May 25, 2013

MLB Player Dashboard: 2008-2012

January 31, 2013 by 29 Comments

Yesterday I tweeted out a mercurial link about my “nerd-project”, but today I wanted to share it with you all more formally.

Before that, a warning: this has almost nothing to do with Cleveland Sports, so turn back now if that’s the particular tunnel you like looking though.

WAR Dashboard

Basically, this thing started when I was writing a piece a few weeks back.  I got tired of looking up stats on several different sites to get all the data I wanted.  More often than not, I was toggling between a player’s Baseball-Reference page and his corresponding Fangraphs page.  Sometimes, I was even averaging the two sites’ similar (though slightly different) version of wins above replacement (WAR) to get a fuller picture of the player’s value.  This became tiresome.

So I decided to create a tool that would average the two versions of WAR for me.  [Read more...]

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On Justin Masterson, Again

April 19, 2012 by 26 Comments

If you forced me to guess, I would say that I’ve probably written more words about Justin Masterson than about any other human being on the face of the planet.  Which is kind of weird for me to acknowledge, considering I’ve written a freaking master’s thesis and am, as Denny would say, “allegedly educated”.

But when you consider that I write mostly about baseball these days, and mostly about the Cleveland Indians at that, it becomes a little less weird.  But only by degree.

Why do I find Masterson so interesting?  I’m not sure, actually.  It’s certainly not because I’m convinced he’s the best player we have.  I mean, he might be the best player we have, but I’m not sure of it.  Santana might be the best player we have.  Choo might be the best player we have.  Heck, even Dunkers….well….no….probably not Dunkers.  Sorry Shelly.* [Read more...]

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Adam Everett is Your Newest Cleveland Indian

December 17, 2010 by 14 Comments

Though the Cleveland Indians have long stated their desire to bolster their weaknesses at third base, outfield and starting pitcher, Chris Antonetti’s latest addition to the Wahoo Warriors is veteran utility infielder Adam Everett who will provide depth at shortstop if he can camp among the 40-man roster.

While third base continues to be a hot button issue, the team felt that adding Everett (this year’s Mark Grudzielanek?), could provide depth at shortstop in the event that Asdrubal Cabrera gets hurt or at second base in the event that Jason Donald and Luis Valbuena continue to play like Jason Donald and Luis Valbuena.

[Read more...]

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SABR-Toothed Triber: Why Not Carlos?

July 1, 2010 by 25 Comments

Last week I examined the Indians’ All-Star candidates, and concluded that Shin-Soo Choo, in all likelihood, would be the Indians’ representative.

As if on cue, Choo put together a monster stretch of baseball: since June 23, Choo’s hit 5 HR, knocked in 10 RBI, raised his slugging percentage by 36 points, and contributed to the team’s recent four-game winning streak.

But someone else has had a hand in the recent offensive output.  In fact, near the end of the piece referenced above, I suggested that Carlos Santana might deserve to make the All-Star team as well.  Sure, it was sort of a joke: Santana made his MLB debut June 11—giving him barely a month before the game in Anaheim.  Like I said then, it’s a long-shot.

Even still, let’s look at Santana’s numbers to see where he ranks.  [Read more...]

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Brandon Phillips Trade Continues to Haunt Cleveland

June 28, 2010 by 14 Comments

When the Cleveland Indians and Cincinnati Reds lock up for interleague play, it is supposed to be the “Battle of Ohio.”  And while it’s always an entertaining subplot, the focus of many fans tends to turn to Reds second baseman Brandon Phillips – the former second-round selection whom the Indians traded for, only to ship him to the Reds prior to the 2006 season.

Per usual, Phillips did not disappoint this past weekend, going 5-for-12 with two runs scored and an RBI.  Increasing his average by 11 points over the last week of play, Phillips seems to have any Indians-Reds match-ups circled on his calendar for retribution purposes.  In fact, Indians fans should actually feel good that Phillips only scored two runs with an RBI in this series as the Gold Glover tends to wreak havoc on the Wahoos.

[Read more...]

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SABR-Toothed Triber: The One about Bad Defense

June 25, 2010 by 12 Comments

Coming into this year, we all knew there would be some holes on the 2010 Indians.  The lineup was a bit heavy on left-handers and looked young.  The rotation was full of question marks and back-end types.  The bullpen was…well, the bullpen in Cleveland is always a shaky proposition.  Yes, there were certainly reasons to temper levels of enthusiasm regarding this team.

But I had no idea the defense would be this bad.

Before we get to the more advanced statistics, let’s look at some of the basics—if only to underscore how they don’t quite work.  The Indians have lost eight of their last nine games, dating back to the Mets series.  Over that span, they’ve committed eight errors that have resulted in four unearned runs.  After the jump, I put together a little chart to map these games out:

[Read more...]

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SABR-Toothed Triber: We Get an All-Star Representative?

June 22, 2010 by 15 Comments

Yes.  We do.  For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, the Cleveland Indians will send a player to the All-Star Game to help determine home-field advantage in a World Series they have no chance of playing in.

To be honest, the Game has become a bit of a farce.  It sort of matters, but it’s played like it doesn’t.  Sure, the managers would like to win, but not at the expense of real effort or keeping any reserves on the bench.  This magic combination of blah and blasé team up to deliver you one of the most forgettable moments in the modern baseball season: the Midsummer “Classic”.  At least the NBA All-Star game knows what it is: an exhibition.  The MLB version seems confused about its raison d’etre, and often leaves me wondering why we have one at all.

But each team is guaranteed one representative (until Bud Selig dies or retires), and it’s my job to vet the Indians’ candidates.  Rest assured: none of these players has the slightest chance of actually being voted in, so whoever represents the Indians will be the choice of the AL manager, Joe Girardi.  Without further ado, here are the Tribe’s mostly like candidates with some SABR-analysis attached to each one. [Read more...]

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SABR-Toothed Triber: Travis Hafner’s “Resurgence”

June 17, 2010 by 14 Comments

I have a confession to make: I really like Travis Hafner.  Sure, the affection may stem from his 2006 season, when he was the best hitter in baseball, but I like to think that my passions for players are less pedestrian than just: “he was good once, so I like him.”  I like to think that I’m a fan because he’s a good guy, or because he was a late bloomer, or because he has a silly nickname, or because he’s currently the longest-tenured Cleveland Indian Tribe hitter.  Maybe I like to think of myself as loyal, and turning my back on Hafner would make me feel otherwise.

But none of that is really true either.  I like Travis Hafner because his swing is beautiful to watch—I’m a sucker for power and quick hands from the left side of the plate.  When I was a kid, I tried to switch hit because I wanted to look like Barry Bonds or Stan Musial. Nothing against DiMaggio or Pujols—it just wasn’t where my heart was. [Read more...]

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SABR-Toothed Triber: Justin Masterson’s Regression

June 14, 2010 by 6 Comments

Just a few weeks back, I started to question how much longer Masterson could stay in the Indians’ rotation.  Early in the season, I knew it had the potential to get ugly, but I was all for sticking with him for the year to see if he could figure it out.  But each time Masterson took the mound, things seemed to get worse: his control looked off, lefties were still pounding him, and he just couldn’t catch a break.  For his sake, I started to wonder if Masterson didn’t need a break from the rotation.  Further, it looked like Laffey’s demotion to Columbus signaled that the front office had seen enough of the experiment as well, and they were on their way to shifting Masterson back to the ‘pen, as soon as Laffey could get stretched out.  I can’t say I disagreed.

But then a funny thing happened on the way to demotion.  Masterson went on a three game tear that looked something like this: [Read more...]

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SABR-Toothed Triber: Santana Leads the Indians in…EVERYTHING?

June 11, 2010 by 21 Comments

A few months back, I looked at Carlos Santana’s Minor League Equivalency numbers (MLEs).  Basically, MLEs convert a minor leaguer’s performance to the majors, adjusting for level of competition and home ballpark.  In honor of Santana’s callup to the majors tonight, I thought we’d take one more look at his MLEs for this year, to see where he’d rate among the current team in hitting categories.

Just a reminder: MLEs are translations, not predictions.  They tell us how a player’s numbers would be deflated by stiffer competition (i.e. Major League competition).  So the numbers we’re going to look below are not projections for what Santana will do, but rather adjustments to what he has done to this point in the season if he had been with the Indians all year and performed at the level he performed in AAA.

With that out of the way, here are Santana’s current AAA numbers: [Read more...]

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SABR-Toothed Triber: Vetting the Top Draft Picks—Stats & Scouts

June 10, 2010 by 5 Comments

It’s old news by now, but the MLB draft is now complete, and the Indians walked away with a boatload of (read: 50)  new, young players.  Between now and August 16th, the job is to sign as many of the picks as possible and assign them to the minor league system to continue their development.

Today I thought we’d take a close look at two of the early round picks.  I’ll certainly include some traditional scouting for each player profiled, but since I haven’t seen them in person, I’ll try to keep most of my opinions to what the numbers can tell us.

Let’s start with our first round pick, Drew Pomeranz.  [Read more...]

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SABR-Toothed Triber: Who is David Huff?

May 27, 2010 by 5 Comments

It’s time for our favorite guessing-game.  Here are three seasons by three different Tribe southpaws.  Can you guess who is who?

Age ERA WHIP FIP K/9 BB/9 GB/FB HR/FB
Player A 24 5.61 1.56 4.69 4.56 2.88 0.90 8.3%
Player B 25 5.43 1.50 4.97 8.09 4.07 0.75 12.4%
Player C 24 5.58 1.49 5.05 4.76 2.90 1.24 12.7%

Before we reveal the identities, let’s pause over these seasons and to see what we can glean.  I’ve tried to pick seasons where each player was about the same age, to get a feel for their respective developmental curves.   Each player had an ERA above 5.40—nothing terribly impressive there.  They each allowed about 1.5 base runners per inning.  All of them had lower FIPs than ERAs, which means either that their defense wasn’t terrific or that they let up too many “seeing-eye singles”.  Both Player A and Player C struggled to strike batters out (about one every other inning), while Player B looks as if he struggled with walks.  Nonetheless, all three of them strikeout about 1.5 to 2 times as many batters as they walk, which is acceptable, if unimpressive.  Player C throws the most groundballs, but also has the highest ratio of his flyballs leave the park.  Player A limited the damage done on flyballs, keeping over 90% in the yard.

All in all, though?  Pretty similar pitchers.  Ready? [Read more...]

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SABR-Toothed Triber: Branyan, Strikeouts, Value, and Hate

May 20, 2010 by 8 Comments

This week’s SABR piece is a shoutout to ESPN’s Chris Berman for discussing “Sabermatics” yesterday on Baseball Tonight.  You know, those new-fangled numbers the kids are talking about these days?  Also the ones that Jon Stenier has dropped on us for a few months now.  This week’s topic du jour? The Muscle.

When the Indians inked Russell Branyan to a one-year, $2 million deal this off-season and guaranteed him an everyday job as the team’s first baseman, there were plenty of legitimate questions about the move.  Was the front office playing the service clock game with Michael Brantley?  Was Matt LaPorta not recovered from his two off-season surgeries?  Wasn’t this club already a bit heavy on the left-handed hitters?

At least those were the questions that went through my mind, and to be honest, I haven’t yet answered all of them.  It is weird that on a rebuilding team, you promise to give 450 at bats to a journeyman slugger who didn’t seem to fit any of the team’s pressing needs (youth, right handed hitters, starting pitching, etc.).

But one question that didn’t occur to me was whether or not Branyan is a good player.  [Read more...]

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SABR-Toothed Triber: Options, Bad & Worse

May 13, 2010 by 9 Comments

With Kerry Wood’s return, Jon Steiner is back to tell us why the Indians opted to send down Jensen Lewis and if it will ultimately prove to be the right decision.  I’ll give you all two guesses to that answer.  This one is light on math, but still heavy on science.  Enjoy.

I know this sort of thing gets overdone on the series of tubes, but I’m going to present you with two relief pitchers, and you’re going to tell me which one is better:

Pitcher A:  66.1 IP   8.41K/9   3.93 BB/9   4.61 ERA   4.44 xFIP

Pitcher B:  48.0 IP   6.00K/9   4.69 BB/9   7.31 ERA   4.73 xFIP

[Read more...]

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SABR-Toothed Triber: The Whys and Wherefores of an Awful Offense

May 6, 2010 by 13 Comments

Last time we demonstrated rather conclusively that the Indians’ offense is largely to blame for our losing ways.  We did this by splitting the team into its three main components—rotation, bullpen, and position players—and looking at a stat called Win Probability Added.  It turned out (and still does, for the record) that the offense is the sole reason we are a sub-.500 team.

 But a few of the commentariat suggested that the work we did merely stated the obvious.  Indeed, it would be hard to watch more than a few Tribe games this season without recognizing the rather large, flaccid void in the place where most teams employ a functional lineup.  Today I want to explore why the offense has failed to live up to expectations—expectations that any number of Tribe Scribes hyped in the off-season.

 Let’s start by looking at some of the batting statistics posted by our “sluggers” so far: [Read more...]

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SABR-Toothed Triber: WPA & the Epistemology of Blame*

April 29, 2010 by 7 Comments

Just because we were told this would be a rough year for the Indians, that shouldn’t stop us from whining every now and then.  Today we’re going to open a whole new bottle of whine (see what I did there?), and along the way, we’ll hopefully develop a better idea of the players who are most at fault for the sub-standard performance so far this season.  A quick note: the stats in this piece were compiled on Tuesday, when the team’s record was 8-11.  That may come in handy to those of you following along at home.

A few weeks back, we discussed the concept of Wins above Replacement (WAR).  Basically WAR tells us how many wins a player generated for his team over and above what a cheap AAA player would have contributed.  But as you might remember, WAR is a context-independent measurement: it doesn’t value a two-run HR late in a one-run game any more than a grand slam when your team is already leading by 10.  The skill (hitting the HR) is what’s being measured, and you don’t take into account when the event took place in the course of a game. [Read more...]

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SABR-Toothed Triber: Translating the Carlos Santana Situation

April 22, 2010 by 4 Comments

Jon Steiner is back once again, this time to dissect everyone’s favorite prospect.  What can we expect from the slugger upon call-up?  Let’s take a look…

The first time I saw Carlos Santana swing a bat was in March 2009 during a spring training game.  I’d just gotten home from work, flipped on STO, and there he was.  The first thing that went through my mind?

Victor looks big.

Obviously, it wasn’t Victor, and as I realized I was watching our newly acquired young catcher, I became obsessed: the kid looked like V-Mart alright, but WOW!  His swing looked more powerful!  How was this possible from a 22-year-old kid? 

Since then, I’ve been waiting patiently like the rest of Cleveland for Santana’s arrival.  We’ve heard from Mark Shapiro for years that his bat is ready for the Majors, but he needs some time to work on his English and refine his receiving skills.  I thought today we’d take a look to see just how ready his bat might be, and what, if anything, his minor league numbers can tell us.

[Read more...]

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What Has Choo Done For Me Lately?

April 16, 2010 by 15 Comments

The Cleveland Indians currently boast the worst batting average in all of baseball with a bright an shiny .211.  Only one player on the team has a batting average north of .300 to this point, and it is right-fielder Shin-Soo Choo.

Over his last four games, Choo is hitting .615 (8-for-13) with three home runs and two doubles.  For the season, he has an OPS of 1.152.

His impact in Thursday’s 3-2 win over the Texas Rangers has already been documented.  Finally being able to take advantage of base runners that were simply handed to them, Choo’s eighth inning home run notched the Indians their third win of the season. 

In Thursday’s game, Choo notched one of the highest WPA (win probability added, the change in win likelihood from start to end) marks of the season at .533.  This means that on his own, Shin-Soo Choo was worth more than half of yesterday’s win probability, with the rest of the team – eight other position players and David Huff – comprising the rest. 

[Read more...]

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SABR-Toothed Triber: Mastering Masterson’s Splits

April 15, 2010 by 7 Comments

Note: The bulk of this piece was written before Justin Masterson’s start last night, so take most of the 2010 charts with multiple grains of salt, as they only include his first start of the season against the White Sox.

In January, Manny Acta and Mark Shapiro announced that Justin Masterson would be given a shot in the starting rotation, marking the first time in Masterson’s major league career that he would be in an opening day rotation.  While much has been written about who would fill the #4 and #5 spots in the rotation, I’d like to take a look today at some of Masterson’s numbers, to see what we might be able to expect from the youngster in a starting role.

[Read more...]

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SABR-Toothed Triber: Pay that Man his Money?

March 25, 2010 by 16 Comments

Guess who’s back.  Back again.  Baseball math.  Tell a friend…

Last week we introduced the concept of Wins Above Replacement (WAR). I encourage you to read the piece in its entirety if you need a reminder, but basically WAR is a counting stat that measures how many wins—by way of runs—a player contributes to his team. Pretty nifty.

You may remember that we had to do some heavy lifting to establish the “replacement level player,” but once we had that set, we had a salary ($400,000) and a WAR baseline (zero) against which we could compare any major leaguer’s performance. This week, I want to spend some time figuring out how much money teams are willing to pay for wins on the open market (i.e. free agency), and where that leaves the Indians front office, considering their Dolan-overlords budgetary constraints.

Let’s start by looking at some of the free agent contracts handed out this past year, along with those players’ projected WAR for 2010 season (courtesy CHONE): [Read more...]

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