Monday, October 21, 2013

Blue Jays Offseason Needs

Alright so lately I've been seeing lots of rumours surrounding what the Jays are doing or what they should do, now what I'm going to do is outline possibilities that have cropped their heads up and realistic moves I think the Jays either should or could make for the areas they need major help in.

Catcher:
-Ok so the first thing I read this morning was that the Jays were targeting Chris Ianetta and/or Hank Conger from the LA Angels via trade. Now this is a TERRIBLE idea, the reason is because one both of these players are FAR more expensive than J.P. Arencibia (salary wise we're talking 510k for J.P and more than 4 million for either of the LA catchers), two they aren't that much better (Conger and Ianetta have better OPS and walk rates but they still have lacklustre defensive skills as they still have a 25% or below stealing throw out and both have several based balls and errors) and three neither of these guys are that good at calling games (that means calling pitches and pitch locations) and with a staff that could very well consist of a lot of new guys (if we have injuries in 2014, which we likely will at some point) intelligent catchers like Yadier Molina are needed. So overall I don't think this move will happen as it will downgrade our already not fantastic prospect pool for a very lacklustre upgrade

-On the other hand there are still possibilities at the catcher position, specifically we can look at how Mike Napoli was only signed for a 1 year deal with the Red Sox. If Boston is not open to shelling out more than another 1 yr deal for the catcher we could give him a 2-3 year deal since that still covers the window where we have the core players in place. As well we must not forget that Brian McCann and A.J Pierzynski are also a free agents this year as well and would fit in quite well offensively and defensively, especially considering Pierzynski has played with Buerhle before. The final possibility is this cuban catcher that I've read some about, now this could be good mainly because of how effecient we've seen some Cuban players be (Puig, Cespedes and Chapman).

Second Base:
-Not many reports have come out in terms of what the Jays plan to do here, the logical move for most people would be to throw Ryan Goins a bone and let him start at 2nd considering how well he played in the last month of the season. Now while I think this is an awesome idea because of how much Goins reminded me of Roberto Alomar, I'm not sure it is what they need right now as we have only 2 years until that window of time where we have all of our stars locked down ends and trying to integrate a young player like Goins may take some time. Not to mention I'd rather have our future stars lined up to come out at one time to make another all star calibre team rather than one at a time and fade into mediocrity.

-Now heres what I think is possible for the Jays, they could make an attempt at signing Robinson Cano (though anything past a 5 year deal would be suicide) which may go over since most big money teams either have an established second baseman or have come out and said their not going to be taking part in Canopalooza. The second option is to trade for a quality second baseman, now out of all the players out there the ones I believe that fit best and are most likely are Chase Utley, Ian Kinsler and Marco Scutaro. Now heres why for each, Utley makes sense because his production level is still on the up and the Phillies have all but collapsed in recent years and are in serious need of remodelling for their team. Scutaro makes sense as well because the Giants just came back from a World Series win and barely managed to scrape together a over .500 season, now with Scutaro I don't think we're expecting a home run hitting machine but he's obviously a lead off hitter and behind Reyes that would be great for loading the bases before the big guns come up. Now the one that most will think stands out and doesn't make sense is Ian Kinsler but just let me explain. First off we know Kinsler has agreed to an extension that ties him down until the 2017 season so theres a fair amount of money involved (not that it's an issue for the Rangers or the Jays) and then the Rangers have nearly made Jurickson Profar a regular, but the 2B/SS doesn't have a spot to fit in unless someone gets injured and to develop him they need to make room, so the obvious thing is to trade Kinsler and slot in Profar as their second baseman. Overall it makes sense for both teams. Then of course there is lovely free agency, which has Cano, Uggla, Infante and potentially Zobrist coming out. I personally don't think Uggla or Cano will end up coming to Toronto, because Uggla has been just as bad if not worse that J.P Arencibia in the batting sense this year and because the price tag on Cano is too high unless he'll take a lower year contract. On the other hand Infante and Zobrist are intriguing because thy are both quality defenders and when on can be more than above average at the plate, more so with Infante, though Zobrist has some serious multiple position ability which would be a big life saver for the Jays as it seems every year someone goes down on injury.

Pitching:
-Not much to discuss here in terms of news, the only trade whisper I've heard is the Jays taking a look at Brett Anderson, which I think is a bad idea since we already have enough pitchers with terrible injury history and taking on another pitcher injury reclamation project would be suicide until we get the ones we currently have done (Morrow, Johnson, Hutchinson, Drabek, etc.). On the international side though there has been some interest show in the Japanese pitcher Masahiro Tanaka (Ma-kun), now I've gone to Japan before and had the pleasure of watching many Japanese baseball games and boy are thy exciting, the outfield is reserved for hardcore fans of each team (left is the home team and right is the away team). Hell it's like a soccer crowd in a baseball stadium. Anyhow Tanaka has a similar repetoire to Yu Darvish and has been just a successful, which leads me to believe that he would be a good pick up for the Jays. Though if thats not enough for you lets look at another few factors. First off the fan base, this year has shown us that there is plenty of love for Japanese players in the Jays fan base (2 words Munenori Kawasaki) and on top of that one thing Darvish didn't have when he came over was a Japanese team mate to help him integrate and considering how friendly Kawasaki is and how crazy fans go for him I can't imagine the same wouldn't happen for Tanaka. Second we have the stadium, Darvish has been wildly successful in Texas and if we look at it Rogers is a FAR more pitcher friendly park than Arlington so it'd be easier for Tanaka to gain the same level of performance as Darvish in Toronto. Overall he seems like a great fit and I would be ecstatic to finally see a good Japanese pitcher get into the Jays rotation. 

-Now on the other hand there isn't much available in the free agent pool for starting pitchers, now don't get me wrong there are a few pitchers that would vastly improve the rotation but those guys I expect to get offers from their current teams and come back to there (ie. Hiroki Kuroda, A.J Burnett, etc.). So theres not much to offer there.

Alright so I'll be doing this for the Orioles this weekend and possibly for the Cardinals the following week (though it doesn't look like they need much of anything with that lineup)

-Eric

Saturday, August 31, 2013

Playoff Predictions - Teams and Bracket

Ok so whats all on every baseball fans minds at this point? Who is going to the playoffs, thats what! Well there are some obvious teams that are going to the playoffs, however there are still some battles for division 1st place or wild cards still going on that means a lot so in essence I'm going to give you what teams I think are going to be going to the playoffs and whose going to go how far.

AL:
East Winners: Tampa Bay Rays - Now the reason I think the Rays will take this division is because in my honest opinion, the Boston Red Sox having been playing over their heads for the entire year, that is to say EVERYTHING has gone right and nothing has gone wrong. So overall I think they will slip back and the Rays will win the division, I mean their only 2.5 games back at the moment so it's not all that farfetched idea to begin with.

Central Winners: Detroit Tigers - Now this is an obvious one but honestly for ages I've been in the group that has considered the Tigers INSANELY overrated. Now before you get your pitchforks for me going against Miggy and Verlander you have to remember that usually they aren't the top placed team in terms of win-loss record in the AL and several years they haven't even been 2nd. That of course means that their percent win-loss was below that of the AL West and/or AL East winners and thats even more disturbing when you consider that about half of their games are against division rivals, and honestly do you think that a team would have a harder time against the East teams (Yankees, Red Sox, Orioles, Rays and Blue Jays) where all the teams are in hitter friendly parks and with high end teams or Central teams (Twins, Royals, Indians, Tigers and White Sox) who are balanced in terms of pitcher parks vs hitter parks. Now after looking after looking at that and considering the amount of talent that the Tigers have and the weak schedule they have, them finishing with less than the highest W-L percentage in the AL is disturbing. Anyhow Tigers should take the Central no problem.

West Winners: Texas Rangers - Not much discussion here, there is a bit of a close call with the Oakland A's right now but considering that the Rangers have been on a roll lately and have a better rest of the schedule than Oakland I expect they will be the ones to stand atop the AL West.

AL Wild Card Winners: Ok so the wild card winners I've picked up are the other two teams I spoke about in the West and East winners, that being the Oakland Athletics and the Boston Red Sox.

NL:
East Winners: Atlanta Braves - No question here as the the Braves have been dominating the NL East and they have a 13 game lead on the 2nd place Nationals so there is no hope of anyone catching them during the rest of the month.

Central Winners: St. Louis Cardinals - Now again this seems like a no brainer but the main reason I think the Cardinals are going to take it over the Pirates is because as I previously mentioned in my Last Month post, the Pirates have a series of games against the Reds in the last month and some middle of the road or somewhat difficult opponents where as the Cardinals have games against nearly all below .500 teams.

West Winners: Los Angeles Dodgers: Now this seals up the National League and just like the East the Dodgers have nearly a 10 game lead on the Arizona Diamondbacks and considering how the Diamondbacks have been playing over the last couple weeks it is unlikely that they will be able to catch up to the Dodgers, especially since they will be having Kemp come back into their lineup soon enough.

NL Wild Card Winners: More obvious ones though surprising that both of them are coming out of the NL Central as thats usually the worst division over several years and wild cards usually came out of the East (Phillies or Nationals). So in this case I've got Pittsburgh and Cincinnati taking the Wild Card spots for the National League.

Wild Card Round:
Ok so for the wild card game I think that for the AL Oakland is going to come out on top and for the NL Pittsburgh is going to come out on top. Now again the reason I think Pittsburgh will win the NL is because they are honestly more of a complete team as they have a good blend of players and there bullpen and starters are solid where as the Reds have a bit of an issue with their bullpen, with exception to Aroldis Chapman. In addition to this their going to be getting back Starling Marte, Grilli and a few other star players back from the DL prior to this game. Now why do I think the Athletics are going to beat out the Red Sox? Well first off I'll point back to the fact that again I think the Red Sox have been playing above their actual talent level all year as most of their players are not nearly as good as they've been playing over the last 2-3 years, mainly guys like Johnny Gomes, Shane Victorino, Mike Napoli, and a couple others. But like the Pirates the Athletics are getting some important players back from the DL before this playoff game, namely Bartolo Colon who has been a horse in their starting rotation and Brett Anderson.

ALDS Rounds:
Ok so in the ALDS I believe that the match ups are going to be Tampa vs. Detroit and Texas vs. Oakland. Though to be honest all of the top teams are currently within 1.5 games of each other for beat W-L record in the AL so it could go any way. But anyhow I expect that the winners of these two series are going to be Tampa and Oakland and the reason I believe that is because recently Miguel Cabrera has had to leave games with injuries, whether they are serious or not is irrelevant because if those things nag him into the post season the Tigers will be without their best player and on top of that the Tigers starting rotation has started to show signs of being human (that is Scherzer and Sanchez) as Scherzer almost lost the last game pretty badly if not for a very late game rally. Now why I think Oakland will win over Texas is for a couple reasons, the first being the people their getting back from the DL and the fact that Texas is missing a key player in Nelson Cruz thanks to the Biogenesis suspensions. The second reason is because of Ron Washington, who in my opinion is probably one of the worst managers in all of baseball and yea go ahead and harp on me for saying it but if you watch the Rangers World Series performances, Washington seems to lose his shit when they are a game or two away from winning the whole thing and just starts to make ridiculous moves, like bringing in Tommy Hunter to relieve despite the fact that he was supposed to start 2 days down the line.

NLDS Rounds:
Alrighty, so here I figure it's going to end up Atlanta vs. Pittsburgh and St. Louis vs. Los Angeles. Now the winners of these series is a bit more difficult as all teams have been playing amazingly but sadly I have to. SOOOO I think that Atlanta is going to win against Pittsburgh firstly and thats because they have pitching depth to spare and despite the injuries to their key bullpen guys they have managed to stay dominant pitching wise in the late innings. In addition to this their starters have been great and having really dominant young starters who hitters have little experience against is a god send, those being Alex Wood and Julio Tehran, not to mention the potential greatness of Brandon Beachy if he goes full force into the post season. As for against Pittsburgh they have been less active on the offensive than Atlanta has and given that plenty of Atlanta's starters are so key the Pirates will likely not get many opportunities to score runs. Now on the other side I'm going to take the less likes side and say the Dodgers are going to win it. Now for a long time I was convinced that the Cardinals were going to go to the WS and take it without a problem, however after seeing what the Dodgers have in their starting 3 pitchers and what Kershaw has been doing stat wise I have changed my mind because like Oakland the Dodgers are getting guys like Kemp and others back right before the post season kicks off and Brandon League has taken to his position in the bullpen instead of when he was closing earlier and the mightier strikeout machine Kenley Jannsen has taken over as closer.

ALCS Round:
Ok so after the ALDS that would make the ALCS a series between Tampa and Oakland and I think that Tampa will come out on top because of their stellar pitching that has been on since the beginning of the season and the trades they've recently made that have already been turning dividends and getting them more runs in must win games. On the other hand, despite Oakland having more players coming back off the DL they haven't really bolstered their offence or defence so I imagine that since the Rays have done the exact opposite they will have a fair advantage over them.

NLCS Round:
Ok well heres the NLCS and I'm guessing if this match up does come to fruition I expect that the Dodgers will win, however it honestly depends on some of the Atlanta hitters as most of them are fairly streaky and can be top 5 hitter level production one month then bottom 250 hitter production the next. Though because of this inconsistency and the consistency of players like Crawford, Puig and the entire pitching staff of the Dodgers I think they'd take the NLCS from the Braves.

World Series Matchup:
Ok so this makes the final match up for the WS the Tampa Bay Rays vs. the Los Angeles Dodgers. Now my personal opinion would be for the Rays to win as I always love seeing lower budget teams succeed, especially when a brilliant manager like Joe Maddon is at the helm of the team. However I believe that if this does come to fruition that the Dodgers will take it as when you look at the teams it's going to come down to a duel of the pitchers and while Price, and Cobb could take on the starters for the Dodgers, Kershaw, Grienke and Ryu, the other Rays pitchers, Archer, Moore, Hellickson and Hernandez, have yet to show that they can be consistently good over a long period of time and I think that is what would be the downfall of the Rays as they lack the hard hitting offence that the Dodgers have.

Ok guys, hope you enjoyed this one, so I'll put up another post late next week as things have been picking up on my end and it's getting pretty busy.

-Eric

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

End Of Year Award Predictions

Ok so one of the major things people should be thinking about as the final month of the baseball season winds down is who, of the greatest players this year deserve the various end of year awards. Those are the AL MVP, Cy Young and Rookie Of The Year in addition to the NL MVP, Cy Young and Rookie Of The Year, so I'll be going over who I think should win those awards and why. We'll start off with the AL.

AL:

MVP: Well this seems like this one is pretty much a no brainer, so my thoughts have this one going to Miguel Cabrera again. Now this would be a bit of a different story if Chris Davis was keeping up the pace he was setting himself up for during the first few months of the season but Cabrera has been holding top spot in nearly all batting categories except HR including some of the additional stats (OBP, OPS and SLG). And it's not just that he's leading those categories it's that he's destroying them, as in nearly all categories only the 2nd place guy is anywhere near him. For example in HR Chris Davis currently leads with 46, with Miggy just behind at 43 and the next best is Edwin Encarnacion at 33, a full 10 home runs below Cabrera. If that doesn't scream MVP I don't know what does.

Cy Young: Now this one gets a bit foggy as there are 2-3 pitchers that could take this for varying reasons. Now, my opinion is probably not going fall in line with the popular belief but I think that the award should go to Yu Darvish. Now plenty of people are going to be up in arms about me not giving it to Scherzer, now I do respect what Max is doing this season I don't pretend to forget that darvish has been the lead in strikeouts by nearly 30, Darvish is 3rd in ERA and is only off the first place pitcher (Anibal Sanchez) by 0.07 (better than Scherzer), is only slightly below Scherzer in WHIP and right behind Scherzer in all other categories. Then of course let's not forget that if you watch him pitch you'll notice not only is his power still the same as it was last year but he's picked up the control as well and as a result is kicking ass even more than the previous season.

Rookie Of The Year: Another slightly difficult decision to make on this one, mainly because there aren't any real big stand outs like that last year, but I suppose the closest to the right pick for this would be Tampa Bay outfielder Wil Myers. Now Myers hasn't been perfect or anything to that extent but to be honest he's the best of a fairly thin selection this year so there isn't really another quality rookie to pick in that case.

NL:

MVP: Ok so heres another one that didn't necessarily have a no questions asked winner, though again I expect people may not agree with the prediction I'm making for this one but my winner of the MVP is Clayton Kershaw. Now yea I realize pitchers don't usually win this thing unless under extreme circumstances and to be honest everything about Kershaw's stat line is ridiculous with exception to his Win-Loss record, which is near meaningless to begin with. The fact that there is only 1 month of baseball left and he's posting the lowest ERA and WHIP since 1968 should tell you all you need to know, not only that but he's also just barely behind Matt Harvey in strikeouts in the NL and he's aiming for a career high innings pitched and that's not including innings he'll likely pick up during the playoffs. Now if that doesn't convince you take a look at this stat line: 2.40 ERA, 24-5 W-L, 251.0 IP, 53 BB, 250 Ks, 0.92 WHIP, those stats belong to the 2011 MVP, Justin Verlander. Now what you should know is that Kershaw is shattering Verlander's MVP ERA and WHIP (1.72 and 0.85), he's on his way to about 235-240 strikeouts, nearly in line with Verlander's MVP season and he's poised to walk about the same amount as well. All in all this pretty much slots Kershaw in for winner of the MVP in my mind, though the common argument against it is that his W-L record isn't nearly that of Verlander's and while that may be true the Dodgers have had serious injuries to their star players and as a result he hasn't gotten the run support necessary to get those precious wins, hence why his win total is only at 13 despite having pitched twice that many games and if you need any more proof of that notice that his FIP is actually 1.44, a bit lower than his current ERA and his xFIP is still under 2.00 as well. So if you don't think Kershaw deserves this take a good hard look at the stats then come back.

Cy Young: Ok so after what I just said about Kershaw in the MVP paragraph I'm sure you can guess I'm giving him unanimous for the Cy Young, no conversation required.

Rookie Of The Year: Now this one again is a hard one as there are many front runners, be it Matt Harvey, Jose Fernandez or Yasiel Puig. Now if you just look at what all three of these players have done this year it's hard to pick one over the other because they've all been amazing however I have to narrow down to one person and that player is Yasiel Puig. The reason I chose Puig over the other two is because not only did he put up amazing stats for the first month of his career but even when it looked like he was going to hit a prolonged slump he figured it out and jumped back into it, hell he's still hitting in the .350's, tut thats not the main reason why I chose him. The reason I chose him is because he got the call up when the Dodgers were without Kemp, Ethier and overall a consistent offensive performance but Puig not only brought that offensive presence but he also kick started the Dodgers as a team back into action, which can be seen in the pick up of the Dodger's games won and run differential increase from the time Puig joined the game. In addition to this we have seen that Puig is very much the definition of a five tool player, he has an amazing glove, can easily hit for power and average, he's got speed on the base paths sure enough to steal bases and he has a cannon for an arm that has allowed him to make some ridiculous throw outs. This is really what sets him apart from the others because he not only delivers on the offensive side but in all aspects f the game he can help in and was responsible for getting the Dodgers back on track towards a playoff push.

-Eric

Friday, August 23, 2013

Bird Watch: Down To The Last Month

Ok so we're down to the last leg of the race for the a playoff spot and well needless to say we have all three of the teams in varying positions. The Blue Jays are 100% out of the running and have been playing worse as the days go by, so much as to lose to Houston the other day, the Orioles are holding on but are nearing the back of the pack for the wild card in the AL and the Cardinals are so far ahead of the rest of the wild card teams that they've nearly got a guaranteed spot, it just comes down to whether they can steal the NL Central from the Pirates or not because if they can't they'll have to play that dreaded 1 game playoff agains the other wild card team (likely the Reds). So for the interest of time I'm not even going to mention the Jays as they've been playing awful, so there isn't much reason the mention them and as a Jays fan it just hurts to look at how bad they are currently.

The Orioles:
Alright so the Orioles here have been sitting anywhere in the top 3 spots of the AL East all season, flopping anywhere from 1st to 3rd, now there is still hope for them to win the division as they are only 4.5 games especially since they have played 3 games less than the Red Sox. Recently however the Orioles haven't been playing terribly well as they've begun to slump back into playing games that they win or lose by only 1 or 2 runs and considering that their closer Jim Johnson has begun to have a bit of a bad luck streak and they overall don't have the same sort of close game winning finesse that they did last year it is entirely possible that they may come up a bit short in the run for a playoff spot especially with the Rays playing as well as they have been not to mention getting back Matt Moore and Alex Cobb, two of the teams biggest starters. Now the rest of Baltimore's schedule is quite difficult as all but 3 of their series for the remainder of the year are against teams that are a fair bit over .500 and have been playing solidly over the last month or so but whether that is a positive or negative all depends on how you look at it because 3 of those remaining 10 series are against Boston or Tampa, the teams they need to get a leg up on in order to make the playoffs as the AL East champs so those games are worth even more to the Orioles down the stretch in addition another 4 of those series are against teams who are just ahead or behind them in the wild card standings so nearly all of them are worth a great deal. On the other hand however the under .500 teams the Orioles are facing have been seen to show a bit of a fight every now and then (specifically the Jays) so if they closer and bullpen struggles continue it may be more difficult for them to gain ground when they should be. All in all it's likely going to be pretty tight as there are 5 teams vying for the 2 wild cards in the AL and all of them within 4 games of each other.

The Cardinals:
Ok so the Cardinals, unlike the Orioles are in a pretty interesting position as 3 of the teams in their division, including themselves, have dominated the playoff spots and are pretty much a lock for the playoffs as the closest team to any of them is still 7 games out and the Diamondbacks unfortunately haven't really shown any signs of a potential winning surge coming up anytime soon. Now if we look at those 3 teams, the Pirates, the Reds and the Cardinals, we notice that they are all within 3.5 games of each other meaning this is going to come down the wire. Now of course I don't mean that in terms of securing a playoff spots I mean it in the sense that obviously the team wants to win the division so they don't have to risk that extra playoff series against the other wild card team. Now when we look at the schedules for these teams we notice that the Cardinals are actually in the best shape and thats because they have 2 series against these other two competitive NL Central teams then their remaining games are against under .500 NL opponents that should honestly make for some pretty easy wins down the stretch. Now what makes their schedule more favourable than that of the Reds and the Pirates is that despite the Reds/Pirates also having series against these weaker teams as well they face each other in 2 series during September excluding any series they have against the Cardinals. So what this means is that as the Cardinals are beating up on weak teams like the Mets or the Brewers the Reds and Pirates are going to be knocking each other around making it a little easier for the Cardinals to sneak into first place in the NL Central. Overall it should be interesting to see what happens with this interesting clump of teams in the NL Central as it has historically been thought of as one of the weakest divisions in the MLB.

Ok so thats all for the remainder of this week but I'm going to be doing a major award prediction post sometime next week and likely also a post in regards to my thoughts on the potentially playoff bound teams.

-Eric

Monday, August 19, 2013

Lack Of Posts

Hey all, sorry for the lack of posts over the last couple weeks, I was back home in Canada for a wedding as well as some other important family events that had me really busy, anyhow I'm unpacking today but I will have some more content within the next couple days.

-Eric

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

A Quick Guide How To Evaluate A Player

Ok so heres a quick guide on evaluating players, you can use this to see what to expect from new players to your team, figure out if a player is worth picking up in fantasy baseball, or even what to expect from call ups.

Look At The Situation:
Ok so first thing you should do in evaluating a player is first figure out what kind of situation your looking at, for instance is this a minor league call up who has no experience in the majors, a traded player, a high end free agent signing, a player returning from the DL, etc. Now the reason for this is because there are certain expectations you should have in these different situations because obviously a player returning from the DL will not likely jump back into the same production they had pre-injury the game they return to the lineup. Also don't forget to adjust for what ball park they are in as some are more hitter or pitcher friendly.

In addition to this if you hadn't noticed hitters that go to the AL generally get a bit of a break and thats because the pitching isn't as strong in the AL as it is in the NL (see pitchers like Clayton Kershaw, Stephen Strasburg, Gio Gonzalez, Adam Wainwright, Matt Harvey, etc.) and the opposite applies to hitters moving from the AL to the NL, which is also amplified because the presence of the DH in the AL, which allows hitters more opportunities to get regular at bats. Now pitchers that move from the NL to the AL generally have a reduction in their stats again because the AL in a much harder hitting division and if their going from the AL to the NL expect an improvement to their stats. Now stat changes from going from one league to the other should be taken with a grain of salt and thats because it is doubtful that if an ace level pitcher like Felix Hernandez, Yu Darvish, Matt Harvey or Clayton Kershaw were to change leagues they wouldn't have that sharp of a decrease or increase as they have proven what they are as pitchers. The inverse can be said about crappy pitchers because you wouldn't expect say John Danks of the White Sox to move to the NL and get a huge boost in ability, and thats because he's a bad pitcher, so these things really only apply to those who are saddled in the middle of pitcher ratings and show potential in one way of another.

Now minor league call ups are another thing entirely, first off you should note which level of the minors they are coming from (low-A, high-A, AA, AAA, etc.) and then find out what league in the minors they were in, this is because certain leagues like the Pacific Coast League is a BIG TIME hitters league so hitters stats will obviously be skewed and inversely good pitching stats will look even better from this league. So again be thorough when looking at minor league records. As well as this standard research make sure you remember, and this is often forgotten by fans out there, that minor league players generally won't immediately start hitting/pitching what they were hitting/pitching like in the minors when they get called up and thats obviously because the pitching or hitting they will experience with their new major league team is FAR better than anything they faced in the minors.

Check Their Base Stats
After this you should look at their standard statistics, through sites like Baseball Reference, Fan Graphs or ESPN, those statistics being Runs, RBI, HR, SB and AVG for hitters or Wins, K, Saves, ERA and WHIP for pitchers, though saves only apply for relievers, but remember to focus on their previous numbers, those being years past in the majors or equivalent minors and career averages. These numbers should give you a brief idea of what they put on the board in a regular season and from there you can adjust based on the situations I went over above. So basically you should be slightly adjusting these stats given the situation.

Check The Averages
Ok so for this we should be looking at OBP, SLG, OPS, BB% and K% for hitters and then K/9, BB/9, K/BB, HR/9, K% and BB% for pitchers. Now I'll talk about these stats separated by hitters and pitchers. So the hitting averages are as follows, OBP and BB% will give you an idea or how much the batter walks as OBP (on base percentage) is their batting average plus inclusion of their walks and then BB% is the walk rate separated from OBP so if a hitter has a high walk rate it either means they are a big time hitter that pitchers are afraid of or they are patient at the plate and have a good approach, either way this is desirable in hitters. Then we have SLG and OPS, which represent power hitting and SLG plus OBP respectively, now these numbers give you a relatively brief look at what kind of power the hitter provides. Then finally for hitters there is the K%, which is obviously the % of times they strike out, and then tells us the opposite of the OBP and BB% of whether they have a bad approach at the plate or if they can't make consistent contact with the ball when they swing. On the pitchers side we first look at K/9 and K%, now these will tell us first what type of pitcher the 'subject' is because your typical 'ACE' level pitchers have K/9 ratios of about 9.0 or higher, the low end pitchers generally have 3.0-4.0 or sometimes lower than that so obviously the higher the strikeout % the more effective the pitcher is. Now this is not 100% true as there are also fly ball and ground ball pitchers so if a pitcher has a low K/9 and K% but you think their good look at their ERA and WHIP and if it's in the 3.00-4.00 and 1.00-1.50 marks then they are most likely are a contact pitcher, they will be talked about a little later too. Next up look at BB/9, BB% and K/BB, this will tell you how many batters the pitcher walks and overall is a good indicator of how much control a pitcher has over his pitches. The last of these averages in the HR/9 ratio, which gives us an idea of how susceptible the pitcher is to home runs, which may have to do with the park they are pitching in. After looking at these numbers you should have a better picture of how effective the hitter or pitcher is overall and usually these numbers tend to regress or increase to match or become close to the player's career average so you can tell whether they are expected to go up or down, but again consider the situation as you can't really make those assumptions about call ups or players who don't have a decent amount of experience in the majors, and thus a biased career average.

The Extra Shit:
Ok so the next set of stats are those to better look at a hitters power, speed and a pitchers performance, taking out defence and home runs, thats right we're going to ISO (isolated power) SPD (speed), FIP and xFIP. Now ISO is similar but slightly more accurate that SLG in terms of determining a players raw power at the plate and well thats because it uses SLG in it's calculation (SLG-AVG) so again treat this just like the other averages, expect it to turn to the players career average. Next up is SPD, pretty much the only indication of a players speed on the base path, now there are different versions of this stat as some websites or evaluators take different things into account when calculating it hence why there aren't really any other base stealing oriented stats available out there, but again treat it like other averages. Then we have FIP and xFIP, these 2 stats are nearly the same as both indicate where the pitcher's ERA should be if you took team defence out of the question, except xFIP removes home runs as well so if they are pitching in a homer prone park xFIP is the thing to look at. These stats generally are a better indicator of where the pitcher SHOULD be, so if the defence is in a slump expect the pitcher's ERA to improve over to his FIP or xFIP, however remember a shitty defence is still a shitty defence and thus if a pitcher say for the Astros has a FIP of 2.50 but an ERA of 4.30 it's not likely going to change as the Astros are just a bad and unexperienced team to begin with.

Types of Hits:
Ok so this area is important to both pitchers, so we're looking primarily at HR/FB and GB/FB for both hitters and pitchers. For hitters the HR/FB ratio is important a it indicates how many balls hit actually go out of the ball park, and just like everything sometimes it can seem a bit lopsided so expect it to move toward the career average, but also recognize when they have an excessively high ratio that is likely not sustainable, like if they have the same HR/FB ratio but have moved to a serious pitchers park. Now for pitchers it means something slightly different as this show how effective a pitcher is at getting fly balls because contact pitchers rely heavily on their ability to get fly balls that are easy for the outfielders to pick off, overall the same evaluation rules apply as to the HR/FB comparison of hitters. GB/FB ratio is in essence the same as the HR/FB for hitters but for pitchers it will show you what type of contact pitcher a player is and if it turns out they have a high GB/FB ratio, meaning their a ground ball pitcher, you should look at their LD% or line drive ratio to determine their overall effectiveness, as it is similar to the HR/FB ratio.

The All In One Stat:
Ok so there is ONE stat that is the mother of all stats as it was put together to take everything into account and that stat is WAR or Wins Above Replacement, basically the people who put this together basically said that this stat indicates how many games a team will win by having this player on their team instead of a player of average ability in all categories. In addition to standard WAR there are more specific break downs in oWAR (offensive WAR), dWAR (defensive WAR), etc. These act the same but are more accurate for the side they are looking at and overall WAR can be looked at similarly to the averages we went over previously.

All in all once you've looked at all of these stats your probably wondering,'What the hell do I do with these numbers?'. Well from here you need to think about what things can or have effected the numbers as compared to previous years or career averages and whether said change is legitimate or likely to change back to normal. Some situations would be reduced SPD/SB in a player that just got back from a hamstring injury, in that case of course those stats will be hampered but gradually they will come back to the norm but one shouldn't expect it to completely right itself considering the time lost and the fact that they WILL have a period of lacklustre performance in that category. So just remember when your going over all of this stuff be thorough because the more information you have on a player the more likely your predictions are to being correct.

-Eric

Monday, August 5, 2013

Bird Watch: The First Half Of The Cardinals Season (Hitting)

Alrighty, so heres that last of the half way evals of  the three teams, so let's get into it.

Yadier Molina: One of the start players for the Cardinals who happens to be having another fantastic year offensively and in my personal opinion is likely in line for potentially winning the NL MVP. Theres not much to indicate that Molina is going to have some sort of down turn in skill in the second half this is because, despite his numbers being slightly better than his career averages they are strikingly similar to the stats he managed to post last year meaning it is more likely that he's started to get to the prime of his career rather than what he's done being anything like a fluke. In addition to his standard stats his batting average, OBP and OPS in different situations is fairly even so his approach at the plate and overall discipline when at bat so we don't have to worry about him striking out an excessive amount or pitchers putting him in bad batting situations either. Now if anything his skill set is likely to increase a bit from here until the end of the season, this is because again if you believe that this seasons production is real, which I do, then you have to compare his numbers with those of last years and he is currently a couple steps below last years production in terms of SLG/Isolated Power and BB % so expect an increase in home runs/extra base hits and walks from Molina in the second half of the season.

Matt Carpenter: Ah Matt Carpenter, another of the seemingly endless supply of surprise rookies that the Cardinals have in their minor league system. Now Carpenter did play ALMOST a full season last year (about 2/3 when all is said and done) but he managed to hit for AVG (.294) and some power driving in 6 home runs and a fair amount of extra base hits, which of course is great production from any rookie player who is just getting in their first long stretch in the majors. Now the thing that was again, typical of rookies, but not great on the stat line was that he was striking out a fair amount above the average for MLB players and his defence was a bit wobbly, though despite these short comings he still had an above 0 WAR meaning that he did positively contribute to the team. Now on the other hand this year he has managed to reduce his strike out rate by about 4% impressively, while still holding onto the walks he had last year, while also greatly improving his fielding and getting a slight boost in power, which has helping the Cardinals stay at the top of the MLB for an extended period of time. Now don't misconstrue what I'm saying with the rookie hype that came last year with Bryce Harper and Mike Trout, he's not playing to that level (and personally those two are the anomaly as most rookies won't play to that level until late in their career if at all) and as such he's not doing anything that can be considered outside of his talent. What this means of course is just at a glance there isn't much reason to expect a regression as he's just built up on last years performance, which any player would typically do in the first few years of their major league career. Just like Molina, Carpenter has no issues present in his split stats again as they remain pretty even within a decent area of deviation and don't sink below .250. Now he could improve in his strike out rate and thats because, despite lowering it from last year 10% is still not a desirable strike out rate, overall though expect more of the same and a bright future for this rising star.

Allen Craig: Another fairly new player to the Cardinals regular players, it's kind of surprising how many of these guys have only started in the last couple years and just like the others he has been a good producer for the teams offence. Now I'm just going to get it out of the way, Craig is literally the ultimate clutch hitter as he's been hitting .476 with runners in scoring position, which has been made up for a lot of the large scoring games the Cardinals have been involved in. Now just like Carpenter since he is a relatively new player to the Cardinals so we can only really compare last year to this year as his averages are biased as it has incorporated his minor league numbers as well. Ok so as far as what he's done right, he's had good splits across the board, hence his ability to hit in the most needed situations. Now when we look at last year in comparison to this year his numbers have improved slightly however his power has been reduced than what it was like last year so it is expected that that his number of home runs and extra base hits will increase form here on out and like Carpenter he has room to better himself in terms of his strike out rate, which is currently at 17% and his walk rate, which is fairly low (6.1%) so there is plenty of room for Craig to get better. The other thing we can look at is his defence and base running ability, which is oddly reversed from last year as compared to this year, low fielding last year but much higher this year, low base running this year but fairly higher last year so it's a bit hard to tell, which is the REAL Allen Craig. Overall it's likely that we will need another year or two before analysts can come to an accurate conclusion of Craig's numbers but all in all we can expect him to continue to grow and improve as a player but don't expect any large increase or decrease in his production for the remainder of the year.

Carlos Beltran: Now heres the other end of the players for the Cardinals, an aging player who has been injured fairly often on the other hand though just like everyone else he's been producing well for what kind of a player he is. Beltran has been on the right side in terms of his average stats for nearly everything comparatively to the last few years, however his fielding has decreased over the years, which is likely due to his injury history and inability to cover the same amount of ground in the outfield.  In addition Beltran has a fairly poor approach at the plate in 2 strike situations as his batting AVG drops from .176 - .239 in 2 strike counts and the rest of the count situations are much further above the .250 line in his AVG. With the exception of those situations just described all of the rest of this situational stats are fairly level with what we've come to expect from players like Beltran. Though there is some room for improvement that we expect to see with Beltran's production, the first being a rise in his walk rate as it's currently at an abysmal 5% and his standard BB % is actually about double his current rate. In addition to this there is a correction to his power numbers that is likely to come up as his SLG, OPS and Isolated Power are about .05 - 0.8 points lower than his career numbers of even the numbers in the last 3 or so years so there should be a slight increase in his power numbers, home runs an extra base hits.  Now while there are all of these potential positives for the future of this season for Beltran, his HR/FB ratio is inflated well above the major league norm and considering that a little over 40% of his hits are fly balls once less of those balls are flying out of the stadium there will be a regression in power numbers and batting AVG/OBP/OPS. So overall I imagine that the downside would likely outweigh the potential upturn of production so expect a decrease in Beltran's power production and slightly in AVG/OBP and OPS.

Matt Holliday: Another of the Cardinals aging stars, now Holliday is another big power producer for the Cardinals lineup, he's a consistent 20 home run hitter, drives in plenty of runs has the ability to steal some bases throughout the season. Now what we've seen from Holliday so far is pretty much what he did last year with 2 exceptions and that is his strikeout % and his isolated power. What we see here as compared to previous years and his career numbers is a decrease of about 3-4% in his strikeout rate, which is fantastic for any batter, however he has also seen a fair drop in his ability to power the ball that can be seen in his SLG being .04 points below from last year, nearly .1 lower from 2011 and a drop of 50 points in isolated power. Now the next question, is this real? Well in a way yes, thats because like some of the other players I've analyzed they showed a steady decline or incline of a certain skill over time and with Holliday we've seen a slight reduction in his power over the last 3 years. On the other hand this random dip in his strikeout percentage is against any sort of trend that you can see so I don't believe that to be a true representation of where he'll be at the end of the season. Another slightly strange thing is the number of bases he's stolen because he has 5 so far on the year but last year he only snagged 4 bags total, now it's not completely insane but it's definitely out of the norm for him and again theres no statistical trend to indicate that this is for real. Overall Holliday should continue at the rate his power is moving but his strikeout rate will likely climb up a bit as pitchers adjust to him or he changes his swing.

David Freese: A pretty average maybe slightly above average third baseman, honestly his ability is a bit overblown and thats because he had a good year in 2012 but his stats this year have been more driven toward his previous stats outside of 2012. Now comparing his career averages to this year to date we can see a few areas that are lower or higher, his base running and walk rate are both above his career averages, but then every other stat of his is below his career averages. Now if we look past the last year when he hit 20 home runs his isolated power, walk rate and OBP are similar so thats more or less what to expect in terms of those stats in the future of this season. On the other hand his strikeout rate is currently 2-3% higher than his previous seasons and Freese is known as a bit of a free swinger so expect an increase in his strikeout totals in the future. As such with an increase in strikeouts there will likely be a decline in batting average, but there is some indication that there will be a slight increase in power as his SLG and isolated power is lower in this years values to where they were in 2011/2010 and his career averages. So expect something similar from Freese as with Holliday, an increase in strikeouts and a slight increase in overall power, so more extra base hits and home runs.

Jon Jay: Going to be a bit quick about these last two players because they are what they are and it's doubtful we'll see any sort of change in anyway. Jon Jay first of all is someone who hits for average with next to no power at all and with pretty average speed. This year his strikeout rate and walk rate is higher than usual so it's likely that this will correct itself but because both of them are about equal in terms of above the average or last years stats so there isn't likely to be a change in any of his other stats (OBP, AVG, SLG, etc). So again expect to see him walk less and strikeout less but again overall should make a difference in any other stat.

Pete Kozma: The replacement for Rafael Furcal and yet another Rookie on the Cardinals starting line up. Now since this is really his first 'full' season we can't really make any sort of estimate as to where we expect him to end up but we can see in his stats that he has a trend of hitting below average and walking at a fairly low rate with a big lack of power and speed. So his current production should be what carries into the rest of this year as he hasn't shown any sort of flash of brilliance to indicate otherwise.

Tomorrow I will post the previously mentioned 'How To Evaluate A Player' post.

-Eric

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Bird Watch: The First Half Of The Cardinals Season (Pitching)

Ok so this is the last of the 3 teams I'm running the half way evals on, sorry for the lateness of them though, I have been a bit sick as of late, but anyhow lets delve into the stats. And just a heads up, since both Jaimie Garcia those who filled in for him haven't had 10 starts I'm only going to be covering the regular 4 (Wainwright, Lynn, Miller and Westbrook)

Adam Wainwright:
Here we have the proverbial ACE of the Cardinals starting rotation and boy has he taken that to heart this year, which is impressive since it's not long since he was still rehabbing that injury a couple years ago. As of now Wainwright has a K/9 of 8, a little below the past few years, BB/9 of 1 and HR/9 of 0.39. Now all of these of these are great indicators of how amazing Wainwright has been and theres more if we look at his ERA, FIP and xFIP (2.51, 2.24 and 2.68), which shows that for the most part this performance is real and it's not likely to see any sort of major down turn in the second half. I say for the most part because there are a couple small things in his advance stat line that might suggest some regression, the first of those things being his HR/FB ratio, now first let's look at his FB% first, it sits at 25.8% and he has a HR/FB ratio of 6%. So 6% of that 25.8% of fly balls are leaving the park, not the first thing to recognize is that 6% is EXTREMELY low placing him 7th in terms of lowest HR/FB ratio. Now while this is all well and good he has this in combination with having only 11.1% infield fly balls and his combination of FB% and HR/FB ratio being the lowest in the league, now what we can gather from this is that of the 25.8% fly balls that are hit off of Wainwright 6% leave the yard and 11.1% are hit high but stay in the infield. So that means of course 82.9% of his fly balls are in the outfield, which alone seems like a lot to not have become home runs, now usually the next best indicator is to check how else he's getting his outs (ie. strike outs). Wainwright as I said before sports an 8.07 K/9 so he strikes out 8 batters per 9 innings but unfortunately this doesn't really take our gaze away from those fly balls as he is well outside of the top 30 in terms of K/9 meaning of course he's not one of those big strike out guys like Max Scherzer, Matt Harvey or Yu Darvish. So what we can gather form this is that his HR/FB ratio is likely not sustainable at least if he keeps giving up the number of fly balls into the outfield that he has been. So expect the potential for more home runs allowed by Wainwright in the future, however don't expect much more down turn as this just seems to be a career year, hell could set him up for a Cy Young.

Lance Lynn: The second in the rotation for the Cardinals is a rather new pitcher as Lynn has only pitched one full season, last year, prior to this year, though he had a part season in the bullpen the year before. Now whats funny is that he has the same fly ball situation that Wainwright currently has going, similar numbers, situation and everything, so again expect an increase in the number of home runs allowed over the remaining season. On the other hand he sports a 3.89 ERA, 3.09 FIP and 3.75 xFIP, so there is a bit of improvement to come his way in the future. Since he has only had 1 full season just like all rookies I can't make a speculative statement on where his stats might be based on his averages but what I can tell you is that he had a fairly steep decline after the half way point, obviously because of the stark increase in his number of innings pitched and given that he is likely to exceed that number of innings this year as well expect another drop off (last year he hit 176 innings and he's currently at 135).

Shelby Miller: Now get this Shelby Miller....has the same fly ball situation as Lynn and Wainwright so expect an increase in home runs and just like Lynn last year, this is his first full season so again expect a decrease in performance as the year goes on and the innings increase. His ERA, FIP and xFIP also indicate that there should be a correction back to the average since the numbers are as follows, 2.79, 3.04, and 3.38. This of course means that his defence is helping him keep hits from actually turning into base hits. Now unlike Lynn and Wainwright, Miller is a huge strikeout guy as he has a K/9 of nearly 10, which puts him on the same level as guys like Scherzer, Harvey and Darvish however with rookie pitchers with this level of strike outs we have to take into account that batters will eventually make an adjustment to his pitches and start being able to hit them and when we look at his repertoire Miller has 4 pitches (Fastball, Curve, Cutter and Change up). Now this isn't bad because having more weapons in your arsenal is better, however he throws his fastball nearly 75% of the time meaning that if hitters can catch up to his fastball that could be bad news for him. So expect the same changes as with Lynn.

Jake Westbrook: Now heres the only guy on the Cardinals rotation that I cringe just thinking about. Westbrook is not the pitcher he was, not to mention he seems to have gotten worse since coming back from injury. He' sporting a fairly nasty K/9 of 3.28, BB/9 of 3.47 both of which are not good, he's striking out a fairly low number of batters and on top of that he's walking a lot of batters as well. In addition to these nasty stats theres the ERA/FIP/xFIP set 3.18, 4.25 and 4.72. So this means that there is a severe drop in ability that is coming Westbrook's way, not to mention that he's a second rate starting pitcher and has the same fly ball situation as Wainwright and the rest but even crazier (he has a higher % of fly balls and  a lower HR/FB ratio). Overall this is the best you should expect from Westbrook and don't be terribly surprised when his performance takes a significant dip.

Alrighty so thats that for the Cardinals starting pitchers, should have the hitters up by the end of the weekend at the latest, so look forward to it. After that I plan on posting a small 'Guide To Evaluating Players' post after it so hopefully it'll be a good read for you all.

-Eric


Saturday, July 27, 2013

Bird Watch: The First Half Of The Orioles Season (Hitting)

Alright so next on the chopping block is to look into the hitting performance of the Orioles over the first 'half' of the season.

Matt Wieters: Ok so the catcher for the Orioles is the first one I've decided to look at and his primary stats are more or less in line with what he did last year as well as his career average (those stats being AVG, OBP, SLG, OPS). Now on the other hand there are some slight changes that could indicate something further if the trend continues, for instance Wieters had 60 walks over the course of the season but so far with just 50 games left in the season he only has 30 (after playing 2/3 of the season already) so it's possible that he's being less selective at the plate and thus taking less balls though his strike outs have gone down so far but what does show whats going on is what happens after he hits the ball. That of course is the fact that his FB and GB percentages have gone up while his LD (line drive) percentage has gone down a fair bit from previous years and falling in line his HR/FB ratio has taken a nose dive of about 4% from last year. So basically what this shows is that he's trying to make contact on pitches that would otherwise be balls and is getting bad hits that end up being fly ball or ground ball outs. Now if he, like most, tends to deviate to his average then he should see a slight increase in power and average in the rest of the season however, not only has his hitting stats suffered a bit this season but he hasn't been nearly as good as expected defensively this year as his fielding runs above average has dropped 5.5 points and his WAR (wins against replacement, basically meaning how many games the team wins just by having him on the team) has dropped by nearly 2 points and is the lowest in his career. Overall I expect some bit of a turn around but don't expect high to start mashing the ball at an amazing pace either.

Chris Davis: So here we have the big anomaly of the year in baseball, now you should know what I mean by that as Davis has just come out of no where to become one of the games premiere power hitters. So obviously I cant really compare this years stats with what he's done in the past as it would seem obvious that he's changed something major that has triggered some innate ability he didn't have before. Anyhow let's get into it, at this point David is having his 3rd full year in the majors after a few year stint with the Rangers, where he was only up for one full season, and a full season with the Orioles the previous year as he was traded. Now his stats this year have been out of this world as he's been able to hold an above .300 AVG, high OBP and nearly above .700 SLG. The obvious explanation is that he has had an increase in his walk rate and a decrease of his strike out rate, then his ISO (isolated power, SLG-AVG) has shot up as well meaning not only is he being more selective about pitches and making more contact because of it but he's making BETTER contact and is driving more of his hits out of the park. Now there are already signs that Davis is starting to regress, what I'm talking about of course is the fact that his AVG dropped to below .300 in June but it's plummeted to .209 so far in July and he's been kicking way off what his pace was for home runs. So overall there are really 2 ways this can go, either Davis will continue to regress back to his previous years numbers or he'll right himself and remain a pretty high end power hitter in the AL, personally I think the later is more likely as I don't think he'd just click like this and then within a few months fall back into old habits for good.

Ryan Flaherty: Not much to talk about here as Flaherty has been just what he has been all his career, an infielder with not much power and not much ability to hit. Then in addition to this there hasn't been much change for him in the way of any of this stats be it offensive or defensive, he was more of a roster filler when the Orioles true second baseball Brian Roberts went down with injury during spring training so expect to see more of the same from Flaherty.

J.J. Hardy: Hardy, the SS for the Orioles, is one of those one/two tool short stops out there in the MLB similar to guys like Elvis Andrus who is really only useful for some average hitting and his speed however Hardy is better known for his defensive ability and his power hitting as he usually breaks 20 home runs but in doing so ends the season with a low .200's AVG. Ok so what we've seen from Hardy this year is more of the same, and thankfully his splits don't really indicate that he has specific areas of his hitting game that he is lacking in, but his strike out rate is 4% lower than the last 3 years and his career average to in the future I expect that to correct itself to some degree and his batting average to decrease slightly to accommodate for it. In addition to this his HR/FB ratio has gone up about 3% from last year and 2% on his career average, which would indicate that he may fall off pace in terms of power for the remaining games. Looking at the rest of his stats doesn't tell us much in terms of what to expect in the future however I believe that it would be wise to expect maybe another 8 or so home runs but a slight increase in strike outs and a slight decrease in his AVG, which would equate to a better year than 2012 but not quite as good as 2011.

Manny Machado: And here we have another rookie phenomenon and I personally think that he's been unfairly over shadowed by the start of Bryce Harper and Mike Trout. Now like Davis, Machado has been able, for the first half to sustain an AVG of over .300 and has been on a doubles hitting spree, now a problem is that he has had an exceedingly low walk rate so he isn't being as selective at the plate as he could be and if he did make those changes his OBP would go up a fair bit and he'd likely have more runs scored to show for it. On the positive side he has a strike out rate thats only a few points above the norm in the MLB and as a young player we all should expect it to decrease closer to the mean as his career continues in addition he has already taken steps to improving his ability as his line drive percentage has gone up by nearly 4%, which would account for the amazing amount of doubles that he been hitting. Now as like Davis, he to has been seeing a decrease in his stats as well, he's seen a severe drop in in AVG and walk rate meaning he's swinging more at pitches and likely pitchers are challenging him with tougher pitches, which can be seen in the fact that his LD% has decreased by 13% and then his GB and FB % have increased by 10% and 4% respectively. So in essence what this tells us is that he's swinging at more pitches that may not be the best to drive or put into play and as a result his at bats are resulting more in ground ball and fly ball outs. Now despite being a small sample size his HR/FB ratio has taken a huge leap, which if true, could mean he's sacrificing AVG for power much like the way that his team mate J.J. Hardy works at the plate. Though overall since he still is a very young player it's hard to say what people expect him to be in the end, but I do expect he'll continue on his normal trend but he won't end up as high as his initial 1st half numbers suggested he would as most high talent rookies end up crushing in the first half, then they get challenged by pitchers in the second half and their stats drop off until they make the necessary correction and I believe that Machado will be able to make that adjustment.

Nate McLouth: McLouth this year has shown a bit of a turn around since after being passed around 3 teams in the last few years he's managed to decrease his strike out rate a fair amount and is hitting more for average these days with Baltimore, what has been most surprising is that the last 3 years has seen his development of his speed and it is currently at it's peak. Now in terms of regression there doesn't seem to be any realistic stats to indicate this is not real as there has been a steady increase in these areas since he's come over to the Orioles. This  shows that he's had a decent increase in the AVG and speed departments but the stats that show how this is happening is his BABIP, and his LD, FB and GB percentages, the percentages have all steadily increased or decreased in the right direction of the last 3 years (LD up, GB and FB down). Then BABIP is a stat called 'batting average against balls in play', it's basically a way to better look at what a players average SHOULD be or at least what direction you can expect it to move in and in McLouth's case his BABIP has, like his percentages, have gone up and is sitting pretty at .313. All of this basically tells us that McLouth is starting to come into his own and hitting the prime of his career, lucky thing the Orioles traded for him, and like I've said his stats have steadily increase since the beginning of the 2009 season so it's a real increase in his abilities and it is not likely that his current pace will decrease and even more his second half stats so far have also indicated that theres unlikely to be a heavy decline in his skill set.

Adam Jones: Now heres the real muscle of the Orioles batting order good ol' Adam Jones. Like many of the Orioles hitters Jones has been surprisingly consistent throughout his tenure with the Orioles, however there are a few things this year that do raise a bit of question, that being his walk rate, which has gone down a couple percent from the last couple of years and is very low at the point it's at. In addition to this there has been an decrease above his career average for FB and GB percentages and a increase as compared to his career average of line drive percentage, since we lack the same sort of steady increase in his stats over the past few years like we've seen with McLouth theres no reason to think that these changes will necessarily be permanent in the second half and that there won't be a drop off. This can be seen even more by the percentages more or less righting themselves in the few second half games he has had so far, but his walk rate has also increased, which makes up for the lower number of line drives to some extent. Now one thing I haven't mentioned in all of these evals is batting average with runners in scoring position and pitch count splits, now the reason for that is because all of the Orioles hitters don't have any issues with any sort of situational or clutch hitting and in the cases of Machado, Jones and McLouth they seem to thrive in those situations. Overall just like the majority of the hitters for the Orioles we can expect more of the same from Jones, now yes there will likely be a decrease in the amount of power hitting that we see from him in the second half, however he has also increased his walk rate and his slugging has taken a sharp upward turn so there is a good chance that he may not even see a decrease since he has decrease in one way but an increase from the other end.

Nick Markakis: With more consistency to the Orioles line up we see Nick Markakis. This guy has been doing the same thing for the past couple years, his numbers have stayed rather steady and unchanged. Though his ISO (isolated power) has decreased over the last 2 years to this year it's important to note that despite this decrease those 2 years only saw him take 400 or so at bats over the whole season whereas this year he's likely to sport around 500-600 at bats and get about the same number of home runs as the previous years. As well his LD%, GB% and FB% are slightly above/below what his career averages, which indicates that his stats are going to decline, however even though his career averages aren't as good his past 3 years have actually been slightly better in those 3 stats that his current coverage, making the idea that we could even see an increase in his production more likely. One more thing that proves this theory on my part is that his OBP, AVG, SLG and OPS are currently a bit lwoer than his career averages but even more so when you look at his previous 2 years of production. In essence what this tells us is that Markakis has yet to show us his best and is likely to get better in the last couple of months of the season.

Nolan Reimold: Now the reason I'm writing in Reimold is because out of all the other people that have been cycled into the DH position he's the only one that has been present for 100+ at bats, the rest having less and in most cases 40 or less at bats. Now in terms of Reimold, he has shown rather lacklustre ability so far this year hitting at a pitiful .195 so far and his OBP and OPS have followed suit and the reasoning for this can be seen in the fact that his strike out rate is up 9% more than his norm and his walk rate is down about 2.5% from the norm. Now the unfortunate news about this is that like McLouth, this trend has been occurring over the past 3 years so there is less evidence to suggest that it isn't going to be permanent. However on the other hand if we are to expect that the changes that have occurred over the past years are permanent we must also expect that his heightened line drive rate from 2012 must also follow suit so despite the lower walk rate and higher strikeout rate there is good potential that at the very least his OBP and AVG should improve to a degree for the remainder of the year.

Ok, now onto the final, and most playoff relevant, team over the week I should have posts on the Cardinals hitting and pitcher for the first half.

-Eric

Friday, July 26, 2013

Bird Watch: The First Half Of The Orioles Season (Pitching)

Ok so unlike the Blue Jays, the Orioles have actually been doing pretty well for themselves a couple of issues coming up here and there, those being having several close 1-2 run games, meaning the offence in those games didn't provide the starter with enough run support, and the mid section of the bullpen, just before the set up and closer get involved. So let's take a look at the Orioles pitching for the first half of the season:

Chris Tillman: Tillman has been a very welcome surprise for the Orioles this season a he seems to be finally coming into his own on the mound. Now I say this despite a good performance last year because he did not play for the full year and ended with a record of 9-3 whereas he currently is at 12-3 right now, so with a much better winning percentage. Ok so as of now there honestly isn't much to say about Tillman, he only has a few stats that aren't really in line with his career averages or slightly higher/lower with the exception of his home runs per 9 innings and his home run/fly ball ratio. Now his HR/9 ratio is 1.58, whereas his career average is at 1.44 so he has the potential to allow less home runs during his starts in the second half. Then to further prove that we can look at his HR/FB ratio this year, which is 15.6%, and his career is 12.4% showing that he has been getting a bit unlucky with the long ball and suggests like the HR/9 stat that he is likely to give up less home runs in the second half. Now I suppose the only other area I can look at for holes or hope in Tillman's stats is in his FIP and xFIP, which sits at 4.87 and 4.17 respectively, now his ERA sits at 3.84 so his field independent pitching ratios suggest that the team's defence has been helping keep the ball from becoming base hits so while there may be a decrease in his number of home runs in the second half the numbers also suggest that he's been getting off lucky and his ERA and WHIP is set to increase a bit. Now some may wonder what of FIP or xFIP should I focus on when looking at players? Well the answer to that is based on what you want to focus on as xFIP is the same as FIP but it doesn't incorporate home runs so in the case of Tillman, since we expect his home run rate to change, and that it wasn't very high to begin with, we should be looking at his xFIP. Overall Tillman should enjoy some more success in the rotation though don't be surprised if his ERA and WHIP inflate a little, the only final thing to consider is that this will be his first full season so he could run into some issues down the stretch since he hasn't pitched over 90 innings at the major league level.

Jason Hammel: Now I loved Jason Hammel last year, he just came out of no where and acted as the team's unofficial ace and he helped a couple of my fantasy teams to a swift victory. However he is taking in the ass this year as he has had a pretty severe regression in nearly all stats, his K/9 has dropped from 8.62 to 6.27 so he's not striking out as many people as before, which could be either a lack of command or just that his pitches aren't fooling hitters anymore. As well as this his HR/9 has increased from 0.69 to 1.45 so it's more than doubled so his talent for suppressing the long ball has vanished, his ground ball percentage has gone down from 53.2% to 40.9% so he's not hitting the bottom of the strike zone as much to cause ground balls, his HR/FB ratio has also gone up from 9.7% to 13.5% so this would suggest the balls that he's not getting ground balls are more than likely getting located in the centre/middle of the strike zone and pummelled out of the field. Now on the other hand Hammel does have some indication that he has been getting a bit unlucky as his 5.80 ERA is fairly higher than his 5.00 FIP and 4.57 xFIP again suggesting he's in for a slight turn around and his career stats as compared to the previously mentioned ones are somewhat lower, which would generally indicate he is going to trend upwards. NOW this isn't entirely true and that is because he has 4 full seasons in the majors, excluding this year, and 3 of those 4 years were with Colorado in the NL West where the hitters are much weaker than in the AL East so it's hard to draw those conclusions with only 1 full season in the AL East. So basically I would expect the his ERA and WHIP will get a bit better though his other stats are up in the air as you can't really make a safe assumption since the majority of his career stats are from a MUCH weaker hitting division.

Miguel Gonzalez: Now heres another young pitcher who is doing a good job for Baltimore and holding the team in the game on a regular basis as he is just in his second full season in the big leagues. Now like with Jason Hammel, because of this lack of major league experience these stats have to be taken with a grain of salt as there isn't really enough major league stats that you can appropriately draw a conclusion. Now to be honest Gonzalez's stats are pretty much in line with what you'd expect from a solid #3 or #4 pitcher in your starting rotation and his stats generally show that there isn't much change to be expected, his ratios (HR/FB, K/9, BB/9. GB%, HR/9, etc.) are all at or just slightly above/below the career average and what he managed to post the year prior so I expect he continues to do what he's doing. Now there is one thing to note and that is similarly to Chris Tillman, because he has a lack of major league experience he has only pitched 105 innings most in his time in the majors and only 130 innings as his most in a season with the Red Sox AA affiliate so he could see some regression as the large number of innings start to wear on his pitching arm, especially with the Orioles looking like they will be playoff bound. So all in all nothing to worry about, Gonzalez should keep doing what he's doing but keep in mind he may show a bit of wear and tear later as the final month closes in.

Wei Yin Chen: Boy do the Orioles have A LOT of young pitchers in the rotation and all guys who are managing to perform well and keep the team in the race for the AL East title and the playoffs in general. Now in terms of Chen in the games he pitched post and pre injury, which has kept him out of the line up for an extended period of time he has had some increase in one stat but a decrease in another. Now the first to see is that his K/9 has decreased from 7.19 in 2012 to 4.90 this year, which is a bit worrying at first glance since strikeouts are a big part of a starters repertoire, though he has seen a decrease in his HR/FB ratio as well from 1.35 in 2012 to 0.66 this year so even though he's lost strikeouts he's still able to keep the ball out of the stands. Now the final interesting bit about Chen's stat line is that his ERA has taken a nose dive, which is a good thing, from 4.02 in 2012 to 2.78 this year, which suggests that he's been incredibly effective with keeping the ball within an area that the fielders can throw them out when he doesn't get those strikeouts. Now like I've talked about you also have to still take note of his FIP and xFIP, which are each 1.00 point above the prior so despite all of these spectacular numbers the Orioles defence is saving him to some extent though like Gonzalez, there is nothing to suggest that his ability will decrease in the mean time and last year he pitched 192 innings so he is more than capable of pushing his innings high.

Kevin Gausman: Good ol' doughnut boy himself. Now if you don't know what I'm talking about I made a post on Gausman when he was first called up and reason being because he feasts on powdered doughnuts in between innings, definitely another funny habit some players have. Now with Gausman there isn't much to talk about and thats because the numbers he's shown in terms of ratios match up with his minor league numbers except K/9, which was expected going from AAA hitters to major league hitters. Though the downside is that because of his inexperience against major leaguers he's been beat up quite a bit, sporting an ERA of 6.21, though his FIP and xFIP (5.03, 3.76) suggest that if he gets the ball to start again this year some improvement will likely be seen in how many runs get out during the game. So don't go crazy for Gausman just yet, yes he is one of the Orioles biggest pitching prospects along with Dylan Bundy but give him a year or two and I'm sure he'll be pitching like all of the other young studs in the Orioles rotation

The Rest: Now since the Orioles have had a bit of issue with their starters getting injured this year there have been a surge of pitchers who have gotten starts here and there, though they all fall under the same category, crappy pitchers. Nearly all of these starters ended up sporting a high ERA, sometimes with high strikeouts and low walks but still allowing a fair number of runs and overall not helping the rotation a great deal as most of them got sent down when they could be replaced. Now the final thing I can say about the evolution of the Orioles rotation this year is the addition of Scott Feldman, while I don't think theres enough data to draw any conclusions I do believe he could be a difference maker for Baltimore strictly because he played with Texas for a few years in one of the most hitter friendly parks and had decent success and while Camden Yards is a hitters park it's not nearly as bad as Rangers Ballpark so expect Feldman to be a good contributor to the Orioles lineup and maybe assist in the playoff push.

Ok so thats all for the Orioles starting pitching staff, expect a post on the Orioles hitters within the next couple days.

-Eric

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Bird Watch: The First Half Of The Blue Birds Season (Hitting)

Ok so first, sorry for the delay, I've been rather busy lately but here it is, the hitting eval for the Jays first half.

Jose Reyes: To be honest I've got nothing for Reyes, all of his stats have been rather good, he's batting a solid .318, has an OBP of .368 (the lack of walks is the only bad thing) and is slugging .447, which is actually pretty high  considering some of his other years. Now when evaluating a hitter, going into the situational splits is the first thing I do after browsing their standard stats because it tells you where that batter can improve his approach or where they are lacking if their base stats don't already show that. Now in Jose's case nearly all of his splits are fairly even with his basic stats, his vs. pitcher AVG ranges from .299-.371, which is great from anyone, additionally his AVG with runners in scoring position is .313. Now the few issues he has, first off his 2 strike approach is pretty weak as his cumulative AVG with 2 strikes on the count is .149 and in the most clutch situation, runners in scoring position and 2 outs, AVG is .200. Then the last holes in his split stats are that his AVG in the first inning is .241 and finally he is only hitting .200 if the gams is close and in the last 1/3 of the innings, which a bit of a disappointment considering the team is lacking in those kind of areas. But overall Reyes has more positives than negatives.

Melky Cabrera: Melky, like Jose has been fairly consistent, he's got a .280 AVG, .325 OBP, .363 SLG. Now I should have made it clear that the reason both Melky and Jose have good batting splits against all types of pitcher situations is because they are both fairly efficient switch hitters so they are used to batting against left and right handed pitchers from both sides. In addition to these things like Jose, to a lesser extent, Melky has a low batting AVG with a 2 strike count, .232, and then again his AVG with the game late and close is a disappointing .224 and then his AVG in a tie game is .245. Now while this is bad for the team Melky is like our #1 clutch hitter as he has a batting AVG with runners in scoring position .295, and then with 2 out and runners in scoring position an AVG of .341. So in other words Melky is an overall successful clutch hitter and a good #2 hitter, when he's healthy, but again we need a change in his 2 strike approach.

Jose Bautista: Bautista is a bit of a go with the flow kind of guy, that meaning that he can have a year of AMAZING stats (see 2011 or 2010) but then it can regress a bit, so this year his stats so far are as follows: .252 AVG, .348 OBP and .501 SLG. Now the OBP is good because it means he's taking a fair amount of walks (about 10% of at bats, which is alright) and though his slugging is a bit lower than what we would like to see as he was always expected to be the team's premiere power hitter but he's taking a serious backseat to Encarnacion as he only has hit 23 home runs and theres only about 65 games left and his batting AVG could be better as .252 is pretty low when you look at the games top power hitters. Now when you look at Bautista's splits theres some different stuff, his splits with left vs. right handed pitchers are fairly similar but considering he's not a switch hitter his AVG against left handed pitchers is about 20-30 points lower, one rather disturbing thing is that his batting average when the team is winning is 70 points higher than when the team is losing, and it's only 287. In addition to this like everyone he has a very poor 2 strike approach with a batting AVG with 2 strikes of .192, his AVG with runners in scoring position is .306 and .296 with 2 out and runners in scoring position and he has an AVG when the game is late and close of .302 though his AVG with a tie game is only .192. So all of these numbers basically tells us that Bautista has a good approach at the plate but like most he has a poor approach with 2 strikes and same when the game is tied, in addition to this from what you can see from his monthly splits is a regression, going from very low AVG in April to high in May to average-mediocre in June and back to low in July so hopefully we see a turn around there. All in all it seems he needs to improve in the same area as the others.

Edwin Encarnacion: Ok so this is the 'big man' good ol' E5. So his base stats are very similar to Bautista's only a fair amount higher and with a higher total in the counting stats (HR, R, RBI). On the split stats again fairly similar but a bit higher than Bautista's and even the same problems are prevalent though again to a slightly lesser degree with Edwin (lacklustre AVG with 2 strikes). To balance this tough Edwin has an AVG with runners in scoring position of .329 and .318 with 2 out and runners in scoring position, then in addition to these great clutch stats he also has AVGs above .275 when the game is close and late or tied. Not really much for Edwin to work on, yea he does have the same 2 strike approach but his AVG is above .200 so he's not nearly as bad as the other guys on the teams offence.

Adam Lind: Man, Lind can't seem to figure out what he is, he was a power hitter in 2009/2010 and now he's a batter who hits for avg with decent power but he is performing well for us this year as he has an AVG of .300, however his OBP is .365 so he's not taking that many walks, which is a bit of an issue and we don't need that happening with the number of walks Arencibia isn't taking. Lind has also been trending down since the start of July in terms of his batting performance and his splits show a fairly poor performance in games that end with the teams loss, now on the other hand he is one of the few who don't seem to have much problem with his 2 strike approach as he is hitting .230 in that situation. As well he hits well with runners in scoring position and with 2 outs in the same situation, .321 and .333 respectively, the only down sides are that he hits poorly late/close games .217 and and then he hits below .200 in the 6th, 7th and extra innings, generally ones that matter as those innings are usually the ones where the middle relief guys are brought in and before the setup and closer are brought in, who are generally harder to hit against. So Lind seems like the most complete hitter here so far.

Colby Rasmus: Colby fits into the same kind of category as Adam Lind as he's been one of our most productive players this year, with a decent AVG of .264, OBP of .333 and SLG of .480, which is all well above his career average which, is nice because it shows that he's finally coming into his own, something we've been waiting for as a lot was expected out of him when he was with St. Louis. Now his splits for months, pitchers and win/loss situations are all fairly even so he's driven no matter what the situation, however again his 2 strike approach again is poor as he only has an AVG of .180. Now heres something strange, Colby has an AVG with runners in scoring position of .324, which is fantastic, however his AVG with 2 out and runners in scoring position (a very clutch situation) is only .182! Then his late and close game AVG is .230 and in tie games he has an AVG of .282 and like Lind he has issues in specific innings, 3rd, 5th and 6th innings. So again Colby is a very good hitter for us but again he needs work on his 2 strike approach and hopefully find a way to improve in the innings he has issues in.

J.P. Arencibia: Now this guy drives me FUCKING INSANE, and thats because of his approach at the plate and attitude towards it, before I get into the stats everyone reading this knows I hate Arencibia because he doesn't take walks and swings at everything and has one of the top 3 strikeout percentages in the MLB. But just that isn't what makes me dislike the guy it's the fact that he's talked about how he's  stated on record that he has just started ignoring strikeouts and that it doesn't matter to him, he just swings at pitches he feels good about, which is not only selfish but just infuriating for a die hard fan like me, especailly when he sits right in the middle of the batting order, it just breaks up our good hitters and often gets us the last out. ANYHOW J.P. has an atrocious AVG of .225 (12th lowest in MLB), which wouldn't be such a big deal if he didn't have the lowest OBP in the game (.258) and a SLG of .425. Now Arencibia has pretty bad splits with right/ left handed pitchers (average against lefties and shit against righties) though his AVG is getting better in July so hopefully that trend continues but we'll see BUT he has a large drop off in AVG when the team is losing, .294 for winning and .163 for losing. Just like expected all of  his other splits are fairly bad as well since they are all below .250 and about 80% of them are below .200, so not much out of what bad expectations we have of his stats. Overall Arencibia and he's terrible attitude toward batting is a MAJOR reason for the Blue Jays offence being the way it is right now, again he has the same problems as everyone else though his lower AVG amplifies those issues.

Brett Lawrie: Not really anything I can say about Lawrie but thats not because he's been good, in fact he's been slumping most of the season but he's only been on the field for 60 games, which I don't think I can make an accurate evaluation on. So overall give him a month then he'll likely be in more standard form since he missed so much time on the DL with the hamstring injury.

Maicer Izturis: Like most hitters at his age there isn't anything to fantastic, most if not all of his numbers are pretty average though his numbers have been trending upwards since the beginning of the season. Though again he has problems with his 2 strike approach and with runners in scoring position, though not so much with 2 outs and runners in scoring position. Again not really anything aside from the typical that Maicer needs to work on, though to be honest I was really weirded out when the Jays signed him when there were better 2nd baseman they could have tried to get via trade.

Bonifacio and DeRosa: Now I've included these guys as one because one their troubles are similar to other players and two because they aren't being played as everyday players, though if Bonifacio was hitting I guarantee he'd be in the lineup more often just for his ridiculous speed. Now Bonifacio has been a lot like Arencibia just without the power making him next to useless as a hitter since his main strength is his speed, which he can't institute unless he's on base and DeRosa has the same issues as Izturis, though he is a bit better in clutch situations.

Overall the issue for the Jays offence seems pretty clear, the main thing they need to go out and get, if their feeling up to it and think that they can afford prospect or player losses is a second or third baseman (since Lawrie can cover either position) who can hit for high average and in clutch situations. Then they should be getting on the hitting coach about his work, I do realize that the guy who is in the position now is new and was promoted from AAA but this is the time when heads start to role usually. Hell the Nationals just fired their hitting coach since their offence has been as bad as the Jays, now seeing that is a little annoying because it's kind of showing that the Jays managerial or GM staff care a little less about finding out the problem (of course I don't know who is directly in charge of the coaching staff) and it doesn't help that Gibbons is being so cloak and dagger about everything in his interviews. All in all I'm 100% sure they WILL NOT reach the playoffs, maybe next year Blue Jays. Tomorrow or Friday I will have the first eval post on the Orioles pitching up for your reading

-Eric




Sunday, July 21, 2013

Bird Watch: The First Half Of The Blue Birds Season (Pitching)

Alright so myself and many other fans have been UNBELIEVABLY disappointed by the way the Blue Jays have performed in the first half of the season, plenty of problems have cropped up for the team, be it injury, lack of performance or other things. Now the Jays first half has can really be defined as 3 parts, the first being the games leading up to the 11 game winning streak, the 11 game winning streak itself and the games after the streak. So let's explore why I separated it into these 3 areas.

The pre-streak set of games, ok so what we see from here is that the Jays were pretty much winning 1 game for every 3 games played for the majority of this section of the first half with the exception of a couple 3 game winning streaks and a couple 4 game losing streaks. Now a large amount of this can be attributed to the Jays lack of clutch hitting, but at the same time they had quite a few hiccups in pitching primarily starting pitching but no problems from the bullpen, which was the inverse of what everyone thought was going to happen. So let's break it down by each starting player's performance over this stretch, starting off with pitching (hitters will be in a separate post)

Starting Pitchers:

  • R.A. Dickey: Ok so one thing I quickly noticed about Dickey was that in most cases he was either great or horrible, if you take a look at his stats for the first half on Baseball Reference you'll see that 11 of this first half starts only had him allow 3 or less runs, which by any logic is a good pitching performance. In addition to this he has 7 other starts with 6 or more runs allowed, with 1 other outing with 4 runs allowed so despite these bad performances you can see that he more than 50% of the time will pitch a great outing. Now the sad thing about this is that he's only getting an average of 3.9 runs per game of support meaning that even if he puts up an outing where he only gives up 3 runs he's still not 100% to win the game. Now Dickey's 'Field Independent Pitching' is about inline with his current ERA, which indicates he's playing he hasn't been getting lucky or unlucky so far. However his walks per 9 innings is quite a bit higher than his career average and even higher then what he accomplished the last couple years, in addition his home runs per 9 innings this year is fairly higher than the previous 4 years and his career average. Now there obviously has to be a reason for these numbers being so far above his career average and the past few years, now I'm sure a portion of this increase is a result of moving from the NL East to the AL East since the AL is a harder hitting league than the NL (though don't discount the NL East as they are definitely the hardest hitting division in the NL). Now what I expect from Dickey is an improvement in the categories as he is likely adjusting to the hitters of the AL (the man has spent most of his time in the majors pitching for an NL team) and because he's been trying to pitch through injury the whole time, now however minor that injury is it undoubtedly has an effect. And in addition to this if we delve a little deeper into the stats we can see that his home run/fly ball ratio is about 3% higher than higher than the his career average and 4% above the league, which leads me to believe he's in for a a decrease in runs allowed by home runs just form that alone. Now theres plenty more stats to talk about so I'll just say take a look at his baseball reference page as well as fan graphs definitions of the various stats to get a better understanding
  • Mark Buerhle: Now if theres one thing I hear SO often from either people who claim to be Blue Jays fans or commenters on Jays oriented posts/articles it's that Mark Buerhle is terrible and should be traded or sent down, so let's take a look. Now I'll first take it the same as I did with Dickey, Buerhle has pitched 10 games where he gave up 3 or less runs which again is pretty good now then on the flip side he has pitched only 3 games allowing 6 or more runs and finally 6 games pitched with 4-5 runs allowed, which may not qualify as a quality outing it is very considering where Mark Buerhle is in his career. When this trade went through fans I'm pretty sure recognized Buerhle as either the #4 starter of our rotation since Johnson was just being placed there due to his injury history and to be honest this is what Buerhle has been for years. Now just like Dickey he gets just enough run support that he will more often then not lose the games he pitches well in (4.35 runs per game), overall what we're seeing so far is a trend of our pitchers not getting the run support needed to win games, which is very disappointing considering how much power we have in our lineup. Anyhow let's look at more of the stats for Buerhle, now unlike Dickey, Buerhle has a FIP and xFIP below that of his current, which indicates that he's in for a bit of a reduction on the number of runs that opponents score on him per game and that can be further seen in the fact that, like Dickey he has a home run/flyball % that is 2% above his average and the league average so again theres another indicator that some correction is in order. Overall Buerhle and Happ have been the most consistent of the Blue Jays pitchers so to those fans that want to throw Mark under the bus you should just shut up and read some stats before making those ignorant comments.
  • Josh Johnson: Now this has been a fair disappointment and theres not really any other way to look at it, Johnson was fantastic in the games he pitched during spring training but he has seldom been able to show that kind of skill in the regular season. Johnson has shown 7 starts that qualify as quality starts (gave up 3 or fewer runs), then there were 2 outings where he allowed 6 or more runs and finally 3 outings of 4-5 runs allowed. Now again like I said before this is not terrible because when you look at the talent we have in the batting rotation we should easily be able to put up 4+ runs for our pitchers without any problem, and if we did we'd have a MUCH better record than the team currently does. Then as expected, like the other starters, Johnson only gets an average of 3.92 runs per game, so again theres the offence coughing up all over his well pitched outings, which I'll reiterate, occur much more often than bad ones. Now unlike Dickey and Buerhle, Johnson when we look at the deeper stats has a much lower FIP and xFIP than his current ERA (more than a point and a half lower) so that alone should tell you that he is MUCH better than his current stat line portrays him. In addition to this all of his standard stats (ERA, WHIP, HR/9) all are much higher than his career stats and most of the last few years where he under performed. Finally we know from watching the games Johnson has had problems with the long ball and so this statistical 'piece de resistance' will leave you a thinking better of Johnson, and that is that his current homer run/fly ball ratio is 2 times more than his career value, now I'm sure people who are slightly more versed in baseball stats will say 'Well Hey! Marlin's Park is a pitchers park, of course he didn't allow home runs there'. And that is where they would be 100% WRONG and that is because Marlin's park didn't get put up until the start of the 2012 season, before that they played in Sun Life Park, which according to ESPN's Park Factors, Sun Life Park sat at about the same area (within 1-2 positions) of Rogers Field in terms of runs allowed per game. So again those out there should be expecting a turn around from Johnson in the second half, especially if the offence can get their shit together.
  • J.A. Happ: Alright, now up until his injury Happ was honestly the most consistent pitcher in our starting rotation and you could see how much of a blow to the team it was when he went down with that ball to the head. So he pitched 3 quality starts during that run and 3 that had him give up 4-5 runs and even still he only got an average of 3.57 runs per game of support. Not much to say otherwise, his stats indicate that there should be a slight decline in the number of walks he gives up and a slight increase in the number of strikeouts he gets but overall if he gets plugged into the rotation immediately upon his return we should expect just what he has delivered up until this point and that is a #5 starter who consistently gives you a game within 5 runs.
  • Brandon Morrow: Now while he's been injured about as long as Happ has there he has not been nearly as consistent as J.A has. Now Morrow has turned in 5 quality starts and 4 starts of 5 or more runs, now this doesn't look good on his record and reflects to some extent in his ERA and WHIP, though like Johnson, he has struggled with the long ball and his last 2 years and career average HR/9 suggests that there should be a decrease of at least 1 in his HR/9 over the season. In addition his FIP and xFIP are slightly lower than his current ERA. Now while the FIP/xFIP argument isn't a huge one it does show that his struggles are real and not just a product of lack of run support, especially since he gets the most of it amongst our starting pitchers at an average of 5.60 runs per game. Now with Morrow almost all of his stats suggest that he will get better than he has been but unlike the other starters this is a case of lacklustre pitching and it sounds like Morrow needs to figure out whats up with his ability in order to get back on track.
  • Esmil Rogers: Now this was a welcome surprise, mainly because I going into the season I always saw him as our long relief guy replacement for, the more effective Luis Perez, but boy did he prove me wrong when he got the call to start. So the way Rogers worked into this mix was as follows, he was originally a 1-2 inning reliever but then our starters started going down with injuries so the team started stretching him out over 2-4 innings to see how he would handle it and eventually moved him to the rotation on June 13th. From then he has pitched 4 quality starts (3 or less runs) 2 outings with 4 runs and one with 7 runs, overall thats pretty good considering almost the entirety of his career had been as a reliever with Colorado and Cleveland. Now unfortunately, just like the other starters Esmil only gets an average of 4.22 runs per game of support. Now I will say I can't go and make too many assumptions based on Roger's past stats since almost none of them represent him playing as a starter but I expect he may have issues as he approached a higher inning count as he has never pitched more than 83 innings at the major league level and he's already at 77 by the all star break. So I expect he may be one of the first moved to the bullpen when some of our starters start coming off the DL.
  • Ramon Ortiz: Another nice surprise, though again theres not much I can say about him as he came in part way into the season to handle a spot left by one of our injured guys and ended up getting tossed on the DL himself. He pitched half decently through the stretch not allowing more than 5 runs in every outing he had, though just like Rogers I expect that once all of the guys are back he'll be back in the bullpen.
  • Chad Jenkins: Pretty much the same as Ortiz only he stumbled and the Jays replaced him.
  • Todd Redmond: The newest addition to the Jays rotation, Redmond seems more like a place holder since some of the starters are soon to come off the DL but the team needs to make up for the next 1 or 2 starts they would miss. However Redmond has pitched well and it has been a rather ideal situation as he can go strong for 5 innings and then the bullpen crushes it from there.
Well thats my eval of the first half of the starting rotation, now overall I don't think there is too much wrong with these guys, some of them need adjustments to get them back into spring training form (Morrow and to a lesser extent Johnson) but in addition to that Dickey having the All Star break to rest and hopefully recuperate from his nagging injury that he's been pitching through is great. So my final thoughts are that there are tiny adjustments that need to be made to most starters and large adjustments to some (Morrow and Romero, if he hopes to come back up this year) but all in all it's more the fault of the lack of run support from the offence that has caused most of the downfall of the team rather than the starting pitching. (Expect to see one of these every day this week for the Orioles, Blue Jays and Cardinals)

-Eric