicer Izturis
Thursday, April 19, 2007
TROUBLE
As you know, Howie Kendrick has been placed on the DL, and is not expected back in the lineup for four to six weeks.
Howie is one of the only guys in the lineup who had his bat going, hitting 327/365/490 in his 14 games. He had made three errors at second, but otherwise was settling into a regular role somewhat nicely.
It is unclear what the Angels will do in Howie's absence, but we may be as close as one week away from Legs Figgins making his first appearance of the season, which will simplify matters; Figgins can return to third and send Maicer Izturis over to second, or vice versa.
What to do for the next week (or possibly beyond, if Figgins isn't able to come back in time)? The current on-roster solution would be to put Erick Aybar there. Aybar has plenty of defensive skills at short, but isn't as familiar with second. That's a frequent conversion, of course, but we don't know how skilled he may be on the pivot.
Another solution would be to bring up someone from the minors; Brandon Wood (off to an okay 293/373/534 in 58 at-bats at AAA, but with 18 strikeouts) could come up to play third (once again moving Ztu to the keystone) or Kendry Morales (314/340/412 in 51 AB) could come up to DH, moving Robb Quinlan and Shea Hillenbrand into some kind of timeshare at third.
I don't really know what solution is more promising. I don't think either Wood or Aybar are particularly ready to hit in the majors, and Kendry's not off to a stirring start in the minors (though it's only been a couple of weeks, so it's too early to draw conclusions off of that), but the recent offensive ineptitude may lead to Wood or Morales getting the call just because things can't get worse. Both of those guys are capable of getting off to the hot start that Mike Napoli did last year, which would be a nice kick in the pants to a dormant lineup.
Under normal circumstances, I'd say just put Aybar there for a week and see what he can do. But with Maicer Izturis batting in the third spot, this is a lineup completely devoid of punch, just waiting to string single after single together to scratch together runs. Even if Vlad returns tomorrow and healthy, he can only bat when he comes up. So I wouldn't be surprised to see Wood or Morales get the call.
***
It would be churlish to blame John Lackey for the loss yesterday, but he did do some things to annoy me. He did struggle to locate his fastball from time to time, but was mostly getting good results from it, it seemed to me, so you can imagine my frustration when he kept slurving and slurving when he got in trouble.
(I don't know what to call that pitch. John called it a slider when he came up, even though it looks just like a curveball, just with a little bit of sweep to it. The announcers always called it a curveball, and last year in an interview Lackey referred to a curve and slider separately. I think the "slider" is some kind of cut fastball, I don't know; he doesn't seem to throw that one so much. So I'm calling his big breaking pitch a slurve. And you can't stop me.)
He had Shannon Stewart down 0-2 in the third, with no outs and runners on first and second, and slurved him to first base to load the bag. He did get Nick Swisher to ground into a forceout on the slurve, and then mislocated his fastball to allow a hit to Eric Chavez. But I thought the appearance against Stewart caused the trouble.
That didn't bother me so much as in the fifth, when Nick Swisher came up again, this time with a runner on second and two outs. Since he had got him with the slurve in his previous AB, Lackey went to it again, and got a couple over for a 1-2 count. I was hoping he's show Swisher the change away and bust him back inside with the fastball if necessary, but instead he kept throwing that slurve inside. He missed the strike zone three straight times, which brought up Eric Chavez.
So what does he do with Chavez? Slurve inside corner that Chavez wants nothing of, slurve for a ball, fastball way up and in, and then ... slurve hung inside that Chavez has no trouble timing, as Lackey has thrown like 45 straight of 'em before that meaningless fastball, line drive, base hit, run scored.
Lackey has that nice change-up against lefties, but he seems to abandon it when he gets in trouble.
Did you ever see the movie of The Hunt for Red October? The US submarines are having a bitch of a time tracking the Soviet sub, Red October, on their sonar, because the Red October has this crazy kind of engine that's hard to detect. But one of the US sonar operators figures out that something his computer is telling him is a "seismic anomaly" is really that crazy kind of engine. He explains that the computer was originally designed to track seismic anomalies (earthquakes), and when it gets confused, as it is by the Red October engine, it "runs back to momma" and declares whatever it's hearing as a seismic anomaly.
Anyway, John Lackey is like that computer. When he gets in trouble, he runs back to momma and throws breaking pitch after breaking pitch. Now, that's a great pitch, and it's his out pitch, and he's a terrific pitcher, but when you overuse it guys get used to it, they're not fooled, they time it, and they take it when it's a ball and hit it when it's a strike. Lackey has to make guys earn their hits more often, I think.
What was Lackey's last pitch of the day? One out, man on first, Nick Swisher up. Well-located fastball down, 4-6-3, and he's out of the inning. He's got to trust in that more often.
But until he gets runs, it ain't gonna matter.
As you know, Howie Kendrick has been placed on the DL, and is not expected back in the lineup for four to six weeks.
Howie is one of the only guys in the lineup who had his bat going, hitting 327/365/490 in his 14 games. He had made three errors at second, but otherwise was settling into a regular role somewhat nicely.
It is unclear what the Angels will do in Howie's absence, but we may be as close as one week away from Legs Figgins making his first appearance of the season, which will simplify matters; Figgins can return to third and send Maicer Izturis over to second, or vice versa.
What to do for the next week (or possibly beyond, if Figgins isn't able to come back in time)? The current on-roster solution would be to put Erick Aybar there. Aybar has plenty of defensive skills at short, but isn't as familiar with second. That's a frequent conversion, of course, but we don't know how skilled he may be on the pivot.
Another solution would be to bring up someone from the minors; Brandon Wood (off to an okay 293/373/534 in 58 at-bats at AAA, but with 18 strikeouts) could come up to play third (once again moving Ztu to the keystone) or Kendry Morales (314/340/412 in 51 AB) could come up to DH, moving Robb Quinlan and Shea Hillenbrand into some kind of timeshare at third.
I don't really know what solution is more promising. I don't think either Wood or Aybar are particularly ready to hit in the majors, and Kendry's not off to a stirring start in the minors (though it's only been a couple of weeks, so it's too early to draw conclusions off of that), but the recent offensive ineptitude may lead to Wood or Morales getting the call just because things can't get worse. Both of those guys are capable of getting off to the hot start that Mike Napoli did last year, which would be a nice kick in the pants to a dormant lineup.
Under normal circumstances, I'd say just put Aybar there for a week and see what he can do. But with Maicer Izturis batting in the third spot, this is a lineup completely devoid of punch, just waiting to string single after single together to scratch together runs. Even if Vlad returns tomorrow and healthy, he can only bat when he comes up. So I wouldn't be surprised to see Wood or Morales get the call.
***
It would be churlish to blame John Lackey for the loss yesterday, but he did do some things to annoy me. He did struggle to locate his fastball from time to time, but was mostly getting good results from it, it seemed to me, so you can imagine my frustration when he kept slurving and slurving when he got in trouble.
(I don't know what to call that pitch. John called it a slider when he came up, even though it looks just like a curveball, just with a little bit of sweep to it. The announcers always called it a curveball, and last year in an interview Lackey referred to a curve and slider separately. I think the "slider" is some kind of cut fastball, I don't know; he doesn't seem to throw that one so much. So I'm calling his big breaking pitch a slurve. And you can't stop me.)
He had Shannon Stewart down 0-2 in the third, with no outs and runners on first and second, and slurved him to first base to load the bag. He did get Nick Swisher to ground into a forceout on the slurve, and then mislocated his fastball to allow a hit to Eric Chavez. But I thought the appearance against Stewart caused the trouble.
That didn't bother me so much as in the fifth, when Nick Swisher came up again, this time with a runner on second and two outs. Since he had got him with the slurve in his previous AB, Lackey went to it again, and got a couple over for a 1-2 count. I was hoping he's show Swisher the change away and bust him back inside with the fastball if necessary, but instead he kept throwing that slurve inside. He missed the strike zone three straight times, which brought up Eric Chavez.
So what does he do with Chavez? Slurve inside corner that Chavez wants nothing of, slurve for a ball, fastball way up and in, and then ... slurve hung inside that Chavez has no trouble timing, as Lackey has thrown like 45 straight of 'em before that meaningless fastball, line drive, base hit, run scored.
Lackey has that nice change-up against lefties, but he seems to abandon it when he gets in trouble.
Did you ever see the movie of The Hunt for Red October? The US submarines are having a bitch of a time tracking the Soviet sub, Red October, on their sonar, because the Red October has this crazy kind of engine that's hard to detect. But one of the US sonar operators figures out that something his computer is telling him is a "seismic anomaly" is really that crazy kind of engine. He explains that the computer was originally designed to track seismic anomalies (earthquakes), and when it gets confused, as it is by the Red October engine, it "runs back to momma" and declares whatever it's hearing as a seismic anomaly.
Anyway, John Lackey is like that computer. When he gets in trouble, he runs back to momma and throws breaking pitch after breaking pitch. Now, that's a great pitch, and it's his out pitch, and he's a terrific pitcher, but when you overuse it guys get used to it, they're not fooled, they time it, and they take it when it's a ball and hit it when it's a strike. Lackey has to make guys earn their hits more often, I think.
What was Lackey's last pitch of the day? One out, man on first, Nick Swisher up. Well-located fastball down, 4-6-3, and he's out of the inning. He's got to trust in that more often.
But until he gets runs, it ain't gonna matter.
Labels: a real bummer, Brandon Wood, calamity, Erick Aybar, Howie Kendrick, injury, John Lackey, John Lackey (cowardice of), Kendry Morales, Legs Figgins, Maicer Izturis, Robb Quinlan, Shea Hillenbrand
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
BUNTING
As you know, the Angels under Mike Scioscia have become known for playing a brand of "small ball"; often low on sluggers, the club has had to maximize the output of its baserunners in order to score runs and win games -- or, at least, that's how the theory goes.
One aspect of this is a willingness to employ the sacrifice bunt. Since Scioscia took over the club in 2000, the team has ranked (progressively) sixth, fourth, first, fourth, second, fourth, and eighth in the American League in successful sacrifice hits.
I thought I'd take a look at our bunts from last season, to see if they helped or harmed the team's offense. Though it seems odd to look at the year in which the Angels bunted the least frequently under Scioscia, it is the most recent season, which, to me, anyway, is of the most interest.
You can find links to boxscores and play-by-play for every game that contained an Angel sacrifice hit here, thanks to the wondrous and magnificent Baseball-Reference Play Index. The Angels sacrificed successfully in 26 games, and ended up going 20-6 in those games.
Let's take a closer look. But before we do, let me clarify: the data I am examining will not allow us to determine whether or not we were hurt by all bunts called, we're just looking to see if the bunts executed correctly ended up backfiring on the offense.
What's the background here?
After years of support from everyone in baseball, in the late 1970s and early 1980s the sacrifice bunt came under assault from some within baseball (most notably Earl Weaver) and sabermetric authors such as Bill James and Pete Palmer.
Anti-bunt theory holds that your twenty-seven outs are sacred, and should only be given away in extreme circumstances. Further, giving away outs was considered likely to decrease the chances of a team scoring in that inning. Empirical studies bore this out; in The Hidden Game of Baseball, Palmer and John Thorn printed a run expectancy matrix (an updated one can be found here, with some from the past here) that showed that teams bunting a runner from first to second were giving up runs; in the case of the updated matrix, with a runner on first and no outs an average team would score .953 runs (i.e., a team in this situation 1,000 times would score 953 runs), but only score .725 with a runner on second with one out. Just about the only time permissible to bunt, according to such theories, would be in late innings of close games where one run is of paramount importance. The notion that a successful sacrifice bunt actually harmed the bunting team became a key belief of sabermetric dogma.
In an essay called "Rolling in the Grass" in his indispensable (and underrated) Guide to Managers, Bill James questions many of these assumptions (assumptions he had once trumpeted). For one, the run expectancy matrix was based on average hitters against average pitchers; for another, other things (errors, beating out hits) can happen when you bunt which are advantageous to the batting team, and the possibility of these must also be accounted for.
In The Book, Mitchel Lichtman -- at great length (the chapter runs 51 pages, and is the longest in the book) -- further explored the question of when bunting should and should not happen, exploring factors from the positioning of the defense to the groundball propensity of the batter. Lichtman's work really re-opens the question of how the bunt works; the former sabermetric knee-jerk against it seems, to me, at least, overly simplistic.
Given all these factors, how can we determine if any specific bunt is a good play or not?
Well, it's hard. And probably impossible. But we can make a best guess.
The Book employs another toy, a Win Expectancy chart, this a baby of the Tango Tiger. It basically takes a situation -- say, the home team is up in the bottom of the fifth, down by two runs with a guy on first and one out -- and tells you the chances of that team winning -- in this case, a winning percentage of .304. Hitting a home run raises it to .570. (You can, courtesy of Studes, download a spreadsheet to calculate this kinda stuff here.)
Of course, the Win Expectancy chart is also based on average hitters being up all the time, which isn't always the case.
But there are ways to deal with that, too.
Is this about to get technical?
Yeah, a bit. But I'll put a big ***** where the technical stuff ends in case you want to skip that and get to the good stuff.
I am a nerd, and cannot wait to read this part. Please do not disappoint me.
Okay.
It probably helps for you to download that spreadsheet to play along.
First of all, you'll see that it wants you to enter a run-scoring environment. What I did for this was take the park-adjusted league-average ERA for each park from BB-Ref (it was 4.38 for the Big A last year) and add .50 for unearned runs.
This doesn't really make a huge difference; in a 4.5 environment, bunting a guy from first to second in a 3-3 game in the bottom of the ninth "loses" you .009 wins; make that a 4.75 environment, and it's .010. 5.25? .013.
So even if I got an environment wrong, it's going to be within a few thousandths of where it should be, which I can personally live with.
The rest of the spreadsheet is pretty self-explanatory; I just plugged in each situation and recorded the change in WinEx.
The next step was to adjust for the quality of the batter. I posed the question of how to do this to Tango on his blog and got a spectacular response, which you can read there.
Basically, I figured out how many runs per plate appearance (using a basic linear weights, park-adjusted) each of our bunting batters was in 2006 compared to the league average. Divide that by 10 to get an estimate of wins above average, then multiply that by the Leverage Index for the situation ... say you have a batter up in that 4.5 environment situation, the 3-3 score, blah blah blah. The WinEx going in is .711. The batter is bad, -.005 runs per plate appearance. The LI is 3.1, so he decreased that by .016, so the WinEx is now .695. A successful sacrifice will raise it to .702, so, if he can bunt, well, that successful sacrifice helps the team.
After doing that, it became obvious to me that I should have accounted for how specific batters do against righty and lefty pitchers, as well as look at more than one season (where available) for each batter in order to best gauge his true talent level.
So I took the last four seasons (or, up to, for players who haven't been in the majors that long) of each of the bunting batters and broke them down into vs. RHP and vs. LHP, essentially creating profiles for two batters where there had been only one. From that point on, everything was the same as described above. (Honestly, I probably should have tried to regress some of that stuff, too, but we're dealing with such fractions that I don't know if anything would have turned out very differently.)
Really, you could keep going, accounting for the quality of pitcher, the opposing defense, groundball tendencies of batter and pitcher, etc. But at a certain point you're creating work and not really making huge strides in being right. I think the level of adjustment I've put in should be enough to give us a general view of the situation.
*****
How many times did the Angels sacrifice in 2006?
31, though two of those came from starting pitchers in interleague play. Though under normal circumstances deciding whether or not your pitcher should bunt is a strategic consideration, in the case of interleague play, I think it's just a manager protecting his pitcher. "Go out, bunt, come home safely." So I don't count those two in any of the analysis I'm doing.
What kind of situations did we bunt in?
Broken down:
Man on first, no one out: 14 times
Men on first and second, no one out: 6 times
Man on second, no out: 7 times
Men on first and third, one out: 1 time
Man on third, one out: 1 time
All told, for the 29 bunts, there were 36 men on base, and 22 eventually scored.
Is that good?
Well, I don't know.
You know the Run Expectancy Matrix I linked above? That can be further broken down. This chart tells us that, from 1999 through 2002, if a team had a guy on first base with no one out, that team would score one run .176 of the time. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's the guy currently on first who scores that run (if that guy gets thrown out stealing, then the next guy hits a home run, that's still a run for the purposes of the chart), but I think that should be close enough for us to make some guesses; if anything, that will mean our estimate of how many runs should have scored may be a bit high.
We had that situation and sacrificed 14 times last season; 11 of those times, the guy sacrificed to second scored. From 1999 through 2002, we would expect one run (or more) to score .437 of the time (if two runs score, that first run has to score first). In 14 situations, that would be 6 runs, so we're five runs ahead.
Going through each situation:
Man on first, no one out: 14 times x .437 = 6.118 runs
Men on first and second, no one out: 6 times x .641 = 3.846 runs
Man on second, no out: 7 times x .632 = 4.424 runs
Men on first and third, one out: 1 time x .655 = .655 runs
Man on third, one out: 1 time x .661 = .661 runs
That's a total of 15.704 runs we would have been expected to score with average hitters up in these situations; as we (as we'll soon see) generally bunted with below-average hitters, we would expect to score less.
In fact, we scored more often, getting 22 runs home. This indicates to me that Mike Scioscia was choosing his spots well, and probably got some luck on his side.
However, there was a lot of guesstimation on this, so don't take that as the God's Truth. It's a scarcely-educated guess, nothing more.
We can also look at the total number of runs expected to score each inning vs. how many we scored in innings with a sacrifice bunt. Here are the relevant situations from The Book:
Who was asked to bunt, and against whom?
Orlando Cabrera: 3 (1 against RHP, 2 against LHP)
Darin Erstad: 1 (against RHP)
Legs Figgins: 5 (3 against RHP, 2 against LHP)
Maicer Izturis: 5 (2 against RHP, 3 against LHP)
Adam Kennedy: 3 (1 against RHP, 2 against LHP)
Casey Kotchman: 2 (1 against RHP, 1 against LHP)
Jose Molina: 7 (5 against RHP, 2 against LHP)
Tommy Murphy: 1 (against RHP)
Reggie Willits: 2 (against RHP)
What about all that win expectancy stuff you made me read/scroll past?
Without adjusting for the quality of the batter, the successful sacrifices by the Angels cost the team a whopping .224 wins.
That's nothing; that's two runs a season. If I adjust for the quality of the batter, that goes up from -.224 to -.094. Once I account for the handedness of the pitcher, which is as far as I went, that went up to -.080.
This is, of course, pretty negligible, and given the levels of estimation required at every step here, is tantamount to saying "These sacrifices did not cost the Angels at all," in my opinion.
In fact, it appears that Mike Scioscia had a pretty good grasp over who should bunt, and when.
Or, at least, I think so. I haven't looked at other managers; maybe they all come out better under such analysis. It's certainly possible that every team is close to zero in this regard, and given the low number of sacrifice hits in the modern game, that would be my default assumption.
Here is each batter listed by how many wins his bunts gained/lost for the team:
Orlando Cabrera: -.005 (+.005 vs. RHP, -.010 vs. LHP)
Darin Erstad: -.021 (vs. RHP)
Legs Figgins: -.077 (-.045 vs. RHP, -.032 vs. LHP)
Maicer Izturis: +.007 (-.028 vs. RHP, +.035 vs. LHP)
Adam Kennedy: -.017 (-.014 vs. RHP, -.003 vs. LHP)
Casey Kotchman: +.009 (.000 vs. RHP, +.009 vs. LHP)
Jose Molina: +.018 (.049 vs. RHP, -.031 vs. LHP)
Tommy Murphy: +.027 (vs. RHP)
Reggie Willits: -.021 (vs. RHP)
What does the win expectancy chart say were the wisest bunts executed?
Jose Molina vs. Chris Ray, man on 2nd, no outs, and a 2-2 score in the bottom of the ninth: under normal circumstances, the WinEx going into this situation would be .817, with a .835 with the guy on third and one out. Molina is not a good batter against RHP, however, lowering the going-in WinEx to .798. The Fast Molina's successful bunt raised the win expectancy .037; the Orioles proceeded to walk the bases loaded, and Orlando Cabrera popped out and Vlad grounded out to end the inning.
The Angels won in the bottom of the tenth when Adam Kennedy, with runners on first and second, hit a three-run home run (more on this later).
Tommy Murphy vs. Miguel Batista, Tim Salmon on 3rd, one out, we lead 1-0 in the top of the second: a squeeze bunt was a great call here, as Murphy proved to struggle against RHP all year.
Maicer Izturis vs. Tim Byrdak, 1st-and-3rd, one out, we're up 5-2 in the top of the eighth: not only a squeeze, but Maicer ended up reaching on a fielder's choice, raising the WinEx from .947 to .973.
Jose Molina vs. Huston Street, man on 1st, no outs, we're up 4-2 in the top of the ninth: Jose got his man over; the insurance run didn't score, but with Jose vs. a top RHP, it was a good move, increasing our chances from .910 to .928 (the starting point would have been .932 with an average batter at the plate).
Jose Molina vs. J.J. Putz, man on 1st, no outs, tied 2-2 in the bottom of the ninth: sensing a theme here? Jose got his man (Reggie Willits) over to second, and Legs Figgins promptly knocked him in to win the game.
Of the 29 bunts, 12 had results that were neutral or better, and another 6 were within .010 of neutral, which for me would still sit in the "too close to call" camp.
What were the worst bunts?
I'm not going to go through them individually, but each of the worst five:
came with a man on first with no out;
and with a tie score.
Four of the five came in the ninth inning or later, and the one that didn't came in the seventh.
Also, four of the five instances led to the runner scoring, and the Angels taking the lead.
I'm actually not convinced that the WinEx models get extra innings right (or perhaps I was mistaken to use the ninth-inning values for extra innings); it is also possible that teams are wrong to play for one run as often as they do in such situations.
You're only talking about successful bunts here. What about unsuccessful ones, or ones that turn into hits?
A good question; unfortunately, the data is such that there is no easy way to ferret out such circumstances.
And, to clarify: yes, I just praised a question that I wrote to myself.
Remember that Adam Kennedy home run I said I'd come back to? Here is that game. Check out the bottom of the tenth:
That's the first thing; the second thing is ... look at Adam Kennedy: his plate appearance took two pitches. This is what they were:
Also, I don't know how many situations happened such as in this game:
What's more, look at Tommy Murphy, right before Adam comes up: guy on first, no outs, lays down a bunt late in a tie game ... and gets a hit! A situation just like the one we just finished looking at with Reggie Willits.
The fact is, you can't really evaluate whether a bunt was a good or bad call without examining every possible outcome, or at least reasonably possible outcome.
What I wanted to look at here was a narrow question: did the sacrifice bunts we got down hurt us? The probabilities say: "If so, it was ever so slightly." The results say: "The Angels actually seemed to do better in innings in which they successfully sacrificed than they would have otherwise."
What have we learned from this?
I have learned that, with the right combination of batter, pitcher, and situation, a sacrifice bunt can be a valuable weapon. If you have a hitter like Jose Molina, who is not fast, a double play threat, a poor hitter against right-handers, but is a more than competent bunter, a sacrifice will often be a good call in certain situations. If you have an overmatched left-handed hitter, like Adam Kennedy vs. a top southpaw, a sacrifice will often be a good call.
Mike Scioscia may get a bit cute with such calls from time to time (he asked Mike Napoli to squeeze last year, for God's sake), but he appears to have a pretty good grasp of when a bunt does and does not help the team. Hopefully this will continue, as our offense looks as punchless as ever, and we'll need as much help as we can to score runs and compete in a tough division.
As you know, the Angels under Mike Scioscia have become known for playing a brand of "small ball"; often low on sluggers, the club has had to maximize the output of its baserunners in order to score runs and win games -- or, at least, that's how the theory goes.
One aspect of this is a willingness to employ the sacrifice bunt. Since Scioscia took over the club in 2000, the team has ranked (progressively) sixth, fourth, first, fourth, second, fourth, and eighth in the American League in successful sacrifice hits.
I thought I'd take a look at our bunts from last season, to see if they helped or harmed the team's offense. Though it seems odd to look at the year in which the Angels bunted the least frequently under Scioscia, it is the most recent season, which, to me, anyway, is of the most interest.
You can find links to boxscores and play-by-play for every game that contained an Angel sacrifice hit here, thanks to the wondrous and magnificent Baseball-Reference Play Index. The Angels sacrificed successfully in 26 games, and ended up going 20-6 in those games.
Let's take a closer look. But before we do, let me clarify: the data I am examining will not allow us to determine whether or not we were hurt by all bunts called, we're just looking to see if the bunts executed correctly ended up backfiring on the offense.
What's the background here?
After years of support from everyone in baseball, in the late 1970s and early 1980s the sacrifice bunt came under assault from some within baseball (most notably Earl Weaver) and sabermetric authors such as Bill James and Pete Palmer.
Anti-bunt theory holds that your twenty-seven outs are sacred, and should only be given away in extreme circumstances. Further, giving away outs was considered likely to decrease the chances of a team scoring in that inning. Empirical studies bore this out; in The Hidden Game of Baseball, Palmer and John Thorn printed a run expectancy matrix (an updated one can be found here, with some from the past here) that showed that teams bunting a runner from first to second were giving up runs; in the case of the updated matrix, with a runner on first and no outs an average team would score .953 runs (i.e., a team in this situation 1,000 times would score 953 runs), but only score .725 with a runner on second with one out. Just about the only time permissible to bunt, according to such theories, would be in late innings of close games where one run is of paramount importance. The notion that a successful sacrifice bunt actually harmed the bunting team became a key belief of sabermetric dogma.
In an essay called "Rolling in the Grass" in his indispensable (and underrated) Guide to Managers, Bill James questions many of these assumptions (assumptions he had once trumpeted). For one, the run expectancy matrix was based on average hitters against average pitchers; for another, other things (errors, beating out hits) can happen when you bunt which are advantageous to the batting team, and the possibility of these must also be accounted for.
In The Book, Mitchel Lichtman -- at great length (the chapter runs 51 pages, and is the longest in the book) -- further explored the question of when bunting should and should not happen, exploring factors from the positioning of the defense to the groundball propensity of the batter. Lichtman's work really re-opens the question of how the bunt works; the former sabermetric knee-jerk against it seems, to me, at least, overly simplistic.
Given all these factors, how can we determine if any specific bunt is a good play or not?
Well, it's hard. And probably impossible. But we can make a best guess.
The Book employs another toy, a Win Expectancy chart, this a baby of the Tango Tiger. It basically takes a situation -- say, the home team is up in the bottom of the fifth, down by two runs with a guy on first and one out -- and tells you the chances of that team winning -- in this case, a winning percentage of .304. Hitting a home run raises it to .570. (You can, courtesy of Studes, download a spreadsheet to calculate this kinda stuff here.)
Of course, the Win Expectancy chart is also based on average hitters being up all the time, which isn't always the case.
But there are ways to deal with that, too.
Is this about to get technical?
Yeah, a bit. But I'll put a big ***** where the technical stuff ends in case you want to skip that and get to the good stuff.
I am a nerd, and cannot wait to read this part. Please do not disappoint me.
Okay.
It probably helps for you to download that spreadsheet to play along.
First of all, you'll see that it wants you to enter a run-scoring environment. What I did for this was take the park-adjusted league-average ERA for each park from BB-Ref (it was 4.38 for the Big A last year) and add .50 for unearned runs.
This doesn't really make a huge difference; in a 4.5 environment, bunting a guy from first to second in a 3-3 game in the bottom of the ninth "loses" you .009 wins; make that a 4.75 environment, and it's .010. 5.25? .013.
So even if I got an environment wrong, it's going to be within a few thousandths of where it should be, which I can personally live with.
The rest of the spreadsheet is pretty self-explanatory; I just plugged in each situation and recorded the change in WinEx.
The next step was to adjust for the quality of the batter. I posed the question of how to do this to Tango on his blog and got a spectacular response, which you can read there.
Basically, I figured out how many runs per plate appearance (using a basic linear weights, park-adjusted) each of our bunting batters was in 2006 compared to the league average. Divide that by 10 to get an estimate of wins above average, then multiply that by the Leverage Index for the situation ... say you have a batter up in that 4.5 environment situation, the 3-3 score, blah blah blah. The WinEx going in is .711. The batter is bad, -.005 runs per plate appearance. The LI is 3.1, so he decreased that by .016, so the WinEx is now .695. A successful sacrifice will raise it to .702, so, if he can bunt, well, that successful sacrifice helps the team.
After doing that, it became obvious to me that I should have accounted for how specific batters do against righty and lefty pitchers, as well as look at more than one season (where available) for each batter in order to best gauge his true talent level.
So I took the last four seasons (or, up to, for players who haven't been in the majors that long) of each of the bunting batters and broke them down into vs. RHP and vs. LHP, essentially creating profiles for two batters where there had been only one. From that point on, everything was the same as described above. (Honestly, I probably should have tried to regress some of that stuff, too, but we're dealing with such fractions that I don't know if anything would have turned out very differently.)
Really, you could keep going, accounting for the quality of pitcher, the opposing defense, groundball tendencies of batter and pitcher, etc. But at a certain point you're creating work and not really making huge strides in being right. I think the level of adjustment I've put in should be enough to give us a general view of the situation.
*****
How many times did the Angels sacrifice in 2006?
31, though two of those came from starting pitchers in interleague play. Though under normal circumstances deciding whether or not your pitcher should bunt is a strategic consideration, in the case of interleague play, I think it's just a manager protecting his pitcher. "Go out, bunt, come home safely." So I don't count those two in any of the analysis I'm doing.
What kind of situations did we bunt in?
Broken down:
All told, for the 29 bunts, there were 36 men on base, and 22 eventually scored.
Is that good?
Well, I don't know.
You know the Run Expectancy Matrix I linked above? That can be further broken down. This chart tells us that, from 1999 through 2002, if a team had a guy on first base with no one out, that team would score one run .176 of the time. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's the guy currently on first who scores that run (if that guy gets thrown out stealing, then the next guy hits a home run, that's still a run for the purposes of the chart), but I think that should be close enough for us to make some guesses; if anything, that will mean our estimate of how many runs should have scored may be a bit high.
We had that situation and sacrificed 14 times last season; 11 of those times, the guy sacrificed to second scored. From 1999 through 2002, we would expect one run (or more) to score .437 of the time (if two runs score, that first run has to score first). In 14 situations, that would be 6 runs, so we're five runs ahead.
Going through each situation:
That's a total of 15.704 runs we would have been expected to score with average hitters up in these situations; as we (as we'll soon see) generally bunted with below-average hitters, we would expect to score less.
In fact, we scored more often, getting 22 runs home. This indicates to me that Mike Scioscia was choosing his spots well, and probably got some luck on his side.
However, there was a lot of guesstimation on this, so don't take that as the God's Truth. It's a scarcely-educated guess, nothing more.
We can also look at the total number of runs expected to score each inning vs. how many we scored in innings with a sacrifice bunt. Here are the relevant situations from The Book:
1--, 0: .950Going through math above, we find that the Angels, in innings where they sacrificed, "would" have scored 33.402 runs (again, this is with average hitters against average pitchers). As it turned out, the Halos scored 40 runs in such innings, hinting once again that Scioscia called bunts (1) wisely and/or (2) and benefited from luck.
12-, 0: 1.585
-2-, 0: 1.192
1-3, 1: 1.249
--3, 1: .999
Who was asked to bunt, and against whom?
What about all that win expectancy stuff you made me read/scroll past?
Without adjusting for the quality of the batter, the successful sacrifices by the Angels cost the team a whopping .224 wins.
That's nothing; that's two runs a season. If I adjust for the quality of the batter, that goes up from -.224 to -.094. Once I account for the handedness of the pitcher, which is as far as I went, that went up to -.080.
This is, of course, pretty negligible, and given the levels of estimation required at every step here, is tantamount to saying "These sacrifices did not cost the Angels at all," in my opinion.
In fact, it appears that Mike Scioscia had a pretty good grasp over who should bunt, and when.
Or, at least, I think so. I haven't looked at other managers; maybe they all come out better under such analysis. It's certainly possible that every team is close to zero in this regard, and given the low number of sacrifice hits in the modern game, that would be my default assumption.
Here is each batter listed by how many wins his bunts gained/lost for the team:
What does the win expectancy chart say were the wisest bunts executed?
The Angels won in the bottom of the tenth when Adam Kennedy, with runners on first and second, hit a three-run home run (more on this later).
Of the 29 bunts, 12 had results that were neutral or better, and another 6 were within .010 of neutral, which for me would still sit in the "too close to call" camp.
What were the worst bunts?
I'm not going to go through them individually, but each of the worst five:
Four of the five came in the ninth inning or later, and the one that didn't came in the seventh.
Also, four of the five instances led to the runner scoring, and the Angels taking the lead.
I'm actually not convinced that the WinEx models get extra innings right (or perhaps I was mistaken to use the ninth-inning values for extra innings); it is also possible that teams are wrong to play for one run as often as they do in such situations.
You're only talking about successful bunts here. What about unsuccessful ones, or ones that turn into hits?
A good question; unfortunately, the data is such that there is no easy way to ferret out such circumstances.
And, to clarify: yes, I just praised a question that I wrote to myself.
Remember that Adam Kennedy home run I said I'd come back to? Here is that game. Check out the bottom of the tenth:
Bottom of the 10th, Angels Batting, Tied 2-2, Julio Manon facing 5-6-7Two things pop out here; one, Willits had a bunt single. This was certainly a case where, had Willits been thrown out, he would have been credited with a sacrifice. Instead, he beat it out for a hit. Mike Scioscia, in calling for this bunt, obviously knew Willits, a speedy runner, had a chance to beat it out (or reach via an error), so if you wanted to go through and assign Scioscia some kind of score for the bunts he called, this would be a credit. The result of the play added .104 in win expectancy (which in itself is greater than the -.080 brought to us by our sacrifices); had it been a sacrifice, it actually would have been a slight loss (-.011, before adjustments).
Sit Pit Batter Result
--- 4 G Anderson Single to CF
1-- 2 R Willits Single to 1B/Bunt; Anderson to 2B
12- 2 A Kennedy Home Run (RF); Anderson Scores; Willits Scores
That's the first thing; the second thing is ... look at Adam Kennedy: his plate appearance took two pitches. This is what they were:
1. Foul BuntSo here's a situation where Scioscia called for the bunt, Adam didn't get it down, and he took off the bunt. Adam went deep. How would we credit that? I don't know.
2. Ball in Play
Also, I don't know how many situations happened such as in this game:
Bottom of the 7th, Angels Batting, Behind 3-4, Roy Halladay facing 7-8-9Remember that groundout by Adam? It was a bunt, and Adam took exception to what he was thought was a poor jump by Chone Figgins from second, and all hell broke loose in the locker room after the game. I remember that because I remember things like this, but I don't remember every instance, and the gamelog doesn't even record the fact that it was a bunt.
Sit Pit Batter Result
--- 2 M Napoli Home Run (CF)
--- 1 R Quinlan Single to RF
Chone Figgins pinch runs for Robb Quinlan batting 8th
1-- 1 T Murphy Single to SS/Bunt; Figgins to 2B
12- 1 A Kennedy Groundout: P-3B/Forceout at 3B; Murphy to 2B
What's more, look at Tommy Murphy, right before Adam comes up: guy on first, no outs, lays down a bunt late in a tie game ... and gets a hit! A situation just like the one we just finished looking at with Reggie Willits.
The fact is, you can't really evaluate whether a bunt was a good or bad call without examining every possible outcome, or at least reasonably possible outcome.
What I wanted to look at here was a narrow question: did the sacrifice bunts we got down hurt us? The probabilities say: "If so, it was ever so slightly." The results say: "The Angels actually seemed to do better in innings in which they successfully sacrificed than they would have otherwise."
What have we learned from this?
I have learned that, with the right combination of batter, pitcher, and situation, a sacrifice bunt can be a valuable weapon. If you have a hitter like Jose Molina, who is not fast, a double play threat, a poor hitter against right-handers, but is a more than competent bunter, a sacrifice will often be a good call in certain situations. If you have an overmatched left-handed hitter, like Adam Kennedy vs. a top southpaw, a sacrifice will often be a good call.
Mike Scioscia may get a bit cute with such calls from time to time (he asked Mike Napoli to squeeze last year, for God's sake), but he appears to have a pretty good grasp of when a bunt does and does not help the team. Hopefully this will continue, as our offense looks as punchless as ever, and we'll need as much help as we can to score runs and compete in a tough division.
Labels: Adam Kennedy, bunting, Casey Kotchman, Darin Erstad, Jose Molina, Legs Figgins, Mike Scioscia, Orlando Cabrera, Reggie Willits, Tommy Murphy, win expectancy
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
THE LEDGE
Well, we have signed Shea Hillenbrand to be our DH.
This is Juan Rivera insurance. Rivera will be undergoing surgery for his broken leg and we still don't know how long he'll be out.
What would the difference between Hillenbrand and Rivera be, over a full season (say, 600 plate appearances)?
RubenJuan and Hillenbrand is close to a win, maybe a bit more. Remember, however, that's just looking at the offense. There's another cost here, and that's on defense; Juan Rivera figured to get a lot of time on the corner outfield positions, giving Garret and Vlad rests, while providing a defensive advantage while filling in for either of them. That's gonna cost us some runs, as well.
Hillenbrand at DH also means that one of Legs Figgins and Dallas McPherson won't be in the starting lineup. I'd guess The Legs will take the hot corner and Big D will take the bench or another trip to Salt Lake.
And while you don't sign a guy to a $6.5M contract to be a platoon player, Hillenbrand does have a, um, 106 career OPS+ against southpaws, while McPherson has a 112 mark off of righties in his young career.
Let me take a step back here ...
... Shea Hillenbrand isn't an awful player. He's mediocre. He's an average hitter, not a very good fielder, durable. Blah blah blah. But he's a guy that's overrated due to his batting average. His .287 looks respectable, but if you adjust his league averages for his parks, the average is .271. Juan Rivera's .291 average is up against a park-adjusted league average of .265.
And Hillenbrand's average is pretty empty. He doesn't have exception power and never draws a walk. And what bothers me is that the Angels don't seem to understand than an empty batting average isn't really all that helpful to anyone.
Now, I do recognize that we're only getting Hillenbrand because of the Rivera situation, but he's a guy we've been rumored to be interested in for awhile, and we all know he's a guy who hacks and gets singles. If you hack and hit like Vlad, that's okay. But Hillenbrand has never been a difference-maker for anybody, and now he's on the bad side of 30. He's a finger in the dam, but we should all hope that Rivera can be healthy and productive sooner than later.
Well, we have signed Shea Hillenbrand to be our DH.
This is Juan Rivera insurance. Rivera will be undergoing surgery for his broken leg and we still don't know how long he'll be out.
What would the difference between Hillenbrand and Rivera be, over a full season (say, 600 plate appearances)?
Batting Runs Above AverageOver a full season, it looks like the difference between
per 600 PA
Rivera Shea
2003 + 1 -6
2004 +14 +5
2005 - 3 +6
2006 +23 -8
Average + 9 -1
Wtd Avg +12 -1
Hillenbrand at DH also means that one of Legs Figgins and Dallas McPherson won't be in the starting lineup. I'd guess The Legs will take the hot corner and Big D will take the bench or another trip to Salt Lake.
And while you don't sign a guy to a $6.5M contract to be a platoon player, Hillenbrand does have a, um, 106 career OPS+ against southpaws, while McPherson has a 112 mark off of righties in his young career.
Let me take a step back here ...
... Shea Hillenbrand isn't an awful player. He's mediocre. He's an average hitter, not a very good fielder, durable. Blah blah blah. But he's a guy that's overrated due to his batting average. His .287 looks respectable, but if you adjust his league averages for his parks, the average is .271. Juan Rivera's .291 average is up against a park-adjusted league average of .265.
And Hillenbrand's average is pretty empty. He doesn't have exception power and never draws a walk. And what bothers me is that the Angels don't seem to understand than an empty batting average isn't really all that helpful to anyone.
Now, I do recognize that we're only getting Hillenbrand because of the Rivera situation, but he's a guy we've been rumored to be interested in for awhile, and we all know he's a guy who hacks and gets singles. If you hack and hit like Vlad, that's okay. But Hillenbrand has never been a difference-maker for anybody, and now he's on the bad side of 30. He's a finger in the dam, but we should all hope that Rivera can be healthy and productive sooner than later.
Labels: a real bummer, Dallas McPherson, empty batting average, Garret Anderson, hacktastic offense, Juan Rivera, Legs Figgins, Shea Hillenbrand, Vladimir Guerrero
Monday, October 09, 2006
THE OUTFIELD
A couple of weeks ago I discussed the Angel infield; let's look to the outfield and designated hitter.
What was supposed to happen: Garret would stay healthy and bounce back a bit, Darin Erstad would play great defense and ground out to second for a few weeks before getting injured and being replaced by Legs Figgins, and Vlad would be Vlad. Juan Rivera would see time at DH and covering the corners, and even fill in some in center against lefty pitchers.
What happened: Garret stayed dinged up and mediocre, Figgins hit 30 points less than his career average, Vlad did his Vlad thing, and Rivera had a career year.
Where we go from here: Look, we're basically stuck with Garret in left field and/or DH. Mike Scioscia finally began to warm up to the idea that Juan Rivera is a better defender than Garret, and has a better arm. Sure, Garret is more surehanded (he didn't make an error last year), but Rivera gets to more balls (.854 to .844 in zone rating last year, .917 to .864 the year before) and has a better arm (Rivera had 7 assists from left last year to Garret's 1, playing in only around 60% of the innings of his senior). Garret's contract will preclude him from being moved anywhere, to he's all ours.
You're also going to have to get used to having Vlad in the lineup. I know that will be hard for us, but such is life. The only real flaw in his game, last year, anyway, was his defense; Vlad committed 11 errors, mostly the result of lapses of concentration. Mike Scioscia believes that he was dropping balls because of gimpy knees, making it hard to see the ball well while running. There is probably truth to this, and Vlad should be seeing more time at DH to give his body a break. Despite his bad instincts, his athleticism has made him average defender in years past, so I would expect something of a bounce-back in this regard in 2007.
Center field, of course, brings us big questions, and is intimately tied to the third base situation. It doesn't seem unlikely that the Angels will get either a third baseman or center fielder and install The Legs at the complementary position.
The options at center field, at this time, are questionable. Torii Hunter has a good shot at being a free agent, but he's on the wrong side of 30, is starting to suffer the attendant decline in defense, and his offense is solid but unspectacular. He's coming off his best offensive season since 2002, but there is little reason to believe his next four years will be as good as his last four. He'll likely demand a contract in the $10M per year range, which may be too much.
There is, theoretically, the possibility of trading for Vernon Wells. Wells has one year left on his contract with Toronto, so is financially cheap. He's a solid defensive player, though his offense is also something of a question mark; he was terrific in 2003 and 2006, but just a bit above average in the two years in between.
Of course, the Blue Jays, coming off a second-place finish and looking at two perennial giants who seem to be teetering on chaos in New York and Boston, may not be too thrilled with the idea of trading one of their key players. However, Alexis Rios, who had a breakthrough season with the bat last season, could be a candidate to be moved to center if Wells were dispatched. Juan Rivera might be an essential piece of such a trade so as to replace Rios, though the Jays would likely require a prospect as well. Their middle infield situation is a bit sticky (Aaron Hill can play second or short), so maybe Erick Aybar would sweeten the pot, though I worry that might be too much, so perhaps the Jays would throw in a lower-level prospect to even things up.
Otherwise, we may see Aramis Ramirez signed at third base. Other alleged third base candidates would come via trade, such as Joe Crede (pass), Mark Teahen (intriguing), Miguel Tejada (any talk of moving The OC to third to accommodate him, however, is utter madness), and even A-Rod (a great idea, in a vacuum).
It's difficult to evaluate any potential move without knowing the costs, so I will not do so here. Alex Rodriguez, for example, would be a great addition, but with his salary and the players that might be demanded of us to get him, would he be a good acquisition? That's an entirely different question.
If the Jays are willing to move him, I think the most exciting possibility is Vernon Wells. If not, I think we'd be best-served to upgrade the third base position. Of course, things will change as the off-season progresses.
A couple of weeks ago I discussed the Angel infield; let's look to the outfield and designated hitter.
What was supposed to happen: Garret would stay healthy and bounce back a bit, Darin Erstad would play great defense and ground out to second for a few weeks before getting injured and being replaced by Legs Figgins, and Vlad would be Vlad. Juan Rivera would see time at DH and covering the corners, and even fill in some in center against lefty pitchers.
What happened: Garret stayed dinged up and mediocre, Figgins hit 30 points less than his career average, Vlad did his Vlad thing, and Rivera had a career year.
Where we go from here: Look, we're basically stuck with Garret in left field and/or DH. Mike Scioscia finally began to warm up to the idea that Juan Rivera is a better defender than Garret, and has a better arm. Sure, Garret is more surehanded (he didn't make an error last year), but Rivera gets to more balls (.854 to .844 in zone rating last year, .917 to .864 the year before) and has a better arm (Rivera had 7 assists from left last year to Garret's 1, playing in only around 60% of the innings of his senior). Garret's contract will preclude him from being moved anywhere, to he's all ours.
You're also going to have to get used to having Vlad in the lineup. I know that will be hard for us, but such is life. The only real flaw in his game, last year, anyway, was his defense; Vlad committed 11 errors, mostly the result of lapses of concentration. Mike Scioscia believes that he was dropping balls because of gimpy knees, making it hard to see the ball well while running. There is probably truth to this, and Vlad should be seeing more time at DH to give his body a break. Despite his bad instincts, his athleticism has made him average defender in years past, so I would expect something of a bounce-back in this regard in 2007.
Center field, of course, brings us big questions, and is intimately tied to the third base situation. It doesn't seem unlikely that the Angels will get either a third baseman or center fielder and install The Legs at the complementary position.
The options at center field, at this time, are questionable. Torii Hunter has a good shot at being a free agent, but he's on the wrong side of 30, is starting to suffer the attendant decline in defense, and his offense is solid but unspectacular. He's coming off his best offensive season since 2002, but there is little reason to believe his next four years will be as good as his last four. He'll likely demand a contract in the $10M per year range, which may be too much.
There is, theoretically, the possibility of trading for Vernon Wells. Wells has one year left on his contract with Toronto, so is financially cheap. He's a solid defensive player, though his offense is also something of a question mark; he was terrific in 2003 and 2006, but just a bit above average in the two years in between.
Of course, the Blue Jays, coming off a second-place finish and looking at two perennial giants who seem to be teetering on chaos in New York and Boston, may not be too thrilled with the idea of trading one of their key players. However, Alexis Rios, who had a breakthrough season with the bat last season, could be a candidate to be moved to center if Wells were dispatched. Juan Rivera might be an essential piece of such a trade so as to replace Rios, though the Jays would likely require a prospect as well. Their middle infield situation is a bit sticky (Aaron Hill can play second or short), so maybe Erick Aybar would sweeten the pot, though I worry that might be too much, so perhaps the Jays would throw in a lower-level prospect to even things up.
Otherwise, we may see Aramis Ramirez signed at third base. Other alleged third base candidates would come via trade, such as Joe Crede (pass), Mark Teahen (intriguing), Miguel Tejada (any talk of moving The OC to third to accommodate him, however, is utter madness), and even A-Rod (a great idea, in a vacuum).
It's difficult to evaluate any potential move without knowing the costs, so I will not do so here. Alex Rodriguez, for example, would be a great addition, but with his salary and the players that might be demanded of us to get him, would he be a good acquisition? That's an entirely different question.
If the Jays are willing to move him, I think the most exciting possibility is Vernon Wells. If not, I think we'd be best-served to upgrade the third base position. Of course, things will change as the off-season progresses.
Labels: Alex Rodriguez, Aramis Ramirez, Darin Erstad, Eric k Aybar, fielding, Garret Anderson, Joe Crede, Juan Rivera, Legs Figgins, Mark Teahen, Miguel Tejada, Vernon Wells, Vladimir Guerrero
