There are many players in the majors who don't walk very much, and this tends to come through in their on-base percentages, unless they hit for sensational batting average (Ichiro comes to mind). Sometimes though, even a low OBP can be a little deceiving. For example - the player that inspired this post - Adam Jones.
Jones is still a relatively young guy with a lot of tools, but his lack-luster plate discipline has been his main Achilles heel. In 2010, he hit .284/.325/.442; putting up below league average OBP despite a batting average almost 25 points above. And yet even that low OBP doesn't tell the full tail of Jones' issues with patience at the plate, since a large part of his isolated OBP comes as a result of 13 hit by pitches (the 8th highest total in the majors).
Take them out - leaving Jones with only 23 walks (3.7% walk rate) - and his OBP would have been just .310. That's not to say that getting on base via the HBP is just a fluke - Jones did have 7 in each of his previous full seasons, and Craig Biggio famously bumped his on-base numbers by getting plunked a whole lot - but it does warp our conceptions of a player's skill set somewhat when just looking at his slash stats.Where did Jones rank among the guys who got the biggest (relative) bonus from taking one for the team in 2010? Check out the graph at Beyond the Box Score.
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The initial team projections are posted here. A more thorough walkthrough of how I put the individual ones together is in the Matt Wieters post here. The components I'm looking for are playing time (plate appearances), batting line (BA/OBP/SLG), and fielding.
Today we're looking at the Orioles' "new" left-fielder; Luke Scott.
Playing Time:
Since coming over to Baltimore and becoming a full-time starter (more or less), Luke has been pretty consistent with the playing time; 536 PA, 506 PA, 517 PA. He'll sit every now and again, and maybe go on the DL for a stretch. 525 plate appearances fits right in there.
Batting:
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One thing I commonly hear when discussing the Orioles, their progress, and their chances of contention, is that things would look so much brighter if they were in another division*.
* I'm ignoring the NL since the level of competition there is generally much lower than the AL - or, at least, has been recently - and would perhaps require different team building philosophy. That is, the Orioles in the NL Central this year might have been smart to go after some big name players in an effort to win 85-90 games this year and in the next few years.
This tends to take two forms:
(1) If they were in another division they'd be more likely to make the play-offs
(2) If they were in another division they'd win more games
These may seem like the same idea, but they're not. (1) I think is pretty clearly true, as far as the divisions stand now. The Yankees came in second place in the AL East last year, but would have finished first in the Central or West. The Red Sox finished second in 2009, and though their 95 wins would have been behind LA's 97, they would have taken the Central in a walk (the Twins and Tigers ended 162 games with 86 wins each). The preceding couple of years played out similarly - to win a division title recently, one needs to beat two 90+ win teams in the East but only one (or zero) 90+ win teams in the Central or West.
In the AL East, the Orioles need to build themselves into a 90-95 win club and hope to catch a break or two to even compete for the division. In the Central or West, coming into the season as an expected true talent 90-95 win club makes you a prohibitive favorite at the moment. So yeah, moving to another division would up the team's chances of making the play-offs.
Point (2) though, is a little different. It posits that the O's moving to the Central or West would actually see a significant increase in raw win total, by virtue of not having to play their unbalanced schedule against the tougher AL East teams. I don't think that's really true, after looking into the matter at Beyond the Box Score last year*:
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In the last week or two I've had multiple people tell me they're not too familiar with the statistics I tend to use and ask various questions - mostly about Wins Above Replacement (WAR). I've taken to adding a little glossary link at the bottom of each post based on which stats were used therein, but expounding more thoroughly on WAR seems like a fair idea. Luckily, there are numerous great primers on the stat around the interwebs, so I'm going to crib shamelessly from them (and I'm pretty much just sticking with the position player side). If anyone has any additional questions - big or small - please leave a comment and I'll try my best to explain more/better.
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Reggie from Baseball Press was nice enough to have me on his podcast this past weekend to discuss the Orioles' off-season and how the team looks for 2011. Check it out. no comments
Keith Law did an interview with Steve Melewski that went up today, in which he basically echoed my thoughts about the Orioles (almost*) completely. I'm going to quote somewhat selectively (the things I agree with most), since you should read the whole thing.
* I do think he was slightly harsher than necessary, but I can understand taking the stronger position to get one's point across.
""The Orioles are not a club right now that is adding young talent, they have added veteran players to the roster. I don't get it, they are not winning 85 games this year and even if they did, what is that going to buy them? A couple extra fans in the seats? It won't put them in the playoffs," Law said."
They could win 85 games. It's just very unlikely, in my opinion.
""I feel like this is an offseason that may be coming from ownership or marketing, saying 'we can't lose 100 games again.' In that situation the baseball operations department should say 'do you want to win in the long term? Or do you want to just stink less in the short term?'"
When the Orioles signed Vladimir Guerrero and objected to the move in large part because of the $8 M price-tag (and even with the deferred money, the present value is still probably more than $7.5 M), Many people didn't like that point, making arguments including "it's not your money", "better Vlad gets it than it goes into Angelos' pocket", and "what's the big deal, the team can afford it". Some rebuttals to these are in my post today at Beyond the Box Score, and I'd really like to hear some more on the whole idea. Check it out. no comments
The initial team projections are posted here. A more thorough walkthrough of how I put the individual ones together is in the Matt Wieters post here. The components I'm looking for are playing time (plate appearances), batting line (BA/OBP/SLG), and fielding.
Today we're looking at the Orioles' new shortstop; JJ Hardy.
Playing Time:
After two years of ~635 PA, Hardy got to 465 in the majors his last year with the Brewers due largely to poor performance (he added 74 in the minors). Last year for the Twins, Hardy missed time with a wrist injury and only accumulated 375 PA. Hopefully that issue won't recur, but I wouldn't feel comfortable expecting more than 525 PA for 2011.
Batting:
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At 9 pm tonight, Jon (Crawdaddy) from Camden Depot, Heath from Dempsey's Army, and I will be having a Baltimore Orioles Round Table chat. Feel free to throw out some questions, and we'll try to get to as many as possible. Check it out here.
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In what I'm calling "pretty damn stupid", the Orioles have agreed to a one year $8 M contract with Vlad Guerrero (with some of the money apparently deferred). I argued previously why signing Vlad wasn't a good move - and I never even considered the team would go up to $8 M for a guy with little to no leverage, and who doesn't improve the team by much, if at all:
"Vlad Guerrero was a great player in his prime, and is still a good hitter. He's no longer a great hitter though. He's turning 36 in a week, and his knees aren't exactly in great shape - that fully limits him to the DH spot. To be valuable from that position, a player really has to hit. Vlad did last year (.300/.345/.496) but not quite so much a year before (.295/.334/.460). Despite hitting .300 (or close to it), Vlad rarely walks (especially so if you take out the intentional ones) which keeps his OBP not much above average. He still has some power, but he's more likely to hit 20 home runs than 30 at this point. If Vlad were to hit .295/.335/.470 for the O's next year in 575 plate appearances, he would be worth about 1.2 Win Above Replacement. At $5 M per win, that's ~$6 M*. So even if you want to sign Guerrero, giving him more than $6 M wouldn't be a great idea (especially given the lack of demand for his services).
* I believe players who sign one-year deals tend to be cheaper though.
How much does a 1 win DH help the Orioles? Since Luke Scott isn't likely to get traded at the moment, he'd probably move to left-field. The difference between DH and left-field (positional adjustment) is about 10 runs, so Luke would pick up that value (well, scaled down for playing time). Then he'd lose a little based on his fielding. Luke has a career +6 UZR/150 in left-field, but he's only seen limited time out there in the last couple years (and his numbers were below average). He's probably still a better fielder than many people think, but somewhere between a tad and solidly below average wouldn't be surprising from him at this point (say, -3 runs). So we add 1.2 win for Vlad and another 5 runs or so for Luke switching positions. Largely gone are the current left-fielders though; Felix Pie and Nolan Reimold. I don't have fuller projections for the two yet, but initial numbers were in the neighborhood of a win and a half. So that wipes away a vast majority of the upgrade from adding Vlad. Basically, team's offense would be better (Vlad > Pie, perhaps a 10+ run gap), but the defense would be worse (Pie > Scott, by upwards of 10 runs).
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