Thursday, September 27, 2007
GARY
So Gary Matthews Jr is injured, and may or not be available for the postseason. What would this mean for the Angels?
Well, first of all, let's take a look at how Matthews has done this year. As you may recall, there was some handwringing in the Halosphere when Matthews, after having put up the first good offensive season of his life, was signed to a deal that will keep him in Angel red until the year 2011. He did okay in the first two months, hitting 286/339/452 through May (an OPS+ of 111). Along with his solid defense, that was just fine.
But the second half has been nothing but struggles for Matthews, who has hit 211/296/392 since the All Star Game, and hasn't been completely healthy of late. Interestingly, if you add 75 points to that batting average, you get a line of 286/371/467, an improvement on his first half; he actually had more walks and extra-base power in the second half than in the first, but he wasn't getting the hits to fall in.
At any rate, as of now he's got a 98 OPS+, which ranks 10th out of the 21 major league center fielders with 120 or more games. His fielding stats aren't too hot, either.
Here's something simple: how Matthews has done the past few years by average, OBP, and slugging, as compared to the park-adjusted league average, reported by BB-Ref:
Oh, wait, I left out a year:
Without Matthews in the lineup, we could see any and all of these combinations:
Surprisingly (maybe), Maicer Izturis has also out-produced Gary (on a per-plate appearance basis, at any rate) this year, notching an OPS+ of 104. Ztu put up a 106 last year, so it seems like this may actually be his real level of ability. In fact, his last two years resemble each other quite strongly:
All things considered, I'd have to say this team could withstand Gary Matthews Jr's absence during the playoffs. I'm not saying that as a shot at Gary: the fact is this team has succeeded because of uncommon depth. I'll probably write about this sometime, but a lot of things have gone wrong for the Angels this year, but the team has managed to stay in front because of these seemingly endless reservoirs of guys like Willits and Izturis who can step in and perform at an above-average level when someone gets hurt.
I'm actually saddened by the prospect of Gary's being unable to play in October, as he signed with this team to get that shot, and regardless of my skepticism over his contract, he seems like a good guy who has worked hard and given his all, and I'd love to see him contribute. But the reason he can even ponder playing in October is that he's on a team with the foresight and resources to still get there even when nearly everything goes wrong.
Well, first of all, let's take a look at how Matthews has done this year. As you may recall, there was some handwringing in the Halosphere when Matthews, after having put up the first good offensive season of his life, was signed to a deal that will keep him in Angel red until the year 2011. He did okay in the first two months, hitting 286/339/452 through May (an OPS+ of 111). Along with his solid defense, that was just fine.
But the second half has been nothing but struggles for Matthews, who has hit 211/296/392 since the All Star Game, and hasn't been completely healthy of late. Interestingly, if you add 75 points to that batting average, you get a line of 286/371/467, an improvement on his first half; he actually had more walks and extra-base power in the second half than in the first, but he wasn't getting the hits to fall in.
At any rate, as of now he's got a 98 OPS+, which ranks 10th out of the 21 major league center fielders with 120 or more games. His fielding stats aren't too hot, either.
Here's something simple: how Matthews has done the past few years by average, OBP, and slugging, as compared to the park-adjusted league average, reported by BB-Ref:
Year AVG OBP SLGPretty consistent, huh?
2004 -.008 -.013 +.013
2005 -.018 -.016 +.003
2007 -.013 -.009 +.005
Oh, wait, I left out a year:
Year AVG OBP SLGSo, to the surprise of no one, except maybe the Angels, Gary Matthews Jr reverted to being the hitter he was before his "breakout" season; he's an average hitter. No more. No less.
2004 -.008 -.013 +.013
2005 -.018 -.016 +.003
2006 +.033 +.026 +.050
2007 -.013 -.009 +.005
Without Matthews in the lineup, we could see any and all of these combinations:
3B FigginsAs a hitter, Reggie Willits has been a bit better than Matthews so far this year. Willits, like Matthews, has slumped a bit after a hot start, but has still managed to hit 276/377/323 in the second half (not too far off of what I speculated he might do back in May, though I'm happy to say he has maintained his walk rate to a greater degree that I thought he would). By the numbers, his defense in center seems to be worse than Matthews', and this reflect my subjective view of their relative glovework, as well.
CF Willits
RF/DH Vlad/Rivera
3B Izturis
CF Willits
RF/DH Figgins/Vlad
3B Izturis
CF Figgins
RF Vlad/Rivera
Surprisingly (maybe), Maicer Izturis has also out-produced Gary (on a per-plate appearance basis, at any rate) this year, notching an OPS+ of 104. Ztu put up a 106 last year, so it seems like this may actually be his real level of ability. In fact, his last two years resemble each other quite strongly:
Year AVG OBP SLGIzturis might just be a better hitter than Matthews at this point, and seems to be a pretty good defensive option on the hot corner. And while Juan Rivera took some time to adjust, he is hitting 348/375/652 over the last two weeks, so he may be rearing to go, as well.
2006 +.024 +.032 -.016
2007 +.026 +.019 -.006
All things considered, I'd have to say this team could withstand Gary Matthews Jr's absence during the playoffs. I'm not saying that as a shot at Gary: the fact is this team has succeeded because of uncommon depth. I'll probably write about this sometime, but a lot of things have gone wrong for the Angels this year, but the team has managed to stay in front because of these seemingly endless reservoirs of guys like Willits and Izturis who can step in and perform at an above-average level when someone gets hurt.
I'm actually saddened by the prospect of Gary's being unable to play in October, as he signed with this team to get that shot, and regardless of my skepticism over his contract, he seems like a good guy who has worked hard and given his all, and I'd love to see him contribute. But the reason he can even ponder playing in October is that he's on a team with the foresight and resources to still get there even when nearly everything goes wrong.
Labels: Gary Matthews Jr, Juan Rivera, Maicer Izturis, Reggie Willits
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
LOOKING FORWARD
As the midpoint of the season draws near, rumors begin to swirl about what, if anything, the Angels will and should do to secure their lead in the West.
However, the most imminent and likely rumor has to do with dispatching someone; the Yankees, as has been reported all over the Halosphere, have expressed interest in Shea Hillenbrand. It's hard to argue that the Angels really need Shea at this point (or that they ever did, really), but, nonetheless, we are reportedly uneasy with trading him while Garret Anderson resides on the DL and Casey Kotchman's near future is uncertain due to his concussion.
Signing Hillenbrand was a panic move in light of Juan Rivera's injury, of course. An understandable panic move, but one that was likely unnecessary (as I argued before the season). Given that he is being out-produced by both Reggie Willits and Robb Quinlan, I hold to this position.
Still, I understand wanting to make sure Casey is okay before moving forward. But I have no reservations with moving him. Kendry Morales is a better use of the roster spot.
In addition to ridding ourselves of Hillenbrand, there is talk of the Angels going out to get Adam Dunn. This is far more complicated.
Dunn certainly is an intriguing player. He has a ton of power and draws a lot of walks, two things our offense could use. But he's also a poor defender and, most likely, an ordinary baserunner (at best), and he strikes out a lot. However, being in the AL would allow him to DH, removing the poor defense from consideration, and you can live with the strikeouts when he produces like he can (a career OPS+ of 128, 134 so far this season). Dunn is an elite hitter who has never played in late summer games of particular significance, so he might really shine in a spotlight.
But, even outside of pondering what we'd have to give up (Joe Saunders and Hainley Staitia and someone else, perhaps?), he would create something of a logjam once Garret and Rivera return from injury. Rivera is about to start taking batting practice, and if he can return, even at his career 115-OPS+ level, he still would help the team considerably at bat, and with his solid defense and outstanding arm would provide a great service by relieving our corner outfielders. Dunn might be able to give Vlad a break as a DH twice a month or something, but that's far from ideal.
Reggie Willits has proven he belongs in the lineup; the Angels aren't going to bench a healthy Garret Anderson (though assuming health from him may be a case of counting chickens before they hatch) and Juan Rivera has earned playing time, as well. Though I wouldn't be adverse to acquiring Dunn if the price were right, I don't see Stoneman making such a move that could disrupt our current "offensive continuity" until he knows more about the condition of Garret and Juan.
Now, if from a month from now, neither one of those guys is healthy enough to produce, then we can revisit it. But as of this moment, I don't see anything developing on that front, and that doesn't really bother me.
I'm actually far more concerned about our bullpen, which we can discuss later this week.
However, the most imminent and likely rumor has to do with dispatching someone; the Yankees, as has been reported all over the Halosphere, have expressed interest in Shea Hillenbrand. It's hard to argue that the Angels really need Shea at this point (or that they ever did, really), but, nonetheless, we are reportedly uneasy with trading him while Garret Anderson resides on the DL and Casey Kotchman's near future is uncertain due to his concussion.
Signing Hillenbrand was a panic move in light of Juan Rivera's injury, of course. An understandable panic move, but one that was likely unnecessary (as I argued before the season). Given that he is being out-produced by both Reggie Willits and Robb Quinlan, I hold to this position.
Still, I understand wanting to make sure Casey is okay before moving forward. But I have no reservations with moving him. Kendry Morales is a better use of the roster spot.
In addition to ridding ourselves of Hillenbrand, there is talk of the Angels going out to get Adam Dunn. This is far more complicated.
Dunn certainly is an intriguing player. He has a ton of power and draws a lot of walks, two things our offense could use. But he's also a poor defender and, most likely, an ordinary baserunner (at best), and he strikes out a lot. However, being in the AL would allow him to DH, removing the poor defense from consideration, and you can live with the strikeouts when he produces like he can (a career OPS+ of 128, 134 so far this season). Dunn is an elite hitter who has never played in late summer games of particular significance, so he might really shine in a spotlight.
But, even outside of pondering what we'd have to give up (Joe Saunders and Hainley Staitia and someone else, perhaps?), he would create something of a logjam once Garret and Rivera return from injury. Rivera is about to start taking batting practice, and if he can return, even at his career 115-OPS+ level, he still would help the team considerably at bat, and with his solid defense and outstanding arm would provide a great service by relieving our corner outfielders. Dunn might be able to give Vlad a break as a DH twice a month or something, but that's far from ideal.
Reggie Willits has proven he belongs in the lineup; the Angels aren't going to bench a healthy Garret Anderson (though assuming health from him may be a case of counting chickens before they hatch) and Juan Rivera has earned playing time, as well. Though I wouldn't be adverse to acquiring Dunn if the price were right, I don't see Stoneman making such a move that could disrupt our current "offensive continuity" until he knows more about the condition of Garret and Juan.
Now, if from a month from now, neither one of those guys is healthy enough to produce, then we can revisit it. But as of this moment, I don't see anything developing on that front, and that doesn't really bother me.
I'm actually far more concerned about our bullpen, which we can discuss later this week.
Labels: a real bummer, Bill Stoneman, Casey Kotchman, Garret Anderson, Juan Rivera, Reggie Willits, Robb Quinlan, trade rumors
Friday, May 18, 2007
REGGIE BBILITS
As you know, Reggie Willits is off to a terrific start in 2007. While the high level of his performance may be something of a surprise to many, his style of performance is highly consistent with what he has done throughout his professional career.
Longtime readers will be familiar with Reggie, not only because he was a mainstay of my prospect Watch Lists while in the minors, but also because anyone who cares enough about the Angels to read this blog will be pretty well-informed about the organization and its players.
As such, we all know that Willits isn't really a .366 hitter. He never hit higher than .327 in the minors, which came last year at AAA Salt Lake. At some point his average will come down a bit, unless he's morphed into Ty Cobb. Will the rest of the game pick up that slack and allow him to continue to be a productive player?
One thing that concerned me about Willits as he came up through the majors is that, due to his lack of size and power, his walk rate would diminish. Of course, walk rates go down at every successive level of play, as pitchers become more and more accurate and precise. But I fear that players with no power suffer this more acutely, as pitcher down in the count have no reason to fear them, and are comfortable attacking the strike zone and making them swing the bat.
I often drew a comparison between Willits and David Eckstein, which, to be honest, is a completely obvious comparison. In the minor leagues, Eck walked in 13.7% of his plate appearances (I'm excluding hit-by-pitch and sacrifice bunts here, as well as intentional walks), but in the majors he's only walked 7.0% of the time. Why? Because pitchers challenge him.
Reggie Willits walked in 12.8% of his PA in the minors; in his young major league career, he's walked ... 15.3% of the time!
That looks good, but it's also worth noting that his walk rate has dived from his cup of coffee last season to this season. He had 11 walks in 56 PA last year (once again, with all the exclusions I mentioned above) for a ridiculous 19.6% walk rate; this year he's done to a more normal 14 of 107 (13.1%) -- which is still better than his minor league numbers.
David Eckstein was pretty good at working the count, averaging 3.83 pitches per plate appearances his rookie year and 3.82 over his career (the average is 3.77). Willits, however, has been even better so far, going through 4.33 pitches per PA in his young career.
Can he sustain this? I don't know -- my skepticism is noted above -- but Willits seems very comfortable hitting with two strikes and seeing as many pitches as he can.
He does walk a fine line, though. Right now, Reggie's career line in the majors is 333/436/370 for an OPS+ of 124. If he's really, say, a .275 hitter, his line would be 275/378/312 ... an OPS+ of 92. Now, with the stolen bases and stuff, he could still be a league-average hitter there, but you'd probably want more from your corner outfielder. And if those walks were to drop just a little bit, say to 10% of his PA, that OBP would drop considerably, down to around .330.
I don't think Reggie is ever going to develop any real power; his extra-bases per at-bat in the minors was only .095, so while he can probably improve on his current .037 a bit, there's not a high ceiling there. Just getting it up to .050 or .060 would be nice.
If he were to settle in at 275/350/330, that probably wouldn't be enough. But if he hits around .300, then he'd be just a bit above average.
Obviously, if he crashes down to .275 now (he'd have to hit .190 over his next 100 AB to drop his season average that far), that would be bad, but we could probably live with him hitting .275 for the balance of the season.
Of course, crazy things can happen. Darin Erstad wasn't really a .355 hitter, but he managed to do it for a season. However, Willits this year is hitting .436 on balls in play in the ballpark after having hit .363 on such in the minors (that BABIP this year would put him at 301/384/344). That's not a good bet, even though it would be wonderful.
But you know what? If he just sustains a little, he can still push Shea Hillenbrand out of the lineup once Garret Anderson returns. And that potentiality, which becomes more and more likely every day, is cause for celebration.
Longtime readers will be familiar with Reggie, not only because he was a mainstay of my prospect Watch Lists while in the minors, but also because anyone who cares enough about the Angels to read this blog will be pretty well-informed about the organization and its players.
As such, we all know that Willits isn't really a .366 hitter. He never hit higher than .327 in the minors, which came last year at AAA Salt Lake. At some point his average will come down a bit, unless he's morphed into Ty Cobb. Will the rest of the game pick up that slack and allow him to continue to be a productive player?
One thing that concerned me about Willits as he came up through the majors is that, due to his lack of size and power, his walk rate would diminish. Of course, walk rates go down at every successive level of play, as pitchers become more and more accurate and precise. But I fear that players with no power suffer this more acutely, as pitcher down in the count have no reason to fear them, and are comfortable attacking the strike zone and making them swing the bat.
I often drew a comparison between Willits and David Eckstein, which, to be honest, is a completely obvious comparison. In the minor leagues, Eck walked in 13.7% of his plate appearances (I'm excluding hit-by-pitch and sacrifice bunts here, as well as intentional walks), but in the majors he's only walked 7.0% of the time. Why? Because pitchers challenge him.
Reggie Willits walked in 12.8% of his PA in the minors; in his young major league career, he's walked ... 15.3% of the time!
That looks good, but it's also worth noting that his walk rate has dived from his cup of coffee last season to this season. He had 11 walks in 56 PA last year (once again, with all the exclusions I mentioned above) for a ridiculous 19.6% walk rate; this year he's done to a more normal 14 of 107 (13.1%) -- which is still better than his minor league numbers.
David Eckstein was pretty good at working the count, averaging 3.83 pitches per plate appearances his rookie year and 3.82 over his career (the average is 3.77). Willits, however, has been even better so far, going through 4.33 pitches per PA in his young career.
Can he sustain this? I don't know -- my skepticism is noted above -- but Willits seems very comfortable hitting with two strikes and seeing as many pitches as he can.
He does walk a fine line, though. Right now, Reggie's career line in the majors is 333/436/370 for an OPS+ of 124. If he's really, say, a .275 hitter, his line would be 275/378/312 ... an OPS+ of 92. Now, with the stolen bases and stuff, he could still be a league-average hitter there, but you'd probably want more from your corner outfielder. And if those walks were to drop just a little bit, say to 10% of his PA, that OBP would drop considerably, down to around .330.
I don't think Reggie is ever going to develop any real power; his extra-bases per at-bat in the minors was only .095, so while he can probably improve on his current .037 a bit, there's not a high ceiling there. Just getting it up to .050 or .060 would be nice.
If he were to settle in at 275/350/330, that probably wouldn't be enough. But if he hits around .300, then he'd be just a bit above average.
Obviously, if he crashes down to .275 now (he'd have to hit .190 over his next 100 AB to drop his season average that far), that would be bad, but we could probably live with him hitting .275 for the balance of the season.
Of course, crazy things can happen. Darin Erstad wasn't really a .355 hitter, but he managed to do it for a season. However, Willits this year is hitting .436 on balls in play in the ballpark after having hit .363 on such in the minors (that BABIP this year would put him at 301/384/344). That's not a good bet, even though it would be wonderful.
But you know what? If he just sustains a little, he can still push Shea Hillenbrand out of the lineup once Garret Anderson returns. And that potentiality, which becomes more and more likely every day, is cause for celebration.
Labels: Reggie Willits, walk rate
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
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, November 14, 2006
WE ARE IDIOTS, POSSIBLY
It is alleged that the Angels have offered Alfonso Soriano a six-year deal worth $80M.
Mike DiGiovanna, in the above-linked report, also says:
Soriano, for all his physical gifts, is a poor defensive second baseman; there is every reason to believe that Kendrick could make a good defensive first baseman with enough time, but why waste his talents there? He's already shown good athleticism at the keystone, and his bat will be much more valuable in the middle of the infield than on a corner. And such a move -- wrapping up Soriano for six years -- also negates the existence of Casey Kotchman and Kendry Morales, most likely putting Kotchman on the trading block (when his value, coming off his debilitating sickness, will be at its lowest) and consigning Morales, who showed some good leather around the bag last year, to DH work if he sticks around.
Not to mention that this plan doesn't address center field or third base. The only real way pursuing Soriano makes sense is if he is envisioned as either a center or left fielder. He took fairly well to left field last year, and with his speed and arm might even hold his own in center. If not, he can always play the corner, with Garret being the primary DH and Reggie Willits being the late-inning defensive caddy for Juan Rivera in center.
That's not the best-sounding defense in the world, but at least there's some pop in the bats, and Reggie Willits to salve some wounds.
I also wonder if Soriano would really go for a six-year deal in lieu of a five-year that is worth more dollars per year. I'm not convinced he's actually worth the ~$13M we may have offered, but I think perceptions of his ability are such that he can pull down more than Aramis Ramirez's $15M per.
I'm beginning to worry a bit about what this team has up its sleeve. After thankfully losing out on the ill-advised pursuit of Paul Konerko last winter, it almost seems like Bill Stoneman wants to do something for the sake of saying he did. But tossing money at old players who would block our cheaper (and soon to be better) players ... that ain't any kind of plan. So hopefully it isn't ours.
It is alleged that the Angels have offered Alfonso Soriano a six-year deal worth $80M.
Mike DiGiovanna, in the above-linked report, also says:
Though the Angels appear set at Soriano's two primary positions, left field (Garret Anderson) and second base (Howie Kendrick), they could move Kendrick to first base, Anderson to designated hitter or open up center field for Soriano.Seitz is all over the, shall we say, suboptimal nature of this, but on parsing the language it sounds much more like speculation than an actual plan.
Soriano, for all his physical gifts, is a poor defensive second baseman; there is every reason to believe that Kendrick could make a good defensive first baseman with enough time, but why waste his talents there? He's already shown good athleticism at the keystone, and his bat will be much more valuable in the middle of the infield than on a corner. And such a move -- wrapping up Soriano for six years -- also negates the existence of Casey Kotchman and Kendry Morales, most likely putting Kotchman on the trading block (when his value, coming off his debilitating sickness, will be at its lowest) and consigning Morales, who showed some good leather around the bag last year, to DH work if he sticks around.
Not to mention that this plan doesn't address center field or third base. The only real way pursuing Soriano makes sense is if he is envisioned as either a center or left fielder. He took fairly well to left field last year, and with his speed and arm might even hold his own in center. If not, he can always play the corner, with Garret being the primary DH and Reggie Willits being the late-inning defensive caddy for Juan Rivera in center.
That's not the best-sounding defense in the world, but at least there's some pop in the bats, and Reggie Willits to salve some wounds.
I also wonder if Soriano would really go for a six-year deal in lieu of a five-year that is worth more dollars per year. I'm not convinced he's actually worth the ~$13M we may have offered, but I think perceptions of his ability are such that he can pull down more than Aramis Ramirez's $15M per.
I'm beginning to worry a bit about what this team has up its sleeve. After thankfully losing out on the ill-advised pursuit of Paul Konerko last winter, it almost seems like Bill Stoneman wants to do something for the sake of saying he did. But tossing money at old players who would block our cheaper (and soon to be better) players ... that ain't any kind of plan. So hopefully it isn't ours.
Labels: Alfonso Soriano, Aramis Ramirez, Bill Stoneman, Casey Kotchman, hysteria, Kendry Morales, Paul Konerko, Reggie Willits
