Tuesday, July 03, 2007
FURTHER EVENTS
There's been some roster busy-ness the last few days, so let's just jump in:
- Mike Napoli injured, Jeff Mathis called up.
Napoli could, reportedly, be out for as many as six weeks, which is not good. Napoli is having a solid season: I have him as around three runs above an average hitter offensively, and his OPS+ of 111 ranks 7th in the majors out of the 29 catchers who have played at least 50 games. Jose Molina is no kind of substitute for that offensive production; he's been hitting horribly so far this year, nearly 8 runs below average with only 102 plate appearances. He's better than this, but he's still not an offensive force.
Jeff Mathis has been performing poorly at AAA; I don't really know who's going to get more playing time to start with. Either way, we basically have to just hope that one of the two guys catches fire, or that Garret Anderson will be healthy enough to pick up some of the slack.
- Hector Carrasco is DFA'd, Chris Resop called up in his stead.
I think Carrasco is better than this, but, then again, he is 37 years old, so it's not like a sudden bottoming-out is a big shock. Resop is an interesting choice to replace him; his 4.60 ERA at Salt Lake is better than the 4.74 league average, and Salt Lake continues to be a hitters' park. Resop also has a good strikeout and strikeout-to-walk ratios. Jason Bulger is having a better season, but is not currently on the 40-man roster. Marcus Gwyn is in the same boat.
Anyway, there's no real way Resop's going to be worse than Carrasco has been. Hector was fairly effective last year, but Bill Stoneman's record of acquiring relievers (JC Romero, Darren Oliver, Esteban Yan, who sucks) has been a bit shaky the past few seasons. Hopefully the likes of Resop, Bulger (both Stoneman acquisitions), Jose Arredondo, and Darren O'Day will come through and make that moot in the near future.
- Mike Napoli injured, Jeff Mathis called up.
Napoli could, reportedly, be out for as many as six weeks, which is not good. Napoli is having a solid season: I have him as around three runs above an average hitter offensively, and his OPS+ of 111 ranks 7th in the majors out of the 29 catchers who have played at least 50 games. Jose Molina is no kind of substitute for that offensive production; he's been hitting horribly so far this year, nearly 8 runs below average with only 102 plate appearances. He's better than this, but he's still not an offensive force.
Jeff Mathis has been performing poorly at AAA; I don't really know who's going to get more playing time to start with. Either way, we basically have to just hope that one of the two guys catches fire, or that Garret Anderson will be healthy enough to pick up some of the slack.
- Hector Carrasco is DFA'd, Chris Resop called up in his stead.
I think Carrasco is better than this, but, then again, he is 37 years old, so it's not like a sudden bottoming-out is a big shock. Resop is an interesting choice to replace him; his 4.60 ERA at Salt Lake is better than the 4.74 league average, and Salt Lake continues to be a hitters' park. Resop also has a good strikeout and strikeout-to-walk ratios. Jason Bulger is having a better season, but is not currently on the 40-man roster. Marcus Gwyn is in the same boat.
Anyway, there's no real way Resop's going to be worse than Carrasco has been. Hector was fairly effective last year, but Bill Stoneman's record of acquiring relievers (JC Romero, Darren Oliver, Esteban Yan, who sucks) has been a bit shaky the past few seasons. Hopefully the likes of Resop, Bulger (both Stoneman acquisitions), Jose Arredondo, and Darren O'Day will come through and make that moot in the near future.
Labels: Chris Resop, Hector Carrasco, Jason Bulger, Jeff Mathis, Jose Molina, Marcus Gwyn, Mike Napoli, prospects
Friday, May 04, 2007
DESCENT
After two fine games in Kansas City, the wheels came off a bit in the last two days. Ervin Santana finally pitched a good game on the road; I was very impressed with his mixture of pitches, both in terms of pitch selection and location. He moved the ball in and out very well and kept out of predictable patterns. Sadly, one fastball too many strayed over the middle of the plate, and he lost the game. It happens.
Most impressive in his outing was that he issued only one walk. He did give up 11 hits, more than you'd like to see, but as we know that's the sort of thing that evens out over time; when you challenge batters to earn their way on base, sometimes they do, but more often they don't. The fact that he was pounding the strike zone was good to see; in his previous losses this year, he had walked 13 batters in 14 innings, which is simply unacceptable.
Jered Weaver still hasn't had an ideal start, by his standards, but let it be known that the first two runs he allowed yesterday were both by baserunners who should never have been on base in the first place. Gary Matthews Jr.'s elliptical paths to flying baseballs sometimes cost us and sometimes don't, and yesterday cost us big when his incompetence led to a Ross Gload triple. Reggie Willits mis-read a ball in the fourth that led to a lead-off double. With a pitcher like Weaver on the mound, the outfield has to be on their game, and they weren't here. Still, his peripheral numbers -- 9 strikeouts against 2 unintentional walks and 7 hits in six innings -- were solid, and in the long run he'll be fine.
The real problem the last two games, as it has been and will be again, was the offense. Players not named Vladimir Guerrero went 3-for-30 yesterday with one walk and no extra-base hits; the day before, they were 6-for-28 with one walk and three doubles. That adds up to a 155/183/207 line for Non-Vlads over the two games, and we're simply not going to win when that happens. And as currently constituted, this is an offense incapable of scoring runs in a hurry; Matthews is the only semi-legitimate power threat in the lineup outside of Vlad (unless you want to count Shea Hillenbrand, who has one extra-base hit in 87 AB this year, or the struggling Mike Napoli), which means the singles have to string together to make the runs happen. Casey Kotchman's season has been fits and starts so far, but hopefully he can step up behind Vlad and make some run production ensue.
Most impressive in his outing was that he issued only one walk. He did give up 11 hits, more than you'd like to see, but as we know that's the sort of thing that evens out over time; when you challenge batters to earn their way on base, sometimes they do, but more often they don't. The fact that he was pounding the strike zone was good to see; in his previous losses this year, he had walked 13 batters in 14 innings, which is simply unacceptable.
Jered Weaver still hasn't had an ideal start, by his standards, but let it be known that the first two runs he allowed yesterday were both by baserunners who should never have been on base in the first place. Gary Matthews Jr.'s elliptical paths to flying baseballs sometimes cost us and sometimes don't, and yesterday cost us big when his incompetence led to a Ross Gload triple. Reggie Willits mis-read a ball in the fourth that led to a lead-off double. With a pitcher like Weaver on the mound, the outfield has to be on their game, and they weren't here. Still, his peripheral numbers -- 9 strikeouts against 2 unintentional walks and 7 hits in six innings -- were solid, and in the long run he'll be fine.
The real problem the last two games, as it has been and will be again, was the offense. Players not named Vladimir Guerrero went 3-for-30 yesterday with one walk and no extra-base hits; the day before, they were 6-for-28 with one walk and three doubles. That adds up to a 155/183/207 line for Non-Vlads over the two games, and we're simply not going to win when that happens. And as currently constituted, this is an offense incapable of scoring runs in a hurry; Matthews is the only semi-legitimate power threat in the lineup outside of Vlad (unless you want to count Shea Hillenbrand, who has one extra-base hit in 87 AB this year, or the struggling Mike Napoli), which means the singles have to string together to make the runs happen. Casey Kotchman's season has been fits and starts so far, but hopefully he can step up behind Vlad and make some run production ensue.
Labels: Casey Kotchman, Ervin Santana, Gary Matthew Jr (scenic routes to the ball of), Gary Matthews Jr, Jered Weaver, Mike Napoli, Reggie Willits, Shea Hillenbrand, Vladimir Guerrero
Monday, February 26, 2007
BUNTING REDUX
Around three weeks ago, I broke down all of the Angel sacrifice bunts in 2006 to determine whether or not successful sacrifices were actually counterproductive and hurt the team. As I mentioned in that piece, limitations in the data prevented me from exploring the topic any further.
That limitation has already been transcended, as Baseball Reference's tremendous Play Index has a new feature that allows one to search for bunting attempts in addition to successful sacrifices. (And if you're not a subscriber to PI, you're just living in ignorance of the finer things in life.)
To wit, here are the 31 successful sacrifice bunts laid down by the Halos last season, and here are the 40 bunt attempts.
Now, I'm not 100% sure that this covers all attempts; the notorious Adam Kennedy attempt on May 18 is not listed, for instance. Also, any time a bunt attempt was called for early in a count, but then taken off, would not be included. But this should still give us close to a complete picture of Angel bunting last season.
So, as you can determine from the above, there were nine sacrifice attempts that resulted in something other than a sacrifice. Of these nine, one led to an out with no advancement, one turned into a double play, two advanced a runner but were not counted as a sacrifice as there was one out, and five were singles.
As you may recall, I discovered that the sacrifice bunts that were laid down "cost" the Angels -.080 wins, using the win expectancy chart and adjusting for the handedness of the pitcher and batter. I was expecting (and hoping) that adding in these nine additional attempts would allay that, but in fact it goes down slightly to -.091 (though one of those appears to have been a clear bunt-for-hit attempt by Reggie Willits, though removing that would only make it -.086, and the Kennedy attempt I reference above would probably knock that down further).
However, there is one particular bunt call that lays waste to all the others. As you may recall, and I discuss this in the link to my entry on the Kennedy bunt above, in that same game Mike Napoli was asked to lay down a squeeze bunt. Mike Napoli, a power-hitting batter who had successfully executed only three sacrifice bunts in his entire professional career.
The result was predictable: a pop-up double play to end the inning. As the game was tied 4-4 at that moment, this was incredibly crucial, and markedly disastrous. By the win expectancy chart, this cost the Angels -.249 wins; their chances of winning the game stood at 74.9% before the play and 50% after. No other bunt play last year from the Angels came close to matching this swing, either in a positive or negative direction. Take out that bunt, and the team was helped to the tune of .158 wins over the course of the season.
Still, I concluded in my earlier piece that Mike Scioscia seems to have a good grasp of when the bunt is a good play and when it is not, in general, and I still hold that conclusion. It's just that last year, when he made a bad call that completely mis-fired, it was a total doozy.
Around three weeks ago, I broke down all of the Angel sacrifice bunts in 2006 to determine whether or not successful sacrifices were actually counterproductive and hurt the team. As I mentioned in that piece, limitations in the data prevented me from exploring the topic any further.
That limitation has already been transcended, as Baseball Reference's tremendous Play Index has a new feature that allows one to search for bunting attempts in addition to successful sacrifices. (And if you're not a subscriber to PI, you're just living in ignorance of the finer things in life.)
To wit, here are the 31 successful sacrifice bunts laid down by the Halos last season, and here are the 40 bunt attempts.
Now, I'm not 100% sure that this covers all attempts; the notorious Adam Kennedy attempt on May 18 is not listed, for instance. Also, any time a bunt attempt was called for early in a count, but then taken off, would not be included. But this should still give us close to a complete picture of Angel bunting last season.
So, as you can determine from the above, there were nine sacrifice attempts that resulted in something other than a sacrifice. Of these nine, one led to an out with no advancement, one turned into a double play, two advanced a runner but were not counted as a sacrifice as there was one out, and five were singles.
As you may recall, I discovered that the sacrifice bunts that were laid down "cost" the Angels -.080 wins, using the win expectancy chart and adjusting for the handedness of the pitcher and batter. I was expecting (and hoping) that adding in these nine additional attempts would allay that, but in fact it goes down slightly to -.091 (though one of those appears to have been a clear bunt-for-hit attempt by Reggie Willits, though removing that would only make it -.086, and the Kennedy attempt I reference above would probably knock that down further).
However, there is one particular bunt call that lays waste to all the others. As you may recall, and I discuss this in the link to my entry on the Kennedy bunt above, in that same game Mike Napoli was asked to lay down a squeeze bunt. Mike Napoli, a power-hitting batter who had successfully executed only three sacrifice bunts in his entire professional career.
The result was predictable: a pop-up double play to end the inning. As the game was tied 4-4 at that moment, this was incredibly crucial, and markedly disastrous. By the win expectancy chart, this cost the Angels -.249 wins; their chances of winning the game stood at 74.9% before the play and 50% after. No other bunt play last year from the Angels came close to matching this swing, either in a positive or negative direction. Take out that bunt, and the team was helped to the tune of .158 wins over the course of the season.
Still, I concluded in my earlier piece that Mike Scioscia seems to have a good grasp of when the bunt is a good play and when it is not, in general, and I still hold that conclusion. It's just that last year, when he made a bad call that completely mis-fired, it was a total doozy.
Labels: Adam Kennedy, bunting, Mike Napoli, Mike Scioscia, Reggie Willits, win expectancy
