Monthly Archives: February 2010

February 27, 2010

Reyes Batting 3rd is Risky Business

By Richard Gross

XXX JOSE REYES rd1950 .JPGThere’s one thing that Met fans have learned in the past season and a half since Jerry Manuel has been manager: he likes to experiment and stir things up; sometimes all at once. Manuel has bandied about such ideas as Luis Castillo taking over the leadoff spot, John Maine working out of the bullpen and Fernando Tatis playing second. And he has done his share of back page fodder with virtually throwing Ryan Church under the bus questioning his resilience or threatening to get “gangsta” on Jose Reyes.

Once again, Reyes is the latest centerpiece in Manuel’s master plans with the intention of slotting Reyes in the #3 spot in the lineup rather than his traditional leadoff role. On some level this makes sense. Reyes is not considered your prototypical leadoff hitter in that he owns a career OBP of .337, although the past several seasons his OBP has been anchored in the .350’s. He takes fewer pitchers per plate appearance than the major league average of 3.83 but the one thing that he does possess that any leadoff hitter would be envious of is lightning speed.

One can only assume that Manuel has been fretting over the absence of his usually #3 hitter, Carlos Beltran, who is out for at least the start of the season. With that in mind, Manuel has probably been racking his brains trying to figure out a way to make the middle of the lineup tougher without his star centerfielder. So let’s entertain this notion and do a best guess on how Manuel would put his lineup together with Reyes batting 3rd and Beltran on the bench. But first, let’s look at the more traditional lineup without Beltran and Reyes at the top of the order:

  1. Reyes (S)
  2. Castillo (S)
  3. Wright (R)
  4. Bay (R)
  5. Pagan (S)
  6. Francoeur (R)
  7. Murphy (L)
  8. Barajas (R)

I slotted Pagan in the 5th spot to break up the barrage of right-handed hitters that the lineup would have if Francoeur was batting in the 5th spot instead of the 6th.
Now let’s take a crack at what the order would look like with Reyes batting 3rd and Beltran still out:

  1. Pagan (S)
  2. Castillo (S)
  3. Reyes (S)
  4. Wright (R)
  5. Bay (R)
  6. Francoeur (R)
  7. Murphy (L)
  8. Barajas (R)

The 4-5-6 spots are heavily right-handed but this would seem to be a meatier middle of the lineup. The other option here would be to slide Castillo in the leadoff spot, perhaps bat Murphy 2nd and move Pagan down in the order and have him bat either behind or in front of Francoeur.

Admittedly, the batting order does look more formidable when Reyes is batting 3rd while Beltran is out. It seems that opposing pitchers may have less of a “break” navigating this lineup as opposed to having Reyes lead off. But where does Reyes hit once Beltran returns? Beltran’s presence in the lineup provides a significant boost. Does Manuel really intend to have Reyes bat 3rd even when Beltran is healthy and what would that look like? Well, here’s another stab:

  1. Castillo (S)
  2. Murphy (L)
  3. Reyes (S)
  4. Beltran (S)
  5. Wright (R)
  6. Bay (R)
  7. Francoeur (R)
  8. Barajas (R)

Once again there is a barrage of right-handed hitters in a row. Manuel could flip-flop Wright and Beltran to alleviate some of that problem but again it makes for an interesting lineup that I’m not totally put off by.

However, the biggest issue with dropping Reyes down in the order is that it tempers one of his greatest assets: speed. This move will almost certainly have some impact on his stolen base totals. In Reyes’ case, a walk or a hit is almost as good as a double with his potential to steal a base. When a player that has that kind of potential leads off a game standing on second, it becomes an important factor in setting the tone for the rest of what transpires. Just how important is that? If we have that scenario with a runner on second and no one out, the run expectancy for that team is to score 1.189 runs for that inning. That’s a real plus when a team gets out of the gate with a quick run. Granted, there is still most of the game to play if it’s the first inning and it doesn’t ensure victory but it does provide confidence and puts the opposing team back on their heels. With a visiting team scoring a run in the top of the 1st with no one out, that team has gone from a 50% chance of winning the game to 59%. In a different scenario, if the home team was able to jump to a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the 1st, this would predict the home team’s chance of winning at almost 65%. That’s a 15% increase of securing a possible victory than when the first pitch of the game was thrown.

Dropping Reyes down to 3rd also has other implications. With Reyes in the leadoff spot, we know one thing for sure: he will be the first Mets batter in the top or bottom of the 1st inning. But being a leadoff hitter doesn’t guarantee that at any other point in the game he’ll lead an inning off again. But it does guarantee that he will have at least one situation where he will bat to start an inning. It is also guarantees that every time the lineup rolls over, he will get more plate appearances than batters that hit after him. Reyes is a dynamic force on the base paths with a potential to “make things happen” and by lessening his opportunities to come to the plate, the Mets lessen the run scoring opportunities he generates.

As I mentioned before, Reyes isn’t a prototypical leadoff hitter with his lifetime .337 OBP. Or is he? The .337 OBP is misleading because it doesn’t represent his OBP when he is “acting” as a leadoff hitter. It represents his OBP for his career, whether he was leading off an inning, batting second, third or whenever. If we isolate Reyes’ OBP to just the first inning, at the beginning of the game, when we KNOW he has an opportunity to act as a leadoff hitter, we get an entirely different picture. Let’s take a look at how Reyes did in the first inning of games from 2006 to 2009.

YEAR

OBP

Stolen Bases

Runs Scored

2006

.392

17

37

2007

.370

21

37

2008

.360

18

43

2009

.314

0

6

TOTAL

.370

56

123

We can be generous and disregard the 2009 season since Reyes was hurt for the majority of the year. But even with 2009 data averaged in, Reyes looks like every bit the productive leadoff hitter who sets the tone for the game and puts the Mets in a better win expectancy situation from the get-go.  He obviously adapts to that scenario and recognizes his importance of getting on base as opposed to other times in different circumstances where he may be trying to drive in runs.

Bottom line is that we can play around with lineups and try to come up with the “perfect” batting order that provides a consistent, balanced attack. While it’s debatable that with Beltran out, moving Reyes to 3rd in the order creates that balanced attack, it is also apparent that it sacrifices Reyes’ ability to create havoc on the bases that so effectively establish the tenor of the game.

Sure, Jerry, go ahead and try out Reyes in the 3rd spot while Beltran is on the mend; but once he’s back, Reyes needs to be inserted back at the top of the lineup where he gives the Mets the best opportunities to win.  To do otherwise, in my humble opinion, would be a huge misuse of Reyes.

So what do you think? Do you think Manuel is playing with fire batting Reyes 3rd or do you think it’s the right move? And what would you do with Reyes once Beltran is back? You’re the manager. How would you handle it?

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February 20, 2010

Mets Trying to Figure Out What's the Catch

By Richard Gross

<The article below discusses some of the considerations that Rod Barajas would bring to the Mets.  Shortly after the writing and posting of this article, the Mets signed Barajas to a major league deal–go figure.  Here’s wishing Barajas continued solid defense and a better OBP than .258>

Can you feel it in the air? Yes, it’s that time of the year and the start of the season is just a little over a month away. Since pitchers and catchers reported earlier this week, I thought it might be a good time to evaluate all of the catching options the Mets have this year. Let’s see, there’ rookie Josh Thole. And there’s…hmmm… Omir Santos of course. And…well…um…oh, yes…oh no, not him, he got traded to the White Sox. Oh yeah there’s Henry Blanco. And then, well…I guess there’s Chris Coste. And supposedly the Mets might be close to signing Rod Barajas to a major league contract which would mean that the Blue Jays would receive a compensation pick although at the time of this post that has not happened yet. And, well, that’s it…that’s everyone.

It would be a monumental understatement to say that none of these catchers will be mistaken for Mike Piazza. The combined batting average of all 5 of these players (we’ll throw Barajas in there just for kicks) in 2009 was .240 with a total of 34 home runs. Barajas in fact supplied 56% of that power. Thole had the highest batting average at .321 but with only 53 Major League AB’s and none in AAA, it would be difficult to hand over the full-time catching position to someone so green although he seems to have potential to handle the bat well.

No matter how you slice it, the Mets don’t seem destined to fill the catching spot with any kind of offensive threat. So going into the situation with those realistic expectations, the Mets would do well then to choose the best defensive catcher of the bunch. After all, the catching position is primarily a defensive position and most teams are willing to forgo the bat in favor of a backstop that handle the staff, throw out base runners, provide strong defense and call a solid game.

With a shout out to Sabermetrician Chuck Rosciam, he developed a formula for rating catchers based upon their overall defensive abilities. He took into account the catcher’s stamina to consistently catch games, their ability to throw out runners, their fielding percentage, the ability to be a handle bunts, head’s up game play (double plays and passed balls) and finally the ability to call an effective game. He then took all six of these elements and combined them into one overall rating by which to measure the catcher’s overall defensive effectiveness. While I won’t get into the nitty gritty of his calculations (you can read more about it here), much of the formula is based upon looking at how the individual catcher in question measures against the other catchers on his team and then looking at how he compares against the catchers in the league as a whole.

So before we delve into looking at how the Mets catchers fair against this system, let’s take a test run and look at a proven defensive catcher that is one of the best in baseball: Yadier Molina. We’ll take a look at each of the 6 elements, giving some description on the context and then use Molina as the bar by which to measure the other Met catchers by. Yes, it’s a high bar but we’re throwing offense out the window, right?

  • Stamina– Molina caught 82% of the innings the Cardinals played last season; a very high percentage showing great endurance. If we take that percentage and divide that into the N.L. innings average (1444), Molina scores a rating for stamina of 5.68.
  • Good Glove– This is pretty straightforward. We’ll simply take Moilna’s fielding percentage**of .995 and divide that into the league average for catchers of .993. A rating of 1.00 will indicate that the catcher is right on par with the league. Anything over that is above average. Molina scores a 1.02 in this category. **Chuck Rosciam formula actually takes the catcher’s independent fielding percentage (IPO), but for simplification, I used the regular fielding percentage. My apologies to Chuck.
  • Good Arm– As you can guess this measures the catcher’s ability to throw out those nasty base-stealing thieves. Molina was successful throwing out these culprits almost 41% of the time compared to the league average of 29%. This gives him a rating in this department of 1.40 well above a rating of 1.00 which would be right at the average.
  • Ball Handling– To be clear, this measures the catcher’s ability to record an out on bunt plays, not anything more risqué. As you would imagine, Molina was right there with the best of them at 86% of the time getting the out on a bunt against the league average of 87%. Slightly lower than the average, but still good which gives him a rating of .99.
  • Heads up plays– This measures the catcher’s ability to make heads up plays such as being quick to react and reducing the amount of passed balls or making double plays. The number of passed balls and double plays by the catcher are weighted against the league. Molina scored an 8.27 in effective game play.
  • Game Calling– This measures the catcher’s ERA against the other catcher’s on his team. When Molina was catching, pitchers produced an excellent 3.48 ERA. When he wasn’t behind the plate, the Cardinal pitchers’ ERA evaluated by almost a full run to 4.47 when any other catcher was calling the pitches. If we divide the other catchers’ ERA into Molina’s, he scores a 1.28 where once again 1.00 would be the average.

The finally step to get a raw score for Molina is to multiple the results together for each of the steps (i.e. stamina score * good glove score * good arm score etc.). Molina’s net result would be 85.86. An outstanding score!

Which brings us to the Mets. You probably have a queasy feeling in your stomach right about now and might feel the need to grab a couple of antacids. I’ll wait while you get some………………………………………………………………….. still waiting ……………………………..OK?

Let’s look at how the prospective Mets catchers did when using this same rating system. Once again will throw Barajas into this mix. The table below doesn’t break down each catcher’s individual percentage in the category but rather just gives the rating of each category and finally the raw score.

Catcher

Stamina

Good Glove

Good Arm

Ball Handling

Heads Up

Game Calling

Score

Santos

3.32

1.01

1.03

1.01

7.35

1.00

25.64

Blanco

2.42

1.07

1.38

0.57

11.02

0.93

20.88

Thole

0.62

0.99

1.15

-

2.31

1.09

1.78

Coste

0.83

1.07

0.64

0.57

1.84

0.87

0.52

Barajas

4.65

0.99

1.30

0.94

8.35

1.13

53.08

Stamina is obviously heavily influenced by playing time and Barajas is the only catcher on the list above that had consistent playing time in 2009. The rest of the catchers were essentially no more than back-ups. The majority of the catchers had better than average throwing arms with the exception of Coste who also calls a poor game calling along with Blanco. While Thole appears to be a promising prospect, he really has too little experience to really get a true measure on his defensive skills.

With whom the Mets currently have on their roster it would seem that Santos and Blanco would be the best choices from a defensive standpoint but both were unimpressive offensively. Santos batted a mediocre .260 with a .298 wOBA, while Blanco’s average was less at .235, with a slightly better wOBA at .310. Neither should be expected to offer much offensive punch, and defensively it’s pretty much a coin flip as both don’t come anywhere close to a catcher the caliber of Molina. Interestingly, Barajas would seem to be the better choice from a defensive standpoint as he rated a very respectable 53.08 with an above average arm and solid game calling skills which one would think would be of prime importance considering the Mets pitching woes last season. With the Rangers also listed as one of Barajas’ potential destinations, the Mets should push a little harder to ensure they are able to secure his services. It’s true they will be getting nothing more than a career .240 hitter who has some decent power, but for $1M-$1.5M for the year, he may the right choice to split time with Santos and provide the experience and defense the Mets need. After all beggars can’t choosers and in this scenario between the Mets and Barajas, it’s difficult to know who is the beggar and who is the chooser.

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February 15, 2010

Glass Half Full: David Wright

By Richard Gross

Richard did a good job looking at the Mets (lack of) offseason moves through an optimistic prism, so let’s look at some players with our rose-colored glasses on, right? A lot has been made of David Wright‘s loss of power last year, but was it so bad? Maybe not.

First, let’s take on this idea that Citi Field stole his power. Sorry to be short, but it did not do any such thing. Consider the following picture. It shows all of Wright’s 2008 home runs on top of the Citi Field map. I’ll let you consider it for a second.

WrightSheaCiti

Thanks to Greg Rybarczyk and Hit Tracker Online for all of the information. See those three home runs inside the blue line that represents Citi Field? Yeah, Citi Field would have robbed David Wright of three home runs in 2008. Before last year, he averaged 29 home runs per full season. Take three a way, and you’re talking about a guy who could still put up 25 a season even in the tough environs.

So if it wasn’t Citi, what happened? It looks like Wright altered his batted ball profile for some reason. Maybe the loss of his high-profile teammates caused him to press.

Consider that his fly ball rate was the second-lowest of his career (35.9% last year, 38.9% career), and his his HR/FB rate was easily the lowest of his career (6.9% last year, 13.9% career). These things led to his career-low .140 ISO (.210 career).

All of this lack of power came despite having a normal ground ball rate (38.4% last year, 37.5% career), and the same always-stellar line drive rate (25.7% last year, 23.6% career). So he was still hitting frozen ropes, they just weren’t going in the air. Maybe Citi Field did get to him – psychologically. On the other hand, he didn’t reach more than normal (21.5% last year, 20.1% career), so he wasn’t pressing too hard.

So what can we conclude? His walk rates didn’t change, and his line drive rates were still stellar. He just didn’t hit the ball in the air and struck out a little more than usual (26.2% last year, 20.1% career). Perhaps he didn’t hit an early home run that would have settled him into his normal routine. Perhaps he was trying to hit double after double to make up for the absence of Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran. Perhaps it was a bad year.

But it still looks like Wright is the line-drive hitting, base-stealing, all-around excellent third baseman we thought he was. So don’t count out the power just yet. And don’t blame it all on Citi Field.

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February 13, 2010

Mets Looking for Pure Quality Pitching

By Richard Gross

johanQuality Starts (QS) is one of the more misleading statistics to measure a pitcher by. To earn a quality start a pitcher must pitch a minimum of 6 innings and give up no more than 3 earned runs. This means that a pitcher can earn a QS in a outing where he pitches a complete game shutout, allows 3 hits, strikes out 10 batters, and walks 1. That pitcher would be very deserving of a quality start. But on the flip side another pitcher could earn a QS by logging 6 innings, giving up 9 hits, walking 4, striking out 2, and allowing 3 earned runs. It’s not difficult to figure out which pitcher had a better performance but the problem with this statistics is that they both earned a quality start and from that standpoint, they are equal. Quality starts is a very kind and forgiving statistic by which to measure a pitcher’s performance.

In response to the leniency of quality starts, Ron Shandler developed a more complete method of measuring the value of a pitcher’s outing through Pure Quality Starts (PQS). PQS looks at a pitcher’s individual start and measures their ability to dominant, display command, exhibit prevention, stamina and to keep away from home runs. A pitcher can earn a maximum of 5 points by exhibiting each of these attributes. A dominant performance is classified by a pitcher getting a 5 and a terrible day would be graded with a zero.

So how does a pitcher earn these points? Well, there are rules attached to earning these points and they are as follows:

  1. A pitcher will earn a point if he goes a minimum of 6 innings. If the pitcher fails to complete 5 innings, he will get an automatic zero for the outing and none of the other ways to earn point will count.
  2. A pitcher will earn a point if he allows no more than an equal number of hits to the number of innings pitcher. 6 innings pitched and 6 hits would earn a point but giving up 7 hits would result in a zero.
  3. A pitcher will earn a point if his strikeouts are no fewer than 2 less his innings pitched. If he strikeouts 4 batters in 6 innings that will earn him a point. But striking out 4 batters in 7 innings will receive a zero.
  4. A pitcher will earn a point if he strikes out a least twice as many batters as he has walked. If he strikes out 6 batters and walks 3, he’ll earn a point. If he strikes out 6 and walks 4, he’ll earn a zero.
  5. A pitcher will earn a point as long as he has allowed no more than 1 home run in a game. That’s pretty straight forward, right?

The point breakdown can essentially be categorized as follows:

  • 5 points = dominant start
  • 4 points = very good start
  • 3 points = good start
  • 2 points = average start
  • 1 point = poor start
  • 0 points = disastrous start

So ideally, we would want a pitcher to score more 5′s and 4′s than 1′s and zeroes.

So let’s try this out for size and see how it looks with an actually pitching performance. We’ll use a game that Johan Santana pitched last season against the Red Sox on May 22. In that game Santana’s line looked like this:

7 IP, 7 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 8K, 1 HR allowed.

In this game, Santana would have earned the full 5 points for this dominant start. He met the criteria for rule #1 by pitching more than 6 innings. He met the criteria for rule #2 as he gave up an equal number of hits or less to innings pitched. He met the criteria for rule #3 as he actually struck out more than his innings pitched. Rule #4 was met because he had more than twice the amount of strikeouts to walks and #5 was met because no more than one home run was allowed.

PQS allows a finer measurement of what excellence is, unlike quality starts which can reward mediocrity. With quality starts it’s possible for a pitcher to go the whole season and have a .500 winning pct. and a 4.50 ERA and still have 25 quality starts. Is this really a quality pitcher? PQS is more demanding in its requirements and really helps to identify not only how well or poorly a pitcher pitched in a single game, but also helps us to measure the consistency of a pitcher through multiple starts or even over a whole season.

Which brings us to the Met pitchers. Ah, yes…the Met pitchers! The Mets had 11 different pitchers start games for them last season. Obviously, some of the pitchers were fixtures in the rotation (Santana, Pelfrey) where others were used more randomly (Misch, Niese, Parnell). Below is a breakdown of how each pitcher faired during their starts for the season using PQS. Keep in mind that some pitchers had more data to work with than others simply because they had the opportunity to start more games and the pitchers with lesser starts could have greater variances.

Pitcher # of 5 or 4 point starts % of 5′s/4′s # of 3 or 2 point starts % of 3′s/2′s # of 1 or 0 point starts % of 1′s/0′s Avg. PQS
Johan Santana 14 56% 9 36% 1 4% 3.7
Mike Pelfrey 11 35.48% 12 38.71% 8 25.81% 2.7
Livan Hernandez 5 21.74% 11 47.83% 7 30.43% 2.3
Tim Redding 5 29.41% 8 47.06% 4 25.53% 2.6
John Maine 5 33.33% 5 33.33% 5 33.33% 2.4
Oliver Perez 3 21.43% 6 42.86% 5 35.71% 2
Nelson Figueroa 4 40% 4 40% 2 20% 3.1
Bobby Parnell 2 25% 2 25% 4 50% 1.8
Fernando Nieve 2 28.57% 2 28.57% 3 42.86% 2.1
Pat Misch 0 28.57% 5 71.43% 2 28.57% 2.1
Jonathan Niese 1 20% 2 40% 2 40% 1.8

No surprise that Santana offered the Mets the most consistency from start to start with only a 4% chance of having a performance that would be considered poor/disaster. Over the course of the season, he averaged 3.68 points for his starts, putting him on the cusp between very good and good. Nelson Figueroa was the only other pitcher for the Mets that scored in the “good” range with 3.1, but with only 10 starts for the year, it’s difficult to give that much as credibility as we would like. And not surprising that Oliver Perez showed a penchant for poor outing as he was only able to put together an average point value of 2 for all of his starts.

Now let’s look briefly at the cumulative output of all the pitchers together.

Pitching in ’09 # of 5 or 4 point starts % of 5′s/4′s # of 3 or 2 point starts % of 3′s/2′s # of 1 or 0 point starts % of 1′s/0′s Avg. PQS
Met Starters 53 32.72% 66 40.74% 43 26.54% 2.6

From the information above, we can see that for almost every dominant/very good outing the Mets had, there were almost an equal number of poor/disaster outings that cancelled the dominant/very good ones out. And let’s not forget that all too often, we saw dominant/very good outings wasted and wins squandered by bullpen failures to hold leads which is not reflected in the data above. The highest percentage was in the good/average department which illustrates the mediocrity of the Mets pitching as a whole.

By a point of comparison, let’s take a look at the Dodgers’ starters and their cumulative P’QS numbers. The Dodgers had arguable the best starting rotation in baseball, leading the Majors in ERA and notched 95 wins for the year.

Pitching in ’09 # of 5 or 4 point starts % of 5′s/4′s # of 3 or 2 point starts % of 3′s/2′s # of 1 or 0 point starts % of 1′s/0′s Avg. PQS
Dodger Starters 84 51.85% 49 30.25% 29 17.90% 3.1

The Dodgers starters scored almost 20% more dominant/very good starts than the Mets and almost 10% less poor/disastrous starts. What’s interesting is that the Mets actually had more starts in the 3-2 point range which is really more of a testament to the mediocrity of the Mets’ starters and the excellence of the Dodger’s pitchers.

Since it’s evident that Santana is by far the most reliable and consistent pitcher the Mets have, for fun, let’s see what the team overall numbers would look like if we removed his starts.

Pitching in ’09-No Santana # of 5 or 4 point starts % of 5′s/4′s # of 3 or 2 point starts % of 3′s/2′s # of 1 or 0 point starts % of 1′s/0′s Avg. PQS
Met Starters 39 24.07% 56 34.57% 42 25.93% 2.4

When comparing the Mets numbers with and without Santana, notice how the poor/disaster percentage barely changed, going down just a little over a half of a percent without Santana’s starts. But the biggest swings were in the other categories where we see a cumulative drop of almost 15% between the two. In fact, in this scenario the poor/disaster starts outnumber the dominant/very good starts. This is what life for the Mets would look like without Santana.

Granted, that the above information contains significant contributions from pitchers who are no longer with the Mets (Hernandez, Redding). But the Mets haven’t introduced any one new to the rotation to balance out the contributions that Santana makes on a consistent basis. It really illustrates that once you get past Santana, there isn’t much reliability with the rest of the staff. If the Mets have any chance of competing this season, Pelfrey, Maine and especially Perez will need to significantly pick up the slack and take some of the burden off of Santana’s shoulders. If they don’t step up, we will continue to see the significant disparity in talent between the top of the Mets rotation and everyone else and the results in the standings will more than likely reflect that.

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February 9, 2010

Mets Hitters by Swing Zones

By Richard Gross

I was perusing a fellow FanBall team blog, Camden Crazies, run by Daniel Moroz. Even if you don’t like the Orioles, you’ll be able to learn a lot from his work. For example, check out his depiction of Orioles’ hitters by swing zone. It’s excellent. Now that he’s taken the original work by Jeremy Greenhouse on Baseball Analysts and run with it, I will promptly copy him. I don’t think he’ll mind.

The idea is, that by taking a look at a hitters’ tendencies in certain swing zones, you can see what kind of hitter they are. Using run values, you can see how productive they are when, say, they swing at a pitch that is up and in. Run values place a value on a situation – a runner scores from first with one outs a certain amount of the time, and so you can actually say he’s worth a certain fraction of a run. So, if before an up and in pitch, there’s nobody on first, and then the batter swings, and then there’s a runner on first – that was worth a certain fraction of a run.

So let’s take a look at a trio of Mets hitters. What do their swing zones look like?

First, the key:

RunSwingKey

Now, take a look at David Wright‘s swing zones (the numbers in each zone represent the percentage of his total swings that occurred in that zone):

David WrightLooks like you want to avoid pitching down and in to him, that’s his wheelhouse. That’s also the type of pitch he waits on – you can see that 50.8% of his total swings come in those three zones. He’s a smart one.

For comparison’s sake, let’s take a look at Jeff Francouer.

Jeff FrancoeurWell, he’s largely terrible. At least he can handle the pitch in the middle of the plate! Phew.

Here’s Daniel Murphy:

MurphyWell, he likes the middle in, but he swings middle out. Looks like Murphy either needs to make more contact, or get to know his tendencies a little better. This sort of analysis doesn’t make them look very good, does it?

More on the way once I figure out how to represent a switch hitters’ strike zone.

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February 6, 2010

Oh, Really?!? Mets are done spending? Seriously? Really?

By Richard Gross

For a while I’ve been trying to figure out why the Mets’ whole off-season is just not sitting right with me.  It’s not the lack of moves and acquiring such useless pieces such as Gary Matthews Jr that I have a problem with.  It’s not even that the pitching staff is built on hope rather than ability.  I think what has put me off about the Mets this winter is that their “promise” to do what it takes to put the most competitive team out on the field has the distinct sound of the kind of rhetoric that you hear in presidential election campaigns.

You know the kind of lip-service where the candidate will list a host of initiatives that they will accomplish when elected, if only you support them.  But at the end of the day, the list of all those initiatives have fallen by the wayside and you feel duped buying into all of the talk.  Now I am not talking about anyone specific, I’m using a metaphor here, so please don’t send any letters.  But you get the idea.

Last week, Buster Olney reported that the Mets were done spending money this winter and that this was the team going into Spring Training.  With apologies to Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler of SNL but, REALLY?!?  Did they forget that you need a catcher to throw the ball back to the pitcher?  Oh Really? They’re done spending money?  You know adding a quality starter to the rotation doesn’t mean going out there and a grabbing a guy who has only pitched 5 innings in the last two years and recovering from labrum surgery.  Seriously? Really?  And here’s an idea: since the Mets only hit 45 home runs at CitiField the entire ’09 season and were last in the Majors in that department, rather than having spent the money to bring the Home Run Apple over from Shea, maybe they could have had Mr. Met paint his head red and do some knee-bends when somebody hits a home run. Really?  They’re done spending money?  Seriously? Oh really?

Last week I posted an article attempting to look at the Mets’ lack of off-season moves from an optimistic viewpoint.  And while I do believe that not spending money on a pool of poor free agents is prudent and could serve them well, I wasn’t necessarily buying all of the grub I was serving up.  I mentioned that perhaps the Mets actually have a plan in place.  While I hope that is the case, even I had a hard time chewing on that piece of fat.  Much of their decision process seems to be made in a bubble.  Their inability to multitask and make decisions with a big picture approach has them chasing their own tails much of the time with getting nothing accomplished.  Alex Cora is receiving $2M this year with an option for 2011.  Cora’s a good supporting player with good instincts and baseball smarts, but he is coming off of surgery on both thumbs. Couldn’t some of this money been used to secure a player in an area that really needs to be addressed? Wouldn’t it have been better to use that extra $2M on the rotation rather than a glorified bench player?  Really?

But the primary issue is that the Mets front office is alienating their fan base.  A fan base that has supported them through thick and thin and over the past three years have endured 2 collapses in a row and a year where the Mets roster resembled the emergency room at the local hospital.  So it becomes to feel disrespectful to a devote fan base when you promise them that the team will take an aggressive approach to field a competitive team and then doesn’t follow through.  It’s becomes disheartening and feels like deception.  The baseball community looks at the Mets and sees an organization that is poorly run. The media looks at the Mets and sees an organization that is in need of an extreme makeover. Other players from other teams look at the Mets and see an organization that they don’t want to play for.  And as a Met fan this becomes a further embarrassment to what has already been years worth.

The front office would do well to start to attempt to repair the developing rift that is dividing  the fan base from the team.  How refreshing would it be if the front office actually told the truth about what their plans for the off-season were rather than deliver a bunch of bologna (feel free to substitute your own expletive for bologna)?  What if they said, “Met fans, we don’t think the free agent pool this year is worth spending money on. We don’t have a concrete plan in place and feel it would be better to use this season to assess the talent on the team, in the minors and the personnel.  We can then more easily identify the changes that need to take place and develop a plan that will allow us to move forward for the next season in a positive direction that will make the ball club a consistent winner and a better place to play for players.  So this year, we are going to stick with what we’ve got.  Retool. And go from there.”

How refreshing would that be?  Really!!

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February 3, 2010

Pressure on Pelfrey in Pivotal Position

By Richard Gross

pelfreyThe Mets are truly fortunate that they have a bona fide ace in Johan Santana but after him, well, there’s a huge drop off.  The team has not been able to boost their pitching staff this off-season and acquire a player who might level off the disparity of skill from the top of the rotation to the bottom.  They’ve made minor additions but essentially the rotation is the same as it was last year.

The current Mets’ depth chart has Mike Pelfrey listed as the #2 man in the rotation.  This would provide the average Met fan with more comfort if he were coming off a successful season like he had in ’08, rather than the dismal, erratic season he had last year.  Pelfrey has all the talent worthy of a #2 starter: a 6′ 7” frame that delivers a 93 MPH fastball, a devastating sinker and a developing slider.  But something went off course last year on the road to Pelfrey’s development as a premier pitcher in the league: he lost his control of the strike zone and took a dramatic step backward. His BB/9 went up from 2.9 in ’08 to 3.2 in ’09 which in itself is not overly alarming. But when you combine that with an increased H/9 (9.4 in ’08 to 10.4 in ’09) and increased home runs allowed, it highlights the struggles that Pelfrey had throughout the season.  His home runs went up from 1 home run every two games in ’08 to about a home run given up in every game.  In fact, 66% of his home runs last season were allowed in the second half of the year.  Considering that Pelfrey is primarily a sinker ball pitcher, it’s a concerning statistic.

If Pelfrey is to turn things around this season he will need to do a significantly better job of working himself out of tough jams. Rather than shutting the door in crucial situations, Pelfrey seemed to come unraveled, allowing big hits or having difficulty finding the plate.  He seemed to nitpick too much with his pitches and therefore worked behind too often to hitters. Opponents batted .382 off Pelfrey when runners were in scoring position and he was behind in the count.  His 66.7 LOB% was below the league average (71.9%) and down by almost 9% from the previous year.  As a point of comparison, the Pirates’ Paul Maholm had a 69.2 LOB% and Maholm, by most standards, is a pretty middle-of-the-road pitcher.

There was much talk that Pelfrey had lost some of his confidence during the season and was perhaps over thinking situations rather than just relying on his natural ability.  If this is true, he will need to find a way to figure this out and fast.  The Mets can’t afford a repeat of his challenges with runners on base and the organization did him no favors by not acquiring another pitcher to add to their rotation.  A serviceable, consistent veteran starter would have been able to take some of the pressure off of Pelfrey and allow him to relax a little more and hopefully provide him with a better opportunity to restore some confidence. It would have been similar to what the Phillies were able to accomplish by trading for Roy Halladay. Cole Hamels, who had an off year himself in ‘09, will be the beneficiary of Halladay’s presence and won’t have to bear the weight of being the team’s ace.  Thankfully Pelfrey isn’t being asked to be the ace of the club, but he has a hard act to follow in Santana.

Unless the Mets are able to pull off a trade before April, they will have to rely heavily on Pelfrey to bounce back from last season.  For Pelfrey, this season is pivotal as he attempts to right himself and prove that he is worthy of a #1 draft choice.  For the Mets as a whole, they need many things to go their way, improved performances from underachievers, improved health for injured players.  But Pelfrey as the #2 man must come through if they Mets have any chance to compete.

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